RTP-area local music and culture

[James Hepler <jameshepler AT yahoo.com>]

--- grady <grady AT ibiblio.org> wrote:

> What's the matter, Hep, did you hang onto your
> Krispy Kreme stock a 
> little too far past its peak?
> 
> It's true that I've never actually eaten in a non-NC
> KK, but if the 
> doughnuts are as good in other states as they are
> here, what's not to 
> like? I mean, other than their general inability to
> run a large public 
> company, and that little thing where they force
> franchisees to buy 
> ingredients from them, at prices much higher than
> the fair market prices?

Nah, I was just speaking to how relative it all is. 
To quote Bobby Turnblue from the cover up, you know I
loves the KK, I love to eat my 'nuts.

My issue with Starbucks has nothing to do with their
business model.  It just so happens that I do not
enjoy their coffee.  As I tell everyone I discuss this
with, it's the people who shop there that I blame for
their taking over the world.

> In answer to your other question: I don't live in
> Durham, and I've never 
> been any good at predicting what will/won't "work"
> in Durham, nor at 
> divining what the city needs in order to revitalize
> itself. So my 
> feelings about the American Tobacco Campus are
> merely feelings, and not 
> informed opinions about what it is or is not doing
> for the people of Durham.
> 
> Briefly: it feels like a mall. In fact, the first
> time I went there, I 
> felt like I was at Southpoint, albeit without the
> crowds.
> 
> The only businesses in it are the various
> white-collar firms who occupy 
> the office space (which is great, sure, nothing
> wrong with that - folks 
> gotta work, and it's certainly better to have them
> working in an actual 
> city rather than out here in fucking RTP where
> there's literally no 
> "there" there), and the restaurants which cater to
> the people who work 
> in the white-collar firms who occupy the office
> space.
> 
> Couple that with its rather forbidding exterior
> facade, and it feels 
> less like an exciting new facet to downtown Durham,
> and more like a 
> white-collar fortress across the train tracks from
> downtown Durham.
> 
> In fact, it's so faceless and anonymous on the
> outside that it's really 
> difficult to explain to people (particularly
> non-Durhamites) how to find 
> the Tyler's Taproom that's hidden inside. I've had
> trouble giving 
> directions to friends, and the last time the
> Triangle rock-climbing 
> group had their monthly meeting there, at least one
> new member drove all 
> around downtown Durham for a half-hour trying to
> find it before giving 
> up & going home.

My first experience with ATC was walking through it to
get to a Bulls game.  I thought it was really kinda
nice.  The development left behind several
SortaTributes to the industrial history of that plot
of land, and for the most part, it seemed to be
somewhat locally owned businesses setting up shop.

As it developed further, my one complaint became that
yeah, it's not for everyone.  You have to be willing
to shell out some money if you want to spend some time
there.  

I don't know if I should have expected something
different.  I've newver really seen downtown
revitalization up close.  While I don't think the
hipster community can do it all by themselves,
everyone seems to be taking a role.  Yeah you have
yuppyville, and then you have the dirtmall at 305
south, which is the hipster equivalent of paying $8
for a beer (where you at, B Love?)  So maybe the 305
south anti-mall could have moved in to the ATC had
they not bothered to renovate at all, but would that
serve more or fewer durhamites?

And who here has the balls to refuse to come out when
The Wusses play that amphitheatre?

I guess the degree to which you like or dislike the
renovations that have taken place depends on what your
expectations are.  Since I had none to begin with, I
can't say I'm happy or disappointed.  I can tell you
that some of the most fun nights of recent memory
include drinking at Tylers and running across to the
wrong side of the tracks for the rest of the evening's
entertainment.
 
> Like I said, I don't live in Durham and I don't
> purport to know what it 
> needs. But it seems to me that both the ATC and all
> the schwanky loft 
> apartments in converted tobacco warehouses around
> Brightleaf/Duke St. 
> have become this weird walled yuppie enclave just to
> the south & west of 
> downtown Durham, and downtown itself hasn't actually
> received any direct 
> benefit/improvement from it all.

Well, isn't the plan to do the rebuilding in phases? 
I know that they're planning on makinfg the downtown
streets two-way again.  Maybe that part of downtown
doesn't get worked on until the road work is complete
or something.  And as far as walled yuppie enclaves
go, great!  Keep them walled up.  I am actively
engaged in a plan to take over my street, and I don't
want them moving there. 

BTW there's a house for sale on my street.  If you
want details, I can send you the info that I know and
a "I want to live on James's street" application.
 
> And maybe somebody who lives downtown could explain
> this to me: where do 
> all the people who live in those lofts buy their
> groceries, and go to 
> the drugstore, and etc?

Northgate Mall.  Or fowlers/Whole Foods, depending on
granolatude.
 
> Anyway. The thing about development, in Durham or
> anywhere else, is that 
> it's a delicate multi-way push/pull thing between
> the developers with 
> the money, the city government with its own needs
> (and its own 
> perception of the city's needs, which may or may not
> be accurate), and 
> the actual people who live there currently, as well
> as the people who'd 
> potentially be moving into the newly-developed
> spaces. That's at least 4 
> different constituencies, overlapping to
> greater/lesser degrees. We can 
> argue all we want about, for example, the
> rightness/wrongness of 
> restricting "nightclub" activity in downtown Durham,
> but we have to 
> remember that there's at least one downtown resident
> who *hates* the 
> noise from the few clubs that are down there
> (remember that long cranky 
> letter in the Indy a couple of years ago that we
> mocked mercilessly at 
> the time?).
>
>
> I mean, yes, it's stupid to expect to live in a
> "downtown" and have it 
> be as peaceful & quiet as the countryside after 8
> p.m. -- but then 
> again, there have been big chunks of the past 20
> years when that was 
> more-or-less the reality of downtown Durham, so
> maybe that expectation 
> is more realistic than our idealized expectation of
> a downtown full of 
> life after dark.

No reason why the two can't coexist.  I mean, some
folks are going to be compelled to move out after
night life comes.  I expect that some equalization
should be expected.  Unfortunately the attitude is to
want to change the rules to disallow that which we
don't like instead of taking part in the equalization.
 There will inevitably be a place you can live
downtown where it will be quiet.  It has to be easy to
move there if you wish.
 
> My friends who have moved here from the big city
> will usually say that 
> they don't miss much about the city, except for one
> thing: they could do 
> everything they wanted to do, for weeks & even
> months at a time, without 
> a car. I think it's great that so much [lip service
> | attention] is 
> being paid to this whole "new urbanism" /
> "mixed-use" development trend, 
> but I can't think of anywhere in the Triangle where
> one of these 
> new-urbanist enclaves have gone up where even 5% of
> the residents could 
> live for more than 3-4 days without getting in a
> car.
> 
> I'd say if downtown Durham wants to come up with
> some big-picture Goals 
> for the Future, that would be one to consider.
> They've certainly made a 
> good start via their de-facto expulsion of cars from
> downtown by turning 
> all the streets into giant gaping holes in the
> ground ;-)

LOL!  That works every time!  I for one am sad that
the "screw cars" experiment in Durham has failed.  I
hope that when they rebuild those roads it won't be
impossible to cross the street. 

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