> a less pretentious Brooklyn (I live in BK now).

Interesting. My main complaint about Durham was that it was very suburban; the idea of traveling between any pair of locations other than by car was wholly ridiculous. (But last time I was there, there were a bunch of new bars and restaurants downtown! This is a quite recent development.)

There is no "Southgate mall" in Durham. That said, I'm not disputing that it has a lot of good points. Including the beer :)