Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, CaryThe Triangle Area
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Being from Olde New England, NC reminds me of the East Connecticut/Central Mass but actually alive and kicking, not old and decaying. Same layout, lots of woods with villages and community business districts. Of course it's below those Appalachians, so the cold air masses don't visit nearly as often, which is a big draw to all of us overwhelmed Yanks who are searching for the nearest Dunkin Donuts within 5 minutes of arrival and can't give local pizza parlors any respect.
I'm returning for winter 2010 after living in Chapel Hill last fall. Chapel Hill IS overrated. I feel badly for the original folks there, such a great town overrun with carpetbaggers from Chicago & NYC trying to turn it into a posh, elitist camp for themselves and only their ilk. It seemed all the jobs there were restaurant/retail, very little industry. I lived in a gated, upscale community that had a 20-foot wall to seal itself from the mostly-Mexican trailer park next door.
It's a strange societal meld- Out in the woods near a beautiful lake you have 2 societies: One is an exclusive, well-to-do Hamlet of socialites in their modern amenities sharing the same road with old trailer lots, run-down shackhouses for poor, rural townies who know what it's like to actually eat roadkill but now have a Food Lion and a welfare check because there is no local work to get to.
I alone picked up a few thousand pounds of trash from the shores of Jordan Lake, put it in bags and left the bags by the entrance. I would do this on off-hours because it was such a great natural place and it made me sick how the mostly Mexican catfisherman would leave all their rubbish behind. What bothered me more was how the locals just seemed to let this happen unchecked. I called the county about the trash I picked up and where to find the 50+ full bags. Not only did the pile remain for 3 weeks, other people started putting old electronics and other junk on top of the pile.
One day all the trash was picked up and the recently formed Jordan Lake Conservation Group posted a sign advising visitors to take their trash back with them. A sign in English AND Spanish.
BTW- How the hell does a city assign itself to 3 different counties? I guess up north we are stricter on land division. I was in Chatham County (15% growth in 5 years) and other than a Food Lion mini-mall the nearest civilization was 7 miles away. I can picture it being bleak out there once you get laid off. I had a poor paying job close to the house because better paying ones were all 20+ miles east of there.
I saw many people who found themselves screwed out there thinking it was the land of plenty. Many bought cheap houses and had good pay, then the good paying job went away and the prospects get thinner with all the refugees from squalor in other states are battling for jobs with them.
There is also a bias among employers against Yanks, for reasons real and some perceived. First off, when times are tough people take care of their own. Secondly, the perception by some the Yankee wave is bad for the local economy. We expect a living wage, and the old south mentality is that the money man stays the money man. They would rather hire a local guy or who will accept subpar pay because he knows no better. Third, many of us leave due to homesickness or another city making magazine lists.
I met a great girl from the capital city who asked me why I live all the way out in Chatham, so this winter I'm going to Raleigh with her to try it again. This time I will be right inside the 440 belt. I went to downtown Raleigh once, it reminded me a bit of Providence RI but spread out and new around the edges, not tightly-packed and decayed like most east coast cities.
They say Durham is a bad town because of racial tension, having not lived there I cannot say it's worse there than anywhere else but you hear it from locals enough so there must be something to it. Cary/Apex seems like an insular little world of chain restaurants and subdivision society, very impersonal and competitive.
But I'm going to Raleigh this time. They say Raleigh is still the best, not comparable to the cookie-cutter western Triangle wasteland. An old ghost reborn. I say it has to be better than the Socialist Republic of Massachusetts that takes more out my weekly paycheck than the Fed to fund breast implants for murderous prisoners (it's true) and so the governor czar give all his friends 6 figure salaries with pensions.
It's more a matter of us Yankees see the writing on the wall and fleeing the madness, not trying to bring it along with us.
It comes and goes, doesn't it?
We also set a record for consecutive days over 90. Was that in 2007 too?
But, for the person who asked the question, the response was pretty good.
I don't think any weather response should be based on the extreme years, but more on the common years and averages.
I think it is helpful to look at humidity levels along with temperatures to get an idea of how comfortable (or uncomfortable) the climate is. It turns out according to the Sperling's site below that gives the humidity levels as well as temps and number of days above 90 degrees. San Antonio has many more hot days than Raleigh, but the humidity is actually lower in San Antonio (which I was surprised to see as my sister lives there and always complains about the heat ).
One thing I'm happy to see is that the humidity levels in Raleigh Durham are much lower during the summer than here in Charleston, SC which will be a welcome relief even though the summer temps are almost as high as they get in Charleston.
Moderator cut: link removed, linking to competitor sites is not allowed
I'm returning for winter 2010 after living in Chapel Hill last fall. Chapel Hill IS overrated. I feel badly for the original folks there, such a great town overrun with carpetbaggers from Chicago & NYC trying to turn it into a posh, elitist camp for themselves and only their ilk. It seemed all the jobs there were restaurant/retail, very little industry. I lived in a gated, upscale community that had a 20-foot wall to seal itself from the mostly-Mexican trailer park next door.
It's a strange societal meld- Out in the woods near a beautiful lake you have 2 societies: One is an exclusive, well-to-do Hamlet of socialites in their modern amenities sharing the same road with old trailer lots, run-down shackhouses for poor, rural townies who know what it's like to actually eat roadkill but now have a Food Lion and a welfare check because there is no local work to get to.
BTW- How the hell does a city assign itself to 3 different counties? I guess up north we are stricter on land division. I was in Chatham County (15% growth in 5 years) and other than a Food Lion mini-mall the nearest civilization was 7 miles away. I can picture it being bleak out there once you get laid off. I had a poor paying job close to the house because better paying ones were all 20+ miles east of there.
I saw many people who found themselves screwed out there thinking it was the land of plenty. Many bought cheap houses and had good pay, then the good paying job went away and the prospects get thinner with all the refugees from squalor in other states are battling for jobs with them.
Great post, especially the above.
I'm an NC native. I can easily see why the Triangle is appealing to folks from elsewhere in the country. There are downsides, but the downsides are not so obvious.
I had an old college professor years ago who referred to Chapel Hill as the world capital of under-employment (as in working far below your education, for terrible money), and that is true in CH. One could ask why so many highly educated folks are willing to work retail or wait tables in the most expensive non-resort in the state - what keeps them there? Maybe it's the schools, which are very good, at least when compared to other systems in the South. In Chapel Hill, there's far more education than there are jobs, and it adds up to lots of brains going to waste.
This certainly undercuts the pretenses of progressivism that CH likes to trumpet. There's nothing progressive about the elitism and very intense economic division you see there, unless aspiring to become the Marin County of North Carolina (minus whatever positive attributes one might find in Marin County) sounds progressive.
Chapel Hill's creative community once upon a time (15-20 years ago) drew national press. Those days are OVER - most of 'em are too busy working at whatever job they've been able to finagle to be creative, or they've just thrown in the towel and gone to live somewhere they'd probably rather not live. Durham has been the recipient of a lot of those castoffs, the majority of whom weren't exactly exited about moving there, but it's the last bastion of affordable living in the Triangle.
Chapel Hill's transformation into a retirement destination, or a place to go to get your kids in the schools is - in one regard - a dismal thing. The virtues of the town are not to be found anywhere else in the state, but if you aren't well-off, you aren't going to be able to enjoy or participate in (forgeddabout contributing to...) those virtues any longer. A once-vibrant intellectual and creative community - short on sprawl, well-maintained, low crime - has degenerated into lifestyle tourism.
Culturally, the whole of the Triangle is in great shape compared to a lot of the rest of the South in some regards. If you're from NYC, Chicago or California, there's a lot you will miss, and the vibe is very different. If you're a serious foodie, parts of the Triangle are good, but things like REALLY well-stocked Asian groceries are tough to find, and if you like to eat or make (for example) anything beyond standard-issue Asian or Latin American food, you'd better be very inventive. If your tastes in music run towards edgier stuff, Carrboro especially is a great place. Foreign film and arthouse cinema is around - the Varsity, Galaxy, Carolina theatre all run various things - I've seen Bollywood (the Galaxy in Cary has some Bollywood 24-7), Kurosawa, Hitchcock retros recently, and the largest documentary film fest in the world is based in Durham. So the area is great for some kinds of culture - it's just concentrated in a few specific kinds of things, and there's not a lot of breadth.
Interesting post, Boston Jimbo. It's great to hear different perspectives, especially when they are expressed so well.
This part seems to reflect what Suzy Orman (financial expert) said on the NBC national news tonight about the whole country. She said in this economy, the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and the middle class is disappearing. She said the jobs aren't coming back, and real estate will not appreciate to the degree it has in the past. Very sobering.
Quote:
It's a strange societal meld- Out in the woods near a beautiful lake you have 2 societies: One is an exclusive, well-to-do Hamlet of socialites in their modern amenities sharing the same road with old trailer lots, run-down shackhouses for poor, rural townies who know what it's like to actually eat roadkill but now have a Food Lion and a welfare check because there is no local work to get to.
Interesting post, Boston Jimbo. It's great to hear different perspectives, especially when they are expressed so well.
This part seems to reflect what Suzy Orman (financial expert) said on the NBC national news tonight about the whole country. She said in this economy, the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and the middle class is disappearing. She said the jobs aren't coming back, and real estate will not appreciate to the degree it has in the past. Very sobering.
This is exactly what my wife and I noticed when we moved here from Michigan 2.5 years ago there seems to be a much smaller middle class here (getting by; having a decent smaller house but not luxury cars and everything) it seems it's more defined that one has a lot of money or very little.
As far as culture and entertainment is concerned, the Triangle is a backwater. There also seems to be some tension between the natives who've been here forever and newcomers, who often bring with them a fast-paced lifestyle that is anathema to Southern sensibilities. Moving to a small town in the hinterlands here is no guarantee that you won't be enveloped by growth in a year or two; in fact, it's almost inevitable. We just got back from a trip to Vermont and New Hampshire, both of which seem to have stable, entrenched populations. It was an eye-opener to me, originally a refugee from south Florida's runaway growth who is now seeing the same thing happening here. It reminds me of a tumor that has metastisized, with no prognosis on how far it will progress.
MarkCanWrite words are in italics, mine are in blue:
As far as culture and entertainment is concerned, the Triangle is a backwater.
Compared to what? There is plenty to do. There are Broadway shows. We are on the tour schedules of pop artists. Plenty of concerts. Festivals. Events. Shopping. What do you expect? NYC? LA? Orlando with DisneyWorld? We're not and never will be those cities.
There also seems to be some tension between the natives who've been here forever and newcomers, who often bring with them a fast-paced lifestyle that is anathema to Southern sensibilities.
Oh, please! You make it sound like there are people pickin' their teeth with bits of straw on their front porches. Everyone is going a mile a minute here.
A huge number of people in the Triangle are from elsewhere. Where is the stereotypical slow-moving Southerner of which you speak? I've been here almost two decades. I haven't see one yet.
Moving to a small town in the hinterlands here is no guarantee that you won't be enveloped by growth in a year or two; in fact, it's almost inevitable.
In this recession? Doubtful. What constitutes "hinterlands" to you? Wake Forest? Clayton? Yes, they are growing fast. Obviously. What do you expect? Everyone thinks this is the Promised Land. There are plenty of other places that people should discover. But there is no reason to be so disparaging.
We just got back from a trip to Vermont and New Hampshire, both of which seem to have stable, entrenched populations.
Have you been anywhere else? Most of America has stable, entrenched populations.
It was an eye-opener to me, originally a refugee from south Florida's runaway growth who is now seeing the same thing happening here. It reminds me of a tumor that has metastisized, with no prognosis on how far it will progress.
Yes, the area is growing and will continue to grow, but probably not as fast as it has been due to slowed job growth.
So if you don't like it, move to Vermont.
Vermont is gorgeous. Seriously.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
