RDU On the Rise: Best barbecue | Beating the heat | Cooling housing market
So you didn’t win the $1.4 billion Mega Millions jackpot last weekend. Bummer.
But here’s where you have lucked out: For the second week in a row, one of the N&O’s resident elder millennials will cling to the “young professional” label just long enough to curate this week’s edition of RDU On the Rise.
I’m Tyler Dukes, an investigative reporter at The News & Observer, and I’ve called this place home for nearly two decades. So what this week’s newsletter lacks in youth, it will repay in local knowledge. Hopefully.
Let’s dig in.
No really, let’s dig in
I’d be remiss if I didn’t start my own newsletter with a shout-out to my favorite food to cook, eat and argue about: barbecue.
If you’re new to the Triangle or just need a refresher on the importance of pork here, you could do no better than this slow-cooked and lovingly rendered series from N&O restaurant reporter Drew Jackson, accompanied by mouth-watering visuals from photojournalist Juli Leonard. The second installment of “The State of Barbecue” hit this week, and it details a changing culture of barbecue enthusiasts infusing new life into the scene across the state.
In the Triangle, Jackson features Longleaf Swine in Raleigh, Lawrence Barbecue at Boxcar RTP, Prime Barbecue in Knightdale and the Redneck BBQ Lab just off I-40 Exit 319 in Johnston County. And he also rounded up a list of the best barbecue joints across the state for those interested in a road trip.
As an eastern North Carolina-born, vinegar-based, whole hog-pork purist, I look forward to confronting my own deep-seated biases by trying out all this newfangled ‘cue.
Get outdoors (without bursting into flames)
It’s hot y’all. Very, very hot.
August in North Carolina means more days where the temps and humidity combine to push heat indexes above 100 degrees.
Discomfort aside, excessive heat can have cascading and deadly effects over time, according climate health experts, especially for our community’s most vulnerable. One way to help out is through the county-run Cool for Wake program, which accepts donations of cash, as well as fans and air conditioners that go directly to families in need.
If you’re set on staying outdoors, there’s still a few ways to make the most of the rapidly escaping summertime:
Face the heat AND get your hands dirty with Kimberly Cataudella’s practical gardening lifehacks to employ even where your space is small. Sweating through your shirt is better with the promise of fresh tomatoes, right?
Take advantage of the slightly cooler evenings with the North Carolina Art Museum’s last few weeks of outdoor films on the lawn. Tickets are $7 (or free for museum members) — and you can even pre-order picnic baskets to avoid the concession lines. My pick? The 2021 reboot of West Side Story, starring Raleigh native Ariana DeBose, coming up on Aug. 27.
If, like me, you abhor the heat without a large body of water within arms reach, you don’t have to drive three hours to the beach for relief. (Although... have you considered the Chapel Hill-OBX ferry?)
Instead, take advantage of the Neuse River, which winds its way through a series of parks and boat launches just east of the Beltline. Grab a tube or kayak, a few beverages and some tunes and put in for a three-to-five-hour float (depending on the water level) from the Buffaloe Road Canoe Launch to Milburnie Dam, where you can end the day on the river beach.
Check flow levels online using American Whitewater’s river gauge list. And before you go, verify the water quality using the Sound Rivers Swim Guide, a website and accompanying mobile app that shows you the results of sampling along multiple sites of the river every week.
And don’t forget your sun protection!
If you’re dead-set on staying indoors, consider some binge-worthy, nerdy television. We’re all Stranger Things fans here, right? Find similar dark fantasy/horror vibes with The Sandman, a 10-part series based on Neil Gaiman’s epic graphic novels that drops on Netflix today.
Hitting you where you live
If you’re looking to buy your first home — especially as the Triangle market cools a bit — you may have to cut a deal with an “iBuyer” like Opendoor.
N&O business reporter Brian Gordon notes that despite several regulatory snafus, the California tech company is still pretty busy buying up single-family homes across the Triangle with the goal of flipping and selling them.
A few stats for perspective:
iBuyers owned about 1 of every 20 active listings across the Triangle (in Durham, that number is 1 of 10).
Raleigh is one of the top-20 markets for iBuyers nationwide.
On its own, Opendoor is one of the largest owners of single-family homes in Wake County.
Still renting? Then it’s worth taking note of a few other big corporate names in the housing market: Invitation Homes, Progress Residential, Front Yard Residential, the Siegel Group and Ventron Management. My colleague Payton Guion and I recently outlined the details of a Congressional investigation showing these companies’ “abusive” and potentially illegal tricks to kick people out of their homes during the COVID-19 eviction moratorium.
Tenant rights in North Carolina aren’t very strong, but they do exist. Observer real estate reporter Gordon Rago put together a great roundup on what you should know.
Grief and mystery after pilot’s death
As service journalists Korie Dean and Kimberly Cataudella point out, there’s a whole lot we still don’t know about the 23-year-old co-pilot who was found dead after a mid-air exit from a twin-engine cargo plane over Wake County.
Investigators haven’t publicly concluded whether Charles Hew Crooks, an instructor for the commercial flight training outfit Rampart Aviation, fell or jumped from the plane after it lost part of its landing gear on an initial attempt at a landing earlier in the day. But the N&O’s Colleen Hammond did report that a 911 call between a Federal Aviation Administration official and a dispatcher indicated that Crooks jumped.
His devastated family has said he was “born to fly,” and their messages to the public have focused on his deep love of aviation.
Federal investigators are now on the case, but it may be a while before we have answers. We’ll keep you updated.
And now my watch is over...
Join us next week, when an actual young professional, Durham reporter Mary Helen Moore, will finally wrest control of the newsletter from the olds and crank the hip-ness level to 11.
But before you go, some final notes:
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