New "Durham Hoods" site showcases neighborhoods, listservs across Durham

Durham is very fortunate to have local bloggers who share great information and insight into the goings on in the place where great things happen - bloggers like Kevin Davis at Bull City Rising.  Read below for his great piece on http://www.durhamhoods.com/.

New "Durham Hoods" site showcases neighborhoods, listservs across Durham
Bull City Rising
Kevin Davis

When Philip Bost's car was broken into in the Duke Park neighborhood, Bost got mad.

Getting even? Not so much. Getting neighbors informed? Yes, please.

Bost decided to reach out to his fellow 'hoodsters to let them know about what happened to his car. "I felt like I had an obligation after that event to notify my neighbors and my community that this type of thing was going on, and I was also curious about whether I was an isolated case," Bost said. "It felt personal, but now I know that it's not. These things happen."

He hadn't previously been signed on to or active on Duke Park's listserv, which is one of the more engaged and active in the Bull City.

(For the uninitiated, it has fewer bizarro flame wars than some other central Durham lists I could name -- discretion is the better part of valor for local bloggers -- though delinquent street sweepers and drivers bypassing the vehicular barriers to the neighborhood's namesake park should beware the e-wrath they'll find.)

Bost's venture onto the Duke Park listserv to share his crime experience got him wondering. How many other neighborhoods had listservs? How active were they? And, where could you go to find out more about all of Durham's sometimes-charming, sometimes-exhausting email lists?

His concern grew when a missing child report hit the police and Old North Durham listserv recently, but the email's author didn't know how to get the report passed along to the Duke Park list, despite the girl disappearing less than 50 yards from the neighborhood boundary.

The result? Durhamhoods.com, Bost's new site featuring a Google Map mashup of all the Durham neighborhoods he could identify, complete with links and engagement data on neighborhood associations' lists.

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