Durham gets a bad rap. I don't know how many times I've heard Duke students comment on how completely boring Durham is, how there's no nightlife, how it's a ghost town riddled with crack houses and criminals, how much better Chapel Hill is than Durham and how much they wish that Durham had something as cool as Franklin Street. And quite frankly, I'm sick of it.
Now, I'll be honest that as one of the dozens of freshman matriculating from suburban New York, I wasn't too thrilled about going to school in what I first perceived to be a sleepy Southern city. But, as I near the end of my four years here, I can truly say that I love Durham. One doesn't instantly take a liking to this city. Like a favorite pair of blue jeans that mold to your butt after a couple of years, Durham grows on you... but you have to be willing to give it a chance (and to let Durham mold you as well).
Sure the Bull City's got its share of problems-crazy one-way streets, unsightly strip malls and strained race relations among them. And I admit that downtown could use some, er, revitalization.
Durham is a bit like your quirky, misunderstood Uncle Larry who always manages to do something clearly inappropriate at family gatherings, but is, underneath it all, way more interesting than anyone else in your family. Chapel Hill, on the other hand, is like your young rich Uncle Chad who everyone likes because he has impeccable style and lends people money, but who is really kind of a prick. I mean, come on, what really is Franklin Street-with its Gap, Taco Bell and Starbucks-but a glorified mall?
One can't describe the assets of Durham in sweeping platitudes like "Durham is a multicultural community," or "The people in Durham have a lot of heart and soul" (though both these statement are most definitely true). Just like a well-crafted short story, it's the details that make Durham truly great. Here are some of those details:
There are three Irish pubs in Durham. Two of those aforementioned Irish pubs are located on the same block as a New York pizza joint owned by full-fledged macho New Yawkers, a family owned Chinese/Vietnamese restaurant, a lesbian-owned dessert café and a Middle Eastern restaurant with a ban on ketchup run by a Palestinian immigrant whose disposition bears a striking similarity to Seinfeld's "Soup Nazi" (there's diversity for ya!).
The Durham Bulls' Stadium has excellent between-inning entertainment including sumo wrestling and a man shooting hotdogs into the bleachers with a special hotdog launcher.
The police chief of Durham is a five-foot tall bespectacled woman.
Durham is the home of Foxy 107 FM radio station.
There are a plethora of breakfast joints in which quantity and/or grease content of the food is paralleled by no other-Honey's, Le CoCo's, and Pan Pan (which is rumored to be a chain with only three locations-Durham, Roxboro and Harlem).
Open the Durham phone book and you'll find nine listings under "James Brown" (you can't get much more soul than that!).
Durham boasts the only Ethiopian restaurant in North Carolina (For your information, The Blue Nile, on 2000 Chapel Hill Road).
So, the next time you feel like opening your big self-righteous mouth to comment on how much Durham sucks, think about it for a minute. Do you know what you're talking about? Have you ever really explored Durham... beyond the realm of Southsquare Mall, George's Garage and the Cosmic Cantina? What are your assumptions founded on?
Now delve into Durham. Drive until you find a playground and push some kids on the swing set. Go into a store you've always wondered about. Eat some biscuits. And, for Heaven's sake, give Durham the respect that it deserves.
Ali Korein, a Trinity senior and senior associate editorial page editor of The Chronicle, is proud that she didn't use the phrase "Gothic Wonderland" once in this column. She would like to thank Durham, for making it all possible, and Jihad for "the best" falafel.
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