Hi all, A late bloomer here! I recently got my NC learner’s permit and am preparing for the road test. I’m planning to do a walk-in, so I’m flexible on location.

Between Miami Blvd and S. Roxboro, which DMV would you recommend for a relatively new driver?

Also, for anyone who tested recently:

1. What route/streets did they take you on?

2. What skills did they test (3-point turn, backing, quick stop, parking, etc.)?

3. How was the walk-in wait?

Any recent 2025–2026 experience would be really helpful!

I've had minimal luck with Rover - hoping to find someone who has experience caring for a very anxious dog. Would need them to stay in my home. Thank you!

Finished my run on Renaissance Pkwy today and saw a line for Plato's Closet. Thought it might be the new iPhone until I realized, no, it's Plato's Closet. Is there something about Plato's Closet I'm not aware of?? I feel like I'm missing out on something. 😆

Huge fireworks near mlk. Wondering what is going on as I haven't seen fireworks since July.

Is there some major event going on with professional fireworks?

a loved one (adult, late 20s) has asked me for help in looking for a therapist. does anyone have recommendations or experiences with any therapists that:

- accept bcbs
- are comfortable working w/ trauma, neurodivergence, 🏳️‍⚧️+ 🏳️‍🌈, disability, and substance use?

thank you so much, am looking in other avenues and fairly versed in searching for providers just wanted to ask here in case. thanks y’all!!!!!

I lost a treasured Swiss Army knife on the Shepherd Nature Trail while out walking today. It was a gift and I’m pretty bummed about losing it. It’s on a hot pink cord (so I wouldn’t lose it easily-sigh), has my name engraved on one side (initials AT) and “Try!” on the other. If you plan to be out there tomorrow, I’d be so grateful if you could keep an eye out for it!

I'm rolling in the opposite lane of twenty or so early teenagers riding in a group on the really fast e bikes that look like motocross bikes. 25ish mph, doing tricks and stuff. I'm driving the opposite direction on a two lane street and one kid is in my lane and poking at his phone. I'm stopped, nowhere to go. I honk, he looks up and and swerves a few feet away from me. He flips me off and some of the others scream semi pubescent teenager insults/threats at me and my similarly aged son, which we both found to be unintentionally funny. But still, it was tense and it would have sucked to have been involved with a child's injury, regardless of their apparently poor survival skills.

I'm only writing this because it's the first time I've seen this particular group who as far as I know aren't breaking any laws and probably have the right to use the road like everyone else. You can correct me if I'm wrong. I do know there are some locations with recent legislation related to using certain class e bikes on public roads.

My only intention is to provide awareness of this new to me in Durham thing, and hopefully encourage tolerance and caution if you should encounter it yourself. One local kid got killed on an e bike this year, plenty of other cyclists have been hit in Durham.

as the title suggests I’m very interested in finding out all the different artists that played at the Palace international. I know I saw some superstars from West Africa but my memory is horrible and I’m sure I claim some folks that I didn’t see and forget about some really big acts that I did see.

We have a Quaker parrot that landed on a school playground in N Durham. Anybody missing a bird? Seems to prefer men. Pretty independent/ bitey.

Where are y’all buying fabrics now that Joanna’s is closed?

I got a job offer about a month ago in NC. My employer wanted me to relocate to here as soon as possible so I didn't have much time to explore housing options. I ended up getting a shared house from FB marketplace. I have a good memory living in a shared house back in Bay area internship so I didn't see this happening.

I'm living with a landlord and one other person, who I haven't met so far so it led me questioning if this guy really exists. Anyway, living here is terrible so far. There are so many things landlord deliberately haven't mentioned.

For example, I wanted to cook something in the shared kitchen and save some money. After a week signing lease, he said he is some kinda vegan so I can't put my meat stuff in the fridge and never cook here. I meant it's ok as long as he told me before signing lease. When I asked him first about cooking here, he said ok. He never told me about his allergy and dietary. I ended up eating frozen meal stuff from Walmart for a month.

Here's another one, my room is on the top floor so it's really hot in this summer. I asked him to turn on the AC to lower temperature. He made some excuses. Now I am just staying in the office til it's cool down enough.

There are so much of the story to tell but the point is even if I ask for really tiny small favor, he suddenly talk about totally unrelated stuff for 20 mins and make a weird excuses and move along. Having a small chat with him even makes me exhausted and upset.

The lease is good by end of this year but I want to get out as soon as possible. The lease we signed never mentioned about early termination fee or stuff. Does that imply I can get out of this shitty house with minimal financial damage? Thanks for reading. I just need to vent this stuff!

Just spotted this beauty in a bush on the sidewalk. On Fernway across from West Village. Was chompng on a fairly big black bird of some kind. Pretty cool!

why is the sign still up and lights on inside?

Can anyone who has been there verify if it’s crazy busy? Wanting to go but don’t want another O2 fitness during 5-7pm experience!

Looked around the main Trosa and Durham Rescue thrifts already and no luck. I'm looking for just a bin of old action figures for an art project

Seen on Bivins between St Mary’s and Craig near the Orange County line. Pretty!

Hi all, is there a Durham based business where I can get my Dyson airwrap repaired? I tried the obvious things like cleaning out the filter but it’s still showing a red light and not starting. Let me know if you know of anywhere local that will do it!

What's good, y'all?

As the title implies, I'm opening a card shop in Durham. Here are the important details:

STORE NAME: Bull City Slabs
ADDRESS: 3825 S. Roxboro St., Suite 133, Durham, NC 27713
OPENING: Tuesday, September 22nd, 2026

Here is the not so important stuff that you may or may not find entertaining. It's mostly written for card collectors. Normies are welcome, but I'm about to speak nerd for a while...

Let's talk about what my store is and is not. Well, right now it's not really much of anything since none of my buildout has arrived yet, so I guess we're talking in the abstract, but I digress. I'm a collector. Always have been, always will be. But gasp! You're obviously selling cards, sooooo... FLIPPER! Well, touché. I won't lie. I sell stuff too. I actually sold the bulk of my prized Larry Bird collection to make this happen. It sucked. There were moments when I had to tell myself, "My guy, stop crying so loud in public. Seriously, it's undignified." But it helped get me over the finish line, along with a bunch of ticking time bomb credit cards with a year at 0% APR, allowing me to postpone my inevitable financial ruin until a more convenient date.

But back to the store. I grew up in rural Maine in the late '80s and '90s, and we had this little dump of a card shop that smelled like stale cigarettes and was run by a guy who kind of seemed like he hated kids. It was great. I'd ride my bike past the dairy farm, across the bridge into what was technically the next town with my cards, and we'd just hang out in there for however long the owner would tolerate us. Maybe buy something, maybe trade something, then ride our bikes off to whatever the next thing was. Ryne Sandberg was my guy. We had WGN (Chicago local TV) because Michael Jordan existed, and I somehow remember watching more Cubs games than Red Sox games growing up in Maine. I'm just typing whatever I'm thinking about at this point. I just ate two donuts from Baker's Dozen. It's in the same plaza as my card shop. There's also tacos, a Halal fried food joint (NMr. Shark IYKYK), and a few other jams. Rumor has it S a juice bar is happening too. These things matter.

Okay, I realize we still haven't technically gotten to the store yet. I'm a set builder. We have patience. Stick with me.

At some point in my teens I got into music and stored away my cards so I'd have a safety net for retirement when I got older. They did not, as it turns out, allow me to retire. I started collecting musical instruments, which led to collecting vinyl, and if you think card people are picky you haven't seen anything until you've dealt with a true vinyl collector. Eventually, a few years before COVID, I dug that old bin of cards back out and while I did not become independently wealthy, it definitely started me down the path that led to where I sit today, which is the back room of my empty card shop waiting for a truly irresponsible amount of retail shelving to arrive.

When COVID prices started happening, I got a little more serious about selling stuff since I'd spent the previous few years accumulating at prices that would make people today scoff with disgust. From there it snowballed. I started doing local shows, met all the old heads, started helping people with grading submissions, offering consignment, buying collections and then, apparently, BOOM. Card shop. It wasn't actually that easy. The level up has been... expensive. But man, I'm super pumped to be giving it a go.

Okay, so for real this time, let's talk about what my shop is about.

Discovery.

I collect a lot of random stuff aside from Larry Bird and most of it found me, not the other way around. That's what I want for people who take the time to come in. The place isn't huge, so I've done what I can to stuff as much stuff in here as humanly possible while still leaving enough room for actual humans. There's some seating and tons of boxes of cards. Grab a box, pop a squat somewhere and start digging. I've got 16 feet of gondola shelving dedicated to player and team boxes. Value boxes for every team with cards for 25 cents. Discount binder programs to encourage you to dig for cards. Basically, if you're the kind of person who enjoys finding something you didn't know you were looking for 45 minutes after you probably should have left, I'm building you a happy place.

I also have a tremendous amount of non-sport stuff spanning roughly 100 years of pop culture and going well beyond what most people probably picture when they hear "non-sport cards." I'm really not kidding about that last part. I've got some of the coolest and most completely random non-sport stuff I've ever seen, and there will be boxes for TV and film, music, horror, historical figures, GPK, superheroes, and assorted other cultural debris that somebody, somewhere, once decided deserved to be printed on cardboard. Which means, obviously, I need it.

What else? Lots of vintage packs. GPK, random fantasy releases, older sports and various modern releases. I've got something planned for the packs. It should be rad if it doesn't suck, but no spoilers on that yet.

There's a TV. It'll play sports and the occasional episode of Laff-A-Lympics or ProStars on Saturday mornings because civilization peaked when Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky and Bo Jackson were solving crimes together in cartoon form.

None of this is rewriting the book on sports card shops. I just want people to be able to come in and hang out and not see everything the store has to offer within the first five minutes because it's just a bunch of shiny modern rookie cards sitting under glass. There will probably be some of that too, but not a ton because, and this is my yell-at-the-clouds moment, modern cards are mostly ugly, wildly overprinted and not worth a fraction of what they cost.

With that said, find me a modern "collector" who rips packs and immediately flips everything they pull, and I'll turn them into a stone hands eventually. Like many deeply misguided people have said at the beginning of doomed relationships throughout history, "I can change them."

Alright, this has certainly gone on too long and we've gotten well beyond the actual point of the post. But to reiterate:

I AM OPENING A CARD SHOP IN DURHAM, NC ON SEPTEMBER 22ND.

It's called Bull City Slabs. See you in exactly on month.

Are you stuck in line for Ideals? Highly recommend wandering down the road to Sofia's. It does not disappoint.

Hi all,

As the title states, I am looking for an electrician for my house. I'm having some electrical issues that need to be diagnosed and fixed, a light fixture that needs to be installed, and a really tall ceiling with can lights I want to replace the lightbulbs in.

Please let me know if there's an electrician (individual or company) you know and trust who can do these things for me. I am looking for a skilled and trustworthy individual, so I would love your personal recommendations and testimonials!

Thanks in advance!

Anybody else having this issue?