Came from metro Chicago and agree on all points. Never felt unsafe walking around Chicago at night but always did walking around downtown Durham. I think it’s a numbers game. When there are 30 other non-criminal people at any time on your street, you have a lot of back up. Safety in numbers I guess. Speaking on that point, there was also a sense of community in cities that I just don’t see here. I look back at my old neighborhood FB pages during this whole COVID thing and I see them singing on their front porches to each other. Here things just seem to be chugging along. Might just be my neighborhood though. People from here just don’t seem open to new interactions. All the friends we have made so far are “Yankees.” We really expected southern hospitality as well but Midwestern people on a street corner in the city are a lot more open and welcoming than any folks I’ve met here. One time I asked a gentleman at a bar if the seat next to him was open and he snidely said “Looks like it.” I’ve thought back to 10 years in the city and I don’t ever recall someone being an asshole to my face like that to something so innocuous.

And my god, I miss driving back home where people paid attention to the fact that there are other drivers. Every day I have to merge onto 15/501 and I wonder if today is the day I die. There could be 1 other person on that road and they will match my speed as well as refuse to get into the other lane. I kept feeling over the last year that I must’ve lost some peripheral vision because I kept feeling like people were swerving into my lane. Then I drove back in the city on a trip and realized my vision was fine, people just don’t pay attention to the lines on the road here.