Charlotte

North Carolinians, regardless of zip code or political stripes, ditched masks and flooded the beaches this summer. But as cases climb to their highest levels since February, there’s a familiar tension between urban and rural areas in this purple state.

In a Harris Teeter grocery store in Charlotte’s trendy Plaza Midwood neighborhood, most shoppers and employees are in masks now. A couple of miles away, the popular local music venue The Evening Muse reinstated a mask requirement.

But in Gastonia, a town 30 minutes west of Charlotte where former President Trump held a mostly maskless rally in front of more than 20,000 people last fall, only about half-a-dozen Harris Teeter shoppers wore masks on a recent visit.

And a nearby Circle K convenience store recently advertised a “PPE BLOWOUT SALE” with buy-one-get-one-free masks, hand sanitizer, gloves and wipes — hoping to sell inventory that’s hard to move there.