FAQ City

It wasn't too long ago — 2003 in fact — that a huge underground bunker was put up for sale just outside Charlotte. The bunker was built in the Cold War, but since emptied and covered up with weeds and rust.

It's the end of the workday in Charlotte, and a crowd of bankers and business people are heading home for the day, striding down a plain, ordinary sidewalk next to a nondescript brown building on Trade Street.

What these business people perhaps don't know is that just below their feet, about a story or two down, is a bustling underground operation and a massive, steel-encased vault containing untold billions of dollars in cash.

It was only around 70 years ago that Charlotte had a booming trolley system, with dozens of orange-colored streetcars running up and down the middle of Queens Road, The Plaza, and other surrounding streets and neighborhoods. That is, until the late 1930s came around, and the city dismantled the system, envisioning a future where cars and buses would become the city's primary modes of transportation.

Listener Jeff Moen moved to Charlotte about three years ago, and has never really figured out this one quirk of his new hometown. While nearly every city in the nation calls its central business district "downtown," in Charlotte, it's "uptown."

Here's a riddle: Imagine two roads in Charlotte, one in the north, one in the south. Both have four lanes and plenty of rush hour traffic, but one has streetlights while the other doesn't. Seem weird?

If you've ever had to make a big move in your life, you can probably relate on some level to WFAE listener Julianne Wooten. She moved to Charlotte two and a half years ago from Austin, Texas, and upon arriving here, realized she couldn't find one of her favorite dishes.

So imagine it's your day off. There's no work or school today. You're ready to go out and make the most of it, but the whole city has shut down, and your friends just want to stay in bed.

If you're a night worker - that is, one of less than 5 percent of Americans who work overnight - you may already know this dilemma ... And that brings us to this week's episode of FAQ City.

It’s time now to take one of your questions. A while back, one of our listeners submitted a question through our website asking if there was anything that could be done to compel Charlotte residents to interact with people different from them - something that could help the city counteract racial segregation that’s grown over the last decade.

WFAE has a new initiative called Ask Us to let our audience suggest story ideas. On our website, we're asking what you're curious about in the Charlotte region, its life, and culture. We recently put another set of five questions to a vote – letting you decide the story you wanted us to cover. The winner came from Steve Tekola, of east Charlotte. He talked to WFAE's David Boraks.