Go west, young Geary

In case you missed this week's Best of the Triangle issue of the Indy Weekly, be sure to check out Indy scribe Bob Geary's excellent piece on discovering Durham.

In it, he tours the Bull City's urban core, meeting local notables and discovering -- with a really surprising sense of wonder and amazement -- all the restaurants, galleries, and renewal that are making central Durham a great place to live.

I say surprising because, if you read the article carefully, you get the sense Geary really hasn't spent much time in the Bull City. I understand this of North Raleigh residents, or Caryites who are afraid to drive their Hummer into Durham without getting one of those bulletproofing kits the U.S. gummint won't buy for their military Humvees. But Geary's one of the good guys on urbanism and smart-growth in the City of Oaks... a founder of Wake-UP Wake County and respectable progressive wag on all things Wake.

To my mind, he's the perfect type of guy to enjoy and appreciate Durham, yet it sounds like he hasn't been over here much. Which isn't a criticism of Bob... the Durhamites who got sent to places like Raleigh for this get-out-of-home piece face the same wonderment that there are Good Things all over the Triangle.

I give the Indy a lot of credit for getting folks out of their corner of the Triangle and having them explore. Heck, I'm guilty of a bit of regionalism, or should I say r-ego-ionalism myself... just as the Raleighing gang tends to think the Triangle ends at Brier Creek, too.

Maybe we need a blog cultural exchange program? Some of us can go discover how great Glenwood South is, sip a milkshake over at the Hayes-Barton Pharmacy... maybe go stand in front of a couple of bulldozers at the latest ITB teardown/McMansion debacle. Y'know, just bond with them. Meanwhile, we'll send Dana McCall down to 305 South or BCHQ, or send Rhonda to tick off some Durham gallery owners. (Careful, Rhonda -- ours are even meaner than yours.)

Back to the subject at hand: do check out Geary's article, which is a nice summation of the good things happening downtown. And follow his lead: check out Durham for yourself during tomorrow's Third Friday event.

Comments

[Michael Bacon]

I posted a trackback, but I'm not sure how quickly they take. Anyway, I wrote on this last night here: http://bullinfull.typepad.com/bif/2007/06/someones_coming.html

[MarcusOne]

Well, whatever they decide to call it, it would sure help to have one of our fine Triangle TV stations get out the word like they do for "Alive After Five" in Raleigh, and the fact that the downtown loop, Brightleaf, and ATC have some of the lowest crime statistics in the city. Now that WTVD has a bright shiny new "Today Show" sytled studio in downtown Raleigh, they might find it in their hearts to publicize the good things going on in the city that gave them their start. WRAL and Fox50 should also expect to devote of few seconds to publicize the event since their owners have invested so much in the Bull City of late.

I think combining ALL of what downtown Durham has to offer every nice weather month of the year, such as art galleries, restaurants, sponsored bands (with beer!), our baseball (both fields!), and stuff for the kids, would go a lot farther than something limited to art gallery walks. Nothing so big as Artsplosure, but at least something more structured as Alive After Five.

[Phil]

Brad Brinegar (chief at the McKinney ad agency) gave a powerful speech on Durham and crime at the 2004 Downtown Durham Inc. annual meeting breakfast.

Brinegar's points (with slides!) as I remember them:

1. Various McKinney staff thought that moving from Raleigh to downtown Durham would be "a death sentence".

2. But the reality is, downtown Durham has (in 2004) relatively little crime.

3. But the other reality is, downtown Durham has relatively little crime because there aren't many people there.

4. And the other, bigger, reality is, if you look at all the areas just outside downtown Durham, there is LOTS and LOTS of crime. Non-ignorable crime if you live and work anywhere in Durham.

5. Durham is an incredible city in many ways -- especially the ways that made McKinney want to move its large chunk of creative class professionals to Durham: downtown Durham.

6. But the one bigass thing holding Durham back is crime.

7. Brinegar lives in Durham and loves living in Durham and made a public pledge that he would GLADLY pay an extra 15% property tax if the entire sum would go to salaries (and other support) for a better-paid and larger police force.

Anyway -- that's the speech as I remember it.

[Phil]

On cultural exchange:

I spent February and March housesitting in Raleigh and just loved it. The first gig was right next to Cameron Village, and I couldn't quit smiling at the fact that I could walk to the post office, the bank, the grocery store, several restaurants, and live sports (courtesy of the Broughton HS athletic teams). And never mind how close I was to all sorts of other inner-Raleigh fun. The second gig was in an attractive 60s-era suburb near the intersection of 440 and Western Blvd. The setting was like I imagined the future would be when I was a kid. Suburbs and thickly treed cul-de-sacs just two blocks from a clean, high-speed highway that was down in a ditch so you couldn't hear it from your bedroom. The second gig put me close to the Grand Asia Market (and yes, Blazer, not far from Trader Joe's which I also love.)

I've generally known that the reason I don't like Raleigh is that to get there I have to travel on the screaming ugly (and sometimes slow) boringness that is I-40, and that all the fun stuff in Raleigh is either shielded or diluted by massive Mcsuburbs and southern government capital institutional massiveness. I was glad to have two months to enjoy what I think of as the many good parts of Raleigh.

[MarcusOne]

Yeah, getting to Raleigh on a Friday afternoon can be impossibly slow and boring. Thank goodness there aren't too many billboards!

Glenwood South and the warehouse area is what I like most about Raleigh. It is for the most part, easy to get to and walkable. The gritty edge to the surrounding areas that mix well with both upscale clubs and dining establishments is what makes me want to sit for hours at an outside table. I've been on many pub-crawl from Mellow Mushroom to Blue Martini, etc. Downtown Fayetteville street on the other hand, with it's new clean-cut, monotonous style and atmosphere is not much different that it was with the old pedestrian mall, but it's too early to tell what kind of vibe will develop there. I'd much rather see downtown Durham develop more like Glenwood South than Fayetteville Street, but that's just my taste.

[Michael Bacon]

I meant to respond to this in my earlier post, too, but I'm going to go ahead and beat this drum again.

The grand project that's been going on for 30 years now to get people in the Triangle to work and live as if we're all one big happy family has failed to do so thus far, and will probably continue to fail to do so. What you have is people in Raleigh in Cary who think of themselves as citizens of the Triangle, but think of Durham as that place you want to avoid at all costs. Durhamites continue to maintain our snarling defense of our town, and generally never go past the airport for much of anything—a decision that's probably one part obstinance and two parts convenience. The folks in Chapel Hill, of course, just live in Chapel Hill and shop at Southpoint and SuperTarget, and never pay much attention to anything else.

It's been this way even though for 20 years RTP dominated employment growth, pulling everyone together in a vanilla pudding middle, and for 10 years gas prices were nice and low, meaning driving between the two was cheap. Still, everyone pulled into their enclaves.

The Triangle is not a single, unified region, but two regions in a close partnership. Just as I have to beg my Raleigh friends to come visit me, I'm equally as reticent to join them every Monday night on Six Forks Road. The drive is just too long.

The sooner we stop expecting people to live in Clayton and work at Duke and go out to dinner in Carrboro, the more sense we're going to be able to make of this place.

[JDC]

Though I read Geary's piece with a Durham-centric viewpoint, I was amazed how little someone could know about Durham. Though I can appreciate the Indy's attempts to place writers outside their "comfort zones," I felt like it was only reinforcing the idea that Durham is a dead, dull town. Geary seemed genuinely shocked to find that it isn't.

[weege]

I cannot believe that the Independent ranked Peace St. Market as the best place for retail beer selection in the Triangle with finalists of Harris Teeter and Total Wine??? Sam's Quik Shop is the best place for beer not just in the Triangle, but in all of NC. Maybe they didn't cull enough "overly exuberant ballot stuffers". Oh Independent, how far you've fallen.

http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A155418

[Barry]

Let's just keep Sam's as our little secret, then, shall we?