Tired of feeling image-challenged? Put down by acquaintances from Cary and Carrboro? Now you can put your pride in Durham out for all to see.

You've also found just the things for your expatriate kids and those Yankee relatives who can't understand how you could have moved down South.

Visit www.durhamthings.com -- a retail Web site of the Durham Convention & Visitors Bureau that deals in t-shirts, ball caps, car magnets, coffee mugs and so forth proclaiming "Durham: Where Great Things Happen."

CEO Reyn Bowman said the site went "softly" operational about three weeks ago, and products are still being added. One just debuted, for example, is a Durham-history calendar for 2008. Active promoting won't start until Christmas time, he said.

The visitors bureau gets a lot of inquiries about Durham novelties, he said.

"Our goal is actually to make [Durham things] available rather than rack up sales."

Sunny side

Clean Energy Durham, a volunteer-comprised agency, hosts a tour of "green and solar buildings" in Durham and Hillsborough next Saturday (Oct. 13).

The do-it-yourself tour starts at the eco-friendly Durham County Library branch way out along the Wake Forest Highway, then suggests 13 more commercial, public and residential properties to visit.

To get an itinerary, you have to pay $10. Registration starts at 9:30 a.m., tour activities at 10; to sign up in advance, see www.nearto.us/durhamsolartour.

Southern cooking

Amy Tornquist has opened her Watts Grocery restaurant at 1116 Broad St. -- right by the Broad Street Cafe.

Tornquist, who also runs Sage & Swift Catering, shows her down-home roots in her menu: fried chicken gizzards with garlic-mayonnaise dressing, chow-chow for the hamburger, buttermilk fried chicken with greens, home-smoked pastrami on the Reuben sandwich and a bread pudding made with Krispy Kreme doughnuts.

The restaurant is open daily except Monday.