WEB EXCLUSIVE After being cooped up in our houses for so long, there’s nothing quite as refreshing as getting outside. This Great American Picnic Day (June 27) we encourage you to pack a picnic, or grab takeout from a locally-owned restaurant, and head out to one of Raleigh’s gorgeous parks for a leisurely outdoor meal. Just be sure to stay six feet away from fellow picnickers and where masks when appropriate.
Dorothea Dix Park 2105 Umstead Drive Dix Park’s hill overlooking Raleigh’s skyline is the ideal place for a picnic with a stellar view. Plus, with its close location to Downtown Raleigh, you can easily swing by one of your favorite local eateries for takeout on the way there.
Ford Fletcher Park 820 Clay Street Set out a blanket at Fletcher Park’s grassy amphitheater to enjoy a tranquil picnic away from home.
NCMA Park 2110 Blue Ridge Road The art museum’s park has a plethora of great picnic spots, all of which are surrounded by beautiful works of art. Spread out in the sunny field near the gyre rings, underneath the shade of trees along the trails, or at a table near the park’s entrance.
Pullen Park 520 Ashe Avenue Choose a grassy spot underneath one of the many trees lining Pullen Park’s pond to reminisce on days spent pedal boating, riding the carousel or attending a program at Theatre in the Park.
Moore Square 226 E Martin Street If you can’t go into any of your favorite businesses in Downtown Raleigh, surrounding yourself with them is the next best thing. Moore Square’s large grassy field is perfect for laying out with a takeout meal and pretending you’re eating at your favorite restaurant.
Raleigh Rose Garden 2703 Everett Avenue Stop and smell the roses while enjoying a classy picnic of wine, charcuterie and cheese (date night anyone?). With the abundance of beautiful flowers and other foliage, there’s no bad spot to lay out!
Lake Johnson Nature Park 4601 Avent Ferry Road Pack some snacks to enjoy on Lake Johnson’s sandy beach—the grassy area behind the dam is also a popular spot for laying out—after a leisurely walk around the park.
Nash Square 200 S McDowell Street An abundance of shady trees make Nash Square the perfect spot for picnicking on a hot day. Stroll through the park with a sandwich from a nearby takeout restaurant or take a seat on one of the benches.
WEB EXCLUSIVE In Dave and Elyssa Nastalski’s household, humans aren’t the only ones following North Carolina’s stay at home order; their chickens are, too.
The downtown Raleigh Dogwood Country Club owners spent the first part of self-isolating building a grande coop for their five hens and two roosters modeled after the clubhouse at Augusta National, one of the most exclusive golf clubs in the world. They named it “Eggusta National.”
Elyssa and Dave knew they were going to need a coop for their chickens when they first got them in July of 2019, but they wanted to build it themselves and didn’t want it to be just any standard chicken coop.
“We were like, ‘if we’re going to do this, we’re going to do something neat,’” Elyssa says.
“Eggusta National”
Building something golf-related was a no-brainer for the pair.
“Golf is our life,” says Elyssa. Together they’ve started two golf companies—Dogwood Country Club and Dirty Larry Golf. Dave is a licensed PGA golf instructor and all of their wedding gifts to each other revolved around golf. Their chickens are also named after famous golfers: Arlene Palmer, Jackie Nicklaus, Tigress Woods, Bennie Hogan, Jeanne Sarazen, Gary Player and Phil Mickelson.
The Nastalskis had the goal of finishing the coop by what would have been the Masters Tournament—the weekend of April 12, though it was since rescheduled to November 9th through 15th.
Elyssa says the stay at home order allowed them to really dive into the project, giving them something to occupy themselves during the statewide shutdown of local businesses, including their urban country club.
“We like to flex our creative muscles,” Elyssa says. “We don’t do things in a standard way.”
WEB EXCLUSIVE Food is essential; whether you’re working or unemployed at the moment, working from home or an essential employee, quarantining with your parents or with a significant other, we all need to eat.
While many of his restaurants and businesses are currently closed, Raleigh entrepreneur Guarav “G” Patel began thinking of ways he could help hospitality workers who aren’t receiving any income right now and may not have the ability to feed themselves as often or as well as they’d like. At the end of March, Patel launched a campaign called Hope For Hospitality in an effort to provide meals for hospitality workers who are displaced due to COVID-19.
“If I can provide a meal for individuals who are in need of it, I think that’s the minimum that I can do,” Patel says. “Let’s keep [hospitality workers] nourished so that when they come back to work, they’re not completely dried out.”
Guarav “G” Patel with Eddie Forbis and Jake Wood of Lawrence Barbeuce
In order to secure a meal, hospitality workers fill out a form with their name, where they work, who their supervisor is and more before 2 p.m. to have their orders picked up between 4 and 6 p.m. Workers may order as many times a week as they need to. After just one week, Patel was able to feed almost 100 people, with the campaign quickly gaining traction throughout the Triangle.
As a thank you to the participating restaurants, Patel started a GoFundMe to generate funds for staff members and other critical needs. Patel hopes that the campaign will come full circle and those that participate will spread the word to others and inspire them to donate. “I don’t think [the partner restaurants] are doing it for the money, I think they’re just doing it for the good cause,” says Patel. “But every dollar counts these days.”
Additionally, NCFC is going to donate 5 percent of its net sales of merchandise through April and May to Patel’s GoFundMe page. So far, he’s raised $1,155 of his $15,000 goal.
Patel has also partnered with friend Jon Seelbinder, another prominent local entrepreneur and founder of Local Icon Hospitality, to help provide displaced hospitality workers with groceries and other essential items through the CARE.BOX initiative. Wine to Water founder Doc Hendley approached Seelbinder to establish a Raleigh chapter of CARE.BOX, with the goal of giving away 240,000 meals and hygiene materials to service industry workers affected by COVID-19.
Jon Seelbinder of Local Icon Hospitality with CARE.BOX volunteers
Each CARE.BOX provides hospitality workers with a grocery box containing 40 meals (about three meals a day for two people) and other essential items, including fruit, bread, dry pasta, canned goods and toilet paper. Displaced workers can get a CARE.BOX in place of a Hope For Hospitality meal or in addition to one. Boxes can be reserved and picked up from Little City Brewing on Thursdays and Fridays between 3 and 6 p.m. “It is an exciting initiative that we are proud to be a part of,” says Lori Shapiro, the director of events and marketing for Local Icon.
Local Icon is also seeking monetary donations to help raise funds for CARE.BOX supplies, as well as volunteers to help fill and distribute the boxes.
WEB EXCLUSIVE Now, more so than ever, it’s important to keep things clean, from your hands to your work surfaces—whether at home or in an office—to the shopping carts you use at the grocery store. Which is why locally-owned business Happy Cans is now offering its dumpster and trash bin cleaning services to stores to disinfect their shopping carts and help mitigate the potential spread of COVID-19.
Started in 2019 in Fuquay Varina, Happy Cans specializes in disinfecting and sanitizing dumpsters and trash bins at hotels, restaurants and apartment complexes around the Triangle. The cleaning process involves using 360-degree cleaning heads to remove dirt and debris from nooks and crannies and blasting the containers with 200-degree pressurized water. According to research from co-owner Dan Preisach, 200-degree temperature water is 99 percent effective in getting rid of bacteria, germs and, yes, even, potentially, coronavirus.
Happy Cans sales representative Caroline Reed says that solely wiping down shopping carts with disinfectant wipes before and after each visit to the grocery store isn’t enough to protect customers from transmitting coronavirus. Most of the time, customers only wipe down the handles and forget about the flip-up child seats and baskets where food goes. Happy Cans’ service would power wash each cart individually, ensuring all sides and angles are disinfected.
“I feel like the places that people are running out to—their biggest need is food—it’s almost a duty of theirs to keep the community safe,” Reed says. “I think that by power washing and disinfecting these carts, the very thing these people touch, would be a huge step in the right direction. We’re just trying to help out the community and safe guard as much as we can.”Happy Cans charges 80 cents per cart and $10 per corral. The service can also be used to disinfect playgrounds. For more information and to request services, visit happy-cans.com.
WEB EXCLUSIVE Before Charul Haugan, an emergency medicine physician at UNC REX, sends her teenage sons to the grocery store, she makes them put on homemade masks and a pair of disposable gloves. Haugan says they volunteered to do the grocery shopping in order to help keep her safe from contracting coronavirus.
“They’re like, ‘Mom, we’re young—if we get sick, it’s fine. You can’t get sick,’” Haugan says. “I may or may not have threatened that I wouldn’t feed them,” she adds, jokingly.
Haugan, who has worked as an emergency medicine provider at REX since 2001, says she believes everyone should be wearing masks right now, including those without symptoms, as they still may be able to spread the disease.
But if you’ve seen the news or have been on social media at all in the past month, you know there’s been a shortage of masks across the United States, along with other essential personal protective equipment (PPE) for healthcare workers. This, Haugan says, is largely due to the fact that India and China have cut off their exports, which is where most PPE is manufactured, in addition to the inability of domestic manufacturers to keep up with unprecedented demand, counterfeited products and price gouging—a typical N95 mask costs around $1.50, whereas some masks are now for sale at $6 or $7 apiece.
A nationwide survey from National Nurses United revealed that a majority of U.S. registered nurses believed their healthcare facilities were unprepared to handle COVID-related cases and/or had a shortage of PPE. And last week in North Carolina, a group of medical workers begged the General Assembly to get them more PPE in order to help prevent shortages as more and more people are expected to flood hospitals in the next few weeks.
Haugan says the supply chain issues cause even more stress and concern for healthcare workers already dealing with difficult situations at work every day.
“Emergency medicine doctors are the bravest, toughest group of people,” Haugan says. “These are the leaders and they are afraid. They’re afraid for themselves, for their staff that looks up to them. They’re afraid of getting infected and bringing it home to their families.”
Many doctors are sequestering themselves at home so as to not potentially spread the disease to their loved ones, even sleeping in separate bedrooms and using separate bathrooms to further prevent contact. Haugan says missing out on that family time and support is an additional burden for healthcare workers during an already difficult period.
Haugan says she has nightmares and that she is concerned for her colleagues and her sister, also an emergency medicine doctor. But she says she and her colleagues feel an obligation to take care of their patients, no matter what. “We have a duty—many of us think we have a duty—and we have a calling to help patients who need us,” Haugan says.
For the general public to help the cause, Haugan says the most important thing to do is stay at home to help flatten the curve. It’s not just about how many people end up getting infected but also about the rate at which people get infected. Flattening the curve allows U.S. manufacturing companies to ramp up their manufacturing of the ventilators patients need and PPE that healthcare workers need.
“The more we can delay the inevitable, the more time we have to prepare,” Haugan says.
Additionally, Haugan says she encourages patients and the public to wear homemade masks to help slow the spread of coronavirus and flatten the curve further.
Haugan says UNC REX, and most hospitals around the country, are generally planning diligently to make sure they’re prepared to care for COVID-19 patients as they continue to arrive in increasing numbers in the coming weeks. At many local hospitals, staffers are setting up tents, offloading patients from the hospital to virtual care centers for telehealth evaluations and getting infrastructure in place to free up inpatient beds.
Area hospitals are also partnering with universities and other organizations to utilize technology in order to sterilize existing supplies and manufacture new supplies. Doctors and nurses are collaborating to understand and share best practices and drive innovation. Haugan says the community has stepped up with impressive donations of medical equipment and basic necessities such as hand sanitizer and cleaning wipes—all of which will help curb the spread of the disease.
It’s especially imperative during this time that we keep our frontline workers healthy and protected. “The skill sets for emergency medicine providers cannot be easily met by people who haven’t worked in that world,” Haugan says, adding that she promises to continue working tirelessly to be a leader for the UNC healthcare system and to do her best to get supplies to the people that need them.
“I have never really thought of myself as an activist, but I’ve never been more moved to action as I have with this issue,” says Haugan. “Each and every person has a responsibility to do what they can to stay home and stay healthy.”
