Today marks nine years of blogging here at ye olde blog. The most notable accomplishment in the last year was hitting 1,000 posts but nine straight years of keeping this thing moving has been pretty rewarding.

For those that don’t know, this blog is a side project, a way to flex my writing muscle, play with my camera a bit, tinker with web development, and just get conversations going about our city’s urban core. This site is fueled by passion but also by those that participate by commenting and your emails.

Thank you, readers for sticking with me.

Above is a photo from the vault. It’s a view of downtown Raleigh from West Street, north of Peace, taken in April, 2008.

Just like downtown Raleigh, this website is never finished but always a work in progress. RalCon is now eight years old and there are a ton of good things to talk about and photograph this year.

The photo above was taken on April 13, 2008. In the photo, you can see the construction of the then-called RBC Plaza tower, now PNC Plaza, and Raleigh’s tallest building. I like the photo because while the building might be the tallest, the crane used to assemble it was the tallest structure ever in Raleigh’s history. (to the best of my knowledge)

And back to the conversation…

Lucky number seven? The blog has made it another year and maybe this time I will figure out something to do to celebrate it. A Raleigh beer perhaps?

What I do like to do is use this time to dig into the photo vault and take something out. Sure we all like the real historic photos but it can be amazing to see the difference in just a few short years. Above is a shot from the Wilmington Station Deck looking south on a warm July day in 2006. What’s different?

I’m thinking of throwing a party at number 10. Until then, we can plan for it and enjoy the downtown. Cheers!

We’ve made it to six, SIX years of blogging.

Let me get up and dance real quick………..

I really have no interesting story about how this website was started. I was bored at work one day and started blogging. It just stuck and here we are.

What can you expect from this blog in the future? Absolutely nothing different. I plan to continue geeking out about downtown Raleigh, meeting new people, and taking photos.

2013 should be a good one as the Urban Design Center wants to start talks of a new downtown plan. Stay tuned for more as it comes out.

As a birthday treat, I’d like to post this photo I took before the blog was started. This is of the early construction work on the RBC Plaza tower, the current PNC Plaza on Fayetteville Street.

Five years and going strong.