30 Degrees. Photo and copyright: Alex Bajuniemi.

Sometimes a girl just has to brag on her hometown. My darling Durham, radiating from Five Points, is flaunting her good sides today.

The trees are out, the flowers are out, the lunchers, the munchers, the sippers and the tattoo trippers are out. The beer garden at Bull McCabe’s is OPEN.

Shortly, the first Art of Cool jazz festival will begin with FREE music in Durham Central Park (later events are ticketed). 6:05–Yolanda Rabun, y’all! I fully expect there will be food trucks.

Will Grossman 1st Prize Winner, Food Truck Durham. Photo and copyright: Bill Pope.

The Pleiades Gallery is showing Local Flavor, by the cool co-op gallery artists. If you need something for your stomach, Toast, across the street, serves up Billy and Kelli Cotter’s great stuff at sidewalk tables–perfect for the flaneur. And Whiskey is right next door, also with sidewalk tables. Or get a snack at The Cupcake Bar and sit at a table in the little park. And hey, it is warm enough for ice-cream from The Parlour on Market. Take it outside on the plaza and admire The Bull stolidly enduring the renovation of the CCB building into an art hotel.

The Carrack is showing photos, for one more day, by J Gray Swartzel, and at Through This Lens, you can see the entries and prize winners in the Will Grossman Photo Show, including those shown here. It is a sweet show.

And not least, not least at all, the world-famous, one-and-only Manbites Dog Theater is opening SPIRITS TO ENFORCE, in which many of our favorite actors will cavort as actors dialing for dollars to stage The Tempest.

Be cool, Dur’m.

Snow at Washington Duke. Photo and copyright: Dan Ellison.