INC NEWS - Bull City loyalists think it's just right: Some in Durham won't trade places (N&O)

[John Schelp]

Bull City loyalists think it's just right
Some in Durham won't trade places
By Anne Blythe, News & Observer, 31 Jan 2006

This city's faithful -- similar to proud New Yorkers
who would live nowhere else -- boast about the gritty,
urban neighborhoods.
The hard-core loyalists crow about Durham's diversity
and vaunt its history as a powerhouse for producing
African-American politicians and entrepreneurs who
become big players in the state and national arenas.

Although the Bull City again is battling a reputation
as a place where guns blaze and teenage thugs rule
street corners, many people say Durham remains just
right for them.

"I've lived here 30 years. You wouldn't catch me
anyplace else," said Carol Anderson, an owner of
Vaguely Reminiscent, a granola-chic clothing and gift
shop on Ninth Street. "Durham is the best without
question. We've got problems like you have anywhere
else. It's just whether you try to face them, and I
think we do."

In 2005, the Durham Police Department investigated 37
homicides, giving the city for the second year in a
row the highest homicide rate among North Carolina's
large cities.

Until late December, most of the gun violence was
confined to low-income neighborhoods.

But then an unarmed teenage boy was shot right outside
Northgate Mall, a magnet for all walks in the city.
Then this month, another teenage boy was shot on a
crowded city bus, with bystanders in the crossfire.

Still, for many Durham residents, the violence seems
worlds away. The central city is a patchwork of low-,
middle- and high-income neighborhoods that bleed into
one another, but really don't mix.

Many people who choose Durham over elsewhere in the
Triangle tout its moderately priced homes and its rich
cultural scene.

They talk about the wealth of restaurant offerings --
from the home-cooking and barbecue that have been
around many years to the intimate gourmet fare and
authentic Mexican food that have flourished in the
past decade.

In a city once reliant on tobacco factories and
blue-collar work, they brag about the chic turnaround
of downtown warehouses. They rejoice in the legacies
of two very different local campuses -- historically
black N.C. Central University and elite Duke
University.

Many look down on Chapel Hill, calling it expensive
and elitist.

Wake County, they complain, is rampant suburban
sprawl, with cul-de-sac neighborhoods sprouting from
Zebulon to Morrisville faster than kudzu on a road
shoulder.

"In the Triangle, what you have is a lot of new, a lot
of synthetic neighborhoods. What's obviously different
about Durham is there's obviously nothing synthetic.
It's real. It's like a family -- with the good, the
ugly and the bad," said Carl Webb, a Bull City native
who lived briefly in Atlanta before returning to his
roots to start Webb Patterson Communications. "What I
like about Durham is you have diversity, not just
racial diversity, but you have cultural diversity,
economic diversity and a diversity of voices."

Kenneth Olden, a Tennessee native and the first
African-American to direct one of the federal
government's National Institutes of Health, lives in
Croasdaile, one of the city's wealthier neighborhoods.

With the means to live anywhere in the Triangle,
Olden, an internationally acclaimed cancer researcher,
chose Durham in 1993.

"I wanted to live in a city where I could interact
with African-Americans like myself," Olden said.
"African-Americans have a tradition of social
involvement and successes in business and politics in
Durham, and the tradition goes way back."

Since stepping down last year as director of the
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in
Research Triangle Park, Olden, 67, plans to devote
more energy to tending to the city's warts. He was in
New York before Rudy Giuliani took a tough stance on
crime and thinks Durham leaders should do the same.

"New York City was not safe for a while," Olden said.
"But it is a great city now. I think Durham can be a
great city again, which motivated me to want to live
here. ... The village has changed. In other words,
people like me and other black professionals no longer
live in the inner city. ... Basically, we live outside
of the village, and we're not there as role models. I
think we can have an impact without moving back, but
we need to see some strong leadership."

Anita Brown-Graham, 39, a lawyer who commutes to work
at the UNC-Chapel Hill law school and school of
government, likes that her children are growing up
among a diversity of races, income levels and
opinions.

"When my husband and I decided to move back here, we
made the conscious decision to live in Durham,"
Brown-Graham said. "For our family, and our values,
this is what we wanted."

Durham loyalists bristle when outsiders ask whether
their neighborhoods are perilous.

"You get sick of saying, 'Yes, I feel safe walking
down the street,' " said Michael Bacon, a Rose Hill
Avenue resident who is in graduate school at
UNC-Chapel Hill. "Durham has a crime problem; I think
most places do. Is Durham some incredibly dangerous
place where you shouldn't walk down the street? No."

Some residents theorize that a bit of bigotry is
involved with Durham's reputation outside its
confines. At 44 percent, the city's black population
is the largest in the Triangle. "I think it has to do
with racism," said Anderson, the Vaguely Reminiscent
owner.

Michelle and James Lee, part of the so-called creative
class that many towns long for, scoured the East Coast
seven years ago when they decided to leave Richmond,
Va. They wanted an arty community with a vibrant local
music scene. They looked at a carriage house in
peaceful Chapel Hill, near where James Lee grew up,
but thought it "too gingerbread" and opted for Durham
instead.

"I like the diversity," Michelle Lee said. "I like it
because it feels like the big city attitude but
remains small town. We have it all, but then you have
crime and homelessness at the corner. Any big city has
that, and it makes you feel like you're alive. You're
not sheltered in suburbia."

The Lees, who own 305 South, a venue for local bands
on South Dillard Street, and the Electric Blender, a
downtown vintage store that they describe as "the
anti-mall," have become some of the city's biggest
cheerleaders.

They created the "Durham, Love Yourself" T-shirts
several years ago and this winter came out with new
"Durham Rocks" T-shirts and bumper stickers.

"There's this very palpable loyalty among certain
people who live in this community that goes beyond the
'You love where you live' attitude," said Scott
Harmon, an architect who has lived in Durham for 14
years. "Durham is a place where people are politically
committed and loyal to their community. It's a place
where people care more about taking care of their
community than taking care of themselves."