the SCENE RALEIGH-DURHAM North Carolina’s axis of cool.
With its food trucks, design collectives and rehabbed downtowns, the Research Triangle — the patch of North Carolina that is home to Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill and 150,000 college students — seems to be yet another hipster vibe factory. It’s Silver Lake, you think, just with a few more ‘‘yes, ma’ams.’’ But then you taste the okra and sni the heirloom tomatoes. You meet an ex-vegan who’s smoking whole hogs and a church pastor who plays in a secular rock group. And speaking of music, it’s everywhere — beamed out from great college radio stations, seeping out of historic rock clubs and packaged by a growing local record industry. This is the kind of place where bands still play house shows, where a local will endorse a dingy club by telling you that, inside, it feels like you’re at a Halo of Flies show in 1988. You don’t really know what he’s talking about, but you must nd out. STEPHEN HEYMAN
RALEIGH DENIM Victor Lytvinenko, 30, a former cook at Nobu in New York, and his wife Sarah, 29, who studied design at North Carolina State, began sewing selvage denim in their living room three years ago; now their jeans are on sale at Barneys for up to $300. Inside Raleigh Denim’s new workshop (and small retail space), ambient music plays over the hum of vintage sewing machines, including one from 1921 that torques hemlines in a way that makes denim geeks freak. The staff of recent college grads and immigrants includes Christel Ellsberg, a feisty 76-year- old woman originally from East Prussia who was a patternmaker for Levi’s in the 1960s. 319 West Martin Street, No. 100, Raleigh; (919) 274-5999; raleighdenim.com.
KINGS BARCADE THE PIG The arrival of mixology haunts like It’s not entirely clear how Sam Suchoff Foundation (in Raleigh) and Whiskey (in transformed himself from a vegan New Durham) has upped the Triangle’s cocktail York University student into the proud cachet, but a night out here is still all owner of a whole-hog barbecue joint. The about music. Kings is a good start. The Pig, which opened in September, uses venue’s original Raleigh location was only local, animal-welfare-approved hogs. closed in 2007, only to be resurrected The preparations — chopped carrot to this August. The new space, which has brighten the cole slaw, degreased hush a dance den called Neptune’s Parlour, puppies — make this a lighter twist on the was inaugurated by the local arena-rock gut-busting tradition. Vegeterians are not parodists Bandway. ‘‘They may just be the excluded: country-fried tofu with gravy, greatest band in America,’’ says Steve anyone? 630 Weaver Dairy Road, Chapel Popson, an owner. 14 West Martin Street, Hill; (919) 942-1133; thepigrestaurant.com; Raleigh; (919) 833-1091; kingsbarcade.com. barbecue from $7.
30 PHOTOGRAPHS BY ASHLEY MACKNICA TO SEE A SLIDE SHOW OF MORE IMAGES FROM NORTH CAROLINA, GO TO NYTIMES.COM TMAGAZINE.
INDEPENDENT WEEKLY Since its founding in 1983, the Triangle’s crusading Independent Weekly has kept ONLYBURGER hot-button local issues like immigration The Triangle is lousy with food trucks and gay rights in the headlines. That’s a slinging increasingly unlikely fare: blessing, says the paper’s big-bearded kimchi quesadillas in Durham (on Twitter music editor, Grayson Currin, since the @ncbulkogi), meatloaf in Raleigh local daily, The News & Observer, ‘‘has sort (@momsdishes) and hemp milk smoothies of withered on the vine.’’ The weekly has on a leafy lot in Carrboro, the hippie- also ramped up its arts coverage lately, dippie precinct just beyond Chapel Hill even creating its own music festival, (carrbororaw.com). But the widely Hopscotch, co-curated by Currin. It made acknowledged leader of this vehicular its debut this past September, headlined pack is a Durham-based chuck truck by Broken Social Scene. On newsstands called OnlyBurger. Its ‘‘breakfast’’ every Wednesday ; indyweek.com. special — tiered with fried green tomato, pimento cheese, fresh-ground beef and a gooey griddled egg — is a wonder of patty perfectionism. Find it on Twitter @onlyburger. Hamburgers from $4.50. the SCENE
MAC MCCAUGHAN AND ANDREA REUSING Mac McCaughan is probably the Triangle’s most important cultural arbiter, and his wife, Andrea Reusing, is one of the area’s best chefs. (She was shortlisted this year for a James Beard Award.) McCaughan founded Durham-based Merge Records in 1989 with Laura Ballance from his indie-rock band Superchunk. Merge’s hugely popular bands — Arcade Fire, Spoon, She & Him — occasionally touch down at Lantern, Reusing’s Asian-in lected Chapel Hill restaurant. A meal there is one delectable surprise after another, perhaps beginning with raw oyster topped with bits of gelatinous hot sauce, which dissolve into a gentle cloud of heat only NORTH CAROLINA after you’re blasted with brine . Merge MUSEUM OF ART Records: mergerecords.com. Lantern: This museum reopened in April after a 423 West Franklin Street, Chapel Hill; three-year expansion, unveiling a new, (919) 969-8846; lanternrestaurant.com; light-filled 127,000-square-foot building entrees $19 to $29. designed by Thomas Phifer. Thirty new Rodin sculptures dominate the sculpture gallery (modeled after one at the Canova Museum in Possagno, Italy). ROCK PAPER SCISSORS SALON At Iris, the museum’s surprisingly ambitious This Durham salon-cum-art gallery restaurant, the Fritz Hansen chairs perfectly captures the Triangle ethos, swivel, the better to admire the local beyond offering structural haircuts. The sculptor Patrick Dougherty’s ‘‘Out of gallery is curated by the husband of one the Box,’’ a hypnotic, 75-foot-long piece of the stylists, who works at Whole Foods made out of red maple saplings. 2110 Blue and also brews the salon’s delicious Honey Ridge Road, Raleigh; (919) 839-6262; Basil beer from hops and herbs grown in ncartmuseum.org; free admission. his own backyard. There’s free Wi-Fi, an LOCOPOPS antique pinball machine and art openings Without speaking Spanish, Summer every other month. Currently on view: Bicknell took her M.B.A. to the Mexican zombie paintings by the California-based village of Tlazazalca, where she bricoleur Ezra Li Eismont. 413 East Chapel apprenticed in a paletería, learning how to Hill Street, Durham; (919) 956-7777; transform fresh seasonal fruit into Mexican rpssalondurham.com; haircuts from $30. ice pops. She opened the first LocoPops near Duke University five years ago; today there are more locations in Chapel Hill and Raleigh. Bicknell has a rotating cast of specialty lavors like chocolate horchata and pumpkin spice, which tastes like frozen soup, but not at all in a bad way.
(919) 286-3500; ilovelocopops.com. MACKNICA ASHLEY
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