RTP-area local music and culture

["DJ Golf" <djgolf AT mindspring.com>]

"Downtown Chapel Hill is the new Downtown Durham."  This is my only-
halfway-TIC mantra for anyone complaining about downtown Durham being
"unsafe."

> petty crime in chapel hill and carrboro is totally out
> of control. can't park a car anywhere without a window
> getting smashed out. at least in durham they just
> steal your bombed out car once every fifteen years. in
> chapelboro it's file a small insurance claim every
> week.

One of the other reasons for Durham real estate being "cheap" compared
to elsewhere in the Triangle is the widespread perception (justified
or not - we could argue all day) among potential homebuyers that
Durham is crime-ridden.  This is perpetuated to at least some extent
by real estate agents trying to sell out-of-towners on the more
expensive properties in CH/Raleigh by badmouthing Durham ("there's
lots of crime, the schools are bad, gangs/drugs all over the place",
etc.)  But I'm sure that's no surprise to anyone on here.

DJ Golf grew up in southside Virginia, went to college at the school
up on top of the Blue Ridge that recently joined the ACC and now beats
Duke and UNC in both basketball -and- football on a regular basis,
lived in that little college town for many years, then moved to
Carrboro on kind of a whim in '97.  Has worked in Durham for most of
his 10 years here (at times in some of the Bull City's rougher
neighborhoods, with nary a scratch) and lives in the woods out near
Hillsborough, where Mrs. Golf and he can enjoy the pollen and be
surrounded by her family's land, which provides a nice buffer zone
between us and ever-encroaching anthills of $750,000 cookie-cutter
homes and the fleets of speeding minivans going antlike in and out of
them.

The golf around here is cheap too, as golf goes, although you gotta
drive out of town a bit.  Nothing cheap at Duke or UNC-Finley.

DJ Golf has also rediscovered the Stranglers recently for some reason.
(Maybe it was hearing "Golden Brown" on the radio a while back.)
Their first 5 or 6 albums have aged about as well as anything from
that era.