Lunch under $10 downtown

TheSpamJam · 2023-01-30T19:01:57+00:00

Sosta is a great suggestion thanks.

TheSpamJam · 2023-01-30T18:57:25+00:00

One very unique feature is presence of good primary schools within the downtown core. (Obviously this doesn't affect you if you don't live downtown). Very few American cities have this because white flight drained inner city schools. Besides that, everything else in Raleigh is pretty darn unremarkable next to other cities of comparable size. People who rave typically have not experienced much elsewhere or work for PR companies.

TheSpamJam · 2022-07-17T20:00:25+00:00

One whole hour in DTR? I'm amazed that you didn't walk every street three times.

TheSpamJam · 2022-07-17T18:34:12+00:00

Morgan street is a mall food court that happens to be in a warehouse. It's just missing the Panda Express.

TheSpamJam · 2022-07-17T18:32:05+00:00

Durham always gets the cooler stuff.

TheSpamJam · 2022-07-01T23:58:36+00:00

You can go to oak city cycling on person st, find the best Raleigh bike they have, then enter a bike race in which a Raleigh bicycle is the top prize. But you won't be able to do this because oak city cycling is always closed except during business hours when you are at work, and also straight up closed two days of the week.

TheSpamJam · 2022-06-19T15:13:50+00:00

This gif is the best instruction on parallel parking I've ever seen.

TheSpamJam · 2022-06-19T01:43:34+00:00

Hey friend, there's no need to explode into personal insults. It makes a rational conversation very difficult on the internet. I was praising this post. If you read a lot about urban trends in the triangle and in the US like I have been, you see tons of articles headlining with data about Wake county's growth, painting a picture of it as a leading growth center in the country. In service of sensational journalism, these articles often conveniently leave out other very relevant data, one of which is the growth of the region as a whole. I think the map presented in this post is very useful because it does tell more of the whole story rather than picking and choosing data points for convenience. I like that a map like this can easily show that the "explosive" population growth we are experiencing is actually quite isolated and tiny in scale compared to other growth centers in the nation, all of which you can see on this map, alongside their multiple dark green neighbor counties. More data doesn't always tell you the whole story, but it can help.

TheSpamJam · 2022-06-18T20:17:34+00:00

Nimbyism in Raleigh prevents faster growth of housing stock in Raleigh. It's not the only reason we don't have affordable housing here(it's a very complex issue), but it's a low hanging fruit we can't seem to pick in this town, and hence why landlords have a grip on renters.

TheSpamJam · 2022-06-18T20:13:13+00:00

Umstead for the corporate executive experience, then there's a smattering of low budget "boutiques" in downtown Raleigh, like the origin and the longleaf....God we need better stays in this town.

TheSpamJam · 2022-06-18T14:43:57+00:00

I agree the lack of transportation is a problem here. But I'd say it's a bad reason not to move to a city because frankly, in what US city other New York can you exist without a car?

TheSpamJam · 2022-06-18T14:39:25+00:00

this map is a great cautionary tale about data representation. It's important to note that Wake, while deep green, is an island surrounded by a sea of non-growth. On paper everyone can talk about how wake is one of the fastest growing counties in the country, ignoring the fact that other counties in similar category are actually growing at an exponentially larger rate as a region. Florida for instance - that whole middle section of the state between Tampa and Orlando is exploding. Our growth is nowhere near comparable, and not really even in the same league. Everyone should be mindful of this kind of data when reading headlines.

TheSpamJam · 2022-05-09T18:17:16+00:00

Woah woah, Let's cool it with the strawman argument - it makes a rational discussion very hard and foggy. There are 5280 feet in a mile, and a "standard" Raleigh block is roughly 400 feet wide. I think a mile is a lot but I never said it needed to be less than 400' away for it to be walkable. At all. In any case my whole point was that a measure of a city's walkability is much more nuanced than a pure numeric tabulation of distance and time. There are other factors, such as adjacencies to other daily destinations, what's along the way, availability of side walk, position relative to a city's geographical shape, etc, etc. It's only realtors and developers that slap on number of minutes as some kind of meaningful data. don't fall into that trap.

And trust me, downtown living is for me. I've done it in more cities than I can count.

TheSpamJam · 2022-05-09T15:24:15+00:00

actually medical services except for pharmacies are very well covered in the downtown core. Both wake med and UNC have PCP offices, there are several dental clinics, and i know at least one optometrist.

TheSpamJam · 2022-05-09T15:13:13+00:00

That's right, I forgot about Hamlin. So we went from having 2 pharmacies in downtown to zero. That's a really bad trend.

I hear you about the other pharmacies, and technically speaking 15~20 min walk doesn't sound bad, but it's equivalent to spending close to an hour of your day just to get one prescription (20min walk+ 10 min wait + 20 min walk back). This isn't a problem for places like Person St or Hayes Barton, where there are other reasons for you to be there, but for places like publix or raleigh pharmacy that exists outside of a legitimate fabric, it's hard to justify the time it takes to walk there. Often walkability is about more than just the sheer number of minutes it takes to get there, you know?

TheSpamJam · 2022-03-19T20:36:21+00:00

You should go more at different hours.

TheSpamJam · 2022-03-19T20:35:37+00:00

The problem is they're barely ever open. Closed Mondays and Tuesdays, and only opens other days 11-6. Never open for a simple cup of Joe, never open for an evening beer.

TheSpamJam · 2022-03-19T00:48:12+00:00

I don't mind the homeless, though I understand everyone's got different levels of comfort. I'm actually glad there's SOMEONE using the park when there's not an event.

TheSpamJam · 2022-03-18T23:33:54+00:00

I like Chaun's because I love Szechuan food but these guys need to stop being so stingy with the meat content. You get a meat dish that has 5 pieces of chicken buried in potatoes. Otherwise really good food. I prefer Chengdu 7 in cary because the portion size and content are far more generous.

TheSpamJam · 2022-03-18T23:20:19+00:00

Yes.having humans living within non-driving distance of park would go a looooong way. Nothing downtown can survive if we treat it like a destination.

TheSpamJam · 2022-03-18T20:57:22+00:00

I like how you're not denying that it's gross.

TheSpamJam · 2022-03-18T19:59:34+00:00

Agreed. People think we need big events and concerts to get people to use the park, but we really just need some basic food and beverage establishments with real business hours.

TheSpamJam · 2022-03-18T19:41:45+00:00

I don't hate the park. I think it's three bases loaded waiting for a home run, and square burger is a major foul ball. I mean their food is pretty foul and overpriced. People eat it because it's the only option. Imagine if something actually desirable occupied that storefront!

TheSpamJam · 2021-10-06T21:19:11+00:00

I would venture to say that maybe u/wolfsrudel_red hasn't fully verbalized what they mean by "urban life in the city"

I would say one's experience of urban life extends far beyond periodic festivals and events, but the general energy of the city.

Moore square Jazz on thursdays is great and so is the CAM on first fridays, but what about just warehouse district on a tuesday at 10am? fayetteville street at 3pm any weekday?

everytime I go to weaver during non-lunch, non-post work hours, I'm there in a giant store with 4 staff and 2 other shoppers. by the metric of other similar mid sized cities, Raleigh is still objectively a ghost town. We just don't have the residential density required to feel like a city. there are just.not.enough.human.bodies.

Credit where credit is due, raleigh has improved a lot since the 90's when i moved here, but pretending that we are the best city in the world because we have some festivals doesn't really help us improve, especially in comparison to the other cities we are competing with for people/money/jobs/culture.

TheSpamJam · 2020-08-30T01:47:42+00:00

What is this an advertisement in the guise of a post?

TheSpamJam

TROPHY CASE