  We use 612 single stars with previously published trigonometric parallaxes
placing them within 25 pc to evaluate parallaxes released in Gaia's first data
release (DR1). We find that the Gaia parallaxes are, on average, $0.24 \pm
0.02$ mas smaller than the weighted mean trigonometric parallax values for
these stars in the solar neighborhood. We also find that the offset changes
with distance out to 100 pc, in the sense that the closer the star, the larger
the offset. We find no systematic trends in the parallax offsets with stellar
$V$ magnitude, $V-K$ color, or proper motion. We do find that the offset is
roughly twice as large for stars south of the ecliptic compared to those that
are north.
