Ryan’s Raleigh: “Faithless Street” is no more

I have always found it quite amusing that the real-life “Faithless Street” — one of the actual places where Ryan Adams lived in Raleigh during Whiskeytown’s early days, where events transpired that would turn up in songs on the band’s 1996 full-length debut Faithless Street — was actually right next to a place literally called Hope. Back then, he was living in the neighborhood adjacent to NC State University; an old rental house located on Logan Court, at the corner of Logan and Hope Street, just off the Hillsborough Street strip and about a block away from Sadlack’s.

But alas, time marches on, there’s no stopping progress and so on. As with Sadlack’s, the Brewery, the Velvet Cloak and so many other landmarks from Raleigh’s 1990s-vintage Whiskeytown era, the wrecking ball has struck again. Below is what the block where Ryan used to live looks like now, no doubt on its way to being transformed into another faceless residential/retail development. I guess there’s just too much money to be made for it to be otherwise, but it still kind of breaks my heart to see this happen — again and again and again…