urban bicycle journeys

The New York Times recently ran a Travel section article “36 Hours, Raleigh NC”.   It said how much has changed in the past few years, that Raleigh is coming into its own as an interesting city.     Living in Chapel Hill, I dismissed this as New York Times hype.    From this ride on on a sunny Saturday in March, I became more of a convert.

I parked the car at Whole Foods on the northwest side of Raleigh, just off Wade Avenue.     Much has been written about the trend to tear down existing houses within Inside the Beltline Raleigh, because the land has become so valuable.    They are replacing sixties brick one story ranches with gaudy two or three story palaces.   Still,  within the Ridgeway neighborhood behind Whole Foods there were several modernist houses, including this relatively new one.

Downtown, the NC State Legislative Building (1960) by Edward Durell Stone was impressive.   It had more of an intimacy to the street than I remembered.     If only we could do something about the Republicans who dominate this place!

The southeast has always been the Poor Side of Town.    A positive note is that Garner Road is a quiet street for bicycling, leading directly through that poor side, first towards Garner, then all the way about twenty miles to Clayton.     Garner Road is freed of the heavy car traffic that surrounds all other sides of Raleigh.    I even passed a couple Modernist places down here.

I biked down to Clayton, turned around, and rode back to downtown Raleigh.   Lunch was at The Pit, in the warehouse district.   I cannot recall being in a North Carolina restaurant with a more diverse customer base.     Besides the weightlifting blue haired bartender,  at least thirty percent of the patrons were black, and the other seventy percent were divided among hipsters, motorcyclists in Harley gear, young Asian couples, professorial looking types.   Everyone seemed to be having a good time.    In Chapel Hill, for all our talk of diversity, pretty much everyone looks like they come from the same stratum.   The crowd for Saturday lunch at The Pit really did look like the future of America.