Carolina Beach's boardwalk was bustling with visitors after months of limited activity.
At 4:30 p.m. the beach was packed, with groups of people generally spaced out from one another.
Restaurants planning to reopen were busy preparing for their first open night in two months. Carrie Anders, an employee at Fork N Cork, said the team was anxious to welcome customers. As the restaurant's phone rang around 4:40 p.m., Anders said, "We've had people calling, calling, calling, asking if we're going to open."
Asked how she felt about reopening, she said, "Nervous. Excited."
People lined up in golf carts and sat at outdoor tables at Shuckin' Shack Oyster Bar just minutes ahead of 5 p.m.
Brent and his wife Beverly Featherstone revisited their favorite go-to, Olde Salty in Carolina Beach, during its reopening Friday evening. "I feel like I've been reborn," Brent Featherstone joked, overlooking N. Lake Park Avenue.
His wife Beverly added, "It's like being under water and coming up for air."
Meanwhile, bars and breweries that don't sell food were under the impression they were not able to reopen to dine-in customers (just one hour before 5 p.m., Cooper clarified that breweries could reopen, despite confusing language in his order). For many businesses, Governor Cooper's Wednesday announcement that they couldn't reopen brought on frustration and confusion.
Xandria Taylor, a Good Hops Brewing employee in Carolina Beach, said she had supported Governor Cooper's restrictions up until this week's announcement.
"I was with him until that," she said. With a wide side patio, Good Hops has plenty of room to accommodate groups of customers sitting six feet apart. Taylor said businesses had already made preparations to reopen, and it was confusing for many excluded in the order to understand the distinction between businesses that were allowed to reopen, and others that were not. "As of Wednesday, we thought we were going to be open. We already had the tape created [and] were making plans of what we were going to do.
"I feel like it hits microbreweries and beer and wine places the most," she said.
In downtown Wilmington, the sidewalks were once again filled with friends and families milling around as musicians played on sidewalks and in restaurant bars. Couples sipped wine and ate their dinners on wrought iron balconies overlooking the Cape Fear River.
Although they stuck to their routine of picking up dinners to-go, friends Kristen Holt (wearing the red hat, above) and Melissa Davis said Friday was the first time they were able to hang out in months.
"We're getting back to real life," Davis said. "We used to hang out all the time but with the quarantine we haven't seen each other. We're having a lady date."
"And we're getting away from the kids," Holt added.
Cigar smokers — we're the minority, but we really enjoy our cigars. And when we want to have 'em, we gotta have 'em. If we can't get 'em at our favorite shop, it's a problem. It's a culture, a lifestyle; it's community-based. It's a lot more than just huffin' one down. We're family here." - Lior Ben-Ami, The Cigar Exchange
Asked how it feels to be sipping on a glass of wine with her dog at a restuarant, the first time she's been able to in months, Washington D.C. resident Shannon Kelly responded with one word: "Freedom."
"Freedom with a sense of caution. Coming from the environment where I came from — here it started to open up faster; people are a little bit more relaxed. Up there it's a lot more regimented ... Everyone's wearing a face mask, even when you're outside. If you don't, you're getting publicly shamed for it, even when you're going running," Kelley said.
Kristen Gruodis was sitting on a stone slab with her two sons, eating ice cream. She and her husband had just reopened their restaurant, Little Dipper Fondue, several hours earlier.
"People are out; it's awesome," Gruodis said. "It's been a ghost town for however many months. But we've got the phones ringing off the hook."
Although she felt relief in reopening, she said it came with a heavy sense of responsibility toward keeping her employees and customers safe.
"It's like opening up a brand new business. It's a big responsibility to make sure you're doing it right, and taking everyone's health into your hands," Gruodis said. "And retraining our employees — not the way we did before, but the new way."
Credits:
Johanna F. Still, Mark Darrough