Last week public and private sector leaders toasted the new lighting for the beltline’s pedestrian bridge (next to the Wade Ave. intersection). The bridge is now adorned with 120 LED light fixtures in addition to additional LEDs installed within the columns of the bridge. The project was made possible by Cree, ETG, Lumux, the N.C. Museum of Art, Raleigh Parks and Recreation, Colorume’s Colorlume’s Jeff Brown, and the NCDOT. Check it out the next time you pass by at night.

During these crazy mid-week holidays, it is easy to miss your garbage and recycling collection day. Here is the calendar for this week. Next week the city will resume its normal schedule.

In additional waste news, the City of Raleigh on January 1 will go to “single-stream” recycling. Recycling will no longer by sorted at the truck level. This means that collection trucks will move more quickly through their routes, and that resident no longer need to worry about placing like things together in their bins. The city will get paid 38% less for their collected materials, but plans of saving money by using fewer and less expensive trucks to handle the routes in less time.

Beginning this week Raleigh residents should place their discarded trees at the curb with regular yard waste on their scheduled collection day. Be sure to remove all bags, stands, lights, tinsel, ornaments, and other non-vegetative items from the tree before placing it at the curb no later than 7 a.m. on the collection day. Residents should not put trees at the curbside prior to their collection day. Artificial trees being discarded should be disassembled and placed in garbage carts.

All natural Christmas trees collected by the City’s Solid Waste Services Department, including those taken to the Yard Waste Center, are recycled into wood chips and mulch. These products are sold to the general public at the City’s Yard Waste Center, located at 900 N. New Hope Road, which can be reached at 250-2728.

The Broadway Series South production of The Rat Back is Back! begins tomorrow night for an 8-show run at the Fletcher Theater in downtown Raleigh. This is the crew that performed at the now-defunct Prime Only steakhouse. Tickets are available thru Ticketmaster.

Ambiente International furniture gallery has recently added internationally renowned Italian furniture manufacturer Kartell to its collection. Kartell features the designs of Phillip Stark, Ron Arad, Vico Magistretti, Piero Lissoni,Antonio Citterio, and many others. Kartell award winning products are distributed in 96 countries.

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Downtown Live, the free concert series, is getting ready for the 2009 season. The seven dates are May 30, June 13, June 27, July 11, July 25, August 8, and August 22. There is no word so far regarding the series’ location, which is an issue this year as Raleigh will open its downtown amphitheater this coming summer.

Candlebox will kick off the series on May 30. Supporting bands and additional headliners for the series will continually be announced through the winter and spring.

This past week revised plans for North Hills East were submitted to the Raleigh planning department. The site plan (.pdf) merely shows street placements and building footprints, so it is difficult to appreciate the scale of the project without knowing the heights of the buildings. However there seems to be better integration with hidden parking and the supporting streets. There are roughly 20 buildings proposed with very little open space. The plan also uses the existing surrounding street network well.

The Amras brothers are on the cusp of opening their next addition to downtown Raleigh, the Tobacco Road Sports Cafe. Located in the base of the new 222 Glenwood building, TR promises to be more than just another sports bar. Juan Esparaza, executive chef, has put together a somewhat challenging, well-rounded final menu (.PDF). While most of the items leaked in an earlier post appear on the menu, there are a few additions such as made-to-order salsa and guacamole. The menu features typical bar food, but also ventures into North Carolina favorites, fresh alternatives, seafood, and local produce.

The restaurant is, ironically, non-smoking, so it seems like and entirely reasonable family destination as well as a good one for Glenwood regulars.

12/24 Note: Tobacco Road will be opening to the public later this week, not today as other outlets are reporting.

It appears that recently Time Warner Cable subscribers who tune in to local HD channels by selecting the channel on their TV (as opposed to using a TWC box to select) have recently “lost” some of their channels.

Apparently as TWC has added channels recently, they have changed some of the frequencies being used for some of these HD channels and subchannels (5.1, 5.2, 5.3, etc).

Try going into your TV’s setup menu and get your TV to rescan all channels. The local HD channels and subchannels are delivered through a method called “clear QAM”. New TVs can detect channels on clear QAM, but older ones cannot. These local channels are hidden in Time Warner’s most basic tier of cable service, but not publicized for obvious reasons.

Try rescanning and hopefully you’ll get your channels back!