Durham is not a college town. I grew up in a college town, one where the campus blends into the city and every Saturday, 112,000 residents pack into a football stadium built just large enough to accommodate a few out-of-town guests. Together, 114,000 students and locals share the same set of bleachers and cheer for the same team. Duke separates itself from Durham with a wall, but across those low stones is a pretty great city.
Freshman year, Durham is far away. Like most freshmen, I only saw the city during evening walks to Shooters or out the window of a C-2 I mistakenly boarded on West. Duke gave me enough to do: meet friends, go to class, tent, rush and, when in doubt, work on another problem set. I can count the number of times I left campus by my ticket stubs from RDU.
But something happened sophomore year. I went to dinner with a friend at La Vaquita, a Mexican restaurant that is essentially a straight shot down Anderson from campus. Their fish tacos hinted that Durham might have something more to offer than a bar with a cage and a bull. The restaurant was only about a mile from West, so the next day I ran there and kept on going, down Chapel Hill Boulevard, onto Chapel Hill Street and into Durham.
I continued eating off campus. Downtown, I skeptically tried Dame’s Chicken and Waffles and immediately ordered a second breast on a blueberry waffle to go. Nearby, I ate burgers and fries with a strawberry shake at King’s, a 1950s open-air diner close enough to the old Durham ballpark to hear the chink of an aluminum bat at a little league game (King’s reopened my junior year, in 2010, but it’s one of my favorite spots in Durham). Before a formal, our party went to Fishmonger’s and ordered scallops we ate off butcher’s paper.
With a car on campus my sophomore year, Durham was wide open. In the fall, there were corn mazes and fresh-picked apples, and in the spring I attended the annual strawberry festival and ate ice cream on the porch at Mapleview Farms. On the rolling hills, you could see the dairy and hear cows mooing while the sun set.
My junior year I started taking classes at the Center for Documentary Studies. Each one required fieldwork and I started to get to know more people around Durham. At the Durham Bike Co-op I met authors, entrepreneurs, biologists and directors of non-profits. After volunteering to repair bikes for five hours, I got to choose one of my own for free. After fixing the brakes, spokes and alignment of a 21-inch teal bicycle, I rode it back to campus through the city.
Senior year I moved into a blue house just off East where Richard Nixon once lived for a month while attending Duke Law. Living in a neighborhood offered relative quiet in contrast to the dorms, and I ended up spending more time off campus than on. I found new running routes in the neighborhood. The South Ellerbe Creek Trail passes the North Carolina Museum of Life and Science, and in the woods are scale reproductions of dinosaurs peering through the trees. The American Tobacco Trail straddles Durham’s divide between affluent and working class neighborhoods and offers a view into politics outside Duke.
My final undergraduate paper was written about a local entrepreneur who has been a partner or full owner in five Durham bars, including the Federal, Surf Club and Whiskey. Writing my last story for college I learned about a guy who found himself in Durham and fell in love with the city after walking. He lived in Durham without a car for several years and got to know every corner and side street.
Taking photos for my assignment, I followed his lead and walked from my house off East to Five Points intersection downtown, to the Central Park District, then back through Old North Durham. Along the way I realized that though Durham is not a college town, it doesn’t need to be. It has enough character to be its own place, but that doesn’t mean it is not a place for Duke students. Getting to know Durham is part of getting to know Duke. Duke and Durham might be different places, but they coexist in a shared space. It’s an important part of the undergraduate experience to make it over the wall. Step out of the Gothic Wonderland and into the real world every now and then.
Nathan Glencer is a Trinity senior. He is the Towerview photography editor and former Recess photography editor of The Chronicle. He would like to thank everyone at The Chronicle for a great four years and encourage next year’s Towerview staff to continue the magazine’s in-depth coverage of libraries.
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