There are few people who have that X factor—that thing that makes you feel truly heard and seen. That thing that makes you feel special. Frank was one of those people. For nearly 30 years, Frank Ballard was a familiar face—and friend to many—at Hayes Barton Cafe & Dessertery, the Five Points institution he built with his wife, Marget.
To call his death a loss for the community hardly captures it. When Frank unexpectedly passed away in August following a hospitalization with pneumonia, the outpouring of heartbreak was a testament to the life he’d spent showing up for others. Just months earlier, a serious accident at his home had left him with a life-changing spinal cord injury requiring round-the-clock care. Through it all, the community that Frank had embraced for decades rallied around him in return. “Alongside his wife, Marget, Frank has built more than a business,” the Hayes Barton team shared after his passing. “He has helped create memories for families, supported community fundraisers, and shown up time and again for others.” Frank built more than a restaurant. While his friendly face may no longer greet guests at the door, his generosity and warmth remain woven into a neighborhood beacon built as much around fellowship as food.
Rest easy, friend. Your legacy lives on. 🤍
Jesus Cabrera from RM’s 2025 Best Restaurants Awards
Who’s running—and what to know before you vote Nov. 3.
Election season is officially upon us—and this time, Raleigh’s ballot carries some serious weight.
The rules are shifting, the terms are changing, and the outcomes will stick. So to cut through the noise of yard signs and campaign mailers flooding your mailbox, inbox and phone, we’re breaking down who’s running, what’s changing and why it actually matters.
On Nov. 3, voters will choose a mayor and City Council members who will help steer a rapidly growing Raleigh through some of its biggest questions: housing and development, public safety, transit, Downtown’s future, and more.
And some of those choices will stick around longer than Raleigh voters are used to: Raleigh is moving to four-year staggered terms for mayor and City Council (see sidebar), with half of the council seats expiring every two years. Also vying for your vote: $203 million in proposed housing and transportation bonds. Voters will weigh two $101.5 million measures—which the city says can be issued without an additional property-tax increase—putting even more of the city’s future directly in voters’ hands.
So, yes, local elections matter—a lot. Before you head to the polls, we’re making the homework easy. Here’s your district-by-district snapshot of who’s running—and everything else you need to know to cast your ballot. See you at the polls, Raleigh.
Election day: Tue., Nov. 3, 6:30am—7:30pm, at your assigned polling place
New Ballot, New Terms 4-year terms: Mayor, Districts A & B and the top-finishing at-large candidate
2-year terms: Districts C, D & E and the second-finishing at-large candidate, before moving to four-year terms in 2028
Show Face:
Accepted photo ID: driver’s license, student ID, state ID card, passport, tribal enrollment card or government ID. The address on the ID doesn’t have to match voter registration records.
You can still vote by filling out an ID Exception Form or taking valid photo ID to WCBE by noon on the third business day following Election Day.
Voting by mail? That too—a photocopy + the Absentee Photo ID Exception Form provided with your absentee ballot materials.
Find My District: Not sure which district you live in? We’ve got you covered. Type in your address here, where it says “Find Your Council Member and District.”
Ballot Preview: Want to preview your ballot? Registered voters can enter name/birth year here to search voter details, including jurisdictions, polling place, sample ballot when available, absentee ballot information and voter history. See the sample ballot for District E below.
Seven local nonprofits. One shared mission: putting your dollars to work before a setback becomes homelessness.
A parked car was never supposed to be home. But that’s exactly where one local mother and her two children found themselves after a divorce upended their lives. Bouncing between their car, emergency shelters and, when she could afford it, hotel rooms, she kept working—and saving—determined to secure a permanent home for her family.
And she almost did. The apartment was within reach. The monthly rent was manageable. But the thousands of dollars required upfront to actually move in weren’t. After everything she’d done right, $3,000 stood between her children sleeping in a car and sleeping in beds of their own.
Her story is far from unusual. So many of Wake County’s housing-insecure neighbors aren’t who you might imagine. They’re working parents, professionals and families who were making it—until suddenly they weren’t. An illness. An injury. A divorce. An unexpected death in the family. One ordinary setback that becomes another, and in a flash, the stability they spent years building begins to unravel.
That’s precisely what RM’s Give Raleigh, in partnership with Pinnacle Financial Partners, was designed to interrupt. The annual 40-day giving campaign raises funds for Cooper Charitable Foundation, which puts those dollars to work through seven local nonprofits helping neighbors stay—or become—safely housed.
For this single mother, that nonprofit was Oak City Cares. A $3,000 Cooper Charitable Foundation grant covered the move-in costs, finally allowing her family to trade nights in parking lots for a permanent home. Today, her children have a safe place to sleep, study and grow—and their mother can focus on raising them instead of wondering where they’ll spend the night.
Ten bucks didn’t pay that $3,000. Neither did $20 or $100. But your $10 was never meant to do it alone. Add it to ours. And your neighbor’s. Your mom’s. Your dad’s. Then add Pinnacle Financial Partners’ dollar-for-dollar match of the first $10,000 raised. That’s what Give Raleigh does. That’s how $10 becomes something much bigger.
Last year, those gifts became $118K+ through Give Raleigh—money Cooper Charitable Foundation put into the hands of those seven local nonprofits that know exactly where a few dollars at exactly the right moment can change the trajectory of someone’s life.
A deposit gets paid. A bed gets delivered. A car gets repaired. A student stays in school. A mother stays housed. That’s the $10 difference. That’s what happens when Raleigh gives together.
Meet the Mission
Seven ways your gift can help keep a Wake County neighbor moving forward.
Family Promise of the Triangle | 1993 Home is more than an address. Family Promise helps families move from cars, motels and borrowed couches into permanent housing through prevention, emergency shelter, rapid rehousing and ongoing support.
The Green Chair Project | 2010 Four walls don’t make a home—a bed, table and chair do. The Green Chair Project transforms empty apartments into homes by providing furniture and essentials for families rebuilding after homelessness, crisis or disaster.
Oak City Cares | 2019 Finding support shouldn’t be harder than asking for it. Oak City Cares connects neighbors with housing, employment, health care, meals and other essential services through Wake County’s one-stop hub for homelessness resources.
Wake Tech Fostering Bright Futures | 2009 You can’t put a price on education—until you can. FBF removes financial barriers through tuition assistance, stipends and wraparound support, helping former foster youth stay in school, earn degrees and build independent futures.
Healing Transitions | 2001 Recovery isn’t a straight line. Healing Transitions provides free peer-based recovery services—from emergency shelter and detox to long-term support—giving people as many chances as it takes to rebuild their lives.
The Carying Place | 1993 Sometimes preventing homelessness is as simple as helping a family through one difficult season. The Carying Place combines short-term housing, financial education and personalized support to help hardworking families achieve lasting stability.
The Women’s Center of Wake County | 1977 Everyone deserves a safe place to begin again. Wake County’s only day shelter for single women provides meals, showers, housing support, case management and life-skills programming to help women move from crisis to stability.
“Is Tamara there? Are you sure?” Horror movies have mastered the art of making you want to climb inside your own skin. Psychological thrillers? Not so much.
After tearing through roughly 50 of them over the past year—from BookTok sensations to Goodreads recs—I learned one thing: Most don’t actually live up to the hype. Too often it’s just: Surprise! Everyone’s evil!
These aren’t those books. If you’re looking for that rare thriller that actually earns the gasp, the goosebumps and the 2am lights out, consider this a collection of the ones I’d happily erase from my memory just to experience again for the first time. And, yes—for audiobook lovers—narrators absolutely factored into my rankings.
Listen for the Lie| Amy Tintera READ IF you want sharp humor with a side of murder. “A podcast ruined my life so I’m buying a chicken.” First line = hooked—and somehow it only gets better. From the POV of a woman who can’t remember if she murdered her best friend (seriously), Tintera’s razor-sharp, darkly funny thriller—paired with a perfectly snarky narrator—is slick, modern and twisty as hell, while also making one of the genre’s riskiest narrative choices feel completely natural.
Jar of Hearts| Jennifer Hillier READ IF you’re down for some serious emotional devastation. Where a lot of thrillers can feel cheap, Jar raises the stakes—earning its darkness by slowly reconstructing the protagonist’s entire psyche and survival logic. So by the time you realize the full truth, it lands emotionally instead of just mechanically, all with a narrator who doesn’t sound like a Victorian ghost trapped in a gramophone.
Guess Again| Charlie Donlea READ IF you want to lose to a book. Wickedly clever, relentlessly twisty, impossible to outsmart, every time you think you’ve solved it, Donlea pats you on the head and says, “That’s adorable. Guess again.” I’ve never read a thriller orchestrated this brilliantly—even the twists have twists.
All the Dangerous Things | Stacy Willingham READ IF you love a slow burn that actually pays off. I’d been burned by enough “if you liked…” recs that my expectations were basically buried with the dead bodies—then this one pulled me absolutely under. If All Her Fault wrecked you, this one belongs next in your queue.
None of This Is True| Lisa Jewell READ IF you think you can figure out who to trust (spoiler: You can’t). Psychologically slippery, unsettling, addictive and unreliable to its core, Jewell delivers a masterclass on unreliable narrators where everyone is lying and somehow you still trust all of them anyway—and love every second of it. Bonus points if you’re mad for British narration.
Little Secrets | Jennifer Hillier READ IF you’d do almost anything to save your marriage. Where Jar is emotionally wrecking, Secrets is psychologically savage (and unexpectedly funny). With an uncanny gift for making her characters feel like your friends, Hillier writes people so convincingly that even their most shocking choices feel completely, terrifyingly human.
A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder | Holly Jackson READ IF you’re nostalgic for Nancy Drew, only with a body count. Law & Order enters the high school chat—in the best possible way. Equal parts Nancy Drew and psycho-thriller, Jackson’s whodunit is clever, nostalgic and much darker than it first appears.
The Business Trip| Jessie Garcia READ IF you want an airport read… in the best possible way. Fast, cinematic, impossible to put down, Garcia’s high-concept page-turner is exactly the kind of fast-moving, wildly readable ride that keeps saying, “just one more chapter”—until your flight lands and you’ve forgotten to get off the plane.
The Housemaid| Freida McFadden READ IF pure mindless popcorn suspense will fix you. Get in losers—nothing is what it seems. What starts as a housekeeping job in a seemingly perfect home quickly spirals into a compulsively readable nightmare. And, yes—the book is better than the movie. Sorry, Sydney.
He Started It | Samantha Downing READ IF you think your siblings are a lot. On a family road trip where every mile makes the family more unhinged, Downing turns sibling rivalry into psychological warfare. Wickedly funny, wildly original and unlike any I’ve read, it balances pitch-black humor with genuine suspense.
The Boyfriend| Freida McFadden READ IF you want to feel better about your own dating choices. Tinder turns to terror in one of McFadden’s few thrillers that truly fooled me. Modern, chaotic and deliciously deceptive—I bought every single misdirection.
New Red Hat Amp rising—and bringing a serious upgrade with it.
Raleigh’s favorite boutique amp is making major headway in front of its 2027 opening act.
Marking a major milestone this summer with the topping out of its highest vertical steel, construction is now in full swing on the ~$40M Red Hat Amphitheater move across Lenoir Street.
The new DTR digs promise an upgraded concertgoing experience from top to bottom, including improved sightlines, high-tech concessions, backstage spaces and—cue the applause—permanent bathrooms. Because after 16 summers of Porta Potties, some amenities deserve a standing O.
“We want everyone to look forward [to] what a great thing this is going to be for concertgoers, shops, restaurants, hotels—and everyone Red Hat Amp has a positive economic impact on,” says Raleigh Convention and Performing Arts Complex Executive Director Kerry Painter.
As beloved as the McDowell Street space has been during its 16-season run, it was never built to last. Originally conceived as a temporary placeholder on land earmarked for now-incoming convention center expansion, the scrappy amp became a DTR institution in its own right.
And for those who have sweated and swayed at the OG site, the memories will live on—literally. Last month, the venue curated a time capsule packed with stage-side scrim banners, news clippings, merch, artist riders and more, which will be cracked back open in 2076.
Meanwhile, its successor is already booking shows for 2027. Consider this an encore—not an ending.
