Next to the City Sewage?

The Clarion Content is not a staff likely to frown at filth for moral reasons. That aside, there is a certain lowbrow irony in the story that we picked up this week from the blog Bull City Rising. The northern Durham, city owned and operated, sewage treatment plant along with the city Fleet Maintenance Department and the city Solid Waste Department on Camden Avenue could be getting a new neighbor, a strip club. Dirty!

Bull City Rising pointed us to a Durham Herald Sun article. One of the three reporters they have left over there after gutting the staff must have written this story. The paper says Charles M. Peterson Jr. has asked city/county planners to review a site plan for an adult establishment on Camden Avenue. Peterson himself lives in the swanky Governor's Club development south of Chapel Hill. He proposes a 10,000-square-foot building on a 23.4 site. Peterson would need Durham's Board of Adjustment to approve a special use permit.

Durham law says a property associated with an adult establishment has to be at least 1,000 feet from land zoned residential, and at least 1,000 feet from churches, schools, parks, libraries and licensed day cares.

Adult establishments also can be no closer than 2,000 feet to similar businesses, and any building or structure associated with them has to be at least 50 feet away from the property line of an adjacent non-residential use.

In addition to awaiting the special use permit, the site is still being measured for suitability for development.

Not exactly the same in France

The French national soccer team, huge stars in their homeland, are caught up in a sex scandal. But despite their celebrity, they are not facing the same level of scorn and scrutiny as American golfer Tiger Woods.

Le Bleus, as they are known in France, are said to have been frequented a Parisian house of ill-repute. However, prostitution is not illegal in France. At issue is whether one of the prostitutes was under the age of 18. According to the USA Today, the players being questioned are Franck Ribery, Karim Benzema and Sidney Govou. Ribery is the big star of the French team, he signed in 2007 for about $30 million to play for Bayern Munich. They face up to three years in prison and a $60,000 fine.

The young lady in question, Zahia Dehar¹, who is now 18, told police she had underage sex with all three players, according to the Daily Telegraph. The English paper reported she was "shocked" the players faced charges and that she told them she was an adult. She also stated that the players had treated her "with utter respect" and should be left alone.

France, it is not exactly the American Bible belt, is it? Compare the sanctimonious speech by the president of Augusta National Golf Club, when Tiger didn't commit a crime, with the attitudes of the Frenchwoman in this case!

¹This link is to pictures of Zahia Dehar and is NOT SAFE FOR WORK!

Remember this guy?

He was a sensation back in the day. It tells you how good advertising (an oxymoron, if there ever was one) is sticky. Who can forget the tagline, from an era when Federal Express was still an up and comer, "When it absolutely, positively has to get there overnight." They said it could not be done. FedEx proved them wrong.

Unintended Consequences

The law of unintended consequences is a funny one. We bet this was one of the unknown unknowns even Donald Rumsfeld did not consider. The havoc wreaked on Iraq in recent years have pushed archaeologists to begin excavations in relatively safer and more tranquil Syria.

United States and Syrian excavators have uncovered a huge panoply of artifacts from what must have been a robust pre-urban settlement on the upper Euphrates River at a site known as Tell Zeidan. The New York Times reports, "Zeidan should reveal insights into life in a time called the Ubaid period, 5500 to 4000 B.C. In those poorly studied centuries, irrigation agriculture became widespread, long-distance trade grew in influence socially and economically, powerful political leaders came to the fore."

Archaeologists caught a break because apparently subsequent civilizations and generations did not build on the site. The potential sounds limitless. The Times quotes, Guillermo Algaze, an anthropologist at the University of California, San Diego, "[Zeidan] has the potential to revolutionize current interpretations of how civilization in the Near East came about."

Read the whole article here.

Durham Food Culture

The Clarion Content and many of our local readers know this already, but Durham's food culture is amazing. Now the New York Times knows too. In a write-up published today, The Times interviews, among others, friend of the Clarion Content, Matt Beason about the restaurant he manages, Six Plates. Matt notes the veritable explosion of good restaurants in Durham in the last few years. The Times writer also talked to Amy Tornquist the owner of Watts Grocery. Note too that there was no mention of the wildly overrated and overpriced newcomer to downtown, Revolution.

An excerpt from the article follows.

"There are still plenty of good places for a barbecue plate, excellent French bistros like Vin Rouge and Rue Cler, and some white-tablecloth dining rooms, both traditional and modern.

But the most intriguing cooks here have a few things in common: an understanding of how to give a menu a sense of place; a true love of pork and greens in all their forms; and a lack of interest in linens and glassware...

The vast brick buildings still roll through the city center, emblazoned with ads for Lucky Strike and Bull Durham cigarettes. They are being repurposed as art studios, biotechnology laboratories and radio stations.

More important for food lovers, hundreds of outlying acres of rich Piedmont soil have “transitioned” from tobacco, and now sprout peas, strawberries, fennel, artichokes and lettuce. Animals also thrive in the gentle climate, giving chefs access to local milk, cheese, eggs, pigs, chickens, quail, lambs and rabbits."

The New York Times is not the first place to recognize the Durham food culture for the gem it is. In 2007 Gourmet magazine wrote up our area as one of the best in the country for Mexican food.

What they are watching... Episode VI

Our look at what the teens and tweens of America are watching. You may have caught our first couple of episodes. This clip is a little cheesier than most...




The American Mall is a musical produced by the same folks that produced Disney's smash hit High School Musical. The American Mall did not get rave reviews or high ratings on the first go round. However, it appears to be picking up a modest amount of steam on You Tube.