Bull City Rising

New coffee shop comes to Duke's borders in Shade Tree's spot

Duke-area students and employees lost a neighborhood friend with the closing of Shade Tree Coffee at the end of this past summer. An original tenant of the Erwin Terrace mixed-use development on Erwin Rd., Shade Tree was a popular destination for quality coffee and espresso steps away from Duke's West Campus.

And while Dunkin Donuts remains an outlet for coffee for some, others have missed the presence of a less corporate source for joe in the area.

Looks like that may be coming to an end soon, though. Signs in the Shade Tree space are heralding the arrival of Copa Vida Coffee, setting up shop in the one-time coffee shop. No opening date is available, though as of last night there were people doing work in the space to prepare it for a re-opening. We'll post an opening date when we have it.

Durham Central Market reaches 300 owners, looks to next steps

As we've talked about here before, the planners behind the Durham Central Market co-op grocery store have been moving forward with informal location searches and with initial capital fundraising through the sale of shares to the general public.

The DCM team met their goal of selling 300 ownership shares to founding members at $100 a pop before October 31 -- with 346 shares sold during the period.

According to an email update from the DCM board, those funds will help pay for a financial feasibility study from Cooperative Development Services, a non-profit organization in the Midwest that provides consulting services to coops of all stripes. It also provides seed money "in the bank" for the hiring of a project manager to support fundraising, site selection, and operational aspects of the project.

Early reflection on the election direction: national, meals tax races

No Daily Fishwrap this morning, since the papers are all about one and only one thing: last night's historic election, decisively won on a national level by Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois. We'll look this morning at the presidential and meals tax race before turning our eyes to local and state races later today or tonight.

It was time for a celebration in the Bull City last night, with what the Herald-Sun estimates to have been 500 people turning out for the Barack 'N' Roll celebration downtown, as seen in the photo at right.

From a North Carolina perspective, the remaining outstanding question remains whether Obama will add our state to an historic sea of blue. With about 93% of the votes in last night shortly before midnight, our calculations on a county-by-county basis here at BCR projected that Obama's less-than-20,000-vote lead would hold, with McCain picking up a few thousand votes but not enough to win the state.

As of this morning, Obama's lead is 12,000 votes, with all but the provisional ballots counted. We'd suspect that the provisionals would not be sufficient to overturn the outcome, particularly since infrequent or unregistered seem the most likely to face a provisional ballot, and national trends would seem to give the edge in these voters to Obama.

Should the current trend hold, there's no question that Durham County was a key factor in Obama's victory in the state. Durham delivered a net margin of 70,000 Obama votes to the Democratic candidate. By comparison, Wake County delivered 65,000 net Obama votes -- but more than three times the number of total votes were cast in Wake as opposed to Durham.

Prepared meals tax fares almost as badly as McCain in Durham

It's no sale at the ballot box: the prepared meals tax appears headed to a certain defeat, 72% against to 28% for, with about 79% of precincts reporting.

Ironically, the levy did almost as badly in Durham as John McCain did. Yes, the McCain-Bible Spice ticket pulled 23% to Obama-Biden's 76%.

Interesting for those of us who thought that many voters would skip the measure, which was buried at the bottom of the ballot and didn't benefit from straight-ticket votes: about 128,000 votes were cast in the presidential race, versus 118,000 in the prepared foods tax.

Postscript: So Obama's got a great GOTV effort. Still, receiving a robocall from the senator from Illinois encouraging me to vote doesn't do too much good at, er, 7:41 p.m. -- eleven minutes after the polls have closed.

Vote early, vote often, snack richly

Voting in this year's election will give you a sense of personal fulfillment, civic engagement, and expression of your voice.

Oh, and if you're in the vicinity of Watts Grocery, a happy belly to boot.

Yes, the popular new Broad St. restaurant will be giving out "a red velvet cupcake with white frosting and blue sprinkles" on Tuesday if you can produce an "I Voted" sticker, according to the N&O today:

Chef Amy Tornquist at Watts Grocery plans to make about 200 cupcakes to give out.

"We're a neighborhood restaurant and our neighbors are active politically," she said. "We have some regulars who are kind of coming to watch the results here. I think it will be a festive day."

Like voting this year, BCR's advice: snack early. With election day, you might face long lines. But you never risk running out of ballots when you get to the front, something not the case with cupcakes, especially the way Tornquist makes 'em. (She earlier this fall celebrated the one-year anniversary of the establishment with surprise cupcakes for diners, too.)

The N&O's Sue Stock also notes that Starbucks is offering free tall coffees at company owned stores (a la the Southpoint, Page Rd., New Hope Commons and Guess/Horton outlets in Durham), while Ben & Jerry's will give out free ice cream from 5-8 pm on election night.

The Pinhook opens: downtown bar, club debuts this weekend

Update: The Pinhook is not opening full-time this Saturday but will host the Winky show at 8pm Saturday. See the comments for more.

After months of work, The Pinhook will be opening its doors this Saturday, November 1 -- just in time for the crowds from this weekend's downtown events.

From the press release:

The Pinhook bar opens Saturday, November 1, in downtown Durham. The Pinhook is a community bar and music venue open to members and their guests. The bar is located at 117 W. Main Street in downtown Durham's City Center district.

The Pinhook will feature a full bar, an outdoor patio area, and local music several nights per week. Durham's diverse musical community will be supported, including Indie Rock, Bluegrass, Folk, Punk, Metal, Country, Hip-Hop and Experimental. The bar also has several vintage arcade games and pinball machines.

Owner/operators Elizabeth Tulachanh, Nick Williams and Kym Register have ties to a range of other downtown businesses, with past experience at Parker & Otis and Alivia's; Register is a member of the popular local band Midtown Dickens and was involved in the opening of the Bull City Headquarters up in Little Five Points.

The non-smoking venue will be open Mondays through Saturdays from 4 p.m. until 2 a.m. If successful, the venture promises to provide more options for downtown nightlife and activity, something that (with the exception of the MarVell Event Center) has been in short supply in the city center district.

And what's on the bill for the first night? Starting at 8pm Saturday:

Artist Jim Kellough and composer Shannon Morrow present an expanded cinema performance featuring live music to accompany projected imagery on a giant screen. The imagery, called WINKY, uses 6 slide projectors - special effects that merge the images into a large-scale photomontage that moves and "winks". A "soundtrack" will be performed in real time by Triangle Soundpainting Orchestra, an 11 piece acoustic ensemble composed of a variety of wind, reed, string, and percussion instrumentalists.

Next weekend, The Pinhook will be one of the venues for the Troika Music Festival.

As with many N.C. clubs, a membership is required; you can fill out the form (and pay the $2 fee) at the bar or download a PDF version in advance via The Pinhook's web site.

Video: Pro/con arguments on the prepared foods tax

Tuesday night's Inter-Neighborhood Council meeting offered a forum for two key backers and opponents of the prepared foods tax on the November ballot -- Rob Teer Jr. from the committee supporting the levy, and Dallas Woodhouse from Americans for Prosperity and the opposition committee -- to offer their thoughts and ideas on the measure.

Both sides had a chance to present their side and then to answer questions from the assembled audience of neighborhood representatives and other civic stakeholders.

We at BCR captured the debate on video and present the pro and con sides here for review. Regretfully, the audio from Teer's Q&A session was not of good quality, but we've included Teer's presentation as well as the presentation and Q&A for Woodhouse.

Here's the pro argument, from Rob Teer Jr.:

Next up: the against case, from Dallas Woodhouse, followed by his response to questions from the audience. (Full disclosure: the question on AFP's tax regressivity concerns comes from this author.)

Once you've watched the videos, share in the comments here: what do you think, especially if you've been on the fence on the measure?

Food tax foes put pigs on wheels to fight the levy

No, that wasn't the prize-winning hog from the State Fair you might have seen on Durham streets yesterday.

Instead, it was a display from the opposition to the prepared meals tax -- driven by no less than Dallas Woodhouse, the Raleighite who leads Americans for Prosperity. AFP was identified in the Herald-Sun's reporting on the financial source of opposition to the food tax as being the main monetary source for opposition to the Durham levy referendum.

Our question: if Woodhouse is objecting to this tax as "pork" -- does that mean he'd support the levy if the funds all went to pay for law enforcement? What about if we raised property taxes to cover those costs? Inquiring minds want to know.

You can get your chance to hear straight from the mouths of opponents and proponents this evening, as Rob Teer Jr. and Woodhouse present pro's and con's on the measure at tonight's Inter-Neighborhood Council meeting, set for 7pm in the Herald-Sun's community room on Pickett Rd.

Chickens, bees move one step closer to Bull City backyards

This year's discussion over ordinance changes to allow Durhamites to keep chickens in their back yard moves one step closer to fruition with the release of a draft text amendment to the Unified Development Ordinance permitting chickens under limited circumstances in residential areas.

The Durham Planning Commission will cluck over the proposal at their November 11 meeting. And don't have a hen if you want to attend but have a job that gets you up with the roosters: the meeting starts at 5:30.

Among the key items in the draft text amendment:

• Residents would need to submit an application for a Limited Agricultural Permit in order to lawfully keep chickens.
• Only female chickens (of any breed) would be permitted, though more than ten per lot.
• The product of the chickens -- be it eggs, chicks, slaughtered chickens, or manure, or any produce for which chicken manure was used as fertilizer -- can't be sold or given away.
• Chickens would need to remain within a chicken coop and chicken pen; they'd have to be secured in the coop throughout each evening. Coops would need to be 15 feet away from your property line; pens, 5 feet away. Existing garages/sheds can be used as coops if they meet the conditions of the ordinance; otherwise, it's off to get a building permit for you.
• Odors can't be discernible at your property boundary, nor should noise that would "disturb people of reasonable sensitivity."

Also up on the 11th: a proposal to allow beekeeping within residential areas, with a text amendment proposed to add apiculture to the permitted accessory uses for residential household areas, exclude beekeeping from a definition of "agricultural uses" of property, and which would repeal City Code Section 6-6, which contains restrictions on keeping bees within the city limits.

LocoPops and Duke: Don't worry, you can always venture off-campus

The Duke Chronicle has a story in Tuesday's issue about the closing of a LocoPops cart on West Campus for the winter months, given the cold weather and seasonality of the Duke location, which -- like the downtown branch -- tends to quiesce for a few months each year.

But if you read the Chronicle article, you might walk away with the impression that this is a battle over whether students have any access to the popular frozen treat at all:

Geoff Silver, a sophomore who enjoys a LocoPop once or twice a week, said he will miss the stand. Senior Jane Zhao said that although she does not buy LocoPops often, she has many friends who will likely feel the loss during the winter.

[Co-founder Summer] Bicknell confirmed that LocoPops will continue to be available in the Refectory Cafe throughout the winter. [Duke dining director Jim] Wulforst also said the freezer from the stand may be moved to Joe van Gogh if the coffee shop complies.

"We're not going to let students be without LocoPops," he said.

Oddly missing from this account: a recognition that LocoPops is still happily open for business on Hillsborough, right near the intersection of Fifteenth St./Anderson St. that leads right to Duke's Central and West Campuses. That's a distance of about three-fifths of a mile, we'd guess.