Taking off my shirt is imminent.
Not really, though dinner and drinks with the inimitable M. Soltes is imminent. I'm sitting under a tree at the ridiculously enlightened Weaver Street Market in Carrboro, NC which is probably number one on the list of "Places White People Like" soon, no doubt, to be featured on SWPL. I'm not linking them. You have to go there yourself.
Anyway, Weaver Street is so community-oriented as to be almost too much so. The food is delicious, the coffee pretty good and reasonably priced, the co-op selection huge. They recycle everything, down to the receipts, and they work with tons of local farms and producers. This in large part is convenient because of North Carolina's status as a major agricultural economy. Nevertheless, it's the kind of place I think of as young-educated-socially conscious-person heaven, and not at all the sandy, pine-rich coast that I'm so used to from family vacations down the Banks. Zoe's been living here for nigh on 5 years (probably more) and every time I've visited I've felt richly enfolded in the comforts of her home, her cooking and the love and care she has for this whole town. It has to be a very pleasant place to live.
So it's easy to see myself in the area, if not quite in Carrboro itself. If I can buy fresh, local produce all year long, exercise outside for most of it, engage in active academic work on the topics nearest and dearest to my heart (read: ruralism and Appalachia), enjoy the company of two or three of my most stimulating and amazing friends, be about four hours away from my favorite place on the planet...well, what's not to love?
1 comment:
What a great start to a writing. Though Carrboro may be great, you must never discount Boone, NC! Boone is mountains, mountains, mountains, home to the university with the only Appalachian Studies masters degree in the nation, socially/poltically/agriculturally conscious mecca and relatively close to WV. Outdoor exercising in the winter has to be in the form of skiing, which is awesome, and more than made up for by the fact that summer days hover around a wildly bearable 80 degrees. But we'll still try to make you move to Baltimore regardless.
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