INC NEWS - Durham: Cool, gritty, grand & growing (Indy Weekly)

[John Schelp]

Durham: Cool, gritty, grand and growing
By Bob Geary, Independent Weekly, 13 June 2007

Is it "gritty"?

I'm on the Durham beat, looking for some things that
are the "best of" a city that I don't pretend to know
a whole lot about—I'm a Raleigh guy, remember, with
the occasional foray to Cary. Every time I come to
Durham, unless it's to the Independent office or the
DBAP (to the world, the Durham Bulls Athletic Park), I
can pretty much count on getting lost. It's the @#%&*
streets, stupid! (In the dead downtown!) But I'm
nothing if not aware of my prejudices, so I've
volunteered for the Durham assignment to see if I
might need an attitude adjustment about the Bull City.
Asking around about what might characterize Durham's
"best," someone says "gritty." All right, I'll try
that out.

To assist me in my endeavors, I enlist Lanya Shapiro,
the force of nature who started Traction
(www.gettraction.org) and right off I want to name
them both among Durham's best: Let's call Shapiro the
"best organizer" and Traction the "best activist
progressive group (for the 20- and 30-somethings, but
there are older folk, too) that isn't all battles
about the bylaws and/or the critical defects of House
Bill-Whatever." Traction is based on the premise that
politics is, first and foremost, about creating
community spirit, which is supposed to be fun. So its
events are a mix of dodgeball games and bicycle tours
along with the usual protests and issue dissections.

Is Durham gritty? I ask. Shapiro says we should meet
downtown for Third Friday, when Durham shows off its
cultural best. The old Culture Crawl? I say. But I
thought that was past history since Jo (of the sadly
defunct Joe & Jo's) stopped running it. "Well, how's
this for gritty?" Shapiro says. "We change the name,
and we don't tell anybody."

So we meet at Piedmont (401 Foster St., 683-1213,
www.piedmontrestaurant.com), the new restaurant on
Foster Street. It's an eye-opener—cool, hip, could be
in Raleigh, but maybe not because it's not real big or
ostentatious—and in Raleigh today, we're into
white-tablecloth restaurants, which this decidedly is
not. I will dub it "best new restaurant I saw." (I
came back a few days later and had brunch, which was
excellent and not expensive, even with a mimosa.) So
now, what about gritty? Oh, says my Best Bartender of
the evening, longtime Durham artist and musician
(Maltswagger) Mark Cunningham, that's so five to 10
years ago. "You kind of take that for granted,"
Cunningham says. "How about green," he says, in
contrast to old, brown Michigan, where he came from.
"And burgeoning."

Burgeoning? Durham? I'll have to think about that one,
but before I can, in comes Cris Rivera, an accountant
and one of the many friends of Shapiro we'll meet
tonight. "Gritty?" she says. "That's a great one."

Outside we go. We've been joined by Rivera and, now,
by Celeste Richie, who works in Raleigh (she's a
diversity coordinator at N.C. State's College of
Natural Resources) but loves and lives in Durham.
"Durham has so much going for it, but as soon as you
tell people you live there, they go, 'Oooh'—we're like
the hole-in-the-wall restaurant that's great but
nobody knows about it."

Speaking of places no one knows, we are looking,
across the street, at Durham Central Park
(www.durhamcentralpark.org), something I'd read about
so many times without ever encountering it that I
assumed it was an urban myth—a name slapped on some
dead-downtown corner, maybe. But no, that's it right
there, a charming little hillside of green (hat tip to
Cunningham) with a footbridge right out of the The
Music Man that you're unlikely to stumble upon,
however, if you don't know where it is. But you do
know its name because it's got the best park-name sign
painted high up on the building that supplies its
eastern edge. And there are, OK, not a lot of people
walking down Foster Street on a crisp spring night,
but people nonetheless, in a steady stream.

I'm disoriented. I look to my right, and up the hill,
and I realize I'm not far away from the dead downtown,
only it doesn't look so dead; in fact, this small
oasis of urban community on Foster Street is in neat
contrast to the big, bad buildings above me and could,
in time, succeed in breathing some life into them,
too. Durham's got a downtown going? It goes against
everything I've ever believed.

But now Richie and Shapiro are off on the subject of
Dumpster diving, which before you say "Oooh," is both
a real activity much to be proud of in Durham,
apparently, and also, in their view, a metaphor for
digging out Durham's hidden gems. The real activity?
It's a springtime rite for the young and—in Traction
fashion—the young at heart (or the
thrifty-to-a-fault). Each spring when exams are over,
departing Duke students chuck out perfectly good
possessions that, for whatever reason, they cannot be
bothered to retain or relocate to their country
estates. Shapiro insists that she's fished at least
$2,000 worth of "best of" items from Duke's
remainders, including the exact model of IKEA loveseat
she was fixing to buy. And a working microwave.
And—well, it was a long list.

We come to the Scrap Exchange (548 Foster St.,
688-6960, www.scrapexchange.org). "Best place to find
recycled, overstock, very useful and/or
gotta-have-it-for-your-crafts projects stuff" I've
seen anywhere. And it's nonprofit. Need blue ribbons?
(And who, at some time or other, doesn't?) They're 25
cents. Pieces of rope? Empty ribbon spools? I could go
on. (And on.) Wallpaper rolls, fabric scraps (or whole
bolts)—my wife, with me on a return visit and
imagining some existence in which we had both time and
skills (Writer's Note: She has skills; I do not),
declares that she could make a fabulous patchwork
coat, and visions of old Red Skelton routines come
into my head. But then, some people do make patchwork
coats.

We meet Sarah Woodard. She was born in Raleigh, inside
the Beltline even. Likes it. Doesn't go there much
anymore, though, same as Raleigh people don't come to
Durham. "We have great culture here, great
restaurants," she says. "Durham is the undiscovered
city of the Triangle."

As if on cue, in comes Robert Harper. He's a friend of
mine from Raleigh. Spending more time in Durham
though, he says. He likes Alivia's Durham Bistro (900
W. Main St., 682-8978, www.aliviasdurhambistro.com) as
a "best of" restaurant. It's new. When I seek it out
later, it's all good—a relaxed bistro with big glass
windows, bar food late and "corrected coffees," which
means they use a fair-trade product called
Intelligentsia and add liquors. It's over by The
Federal (914 W. Main St., 680-8611,
www.thefederal.net), another Harper "best," but older,
darker and more neighborhood bar-like. Both places
feature outdoor seating, an urban draw, with a view of
the comings and goings from nearby Brightleaf Square
(905 W. Main St., www.historicbrightleaf.com).

An old standby, Brightleaf Square should not be
overlooked. It's still got the "best pizza, beer and
watch TV or don't watch it" place in the Triangle,
imo, that being Satisfaction (682-7397). To which
Brightleaf has added a couple of newer places to eat
that people bragged about, Piazza Italia (956-7360,
www.piazzaitalia.us), where the pasta's homemade, and
Mt. Fuji (680-4968), where sushi's the specialty, with
half-off specials sometimes. Plus antiques, sundries
and—another nice find—Offbeat Music (688-7022), a
locally owned music store where, says owner Patrick
McKenna, "we emphasize the things that the chain
stores are ignoring—stuff that's just below the
charts." (For sale the day I went in: the original
Home Cookin' platter, used, by Jr. Walker and the All
Stars.)

Brightleaf, remember, is the model for adaptive reuse
of an old tobacco building, and it set the bar high
for the American Tobacco complex and West Village
developments that followed and—between them—contain
the promise of an alive, diverse and—note bene,
Raleigh—even affordable downtown. With transit.

Back on Foster Street, we drop in to the Bull City
Arts Collaborative (www.bullcityarts.org) next door to
the Piedmont and meet Dave Wofford, proprietor of
Horse & Buggy Press (401-B Foster St., 949-4847,
www.horseandbuggypress.com). His letterpress printing
and design work is a clear "best"—best booklets,
books, posters, signs (and the cover of this week's
Independent)—and I recognize it from his days when he
was part of the antfarm collective in Raleigh's Boylan
Heights neighborhood. Yes, Wofford says. He married a
Durhamite. For a while, they had a bi-county
relationship, but finally she convinced him to leave
Raleigh for Durham, and now he's glad he did. "The
neighborhoods are more neighborly," Wofford says.
Downtown, you can walk from one neighborhood to
another more easily, he adds. And it's easier to leave
town, too, and get out to the country on a bike. And
the clincher: "You can live downtown and not pay
$300,000 to do it. I'm trying to convince my Raleigh
friends of that—who've been looking for a house over
there for four years and are about to give up."

Some other Foster Street attractions:

Manbites Dog Theater (703 Foster St., 682-3343,
www.manbitesdogtheater.org). Is it the best local
theater in the Triangle? We ran into Margaret Sartor,
author of Miss American Pie: A Diary of Love, Secrets
and Growing Up in the 1970s, who told us MBT should be
a "best of." I'm not a theater critic, but I will say
that Manbites' solid brick building is exactly the
kind of stage door experience you want in a
comfortable downtown.

The Durham Farmers' Market (501 Foster St., 667-3099,
www.durhamfarmersmarket.com). Saturday mornings. It's
small, unlike the State Farmers' Market in Raleigh,
and it's in town, not out. "It's just so fun and down
to earth, and all of these local people selling their
crafts," said Kendra Cumming, a Chapel Hillian I met
on my way in. "I love to come here."

Liberty Arts (538 Foster St., 682-2673,
www.libertyartscasting.org). It's the "best foundry"
in the Triangle, but that's faint praise. It's right
across from the Farmers' Market; check it out. They'll
show you how they do bronze casting, and for a fee,
teach you to do it, too. Their building, the George
Watts Hill Pavilion, is a great work in its own
right—cut steel and forged gates that invite you into
what is—to my surprise—a hot, hard-working, even
gritty (yes!) if nonprofit metal shop. A shop, not
incidentally, that's turning out artful bronze casts
all over Durham, including the giant turtle ("Mr. Al
Pickles") in Durham Central Park.

Last word from Foster Street goes to Barry Ragin, a
leader of the nearby Duke Park Neighborhood
Association (www.rtpnet.org/dukepark) who, when we
meet him, starts singing the odd virtues of their
recent Beaver Queen Pageant
(beaverlodgelocal1504.org). "You've never seen
anything like it, it's like a drag show about
beavers," he says. (Beavers are a big issue in Duke
Park, apparently. And yes, next year bring the kids,
because the double entendres go right over their
heads.) Is this more evidence that Durham's "gritty"?
I ask. "Hmm," he says. "How about human-scaled?"

So now, for the rest of the story. In our wanderings
downtown, we were told about a bunch of other "bests,"
too many for one expatriate Raleigh man and his
faithful wife to pin down in a single year. But we
nailed a few:

Locopops (2600 Hillsborough Road, 286-3500,
ilovelocopops.com) is the place for Mexican ice pops
called paletas, very tasty. But what we liked best was
how happy this little strip-mall place is, with the
moms and dads and kids, and in particular—the day we
were there—Miss Esme Roberts, age almost 1, with her
purple-cream-covered smile.

By day, Chino Latino (2900 Holloway St., 596-9478) is
a nondescript Chinese-Mexican restaurant. But by
night, it's a sweaty Latin dance scene—mostly gay-male
and Hispanic, but with a smattering of Anglos,
straights, women, men dressed as women, and so on. And
Saturdays, after midnight, the dance floor clears for
two shows by an array of drag-queen performers who
give new meaning to the term "diversity." (Safe? Sure
felt like it. And the massage parlor across the way?
No complaints in four years, said one of the two cops
who were standing duty outside.)

Durham's got a lot of good taco joints, but Los
Comales (2103 N. Roxboro Road, 220-1614) is the best,
in our very unscientific sample.

The Regulator Bookshop (720 Ninth St., 286-2700,
www.regbook.com) just celebrated its 30th birthday, so
hopefully you know about it. If not, it's maybe the
best thing in Durham and anchors Ninth Street, which
is still a place worth going.

And when you're on Ninth Street, have lunch at Bahn's
(750 Ninth St., 286-5073), which really is a
hole-in-the-wall restaurant with generous portions of
good Chinese and Vietnamese dishes for pretty cheap.
Wednesday lunches are the best—that's when the
authentic Vietnamese fare is featured.

The black history of Durham is a subject for books
(and there are books about it in the Durham County
Library, which in my experience has always been a
"best" community gathering place). I didn't spend
enough time on it, but I do highly recommend Stagville
(5828 Old Oxford Highway, 620-0120,
www.historicstagvillefoundation.org), a restored
plantation north of Durham complete with slave
quarters. This year, on June 23, Stagville will be
holding its first Juneteenth celebration, marking the
anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation
Proclamation. The event will feature another Durham
"best," a black stringband called the Carolina
Chocolate Drops (www.sankofastrings.com/ccd). And on
the subject of Durham musicians, I just heard bluesman
Cool John Ferguson (www.musicmaker.org) perform for
the first time recently (in Raleigh, oddly). He's not
just "the best" of Durham (especially since he's
recently moved back to South Carolina). He's one of
the best alive. Definitely gritty.

Our last stop that Third Friday night was at Bull City
Headquarters (723 N. Mangum St.,
www.myspace.com/bchq). It's a throwback of a very
sweet sort—I was imagining the first place in
Greenwich Village, before they thought to call it "the
Village." Old high-ceiling building, nice acoustics,
an old sofa and very few chairs, so people with good
knees are setting on the floor listening to the music.
I picked up a schedule. They've got writing nights and
urban gardening nights and art openings for students'
works, and on Sunday afternoons they fix bicycles "for
the community" (it's a co-op). We arrived in time to
hear The Water Callers, two guys named Bart Matthews
and Jason Fagg who were quite good on guitars and
drum. They have a song called "Durhamite." Its last
chorus:

Durham, my Southern home
Durham, where colors blend
Durham, I'm proud to call myself a Durhamite to the
end.
Durham, I'll take a walk in
Durham, and see my friends,
Durham, I'm proud to call myself a Durhamite to the
end.