On being alone
(04/08/15 8:15am)
When was the last time you were alone? Really, truly alone, without a familiar face to turn to, no one who could attest to the kind of person you are?
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When was the last time you were alone? Really, truly alone, without a familiar face to turn to, no one who could attest to the kind of person you are?
The cafe and bar run by former Marine Matt Victoriano faced dire straits last year, when Victoriano announced that high rent costs and a slump in business were forcing him to close his business. In response, loyal customers helped Victoriano mount a wildly successful Indiegogo campaign, raising enough funds to cover the cafe’s immediate costs and forestalling its closure. After a brief hiatus, Intrepid Life reopened December 9 at 904 Broad Street in Durham.
In Young Jean Lee’s play Songs of the Dragons Rising to Heaven, several of the characters deliver a torrential speech in unison critiquing “unfashionably angry minorities” but continuing: “The truth is, if you’re a minority and you do super-racist stuff against yourself, then the white people are like, 'Oh, you’re a "cool" minority,' and they treat you like one of them.”
Recently, I spent an evening with a rotating cast of friends on Geer Street to answer the question: what do you do with too much time on a Saturday night in Durham?
Hozier is every rustic girl's dream man. Permanently wrapped in his denim jacket, he successfully pulls off the L.L.Bean-model-meets-starving-artist look. When he sings, it is impossible to not compare his low key charisma to Sex and the City’s Aidan.
It’s been a big week in country music. Lady Antebellum’s new album, 747, is a testament to their lyrically-driven, ballad-tinged country. For the seemingly precious-few country listeners out there, Lady Antebellum has been a staple songwriting tour de force in country music since their entrance onto the country music stage in 2007. Although the majority of the album's tracks stay within the safety of the status quo, 747 has some radio favorites (“Bartender,” in particular, has already hit country charts) and genuinely well-written songs (“Long Stretch of Love” and “Down South”).
Lydia Loveless performed at Durham’s Motorco Music Hall this past Tuesday, Sept. 23. Her newest studio album "Somewhere Else" is now available. The Chronicle recently chatted with her to reflect on her music.
Matt Victoriano is the owner of Intrepid Life Coffee and Spirits, a local coffee shop that has been forced to relocate despite a successful local campaign to keep it alive. The Chronicle's Emily Feng recently visited him for a one-on-one interview.
Nigerian-born author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is coming to Duke this Friday, September 5, to deliver a book talk and discussion about her third novel, "Americanah."
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>My hands would have been trembling a bit if I hadn’t been gripping the handles so tightly. I was sitting in the parking lot of a motorcycle shop awkwardly astride my new moped, which until the day of purchase I had never even touched, much less taken on the roads. At its top speed, my quirky little Honda Metropolitan 2006 can reach 40 mph. That’s fast enough to take the skin off someone’s hands in the event of a fall, but luckily for me, not fast enough to necessitate a motorcycle license. A quick lesson and some shaky practice figure-eights later, and I was road-ready.Mopeds, a type of light motorcycle or motorized scooter, have become increasingly popular in the Durham area. David Jensen founded his motorcycle business Combustion Cycles Ltd. in 2003 and began selling mopeds in 2004. Business has been healthy and mopeds have grown to constitute a large part of his annual sales, he said.“Sometimes you would have trouble with the Harley guys,” he half-joked. “They think they’re too tough for a shop that also sells scooters.”Unlike in Europe, where mopeds and scooters can be essential for squeezing through narrow city streets, mopeds have only started to catch on in the United States. Compared to sales of motorcycles and cars, mopeds still only account for less than 5 percent of vehicle sales annually. National moped sales have increased respectively, as well. In 2003, shops like Combustion Cycles sold 83,000 registered mopeds; only five years later, that number reached 131,000, according to an Aug. 21, 2008 NPR article. And that’s not counting informal sellers.What might explain the recent increase in moped sales? For one, mopeds are incredibly energy-efficient. “The moped is the ready-made answer to President Carter’s energy program,” proclaimed a 1977 article in the New York Times. My little bike gets more than 100 miles to the gallon, and more powerful bikes can still manage up to 70 miles per gallon.Durham is a mopeder’s playground. Downtown is concentrated among several blocks, and the wide, store-lined streets are great for a Sunday joyride in the morning sunlight on the way to brunch. Mopeds are well suited for thrifty students in need of transport around relatively quiet urban areas like Durham.“I get a good mix of moped customers, but lots of them are graduate students, some undergraduate,” Jansen noted.Undeniably, the moped possesses its own, unique aesthetic: one that is a little daring, more than a little eccentric, and most of all, fun.“I imagine people who ride them are a little... different, or adventurous,” said junior Will Giles.It wasn’t until after buying my own moped that I discovered the entire, semi-hidden culture around the contraptions.Mopeds, because they can be driven by anyone over the age of 16 without a driver’s license, are considered akin to pedal bikes by the N.C. DMV, making them a target of masculine derision. Others have taken a different view. Drawing on a wealth of popular culture that romanticizes the motorcycle journey, and parodying the toughness projected by motorcycle gangs such as Hell’s Angels, riders with a sense of humor have started hundreds of “moped gangs.” There are five chapters of the “Moped Army,” a national moped organization (motto: Swarm and Destroy), in North Carolina alone, sporting names like Danger Ranger and White Line Riders.The gangs are less about intimidation and more about upholding “the moped way of life,” which by my understanding means doing what you would do on a motorcycle, just more slowly and with tongue in cheek. In an interview with SOMA Magazine, moped gang Creatures of the Loin described the moped way of life as “living out existential mad max fantasies on marginalized motor vehicles in the directly lived moment.”Durham doesn’t have its own moped gang, but a sense of community still pervades the many riders here. We give each other silent nods of acknowledgement when we pass each other on West Main Street. Strangers and I have bonded over moped maintenance, and I have strengthened preexisting friendships by talking about my moped. My moped may not be able to go that fast, but I may as well slow down and enjoy the ride.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>In May 2011, Lindsay Moriarty, the co-owner of Durham’s Monuts Donuts graduated with her second master’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. But she still struggled to find employment. She knew she wanted to stay in Durham, but she wanted to find a job soon. Money and time were quickly running out.Just as things were looking grim, an opportunity fell into her lap like manna from heaven. She rented kitchen space from the Cookery, a “culinary incubator” that gives entrepreneurs opportunities to launch their own gastronomical ventures.Moriarty began working at the Cookery and in her free time sold freshly made donuts off of her friend’s big yellow tricycle.“It was just one of those moments that started as a joke but all came together,” Moriarty said. “I then fell in love with the idea [of selling food], and that’s where we got started.”She set up shop every Saturday morning at the Durham Farmers Market, where demand for her donuts quickly outstripped supply. Her most loyal customers would greet her by name and ask about her dog. Encouraged by her initial success, she and her husband opened a brick-and-mortar location in spring 2013 on East Parrish Street. So came about Monuts Donuts, which is now a staple workday lunch and weekend brunch outfit among the Durham community.
University Carilloneur Sam Hammond began playing the Duke carillon in 1965, when he was an undergraduate at Duke. To this day, the Trinity ’68 grad continues to play the 50-bell carillon through rain or shine at 5 p.m. each day from the Chapel tower.
University Carilloneur Sam Hammond began playing the Duke carillon in 1965, when he was an undergraduate at Duke. To this day, the Trinity '68 grad continues to play the 50-bell carillon through rain or shine at 5 p.m. each day from the Chapel tower.
“A Touch of Sin” includes nearly every hot button social issue relevant in China today, sometimes to the detriment of the film: could Jia have crammed any more social angst into the movie’s 125 minutes? Covered are: factory worker suicides, prostitution, high-speed train accidents, China’s petitioning and redress system, bureaucratic corruption...the list goes on.
This fall’s Cine-East Film Series features five wildly disparate films, reminding us that East Asia may be geographically proximal but culturally divergent. In particular, describing East Asian cinema in broad strokes obscures its astonishing diversity. The films in Cine-East’s lineup are filmed in a variety of languages and countries and cover vastly different subject material.
Late one muggy night in June, in the northeastern suburbs of Beijing, Will Latta made the final preparations for the Forever Duke Send-off party he was hosting. In the spirit of cross-cultural exchange, Latta, Fuqua Weekend Executive MBA ’02, playfully decided to cater the event with some good Southern cooking. Everyone seemed to enjoy the pulled barbecue pork and fried okra, and it seemed appropriate that an engineer like Latta would be able to finagle a way to find okra in large commercial quantities in Beijing.
Whether for interminably long nights of breakneck studying or nights with friends that pass too quickly, McClendon Tower provides a mix of environments for the multitasking Duke student.
Michael “Gus” Gustafson II, Associate Professor of the Practice, teaches Engineering 103: Computational Methods in Engineering, the introductory course he created from scratch and which virtually all Pratt engineering students must take in order to receive a Duke degree. Gustafson, who is referred to as Dr. G by his students, also has a purportedly heavy online presence in Facebook groups for Pratt students, where he answers the various miscellaneous and sometimes frustratingly brutal questions about anything related to engineering. As a scholar who got his bachelors, masters and doctorate degrees at Duke, Dr. G has played a significant role in designing Pratt’s curriculum and shaping the overall direction of Duke’s engineering school.
In New England, where I was born and raised, a favorite autumn pastime for families is frequenting the local orchards where one can secretly eat apples and pears off of the trees and during lazier days, skip right to the pre-picked fruits and desserts at the orchard’s country-store-meets-bakery. Orchards are a tad bit harder to find in the Research Triangle Area (or perhaps just less accessible to students without cars), and I was looking for a ready substitute for the wholesome, friendly and locally-sourced vibe that I liked about orchards. I found a more than satisfying alternative in the Durham Farmers’ Market. For a handy distillation of all there is to love about Durham, make the short drive or early morning run to Pavilion Park at 501 Foster St., especially constructed through grassroots fundraising for the farmers’ market.
When junior Jason Maher walked on Duke’s campus as a freshman, greek life was the last thing on his mind. He had a few black friends who had “crossed” and joined a historically black fraternity but had never considered the option himself. As he became more familiar with student life, however, his interest in community service led him to notice, to his surprise, that those most active in this vocation were also members of black fraternities.