Mobile Home Sales in Cotta, SC

At the start of the 1880s, Greenville was the third largest city in South Carolina (over 6,000 people) and made steady progress with city amenities. In 1882 the Southern Bell Telephone Company set up the first city telephones and a year later, Main Street was lined with telephone poles and wires. Previously bumpy dirt roads were improved with a new road-leveling machine with some roads partially paved with granite rock and brick pavement. Rock culverts served as the main road drainage system with terra cotta side drains for water and sewage. Dozens of water cisterns dotted the city for fire suppression aided by several volunteer fire companies.

In 1888 the Paris Mountain Water Company piped its first fresh water in from a reservoir built on the mountain and piped into downtown. A city school district was established for the first time and in 1888 Oaklawn and Central schools served the white community and Union School served the Black community. The same year the city’s first electric plant opened on the banks of the Reedy River at Broad Street bringing new realms of possibility for the comforts of life and business. Greenville’s entertainment scene leaped forward with the opening of the Gilreath Opera House on the corner of Main and West Coffee in 1880 allowing up to 800 guests to enjoy various cultural performances.

New ventures in food and drink included a large investment in breeding German carp in ponds around the city while grape-growing became extremely promising with numerous vineyards led by a Frenchman, A. Carpin, who planted over 70 acres in the Berea area. Unfortunately, successive years of harsh weather in the late 1880s and the growing temperance movement spelled the demise of the industry.

The industry that had staying power and would soon define the city’s commerce was textiles. For raw material, cotton trading evolved from no sales before the civil war to 30,000 bags sold by 1880 with 17,000 bales being grown in Greenville County. Momentum from the Camperdown mills on the Reedy falls continued with the building of the next downtown factory in 1882, The Huguenot Mill. While prior mills manufactured basic thread, yarns, and basic sheeting, the Huguenot set the pace for the future by being the first in the state to make ginghams and plaids. It also was the first electrified mill in the city, paving the way for future mills to locate further off the river around the city limits. Pelzer Manufacturing, Pelham Manufacturing, Sullivan Manufacturing, Belton Mills and Lanneau Manufacturing were other area mills that also opened during this decade.

Naples Daily News

Terra Cotta Invitational

at Naples National Golf Club

Friday's first-round pairings

No. 1 Tee

8 a.m. — Boyd Owens, Baton Rouge, La.; Sam Kodak, Naples; Matthew Cornegys, Van Alstyne, Texas

8:11 a.m. — Dagbjartur Sigurbrandsson, Iceland; P.J. Maybank, Cheboygan, Mich.; William Love, Atlanta

8:22 a.m. — Nicholas Prieto, Miami; Jake Peacock, Milton, Ga.; Jonathan Griz, Hilton Head, S.C.

8:33 a.m. — Ty Gingerich, Carmel, Ind.; Lucas Fallotico, Italy; Grant Haefner, Bloomfield Hills, Mich.

8:44 a.m. — Mykhailo Golod, Ukraine; Aaron Pounds, The Woodlands, Texas; Andrew McLaughlin, Neptune Beach

8:55 a.m. — Joe Pagdin, England; Jacob Sosa, Austin, Texas; Kiko Coelho, Portugal

9:06 a.m. — Caleb Surratt, Indian Trail, N.C.; Ben James, Milford, Conn.; Kyle De Beer, South Africa

9:17 a.m. — Frank Kennedy, England; Nick Maccario, Waltham, Mass.; Conner Creasy, Abingdon, Va.

9:28 a.m. — Tommy Morrison, Dallas; Wells Williams, West Point, Miss.; Luke Potter, Encinitas, Calif.

9:39 a.m. — Alexandre Vandermoten, France; Pierre Viallaneix, France; Jean-Phillippe Parr, Canada

9:50 a.m. — Jon Hopkins, Fort Myers; Cody Paladino, West Hartford, Conn.; Andy Fogarty, Naples

10:01 a.m. — Jeff Champine, Rochester Hills, Mich.; Brian Bassett, Naples; Joe Alfieri, Lutz

10:12 a.m. — Giovanni Manzoni, Italy; Justin Burrowes, Jamaica; Clemente Silva, Chile

No. 10 Tee

7:55 a.m. — James Tureskis, Naples; Ryan Terry, Nashville; Nicholas Gross, Downington, Pa.

8:06 a.m. — Garrett Jones, Fitchburg, Wis.; John Daly II, Dardanville, Ark.; Noah Kent, Naples

8:17 a.m. — Sean-Karl Dobson, Austin, Texas; Ben Cohn, Ecuador; Jack Irons, Naples

8:28 a.m. — Charlie Davis, Naples; Jack Turner, Orlando; Sihan Sandhu, Pinehurst, N.C.

8:39 a.m. — Evan Woosley-Reed, Shelbyville, Tenn.; Keaton Vo, Austin, Texas; Luke Poulter, England

8:50 a.m. — Eric Lee, Fullerton, Calif.; Jay Brooks, Boca Raton; Felix Bouchard, Canada

9:01 a.m. — Johnny Spellerberg, Bennington, Neb.; Carl Santos-Ocampo, Naples; Joseph Lloyd, Scottsdale, Ariz.

9:12 a.m. — Drew Pranger, St. Louis; Bryan Lee, Fairfax, Va.; William Jennings, Greenville, S.C.

9:23 a.m. — Filip Jakubcik, Czech Republic; Luke Clanton, Miami Lakes; Max Herendeen, Bellevue, Wash.

9:34 a.m. — Hampton Roberts, Cary, N.C.; Owen Kim, Canada; Michael LaSasso, Raleigh, N.C.

9:45 a.m. — Marc Engellenner, Rocklin, Calif.; John DuBois, Windermere; Austin Cherichella, Winter Springs

9:56 a.m. — Jonas Appel, Encinitas, Calif.; Remi Chartier, Canada; John Broderick, Wellesley Hills, Mass.

In the now-infamous summer of 2020, the Baziks’ new business had customers lining up down the block.

SarahCotta Plants opened its Glendale doors that July, a bold move by its married owners, Sarah and Tadeh. Their store grew from tough soil — the summer the pandemic shuttered many small businesses — but it’s still thriving two years later. Now, standing behind the shop’s wood counter, the Baziks answer the big question: How?

Tadeh thinks people needed an escape from pandemic stress.

“Looking back, I can’t believe that actually happened,” he said, wearing a black T-shirt, matching with his wife. “Back then, people were so scared. There was no vaccine, you know, the fact that people would even come here was amazing.”

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Sarah said that attracting customers was never the problem. In the shop’s early months, the Baziks let in only two people at once and required masks. They’d leave every night at 10, and when they came back in the morning, customers were already waiting outside. Nurses from nearby Adventist Health, still in their scrubs, stopped by to pick out plants.

Though they had the customers, the real hurdle was the inventory, Sarah said. They scoured for plants, usually in San Diego, trying to purchase enough types to fill their shop. The plants would arrive at distribution centers and sell fresh off the truck, and either the Baziks grabbed them or another plant shop would. Even now filling inventory can be difficult, but the shop feels full.

Wedged between a hair salon and an air duct business, the Baziks manage to make a small space feel airy. It’s plant-packed, as expected, with glass vials of cuttings on one wall and a white cabinet of rare plants on the other. Then there’s Sarah and Tadeh, a lively couple toiling away in the middle of it all. There’s only one employee, who runs the counter; the Baziks manage everything else. The store closes on Mondays and Tuesdays as they shop for new plants, clean them, add them in the system and take photos. On Wednesday, they restock and reopen.

Working together means Sarah and Tadeh are together “24 hours a day.” They wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I’ve been with him since I was 18 years old, and I’ve never been bored of him ever,” Sarah said. “All of my friends all the time are like, ‘How do you work with your husband every single day?’ I’m like, ‘It’s the best!’ I don’t want to work with anybody else. Like I can’t imagine not working with him.”

“Imagine working with your best friend,” Tadeh added.

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Facebook played matchmaker back in 2010, when Sarah posted about getting a new phone and asked her friends to send their numbers. She and Tadeh had never met but he coyly sent her his number anyway. They messaged for months, even when Tadeh visited Armenia for the first time and she was still in California.

“Instead of visiting the country, I’m sitting there at 3 in the morning on my laptop talking to her because I know she’s awake,” Tadeh said as Sarah smiled. “I fell in love with her before I even met her face to face.”

When he came back, they met in person, and years later, Tadeh proposed when visiting Sarah’s family in Armenia. Though they planned to marry at the end of 2020, they spontaneously wed on a trip to Cancun with friends in 2019 — in the nick of time before the pandemic hit.

Aug. 4, 2022

Both Armenian, the Baziks found their fluency in the language especially handy in Glendale, which has one of the largest Armenian populations outside of Armenia itself. Sarah traces her plant passion to her grandmother’s garden in Armenia. Her grandmother would lead her through herbs and hoya plants, pointing out each type and how it grew. While her mother had a black thumb, her grandmother could grow anything.

Tadeh tested whether it ran in the family. Seven years ago, he gave Sarah her first plant: a glossy fiddle-leaf fig. It’s notoriously difficult to keep alive, but Sarah grew it into something big and beautiful. Tadeh had unknowingly started a “healthy addiction.” Their apartment evolved into a jungle, with more than 100 plants filling all the corners.

Sarah recruited not only Tadeh but all her friends into her plant frenzy, hosting potting parties and handing out plant cuttings. And while her friends encouraged them to start a store, she and Tadeh insisted it was just a hobby — until the pandemic.

As COVID-19 spurred a new era of outdoor activity, the Baziks opted for biking. While driving to buy Sarah a new bike, Tadeh noticed a “For Lease” sign — a side effect of his real estate agent eyes. They continued on and bought the bike, but something tugged on them to stop at the open space on the way home. The interior was a disaster but the Baziks weren’t fazed.

“We were just looking around, and then I’m like, how much is the rent?” Tadeh said. “And he told us and out of nowhere, I looked at Sarah and I’m like, ‘You know that thing you’ve always been talking about, about doing a plant shop? Should we do it?’”

“And then we were like … OK! We literally signed the lease that day,” Sarah said, standing in that same space (which now shows no trace of once being a disaster). “If you keep waiting and waiting, trying to find the right place, like if we planned on finding the right place …”

“You’re never gonna find the right time,” Tadeh finished.

So they went to work, Tadeh turning his real estate career into a side gig as they both devoted themselves full-time to SarahCotta Plants. (The name is a blend of terracotta, their favorite plant pots, and Sarah’s name, which Tadeh jokes sounded better than his.)

Their house is the store’s prep center. In their home greenhouse, they organize, sift and clean through what they’ve bought, label plants and snap photos for their website. Their 1-year-old son, Kylo, gets to grow up in the jungle of it all. When the Baziks bring him into the shop, he explores the terrain but doesn’t knock anything over.

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He’s a particularly peaceful toddler, which the Baziks attribute to the calm environment. “We’re raising him like one of our plants,” Tadeh laughed.

And it’s not just Kylo who is learning to be a plant person. Since opening, the Baziks have embarked on a mission to develop everyone’s green thumb. That’s why Sarah loves cuttings — even if a customer accidentally kills a plant, sometimes a piece of it can be salvaged and used to grow a new one. After all, their main goal is to make everyone a plant person, and two years after opening, they’re seeing the fruits of their efforts. The Baziks love when customers become friends and enjoy seeing them with thriving plants they bought in the store’s early days.

“I feel like plants were just a way for all of us to escape all the insanity that’s going out there,” Tadeh said of the shop’s start. “And just on like a human level, talk about something totally natural and totally nonpandemic and not about dying and not about all the negative stuff. Once you guys step in here, forget about whatever that’s going on out there.”

As some pandemic restrictions have ebbed, SarahCotta Plants still stands as a remnant of the good that came out of a turbulent time. And it persists as an escape for those having a hard day.

Lifestyle

Aug. 3, 2022

Sarah calls two things “meant to be.” The first: her marriage to Tadeh. And the second: opening this plant store.

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“It’s how many people that we helped become plant people that became friends,” Sarah said. “It’s meeting new people and talking to them and becoming friends, to them coming to my son’s first birthday party. It’s those core memories that I’ll remember forever.”

SarahCotta Plants, 401 N. Verdugo Road, Suite A, Glendale. Open Wednesdays-Fridays, noon-7 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays, noon-5 p.m. Instagram: @SarahCottaPlants. www.sarahcottaplants.com

Get your reservations ready. Restaurant Week South Carolina kicks off Thursday, Jan. 12 and runs through Sunday, Jan. 22.

Whether you’re looking to try something new or visit an old favorite, participating restaurants offer special deals (think: three courses for a set price or dinner for two at a discounted rate) to entice Greenvillians to get out and eat local.

Pro tip: Bookmark the full lineup to peep the menus and make reservations.

We were excited to see this casual lunch spot in Overbrook on the Restaurant Week lineup. You can’t go wrong with any of the $12 lunch specials — which come with a side and a tea. We’ll be trying the “Mama’s Boy” — house-made meatloaf, onion bacon jam, tomato barbecue sauce, and sharp cheddar cheese on sourdough sandwich bread.

Indulge in three courses for $45. We’re starting with the yellowfin tuna crudo (with mango, shallot, fresno chile, and lemon gel), then enjoying the fusilli (with lamb sausage, fennel, piquillo peppers, and pecorino romano), and finishing with the key lime panna cotta (with cherry compote and almond crumb).

Looking for a unique Restaurant Week experience? Start by selecting wine or bouron and you’ll receive a $20 flight of chocolates that pair perfectly with your preference.

Three courses for $60? Yes please. Chef Haydn Shaak had us at brussells + pancetta (with calabrian chilis, wildflower honey, fennel pollen, and pecorino), whey braised short rib (with lardo potatoes, wild mushrooms, shallots, and truffle demi), and apple olive oil cake (with salted whey caramel, pistachio butter, and cinnamon whip).

If you’re looking for a spot with deals for lunch and dinner, look no further than three courses for $40 at Southern Culture. Kick off your meal with the creole caesar salad, enjoy the peppercorn herb crusted prime rib (with redskin mashed potatoes, sauteed mixed vegetables, a horseradish cream sauce and a Dijon au jus sauce), and wash it all down with a slice of rum cake a la mode with caramel drizzle.

After last week’s horrific shooting at an historic black church in Charleston, S.C., Kings County churchgoers are — like many other Christians in the U.S. — thinking about the proper response.

They are coming to some very different conclusions.

Pastor Jeff Kristenson at South Valley Community Church in Lemoore said a church shooting in Colorado a few years ago prompted his church to re-evaluate how it handles the possibility of violent incidents.

Kristenson said that South Valley now has a security team “in place at every service and every event.”

He said the team, which includes people with concealed carry weapon permits, has at lead somebody with a loaded firearm present.

Members wear regular clothing and are generally indistinguishable from other members of the congregation, according to Kristenson. They include people with law enforcement experience as well as private citizens.

“I think it’s appropriate for churches to take measures to protect the safety of their congregations,” Kristenson said. “We just realized, with more people [attending], we need to be prepared for whatever happens.”

Commenting on the Charleston attack, Kristenson said, “The church in Charleston, they welcomed that man into their fellowship. He used their openness against them.”

The Rev. Michael Lastiri, pastor of Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church in Hanford, strongly disagreed with the notion of having an organized group of armed Christians in church services.

“Absolutely not,” he said. “We are not a church of war. We are a church of peace. I will not have a gun in my church. It conveys a sense of war.”

Lastiri said that Roman Catholic priests in Kings read a statement from Armando Ochoa, Bishop of the Diocese of Fresno, at Sunday masses.

Lastiri said the statement indicated that “basically, we respond to violence with prayer and peace. We have to be a contradiction against war and violence. Sometimes, that’s not easy. The gospel is not meant to be easy.”

Lastiri said that doesn’t mean that ushers and church staff don’t evaluate suspicious individuals walking through their church doors.

Kristenson said he doesn’t see a contradiction between having Christians ready to use loaded guns in church and Christianity’s basic stance of welcoming everybody on an equal footing.

He used the analogy of a shepherd having a weapon to protect the sheep against wolves or other threats.

“I don’t see a conflict with that,” he said. “I don’t think the church can compromise on being open. Everybody is welcome, but if somebody comes in to harm … I don’t see any problem in being there to protect.”

Todd Cotta, member of First Baptist Church Hanford and the owner of Kings Gun Center, said he’s inviting local church members and leaders to attend a once-a-month safety meeting at the center.

Cotta said the meetings will review ways to respond to incidents, including restraining the perpetrator, providing first aid and working with law enforcement.

Cotta, noting the burglary last week at Living Word Church in Hanford, said the meeting would include how to respond to theft.

“What it’s going to be is working with churches that want to come on board with us,” he said. “We would work toward getting churches a little more aware of their environment, their security.”

In Cotta's opinion, “historically, churches are the least safe places out there. We would encourage each church to put together a safety plan.”

Cotta said that small mid-week gatherings, like the Wednesday bible study that Charleston shooting suspect Dylann Roof reportedly sat in for an hour before he started shooting, could potentially be more dangerous than Sunday morning services.

“People are going to pick the softest targets they can,” Cotta said.

Rev. Susan Foster of First United Methodist Church Hanford called the Charleston shooting “horrible and awful,” but she stopped short of endorsing Christians packing heat in worship services.

“To have our baseline be fear, that this will happen to us, or that this is going to become common, means we are not approaching this in the right way,” she said.

“Jesus says, ‘Welcome the stranger,’ ” Foster added. “Don’t wait for the background check.”

The reporter can be reached at snidever@hanfordsentinel.com or 583-2432. Follow him on Twitter @snidever.