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I meant to write earlier, but one quick note on this topic. I wonder if taxes are a factor. I moved here from Boston, which doesn't tax clothing/shoes/etc., but does have high (implicit) taxes on restaurants, due to the restrictions on beer/wine/liquor licenses (making it less profitable to run restaurants, as the licenses are in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to acquire).
As a result, Boston is a great city for shopping, including luxury goods, but only so-so for restaurants (and there are very few breweries, and no growler stores, etc.) and grocery stores (also banned from selling alcohol, except for five of each chain store in the entire state).
If NC wanted more retail, they'd get rid of the tax on clothing.
Raleigh, and North Carolina in general, has always had more modest origins, a source of pride for many. "A state of yeoman farmers and among the South's first industrial areas, North Carolina was no home place to the gentry, but rather a state of working men and women who valued education and established the nation's first state university" (Raleigh gov site).
Fun fact: long ago, we were known as a "vale of humility between two mountains of conceit," referring to blue-blooded Virginia and aristocratic South Carolina, as another poster mentioned. But overall, the South's culture places less of a premium on "luxury" fashions and trends, eschewing designer goods for more traditional wares, often made in local environs.
Down here, the real wealth, for example, drives around in older but loaded Tahoes that would hardly elicit a second look, not Maseratis and Bentleys (nothing against those cars or those who drive them, but that's more of a Westside LA or Miami kind of scene).
Think a well-landscaped colonial, not the monstrously out-of-proportion McMansion that is becoming all too common in parts of Raleigh. The latter unfortunately characterizes much of the same ethos held by those who are all too caught up with "keeping up with the Joneses" and their excessively conspicuous consumption habits.
Our state motto, after all: "to be, rather than to seem."
Raleigh, and North Carolina in general, has always had more modest origins, a source of pride for many. "A state of yeoman farmers and among the South's first industrial areas, North Carolina was no home place to the gentry, but rather a state of working men and women who valued education and established the nation's first state university" (Raleigh gov site).
Fun fact: long ago, we were known as a "vale of humility between two mountains of conceit," referring to blue-blooded Virginia and aristocratic South Carolina, as another poster mentioned. But overall, the South's culture places less of a premium on "luxury" fashions and trends, eschewing designer goods for more traditional wares, often made in local environs.
Down here, the real wealth, for example, drives around in older but loaded Tahoes that would hardly elicit a second look, not Maseratis and Bentleys (nothing against those cars or those who drive them, but that's more of a Westside LA or Miami kind of scene).
Think a well-landscaped colonial, not the monstrously out-of-proportion McMansion that is becoming all too common in parts of Raleigh. The latter unfortunately characterizes much of the same ethos held by those who are all too caught up with "keeping up with the Joneses" and their excessively conspicuous consumption habits.
Our state motto, after all: "to be, rather than to seem."
Can't rep that one enough. So true about the Tahoes
Does anybody know what Jim Goodnight drives? I'm betting a Tesla, but I'm curious.
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