A Little About YOU! - May 7th

Good Morning Raleigh, Happy Wednesday!

I wanted to preface today with a little section about YOU, my readers, and highlight some of the reasons I write about what I do.

• 25% of readers, favor our In The Know content the most and near everyone listed this as at least a category of interest.

• Surprising to me, our second biggest, is the music category, even though I can’t be sure who is going to shows, people seem to enjoy it.

• 74% of you are in Raleigh, while 26% fall (within ~15 miles or so) of it and those outside almost always want updates about things just beyond Raleigh (hence the Triangle To-Do’s section).

• 94% of you agree the newsletter is Fantastic (as opposed to Okay or Bad), so thank you for the wonderful feedback!

It is too much to share all the info I have in one email but I like to be transparent with what it is I choose to share and a lot of it is influenced simply by what the majority of people seem to enjoy reading.

With that said, thanks again for being a reader and let’s get into today’s content!

• Raleigh Iron Works has their triangle pop-up market this Saturday from 11-4PM, with local artists and live music — every month, more here.

• MaiFest, a German themed May festival & market hit Trophy on Maywood this Saturday from 12-5PM — check out the details below:

• The Spring Mother’s Day Market starts this Friday at 9AM and runs through Sunday, they will have 130+ Vendors and will be located in the Jim Graham Building at the Fairgrounds —tickets here.

• Truly a ton of markets this weekend, but if you want a hotdog themed day, check out the Moore Square Spring Festival, complete with the Oscar Meyer Wienermobile, games & prizes, sack races, food, drink & more — see below:

• As some of our comments suggested, readers asked for more thrift and vintage options, so this Friday and Saturday check out trunkshow’s Estate Sales! Location will be announced soon and the signup sheet goes live from 8-5 tomorrow — more details on the event here.

• To follow up from Monday, Mala Pata has their official opening date set for May 14th in Gateway Place alongside their sister-bar Peyote. This restaurant is led by the same team as Centro and Ex Voto — See more below:

• Kane Realty announced a new luxury residence building, The Strand, a 20-story mixed-use residential tower, for construction in North Hills. The building will have 362 apartments, 9k sq/ft of retail, and is set to be complete by Summer 2027 — source here.

• Rigoberto Mena, a Cuban abstractionist painter is set to open a new exhibit in CAM Raleigh next week on May 15th. Skin of the City, draws inspiration for his homelands urban landscapes and vibrant spirit — see more about the event and his page here.

• 3 emails a week, every week. If that’s worth a single coffee each month, consider joining below? Your support helps us remain free, local, and ad-light — support here 📬.

• One of the newest music venues in Raleigh, Cannonball is having a Jazz/Metal (yes, you read that right) event May 15th at 7PM — more info on the venue/event here.

• Berkeley, the Nash Square squirrel that was carved from a 90 foot Willow Oak, is set to retire on May 9th. The art piece, commissioned by Corey Lancaster (featured below) is set to move to an natural remote area, to decompose in a safer space. You can see the state of the work currently, down below:

May 7th - Wednesday

• Dunlow [songwriter] @ Clockwork | 7PM - FREE

• Jazz Open Jam Session [jazz] @ Moon Room | 8PM - FREE

• Discoveries, Inferious, In Gloom [metal] @ The Pour House | 7PM - $15+

• Devin Townsend, Tesseract [progressive rock] @ The Ritz | 7:30PM - 53+

NOTE: I don’t love promoting Ticketmaster, but Devin Townsend & Tesseract are awesome.

May 8th - Thursday

• Midtown Beach Music Series [beach] @ Midtown Park / North Hills | 6PM - $5+

• The Toasters, Matamoska, Sound System Seven [ska] @ The Pour House | 7PM - $17+

• Pony Bradshaw w/ Will Overman [americana] @ Lincoln Theatre | 7PM - $25+

• Teens In Trouble, Bat Boy, Long Relief [alt-rock] @ Kings | 8PM - $12+

This weeks artist is Corey Lancaster, of Boon Hill Gallery, who specializes in chainsaw carvings. You may know of him from the downtown Nash Square Squirrel (named Berkeley) mentioned above. Check out their work at the link below:

• Hurricanes: It’s Round 2, Game 1 and the Canes faced off against the Capitals last night in DC last night. In honor of Round 2, from here on out I am using NO CAPS, so everything will be lowercase until the round is over for this section.

… with that said, go canes!!! they beat the caps away, 2-1, winning it in overtime to take a 1-0 series lead, the play the caps again on thursday at 7pm for game 2.

• NC FC: The FC played last night at home against Charlotte FC, falling 1-4 in the Cup Run and being eliminated by Charlotte FC.

• Wool E. Bull has been nominated for the Mascot Hall of Fame, voting begins May 11th and ends May 24th — see more on the list here. Speaking of the Bulls, they also play at home through the 11th against Gwinnett.

• Duke and UNC graduate this weekend, check local times and schedules to avoid traffic.

• The $2.1 Billion 2026 Wake County Budget has been proposed to county commissioners, proposing an increase in public school budget as well as property taxes — see a better breakdown of the bill over at ABC 11.

• Neill Reynolds, the departing CFO of Wolfspeed, is set to join Ralliant as its new Chief Financial Officer. Ralliant is a new company headquartered in Raleigh — more here.

• We try to take it easy with politics but this one has been going for a while (and still is) but a key Supreme Court seat was just asked to be certified for NC — more at WRAL.

• SAS Institute has partnered with Fathom Science (an NCSU spin-off) to develop AI-powered ocean forecasting models aimed at protecting the endangered North Atlantic right whale from shipping lanes — read the press release from SAS here.

May 7th - Wednesday - Overcast , High 77°F, Low 60°F

• Sunrise: 06:16 AM, Sunset: 08:07 PM - Moon: Waxing Gibbous 🌔

May 8th - Thursday - Partly Cloudy , High 79°F, Low 63°F

• Sunrise: 06:15 AM, Sunset: 08:07 PM - Moon: Waxing Gibbous 🌔

• Want a postcard of your local parks? Wake Gov has new ones from community photos at the parks listed in their instagram post — more here to find and pick one up.

• This Friday, join PIPs and The Hartwell for an meet and greet event for their dogs from 6-8PM. There will be live music, dinner, and a chance to inquire about adoption:

• Yesterday was National Nurses Day, as much of my family works the medical field, I wanted to share a fun fact about our local area for it as well down below:

That’s it folks! As always these events and more are over at our community calendar, just refer 3 friends and you can gain access to it for either Google Calendar or iCal for Apple.

See you Friday!

— Mason at The Raleighwood Inbox