Variously good to see things in Durham

Had lunch with my friend Scott today in Durham.  We'd been thinking we'd go to the new pizza place, but it hasn't opened for lunch yet.  What are they thinking?  What Durham needs is specifically a slice place, where you can go in and get a couple of slices and a soda for $5.  It doesn't need another dinner pizza place, which is unlikely to compete well with Pizzeria Toro (if the owner Grey could ever stop it from freaking setting itself on fire, that is).

As we were leaving, Scott remarked that, for one, the old bank building on the corner of Mangum and Main would be make a good restaurant, and, for two, that downtown Durham needed some places one could shop.  Upon closer inspection, the building in question was being gutted (for what?  I don't know), and there was a new bookstore, primarily used books, down Main Street towards Five Points.  Ask and ye shall receive.

There's also a new soul food restaurant as well as a new cafe (owned by some ex-Green Beret philosopher dude) on Parrish as well as a new pub on Main between Mangum and Roxboro.  And ground has been broken on the new apartments to rise right near the old old courthouse.  Now they just gotta figure out what to do with the hulking Albanyesque thing that is the merely old courthouse.

And the gutting of the old CCB building proceeds apace, for it to be turned into a "boutique hotel."

I didn't even have time to head off into the warehouse district to see what's going on there.

Chapel Hill is getting lapped.