90 PERCENT BEER, 10 PERCENT BASEBALL By Samuel Evers Photography by Alan Campbell
Head to downtown Durham before a Bulls game this summer and you’ll notice a lot more than a minor league baseball game. Home plate of Durham Bulls Athletic Park lies at the intersection of Blackwell Street and Jackie Robinson Drive. Within a few miles radius of the ballpark embedded within the buildings, is a bustling community largely brought and held together by the craft beer craze fully entrenched in the Triangle. For further proof, let’s talk ratio. “For me, it’s maybe about 90 percent beer, 10 percent baseball,” said Durham resident and Duke graduate Rahul Shimpi, who can remember a time a few decades ago when the neighborhood was no place worth
visiting for a transplant. He and his friend, Andrew Wolf, another Duke graduate, were taking in the scene on a recent breezy and easygoing Friday at The Bullpen, a taproom full of drinking options run by Bull Durham Beer Co., about 50 feet from the stadium’s left field. It was about 20 minutes before the Bulls were set to take on the Lehigh Valley IronPigs; an unlikely scene when both were in school. “Put it this way. We’re both Duke undergrads. We were in school here. There was nothing to do around here,” Wolf said. “Now we come down here any night of the week, hang out at these games, these bars. It’s a lot of fun. “Before we didn’t come down here. You stayed in the walls of Duke, maybe
32 | Carolina Brew Scene | Summer 2018
went to Chapel Hill. Now you can come down downtown. There’s great food, beer. [Durham Performing Arts Center] is great.” Though The Bullpen, an opensided bar with tables and games on the doorstep of the stadium — people can actually enter a few feet from the bar — is the staple, venture farther out and you’ll find the type of gems that make this the area pop. In the American Tobacco Historic District, an enclave of old and renovated buildings to the direct left of the stadium, is Tyler’s Restaurant & Taproom. And about a mile’s walk from the baseball action is Rigsbee Avenue, a dense area of warehouses turned breweries like Fullsteam Brewing and entertainment venues like Motorco.
