Bob Pickard – Pure Durham

I visited the Durham Farmer’s Market Saturday and stopped next door to visit with Bob Pickard, a third generation Durham roofer who has a small manufacturing business on the side working with metals to create some incredible trailers and his operation is part of this area’s unique character.

Sandwiched in between the burgeoning Farmer’s Market and the noted restaurant Piedmont is Bull Durham Custom Trailers.  I’d seen the little shop before but last year I dropped by, met Bob and saw some of his incredible motorcycle trailers.  He’s now also manufacturing a cool Mini-Me Grill for folks who go to cook-offs or just want their grill mobile, very mobile.

Bob is Durham through and through.  Unpretentious, generous with his time, always inviting me on motorcycle rides.  In most towns a district like Central Park would rapidly become purged of its roots, a bit, you know, foo foo!  But if Durham is Durham, we’ll always make sure to retain the area’s optimal serendipity.

Bull Durham Custom Trailers is also across from the George Watts Hill Pavillion of Liberty Arts, home to an incredible non-profit bronze foundry and Vega Metals, blacksmiths producing some incredible art and indoor and outdoor furniture.

And further up the street, past some studios carved out of the side of what was Durham’s last remaining tobacco auction warehouse (so as you can see farmers have been coming to this area long before the Farmer’s Market) is the Scrap Exchange.

Keep going up Foster and you’ll run into the Geer-Foster area I blogged recently or cut over a block to see the progress on Full Steam Brewery.

The area is eclectic in a way that the entire community of Durham is eclectic and accepting and unpretentious.  It is places like this that give Durham such an enduring and unique sense of place.