Lately, I have found myself discovering how much I used to think about the New York City lifestyle. NYC, to me, has always been the epitome of city life. A child of television, I learned a lot about New York as it was a dominant setting throughout various shows and movies. I’d imagine most people learn about NYC this way.
My first experience there was when I was nineteen; I went to a film festival I had entered. Terrified would be an understatement. I don’t think I quite understood what a NYC experience was until that moment. After that, I found myself disenchanted with New York and instead, focused on a more Los Angeles fantasy of city life.
I would later experience the LA life and found that it was far more glamorous. And at the moment, that was wonderful. I would think about it near constantly, telling myself that I was going to go back. Then I met my future wife, learned that I was polyamorous, and suddenly I didn’t want to go back. I haven’t gone back since, and there isn’t much of an absence in my heart for it. I realize my love for it was the history and the elements of attraction. The more I interacted with Angelinos from a distance, the more I realized that it was far from what I preferred a community to be.
This made me wonder if perhaps New York would be a different experience now.
I visited New York one other time a few years back. I spent a weekend in Brooklyn working on a documentary. And this wasn’t hipster Brooklyn. I was there with someone who grew up there in the eighties, and since the target of that documentary was his life at that time, he gave me a truly authentic experience. I wouldn’t say I was re-enchanted with the concept of New York, but I can say that the sour taste in my mouth from years before was no longer prevalent. Mostly, it made me appreciate my city even more.
Durham.
My interest has always been to live in a larger city; however, there will always be this desire be near the trees. The comforts of nature. That is where I grew up. That small, yet largely impactful fact, is what I realized always kept me from moving to New York City. While I love urban landscapes and the diverse array of cultures, the idea of living without nature is more than bothersome to me.
Which made me look at my city once again with eyes of appreciation.
Durham, North Carolina, seems like an odd place to land to some people, but I don’t think they quite understand the unique cultural experience that comes from this city. While it has come far from its legacy of a rough environment that it carried in the nineties, it is still Durham. Yes, those frayed edges have been woven into quite a different tapestry, but it still somehow holds all of its historical and cultural charm from all of its years of transformation. While outside tourism likes you to focus on the southern charm that is Duke and Tobacco, the community here will tell you it is much more than that. There is a warm blend of nature and urban development, with respect paid to both. The community has been fighting, and will continue to fight, to keep everything within balance. Development isn’t shunned here; it just isn’t welcomed in places where our culture is valued.
I am not an untraveled person, and more so, I’m not a lavishly traveled person. I spent most of my early twenties in transit between states, from North Carolina to California, with no more than a few dollars in my pocket. I know what most cities around my country are like. Quite the same, I must say. It didn’t matter whether it was Des Moines, Nashville, Houston, Tampa, or Seattle. For the most part, cities are cities, but what changes are the people that that city caters to and the culture that is cultivated from that nurturing.
Durham isn’t a city that sleeps, but it isn’t a city that remains awake either. Different cultures dominate the times of day. A local business that is open during the morning and afternoon will typically not be open at night. While I have seen this a lot in other cities, what I haven’t seen is a city actually functioning around this seamlessly. This isn’t just bars and nightlife; this is all around how the city caters to one another. Instead of declaring that one culture needs to remain, or inhabit one particular area, and the other leaves– something we see a lot in surrounding cities like Raleigh— Durham simply steps out of one another’s way, almost as if to hand the keys over to a new shift.
With Duke’s campus so entwined within the city’s layout, one would assume it is overrun with college students or relies on the student body for their businesses to remain afloat. However, that is simply not the case. It doesn’t matter what part of the city you’re in, or what time, it never seems to be a surplus of one type of person. Yes, of course, you will have a culture dominate one particular area of the city. But even in those areas, various ethnicities, cultures, subcultures, and econimic class seems to exist around one another with almost no issue. Institutes of different religions sit at varying corners of blocks, with no hassles from one another.
We aren’t a city of peace, that’s for sure. We have our internal conflicts with one another, as anyone does, but we aren’t a city that accepts pretension and superiority either. We don’t tolerate anyone playing superior to us. And if you do act as if you are, we are quick to note that you’re not from here. True to our moniker, we are quite bull-headed. You can’t change the way we feel about something. Those who move here learn quickly that that’s the case, and those who can’t handle it leave even quicker.
I love my city, and I think that’s why lately I’ve been apprehensive to be involved with it. I’ve lived here for almost a decade, and with each passing year, I find myself more in love with the bull. But my fear is that if I step further into the community, it will let me down as other communities have. My theory is if I stay at a distance, I’ll be safe to continue loving my city.
These photographs are from my first day embracing it, and I had such a great time.
My goal is to be a community member, not a community leader. I feel that it is safer for me. The world has let me down a lot, but it is usually because my presence challenges people. Perhaps, if I never have a presence that can potentially impede on someone’s position, then I’ll be left alone to love.
I hope that Durham never lets me down, and I, it.
2/12/2026 at 12:39pm
Liminal Window 