soil
Wilmington is situated on the lower Cape Fear River, in the southeastern North Carolina tidewater. It was a port from colonial times, and pivotal in the conflicts that forged the nation. Wrightsville Beach lays 9 miles east. This corner on the coast is surrounded by a hundred miles of swamp, pine forest, pig and tobacco farms, and two military goliaths, Camp Lejuene and Fort Bragg. Insulated from the academic, hi-tech, Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Triangle, and the tourist mecca of Myrtle Beach, and nowhere near an interstate (yet), it developed a best kept secret rep. Through the ’60’s and ’70’s, as the sunbelt swelled, a diverse, if small, arts community coalesced.
UNC by the Sea, AKA “the College”, was considered an inexpensive party school. Half the student body, along with those of local high schools, inhabited the beach on weekends, either the strand itself, or a two block strip of taverns, 18 being the drinking age in 1980. The Crest Theater and the Wit’s End were stops on the East Coast bar band circuit. Historic downtown had the cultural anchors of Thalian Hall, an antebellum theater, and the Community Arts Center, a former USO ballroom. A cafe society sprouted among actors, artists, musos, techies, bartenders and restaurant hands, often playing multiple roles. The businesses and bourgeoisie had fled to the metastisizing suburbs, as the coastal forests and plantations were leveled by subdivisions, stripmalls, parking lots, and golf courses. Out of the sun, and into the void, came the punk generation.
