C’mon and raise up!

A little Petey Pablo to get ya in the mood…He was my first taste of the NC, after all. Literally. But that’s another story…

I went to the Triangle (Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill) to interview at UNC a week ago. It was very pretty, lots of trees. Amazingly liberal. Like a little oasis of progressiveness in the desert of the bible belt/ South. Mostly took pix of cool bumper stickers. This is the first “Impeach Bush” sticker I’ve seen besides the one on my helmet. The area was way more progressive and political than LA. But then, it is a college town to the 4th power. Not much else to do there but go to school and do homework, which makes it very appealing as a place to be educated. One big reason this place kicks ass is the astoundingly low cost of real estate. While I’d be paying out the ass to live in SF or even Berkeley/Oakland, I could actually MAKE money living in Chapel Hill! And have a much nicer place to boot! Like a brand-new 3 bedroom townhouse with a 2 car (that’s 8 motorcycles!!!) garage for a measly $110k!!!!!

Went to a UNC b-ball game, which was amazing. My first college game and wow, do they play better than the Lakers! Saw pretty much all there was to see of Chapel Hill, Carrboro (kinda like Silverlake, artsy and hispanic, but without the great shopping, and massively cheaper) and Durham. Then tried to get a taste of Raleigh, but could only find the part that resembled every other tired-ass state capital I’ve ever seen. What is it about Government being the main gig in town that seems to suck the creativity out of a city?

Couldn’t find the actual sign, but a funny fact is that Durham is the sister city to Arusha, Tanzania!!! It was so weird and exciting to discover that, and then buy Tanzanian crafts in a fair-trade shop in Durham. I wish the sister city program was more useful though. I scoured their website and it didn’t seem like they were doing anything particularly meaningful for Arusha.