We Love Durham NC

Maggiano’s

We celebrated a friend’s birthday at Maggiano’s on Saturday. The tables are shoulder-to-shoulder, but it’s not an unpleasant feature. Food is good and plentiful…eating family style, they will bring you about twice as much as you can eat, so they put it in straightaway into takeout containers. That’s 5 courses for $24.50 a head, for a full belly, good fun, and enough leftovers for a week’s worth of dinners.

More Durham Restaurants here.

Starting a Business in Durham

It can seem overwhelming to deal with the paperwork necessary to register a business, but really the city employees in charge of the various related offices do everything except literally hold your hand. There’s a simple list: (1) register your business name, (2) get zoning, and (3) get a business license. Start with the folks in planning and everything else in in walking distance, and can be done in one day.

Foster Street

Development is creeping from downtown to Foster Street. Across the street from the Scrap Exchange, a vacant building was demolished and hauled away. Across the street from that, Nu-Tread Tire was closed, and sits vacant…to be demolished, too? An old gas station parking lot was paved last week and lined for parking, and next door, workers are slowly replacing broken wood-paned windows with shiny new modern windows. Not to mention Trinity Lofts one street over.

Blog Award

Bob gave the We Love Durham blog an award.
If you get tagged, write a post with links to five blogs that make you think.
Link to this post so people can easily find the exact origin of the meme.

Here are 5 things I’m thinking about most days:
1. Zen Habits for Getting Things Done
2. How Magazine for good design
3. Seth’s blog for branding and business
4. A List Apart for the code
5. Eide Neurolearning for brain scan images

Vin Rouge

Couldn’t go much longer without saying what a lovely-pleasant date night we had at Vin Rouge on Saturday. Tried to go to Tyler’s at the American Tobacco Campus, realizing too late that the Bulls were having a game, and there would be no parking available. I’ve been passing VR on my shortcut to Locopops, so we headed over there, just in time for dinner opening, scoring a table on the patio. Simply perfect meal, wonderful service. I bet brunch there is a treat.

More Earth Day

Wrapped up Earth Day weekend with a drive over to Hillsborough to show the girl baby chickens. Wondered why there are no Durham farms on the Piedmont Farm Tour…maybe Durham is too far East to be Piedmont. The farm we visited did, after all, have a largish hill in it, and I don’t see that geography in Durham. Noticed there is an Eastern Triangle Farm Tour in September, and hope the 5 CFSA farms in Durham will be on this tour.

Also finished compost bin, after problems getting the stakes into the rocky Carolina ground.

Happy Earth Day!

There were a lot of free hands-on kid activities at the Earth Day Festival in Central Park yesterday. In all, it was a friendly, not-crowded festival. Good vibes.

Spider-man at Northgate Mall

The question is, with everything else going on May 5th, should I tell the boy that Spider-man is going to be in town?

Truck, Stuck

Yesterday, going onto Chapel Hill Road off the Downtown Loop, we passed a truck wedged under the overpass. I don’t think anyone was hurt, but the back of the truck was ripped open like a can of tuna. Ouch!

Coming Into Durham…

Coming into Durham from the north on I-85… Sunset shining on skyscrapers in the distance, freshly paved road, new sparkly signs, two big swoopy bridges overhead. City on the Move!

Paving Downtown Durham

You can hardly find a place in Downtown or Central Park that is not under construction, public or private, but the piece of Corcoran that runs in front of the We Want Oprah (someone please explain this) building, near the new plaza with picnic tables and trees, is freshly paved and smooth enough to roller skate on.

Strawberry Festival, May 5th

The Strawberry Festival is Good Fun.

Strawberry Festival is Central Park for Children’s annual community celebration and fundraiser. It is a celebration of children, of spring, of delightful fun… of good music, of tasty things to eat like strawberries, of good friends… of our community and of our school.

More info: http://www.centralparkschoolforchildren.org/strawberry.htm

Ninth Street Bakery

In the midst of downtown construction, but still easily accessible (parking directly outside the door) on Main Street, Ninth Street Bakery offers a We Love You card, with both a free cup of coffee and a loaf of bread after 10 coffee purchases. It’s covered in hearts, which warms mine. In more good news, the bakery products do not contain shortening.

Durham Farmer’s Market Grand Opening

The Durham Farmer’s Market is in a new location on Foster Street. Saturday was icy cold, but lots of folks came out for opening day anyway. The crowd enjoyed live music, live cooking from a local catering company, fresh hot chai, a jeopardy-style game from SEEDS, fuzzy dogs, and of course early spring foods and young plants. The kiddos picked out lavender and spearmint plants for our garden area. I either missed the empanadas, or they weren’t there today.

Durham Bulls

We missed opening night for the Durham Bulls, bummer! But now the schedule is on our fridge. This summer is the Summer of Baseball for us.