By:Julia Bank

After a Friday night in Winston-Salem, I am looking at Elkin with some much needed outside perspective.

A lot of people here, my self included, get pretty wrapped up in their family, work and house lives. Any free time we have very quickly becomes dedicated to building or restoring aspects of our other lives away from work.

When I get a free afternoon or a weekend, I tend to go straight to work on cleaning, playing with animals or spending time with my husband. If we go out, it's to catch a friend at Basin Creek, grab a coffee at Snickerdoodles or wander the outdoor garden section of Lowe's.

Friday night we gave the dogs two giant raw-hide bones, sprinkled catnip around the house, finished the dishes and headed out to Winston-Salem for a concert at the Garage. I was covering the event for the Tribune, so it wasn't exactly free-time, but it was still fun.

Justin and I had to catch rides separate of each other thanks to ever widening job timelines, but we met up eventually with other Elkin friends downtown.

The Garage is a small bar with a stage and barely enough room for 100 people located in what is now considered Winston-Salem's art's district. I've seen a couple bands play there before. I've seen some movies screened during Riverrun Film Festival. And I've shot some movie footage for a School of the Art's short film there before. All of them good times.

Friday night seemed to top that list, seeing friends jamming on stage, and getting a chance to dance with all the folks who had come down to support our local band was a great new experience.

There was so much available to our 30-something circle of friends in Winston-Salem. We had to decide where to stay or go. It seemed as though the city welcomed us -- called out, "Have a good time, spend some money, meet some new people." It is a siren song I don't hear being sung out in Elkin.

That leads me to the conclusion that we need to focus more on entertainment. And not just art, but solid havin' fun away from my house, might be sore in the morning, entertainment.

I'm hoping that the Reeves Theater will be a positive entertainment symbol for people of Elkin to gather under. But I worry that the theater, even though I love historical venues, is too wrapped up in the vestiges of antiquity to really become 'cool.' The fact is it's old. It's going to attract a lot of the retired baby boomer crowd we seem to be trying to cater to. But I'm not too certain what it will have to offer the younger generations.

Yes, I'm being selfish when I say, I would like to see a micro-brewery amidst all the wineries we have out here, a dance and music venue (besides FAC, thank you so much for trying!), a movie theater that plays independent films or even just the Miramax special circuits that only ever seem to hit Charlotte if North Carolina at all.

It would be a positive step for my generation to have more than two possible hang-outs on tap. And it would be a great step for Elkin to have them downtown.

In all our historic endeavors with Main Street, let us not forget that a museum of old buildings does not always translate to a fun place to hang-out downtown. We need to take a serious look at some of those lovely old buildings and see if we couldn't get something entertaining into them. Let's get a pool hall I wouldn't be afraid to go into. A music shop that features live performances. A skate park for all the shredders in town.

These things don't happen over night. I've watched Winston-Salem in its revitalization efforts over the past eight years. It's taken them a lot of time and money, but you can see that they are working hard to attract a multi-generational audience.

When we look at the economic development studies that are being performed and entertainment resources come up, let's get a variety of people to answer what they'd like to see. Let's listen to a multi-generational audience's take on downtown. And let's broadcast the results through news, schools and restaurants so that a dialogue begins, entertaining to take part in. And if we need an example, perhaps looking east to Winston-Salem would help.