04 Oct Upstate Headlines: Oktoberfest, Blood Drives, Carolina Theatre Preservation & More!
A collection of the top Upstate headlines for the week of October 4, 2017
Oktoberfest to turn Greenville’s NOMA Square into Bavarian Biergarten
NOMA Square, beside Hyatt Regency will be transformed into a Bavarian Biergarten during a free 4 day community celebration! This celebration begins Thursday Oct 5th and lasts through Sunday Oct 8th. Don your lederhosen or dirndl and join us for delicious German food and fun. Featured food includes grilled bratwurst, pretzels with beer cheese & mustard, Sauerbraten and more! There will also be a selection of brews from Paulaner such as: Paulaner’s Munich Lager, Hefe-Weizen, or a tall glass of Paulaner’s Oktoberfest. Live entertainment will be provided every night and games and contests including cornhole, jenga, the chicken dance, and more will be fun for the whole family.
Blood Donations Needed Now More Than Ever
Blood donations are needed locally but also to help those injured by Hurricanes Irma and Maria, and people wounded in the mass shooting in Las Vegas. Bob Jones University is doing its part with its semi-annual Blood Connection Drive. Blood Connection buses will be located from 11:45 a.m. to 7 p.m. through Friday next to the BJU Alumni Building near the university’s Wade Hampton Boulevard entrance. The general public is invited to donate blood. The Blood Connection will be taking donation appointments, but appointments are not required. Donors who sign up for an appointment are given priority. Each donor will also receive a $10 Wal-Mart gift card. To make an appointment, call 864-255-5000 or visit the website thebloodconnection.org. If you donate blood, you are encouraged to eat a good amount or iron-rich foods (meats, spinach, and broccoli), drink a lot of water, and eat a good meal on the day they are donating.
Upstate Welcomes Professional Indoor Soccer Team
The Upstate is getting a professional indoor soccer team. The Upstate Strikers will play its first game at the Anderson Civic Center in December. The team that will play six to eight home games the first year with the hopes of playing 10 to 15 the second year. Tryouts will be held starting Oct. 28, 2017 at the Anderson Civic Center and are open to soccer players who have completed college and have played at a professional level. The team is also looking for assistant coaches and trainers as well as spectator sport dancers. The Upstate Strikers will provide families with fun and entertainment at every game this upcoming season!
Tandem Creperie and Coffeehouse Launches Mobile Crepe and Coffee Bus
When the popular creperie and coffehouse opened 2014, the now known tagline #TogetherisBest was a reference to coffee and crepes and to the Hartmans, the husband and wife duo who opened the business. But the meaning has shifted. “Now, it’s a whole team working together to bring the crepes and the coffee to a lot more people than we expected,” Hartman says. The bus is a great way to bring even more coffee and crepes to Upstate foodies. The idea for the bus was what you might call a fall-in-your-lap-type thing. The Hartmans were perusing Craigslist for furniture when they came across a VW bus for sale. When they saw it, they just knew they had to make it part of the Tandem family. The bus has two crepe griddles on one side and a mini espresso machine on the other, and is surrounded by glass to allow folks to see inside. That detail was important to the Hartmans, as they have built their café on the same idea of preparing focused, fresh crepes and coffee in an atmosphere that allows people to see what is going on and what is going into their food, and tangentially, to be part of the “Together is Best” sense of Tandem.
Preservation South Carolina Focuses on Carolina Theatre
Although the Carolina Theater has sat abandoned for more than 40 years, Spartanburg natives, historians and preservationists believe the theater can be restored. The first time Suzanne Brooks walked into the Carolina Theater in downtown Spartanburg she felt overwhelmed by the historic theater’s loft ceilings and ornate details. Brooks, the executive director of the Spartanburg County Historical Association, was asked to complete an interior survey of the nearly 92-year-old theater and inventory its historic elements. “The fact that we have all of this is unreal,” she said while pointing to the front of the stage Tuesday inside the theater. “We’re actually pretty lucky to have as much of the material (left) as we do. All the way from the roping to the motifs in the border across the top to the Greek figures in the grill, it’s all textbook revival.”
