The Bull in Full

Quick hits: Creeps, Blogs, and Radio Shows

A few quick things to drop here.  First off, thanks for the lively set of nominations in the Christmas Creep thread.  Believe it or not, I actually looked for a suitably tasteless statue for the Bad Santa award at Morgan Imports, but the best they had was a bare chested beefcake merman with a santa hat on.  A little too expensive, and not quite tasteless enough.  Sometime during the holidays, I'll try to actually post the awards.

Next up, thanks for the help on the Herald-Sun blogs.  No matter how I look at it, I can't figure out how it's supposed to do anything worthwhile.  Oh, well, maybe it will become obvious.

Lastly, I'm going to be appearing on The State of Things with Frank Stasio tomorrow at noon to talk about the economic aspects of food and food access in North Carolina.  The first half-hour will be about the Alston Ave. expansion and how the demolition of Los Primos will impact the neighborhood.  The second half-hour will about about local food and the food economy, wherein I'll be representing Durham Central Market.

New Durham Central Market website now live

So a few weeks ago, the URL for the DCM website got sent out in the Duke Park e-mail list, and we started passing out fliers at the Eno Festival directing people there.  Realizing that we currently had nothing up other than "Welcome to your new website!" I spent about an hour on a Saturday night throwing together something that looked remotely passable and had the dreaded "under construction! coming soon!" info on it.

Since getting me to do web layout and design is a bit like asking Mr. Ed to do some nice calligraphy for you, we had two fabulous volunteers, Beth Fowler and Darwin Campa, jump into the breach and put together something that might not win a Worst of the Web award (a serious possibility with anything I  might put together).  Well, needless to say, they surpassed me, but it's worth mentioning that they didn't just avoid awfulness, but put together what I think is a great site.  So, without further ado, I present the brand new Durham Central Market website.

There's plenty of info there for anyone to read, but here's a brief status update on the market: because we want this to be a professionally run grocery store, and none of us have the experience needed to open this, the current goal is to put together the organization and raise the money to hire people who can do that.  So, if you think, "that Michael Bacon doesn't know a thing about running a store!  What's he doing involved in that?" you're largely right, but what we need is to raise money so that we can hire the people who can do that, and can raise more money, and get us a real cooperative grocery store in the Central Park area.

To that end, we need to sell Founding Owner shares.  Basically, a Founding Owner is someone who buys a share of the co-op (and hence becomes an owner of the corporation) any time before October 31.  Yes, right now, you're basically giving us $100 on good faith, but in return you get a fabulous t-shirt, your name listed in the store as a founding owner, a very low owner number (we hear this is a big deal over in Orange County), and the pride of having helped to build a true community-based asset to the city.  If you're interested, the easiest way to join now is to simply fill out an owner form and mail it in.  And as luck would have it, our new site has most of the details you should need.  Even if you're not interested, please print out our survey and mail it in (takes about 10 minutes to complete).  Many thanks to Natalie Spring for helping us put the survey together.

And if you have any further questions, I'll be happy to answer them.  Catch me in the right mood, and I'll be happy to talk your ear off about this whole affair.

Dude, what happened to your blog?

So this happens to be a question (paraphrased) I've been asked a few times recently.  I know there's been radio silence here, so I thought I might try to briefly explain.

First of all, in addition to working in an office which is currently rather severely understaffed, there's an item which will probably make a more regular appearance here if I do start blogging more often.  I've alluded obliquely in the past to my involvement in the effort to start a new cooperative grocery in Durham.  Now is probably as good a time as any to elaborate a little on that, and hopefully with a few more updates in the future.

Here's the basics: this venture is now officially incorporated as an agricultural products cooperative with the state, with the working name of Durham Central Market.  The steering committee, which I've been a part of since the beginning, has now transformed into an official board of directors.  And here's where my absence from the blog comes in -- I've somehow ended up as President of the board, which doesn't mean a whole lot other than just being a board member, except that I have a few more responsibilities to call board meetings and to a limited degree be the person that talks to the media and other folks with questions about it.  I've promised Monica Chen at the Herald-Sun that I'll give her the scoop (in exchange for her holding off snooping around earlier this year when we were still going through the motions of forming, and really weren't ready for a full load of publicity), but the general gist of the status right now is that we're busy putting together the business plan, working on the website (which is what I'll be doing immediately following finishing up this post), continuing to do preliminary location investigation, but most of all, gearing up for an ownership drive.  (If you know me personally, expect to be hit up for a share purchase sometime in the next few months.  On the other hand, if you want to just hang out, I'll be just about living at our booth at the Festival for the Eno in a few weeks.)