Overheard about Cary:

"We have thugs here... our thugs just wear khakis."

There are a lot of dumb things that go on in Cary- rules against the color orange and such, but the fact of the matter is that people move to Cary because, like us, they believe that their quality of life is better here. And ours is. We like it here. I've even learned to like Cary in my own weird way.

Cary also has a lot of poverty here, and its own inner city I guess. I got lost one day and found it. It's on the east side of down town, near the border with Raleigh. There's a lot of poverty in that neighborhood, and a lot of people that need help, and it's not obvious.

It's another way that the Raleigh Durham Area reminds me a lot of the Bay Area: some parts are impoverished and its totally obvious. Other parts have done a good job of hiding the issue, kind of like Cary. That's my one ding against Cary- it doesn't do enough for the people who struggle here. I'm not talking about 2 income families that lost one income or home owners who cant afford the nicer neighborhoods. And I'm not even talking about people who think Cary should have affordable housing, because those sorts of programs are rarely actually affordable in the end. I'm talking about the people who are constantly one paycheck away from bankruptcy or starvation or homelessness. But rather than make and effort to help these people by providing OBVIOUS support offices and programs to revive neighborhoods so the occupants can stay, the city simply buys up lots in the bad areas of Cary, knocks the houses down and revitalizes the neighborhood- gentrification they call it- moving out people they don't want through community revitalization plans that the current tenants cant afford, so young hipsters (usually white or asian with jobs and money) can move in. And there's no where left for those displaced people to go.

I digressed a bit there. I only wanted to say that the comments about thugs and Khakis isnt totally true.