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JULY 26, 2018

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VOLUME 44, NUMBER 46

ARKANSAS TIMES (ISSN 0164-6273) is published each week by Arkansas Times Limited Partnership, 201 East Markham Street, Suite 200, Little Rock, Arkansas, 72201, phone (501) 375-2985. Periodical postage paid at Little Rock, Arkansas, and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to ARKANSAS TIMES, 201 EAST MARKHAM STREET, SUITE 200, Little Rock, AR, 72201. Subscription prices are $150 for one year. For subscriber service call (501) 375-2985. Current singlecopy price is 75¢, free in Pulaski County. Single issues are available by mail at $2.50 each, postage paid. Payment must accompany all single-copy orders. Reproduction or use in whole or in part of the contents without the written consent of the publishers is prohibited. Manuscripts and artwork will not be returned or acknowledged unless sufficient return postage and a self-addressed stamped envelope are included. All materials are handled with due care; however, the publisher assumes no responsibility for care and safe return of unsolicited materials. All letters sent to ARKANSAS TIMES will be treated as intended for publication and are subject to ARKANSAS TIMES’ unrestricted right to edit or to comment editorially.

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CHI St. Vincent Infirmary in Little Rock, the first hospital in Arkansas to achieve Magnet status, earned its first re-designation as a Magnet hospital by the American Nurses Credentialing Center. To learn more about Magnet designations or a career, visit chistvincent.com/magnet.

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COMMENT

Why all the outrage?

practiced massive war games near RusWhat T Rump did in Helsinki is con- sian borders. They reignited the Cold sistent with who T Rump is. War with $1 trillion in new nuclear There were no surprises. No myster- bombs. ies. No reason to be any more outraged They continued and expanded Bush’s than you should be when he assaults endless “Global War on Terror,” which women, praises neo-Nazis, imprisons has cost $5.6 trillion thus far. Like 2-year olds, violates the U.S. Constitution, Bush, they conducted regime change demeans persons of color and entire cul- war crimes in Libya, after which Hilltures of different faiths, demonizes the ary psycho-laughed about killing their media, criminalizes his political oppo- leader. More extreme meddling. nents, insults our allies, glorifies tyranny, They continued the brutal impeignores facts and shamelessly lies and rial U.S. history of interfering and violies and lies. lently overthrowing dozens of governIf we were privy to his secret two- ments. Nobody meddles like the U.S.A. hour, 10-minute tete-a-tete with Putin, Read Gen. Smedley Butler’s book “War what else would we learn that would be is a Racket” free online. Read William more insulting, more treasonous … cause Blum’s book “Killing Hope.” us to be more outraged? Russians are under severe threats, Alfred Herget and millions practice nuclear drills to Little Rock prepare for U.S. attack. Like millions in the Middle East, Russian people are terrified of the U.S. war machine for damn Diplomacy always better than war good reasons. After the Cold War ended and before The CIA with its history of lying and Trump, the U.S. broke agreements meddling in other nations is hard to trust with Russia to not expand NATO bases on anything. But if Russia did meddle, toward Russian borders, some of which it is entirely logical in light of the danhold massive nuclear weapons. ger they face, being surrounded by U.S. The Obama and Hillary administra- military bases, war games, nukes, coups tion directed the Ukraine coup (extreme and endless bombings. meddling) on Russian borders. They Perhaps with Trump there was at

least some hope for change for them. Medicaid work requirements in KenDespite all the horrors of Trump, if tucky and the decision’s possible ramihis warmer relations with Russia avert fications on other states with approved nuclear war, he will have done some- work requirement waivers, including thing great. Arkansas. Trump is terrible, but so are Obama The court decision emphasized that and Hillary, just like the brutal Saudi dic- Medicaid work requirements go against tators that Obama, Hillary and Trump the core value of the Medicaid program: sold record arms deals to. They all stink, to provide health care access to lowand have lakes of blood on their hands, income individuals. By placing employjust like Bush, who has an Iraqi ocean ment reporting requirements on enrollof blood, along with Hillary and Biden. ees who, data show, already work, work But what sucks worse than all these? requirements are an obstacle designed Nuclear annihilation. Of course we must to slash enrollment in the program and practice diplomacy and be friends with put the health of thousands of vulnerRussia, as Trump correctly said. I just able Arkansans in jeopardy. wish he or any of the others mentioned Arkansas’s was the third federally were trustworthy. approved work requirements waiver If only we had a political party and earlier this year. As consumer health leaders sincerely for peace. We do, but advocates, Consumers for Quality Care the war parties and their warmonger hopes it will soon be the next to have media pals will not even allow them in its work requirements eliminated. It debates. Democracy? Lol. is our hope that the health of ArkanAbel Tomilson sans will always be put at the center of Fayetteville health reform decisions by policymakers, ensuring those with little don’t lose it all. Work requirement is wrong Donna Christensen, M.D Your recent story “Federal court Former member of Congress and strikes down Kentucky’s Medicaid work member of the board of directors requirement; DHS says Arkansas unaffor Consumers for Quality Care, fected” spotlights the recent court deciWashington, D.C. sion to strike down federally approved

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Jeremy Hutchinson’s five rodeos

Last month’s newspaper articles concerning state Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson’s involvement in the GIF scandal is not Hutchinson’s first rodeo. RODEO No. 1: His first rodeo began in 2010, when it was printed in several newspapers that he was having an affair with Julie McGee prior to divorcing his wife in December 2011. RODEO No. 2: Also came about in 2010, when Hutchinson’s girlfriend emerged with two checks totaling $2,700 that were not reported to the Ethics Commission as coming from campaign contributions. For that omission, he paid a $500 fine and received a warning letter. You can’t use campaign money to support a mistress. RODEO No. 3: A third rodeo came the same year when, in a police report, both Hutchinson and McGee claimed minor injuries due to violence toward each other. McGee allegedly hit the senator over the head with a stuffed alligator, causing a small laceration. RODEO No. 4: His forth rodeo was in 2012 when he rented a house in Bella Vista for a year so he could see his children, who were then living in Fayetteville, on weekends. After a year, the owners returned home in June and found their house in shambles. On July 15, 2012, they filed a 32-page police report indicating that Hutchinson must have had continued altercations with the same girlfriend he knocked around in Little Rock. The report speaks of McGee trying to get away from Hutchinson by locking herself in the bathroom. Photos show where the senator kicked the door in. The report shows pictures of blood on the carpet, broken sheet rock, dings on the walls indicating flying objects and other signs of violence.The owner told Hutchinson to not use his boat, but the senator used it anyway and damaged it. When the senator finally moved out, he took some of the owner’s furniture and belongings with him. RODEO No. 5: Is currently under investigation, along with the massive GIF scandal that involves so many of our past and present state legislators. CONCLUSION: The dead stuffed alligator probably can’t bite the senator anymore, but there are at least two live ones out there that may swallow him whole yet. The police report on the trashed house in Bella Vista can be seen at the Bella Vista Police Department. It is Incident 12-01459 dated 07/15/12. Lt. Col. Jim Parsons (RET.) Bella Vista

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WEEK THAT WAS

Quote of the week “Forcing government reductions for the sake of tax cuts without due consideration of the dangers to the public lead to hard lessons being relearned. I have no intention of following the path of my predecessor and will leave with my head held high, and extremely proud of the work my agency has accomplished amid political constraints.” — Sheila Sharp, director of the Arkansas Department of Community Correction, in a memo to the state Board of Corrections after the board voted to terminate her. Sharp said she was fired because Governor Hutchinson was unhappy she’d requested an increase in her department’s budget to hire more parole and probation officers. Arkansas parole and probation officers have long carried caseloads far higher than most other states.

Corruption scandal widens Jerry Walsh, 72, who ran the nowdefunct South Arkansas Youth Services, has pleaded guilty to paying $120,000 to an unnamed Arkansas state senator in return for action favorable to the agency, Walsh and others. The scheme altogether diverted $380,000 in public money. This is a continuation of the public story, Hardy interviewed Walsh, who corruption probe that has already won acknowledged a lobbying contract guilty pleas or jury verdicts against with Rusty Cranford, who’s pleaded former legislators Jon Woods, Micah guilty in the Preferred Family corrupNeal, Henry Wilkins, Eddie Cooper tion case. But Walsh said he knew of and Jake Files (Files for a public thiev- no wrongdoing by Cranford. ery charge unrelated to schemes in Walsh also said then that SAYS which the others were involved with had hired Hutchinson and then-Sen. the Preferred Family Healthcare Michael Lamoureux as attorneys, nonprofit). Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson but not to take government action (R-Little Rock) has also been impli- for them. Again, he characterized the cated but not charged. He is, however, work as aboveboard. apparently not the unidentified “SenaThe criminal charge says Walsh tor C” to whom Walsh has admitted and SAYS paid “Senator C” more paying money. A number of people than $120,000. He paid Cranford employed or working for Preferred and his lobbying firm $130,000 and Family have also pleaded guilty to paid $132,000 to “person 4,” a relfederal charges. ative of Cranford who did no work. The information notes that SAYS The charge also says Walsh concealed was organized as a tax-exempt non- payments from his board and didn’t profit, which meant it couldn’t engage report the lobbying payments, which a in political activities, and that it nonprofit isn’t allowed to make by law. received about $15 million a year in Near the end of the 2013 sespublic money. sion, Walsh said Cranford told him In May, the Arkansas Times’ Ben- he needed to hire “Senator C” and jamin Hardy detailed South Arkansas “person 4” and pay Cranford more to Youth Services’ involvement in some prevent a state plan to move business of the previously disclosed schemes. to out-of-state providers. He said he It served delinquent youths in Mag- met with the senator in May at the nolia until bankruptcy forced it out Capitol to firm up the plan. of business. After publication of the After Walsh’s plea agreement was 6

JULY 26, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

announced, Lamoureux said, by email, “I am just learning about this. I have not have [sic] any communication with law enforcement about this development. Neither legal fees nor campaign contributions have ever influenced my behavior as a public official.”

Oil spill prompts suit An oil spill many people may never have heard about — far bigger than the Mayflower pipeline rupture — has now led to a federal lawsuit against the owner of the operation in Magnolia where the spill occurred. The March 9, 2013, leak from a pump station and tank farm (formerly Lion Oil) spilled approximately 5,890 barrels that ran into Little Cornie Bayou. By comparison, the March 29, 2013, Mayflower oil spill from an Exxon Mobil pipeline break gushed about 3,190 barrels into a residential subdivision and nearby wetlands. On July 13, the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the state sued Delek Logistics and Salah Gathering Systems in federal court in El Dorado over damage to waterways

and wildlife habitat and cleanup costs. It seeks civil penalties for water pollution violations and improper handling of hazardous waste. The rupture of a corroded, 60-yearold underground strainer caused the spill. A containment pond was insufficient for the rupture and oil flowed for 13 hours. It flowed through an unnamed creek into Little Cornie Bayou, which eventually leads to the Ouachita River. The lawsuit said the owners knew components were in disrepair but didn’t have a plan to cope with a major failure. In the cleanup, the suit says, the owners disposed of contaminated soil in a landfill not certified to handle it. The suit says penalties could run up to $4,300 per barrel if the discharge was found to be the result of gross negligence. It says the companies could be assessed a fine of $37,500 per day from Jan. 12, 2009, for failure to plan for major accidents. The suit seeks an injunction against discharge of pollutants into water. It also seeks fines of up to $25,000 a day for improper disposal of hazardous waste and $10,000 a day for violation of the state clean water law.

OPINION

School grades flunk

he Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s veteran education reporter, Cynthia Howell, wrote this week about the third-year use of a new standardized test, ACT Aspire, for judging public school students. A key factor was missing in the discussion about Little Rock schools. Howell reported that a change in the “cut” score, or what’s determined to be a passing grade in English, is likely to have a negative impact on school grades in the coming school year. Use of the A-F scale to rate schools is already a folly. These grades mostly measure the type of student a school receives. Poor students have the lowest scores and race is a factor, too. Howell noted that some schools, such as Baseline Academy and Stephens Elementary, struggle, with 11 to 12 percent testing at acceptable levels in literacy and 22 to 25 percent in math. She continued: “Other schools such as Jefferson Elementary, Forest Park Elementary,

defy expectations of demography. schools, eStem and LISA.Yes, LRSD The state doesn’t provide ready lagged overall, but the chart omitted access to breakdowns of poverty per- context. Booker Magnet centages by school, but the LRSD is 67 While Little Rock has a 67 percent Arts Elementary, percent low-income overall. It’s a safe poverty level, eStem’s is 40 percent and Don Roberts Elebet the high-scoring schools have lower LISA’s is 52 percent. LRSD is 63 percent mentary and Forpoverty percentages than Stephens and black, against 53 percent at eStem and est Heights STEM Baseline. 44 percent at LISA. We all can play Academy reported None of this is to say poor kids can’t games with numbers. much greater per- MAX learn. That children of color can’t learn. Remember Gary Newton, the WalBRANTLEY maxbrantley@arktimes.com centages in the That there aren’t lessons to be drawn tons’ $237,000-a-year charter school ready and exceedfrom how different schools perform. lobbyist and LRSD critic? He and Waling ready categories. Some schools ARE better than others. ton money started the Quest charter “ ‘How do we get more of those?’ Jeff The danger is to generalize. middle school in Chenal Valley as an Wood, chairman of the Little Rock ComThe Democrat-Gazette article came escape for parents to avoid a nearby munity Advisory Board, asked about the with a tool to advance the charter school virtually all-black middle school. high performing schools. ‘That’s what narrative so beloved by its publisher, LRSD white students and LRSD the community wants to see — those but the facts proved inconvenient. A black students outscored Quest whites amazing numbers.’ ” chart accompanying the story compared and blacks significantly in both literacy I say only a bit facetiously that there’s scores of the public school districts and math scores. an easy fix for low-scoring schools — and charter schools in Pulaski County. Newton might have a good explanamore middle-class white kids. Stephens Surprise! Whiter charter schools with tion for the failure of Quest to outscore and Baseline are 3 and 7 percent white, lower percentages of poor kids did bet- the despised LRSD, though it’s his gosagainst Jefferson, 71; Forest Park, 73; ter overall. pel that choice is ALWAYS better. He Roberts, 56; and Forest Heights STEM, But, here’s a funny thing. LRSD can’t fall back on demographics. Only 33, plus 6 percent Asian. white kids outscored all the other 21 percent of Quest students meet the Booker Magnet is an outlier with schools’ white kids in English, and poverty designation, against 67 percent only 8 percent white and worth a deeper they were narrowly edged out in that in LRSD. As for race, Quest is 56 percent look, as is any school where test scores category in math by only two charter white, against 18 percent for LRSD.

Leading with lies

he past week’s tweet storms illustrate with stunning clarity the secret to both the disgrace and miraculous survival of Donald Trump after 18 months of spectacular failures. He controls the news of the United States. Trump can concoct monstrous lies and launch them to his 48 million Twitter followers one morning and that will be the news everywhere that day. The Washington Post, The New York Times, Factcheck.org or any other group can supply the documentary evidence of all the falsehoods, but they and every other news organization will still lead with his narrative because that’s what a news organization does. Whenever a president of the United States speaks, the world listens, and whoever wants to believe him will. Trump speaks every day, so there is never room for another thread to gain ascendance. While all the intelligence agencies of Trump’s government, members of his Cabinet, nearly every member of Congress, including Arkansas’s six Trumpfawning delegates, and every person who read the indictments of Russian agents declare with certainty that the Russian government interfered in the 2016 elections to elect Trump and a few Republican congressmen and is still

himself posing as his own fake agent, “John Miller.” engaged in that Last week was Trump at his best corruption, polls — or, if you are fixed on reality, at his show that 90 permost desperate. Terrible developments cent of those who swarmed on the president at a pace he ident if y t hemhad never experienced before. His celselves as Republiebrated two-hour summit with Putin ERNEST cans believe that ended with his fawning joint appearDUMAS Vladimir Putin ance with the autocrat, which emuand his espionage team are blameless lated his earlier fawning appearances or else, as Trump maintains, they were with the Chinese and North Korean assisting “crooked Hillary.” dictators that left the United States When Trump took office, the goal with nothing but Trump’s declarations of the team he assembled was to wean that the United States’ perils were over. him from tweeting every day because Nearly everyone in his own party and while it was safe and maybe even good American allies everywhere disputed politics for a candidate to blast out daily what he said at Putin’s side. He did insults and lies and to make absurd something he had never done before: boasts, it was beneath the solemnity of He retracted what he had said, and then the president of the United States and it retracted his retractions. Critics threw was dangerous to play recklessly with around the word “treason.” His Justice the tinder of world affairs. That was Department charged a pretty Russian good advice, but Trump knew that it émigré with espionage for infiltrating would not serve him. Republican ranks, including the Trump Manipulating the news, if only the campaign, to promote good terms with gossip columns, was how he gained Russia. His own Justice Department celebrity and power. Back in the ’80s, released a redacted copy of its applicaI went to our newspaper’s morgue reg- tion to Republican judges on the fedularly and read the exchange papers eral surveillance court for permission from New York, the Daily News and to wiretap longtime Trump associate the Post especially, which competed Roger Stone. It indisputably showed to report on Donald Trump’s marital that the application was not based priinfidelities, which often were fed to the marily on Democratic sources, as he had popular gossip columnists by Trump alleged, but upon the Trump adviser’s

lengthy and documented dalliance with the Kremlin. Simultaneously, someone leaked a recording of a Trump Tower conversation between Trump and his fixer, Michael Cohen, before the 2016 election, which proved that he had lied when he said he did not know of a payoff to keep a Playboy model from telling about her yearlong affair with Trump after the birth of his son Barron in 2006. Here was the acid test for the Trump political model, to control every day’s news. With the help of Rudy Giuliani, who now serves as the president’s mouthpiece when it is safest for the president himself to shut up, he put a favorable spin on everything: Democrats and Crooked Hillary were behind all the Putin confusion. The Russian woman’s indictment was silly. The released wiretapping application actually supported his allegations, proving finally that the Mueller investigation was a witch-hunt and should be stopped. Although his old confidante Cohen should be jailed for recording him, the tape, whatever it revealed, exonerated him and thus was a political goldmine for him. If polls and Twitter numbers are right, for 50 million Americans his accounts were the news last week. That is about all that a sitting president needs because his unhappily enslaved party, at the moment, is the government.

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Trump takeover

2018

RUNNER-UP

JULY 26, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

ow long do you suppose, before shows that strong the initial “R” signifying “Re- majorities agree. publican” is also understood Fully 65 percent to mean “Russian?” of voters now Let’s assume that special counsel Rob- believe that the ert Mueller produces strong evidence Russian governGENE that shady GOP campaign officials such ment, as Mueller’s LYONS as, say, Paul Manafort, conspired with recent indictment Russian operatives. What would it take charges, interfered in the 2016 elecfor your Trump-loving brother-in-law to tion. Forty-one percent think it probtransition from “witch-hunt!” to “thank ably changed the outcome. That’s up God Putin saved us from Hillary Clinton?” considerably from a year ago. Three days? A week? Then there’s the Trump cult. AccordAnd what if FBI counterintelligence ing to a CBS News poll, 68 percent of investigators probing the National Rifle Republicans believe Trump did a dandy Association end up proving that it laun- job in Helsinki. Other surveys have dered millions in illegal cash from a Rus- shown that as many as 79 percent of sian oligarch and diverted it to Trump’s GOP voters agree. You do have to woncampaign? Would NRA members aban- der what these people are drinking. Stoldon the organization or take up the ichnaya, I’m guessing. manly tradition of Cossack dancing? “Deep state!” they cry — a nonsense Third question: Should the Trump term signifying the United States govcult seize complete control of the ernment. (It’s full of Jews and people Republican Party? Is that good for the with Ph.D.s, you know.) Supposedly, the GOP, or not? FBI and CIA, along with 15 other intelWriting in The Atlantic last January, ligence agencies and the Department of former George W. Bush speechwriter Justice, have conspired to frame poor David Frum put it this way: “Maybe President Trump, whose only crime you do not much care about the future was defeating Crooked Hillary fair and of the Republican Party. You should. square. “No puppet. You’re the puppet!” Conservatives will always be with us. Indeed, the most recent iteration of If conservatives become convinced that the Trumpian conspiracy theory would they cannot win democratically, they require the active participation of four will not abandon conservatism. They Republican-appointed FISA judges. If will reject democracy.” your brother-in-law believes that, you The way I see it, many already have. A know he’ll believe anything. substantial number of Trump supporters But here’s Trump’s problem: Realhave taken on many of the characteris- istically, anything under 80 percent of tics of an authoritarian political cult. You partisan approval on a red-letter issue could see it in their reactions to their isn’t a strong number for a president. hero’s incoherent performance at the If upwards of one-third of RepubliHelsinki summit — first cowering in the cans mistrust Trump regarding Russia face of Vladimir Putin’s arrogant deni- now, what will his numbers look like als of Kremlin dirty work during the after — as appears increasingly likely — 2016 election, next reading a painfully Mueller’s grand jury brings indictments unconvincing staff-written walk back of closer to home? his own remarks, and then walking back Maybe that’s why the president acts the walk back while crying “witch-hunt!” so paranoid. Republican politicians previously Then there’s the fact that the Repubreluctant to criticize the president were lican Party has measurably shrunk since appalled. Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas), a Trump’s election — possibly as much as former CIA agent, wrote a New York three to five points. A Gallup Poll late Times column expressing his astonish- last year showed a five-point drop in ment that “the leader of the free world persons calling themselves Republicans, actively participated in a Russian dis- from 42 to 37 percent. Democrats stayed information campaign that legitimized the same, at 44 percent. Russian denial and weakened the credIn short, the answer to Frum’s quesibility of the United States.” tion could be that the Trump cult’s takePennsylvania Rep. Brian Fitzpat- over of the GOP — along with estabrick, a former FBI agent, told NPR he lishment Republicans’ timidity about was “frankly sickened by the exchange” standing up to it — turned out to be between Putin and Trump. Indeed, the the worst thing that ever happened to latest NBC-Wall Street Journal Poll American conservatism.

Loving libraries

ver the weekend, Forbes pubI also found at a young age that not lished an article from Panos everyone supports the idea of the free Mourdoukoutas, the chairman exchange of ideas a library provides. of the Department of Economics of Whether they believe the idea is based Long Island University and a frequent on socialism or some other fear, there columnist, calling for all public librar- seems to always be someone who ies to be replaced by bookstores. Spe- wants to censor cifically, Amazon bookstores. Outraged the books in the librarians immediately took to social library. In elemenmedia to extol the obvious and not so tary school, I once obvious benefits the library provides. checked out a sciThe backlash was so swift and brutal ence book only to AUTUMN that Forbes took down the piece with get it home and TOLBERT little comment except to say the writ- discover several ing was outside the author’s expertise. pages had been completely marked Seems like a polite way of saying that out with black ink and a note added the article was so dumb, the magazine in fancy cursive stating that the book would rather give up the heavy web was not consistent with scripture and traffic than be further associated with it. the word of God. I never showed it to The reasons Mourdoukoutas gives anyone. I just dropped it in the book for closing public libraries are poorly return and hoped nobody would think researched and flat-out wrong. They I made those edits. include the notion that library patrons In the mid-2000s, my former eighthwould rather go to Starbucks for coffee, grade English teacher and vocal tea parphysical books are “collector’s items” tier, Debbie Pelley, put herself front and and have been abandoned for digital center in the battle over censorship in books, and taxpayers would save money the Fayetteville Public School library. by purchasing books. He completely The main complaints of Pelley and her downplays and dismisses the commu- fellow censors were that the library nity benefit provided by local libraries. had LGBTQ books and also carried To most, it would defy common sense what Pelley described as “witches ficto do away with a place that helps chil- tion.” Thank goodness they soon turned dren, families and the disadvantaged by their attention to fighting bike trails providing books, classes, children’s pro- and other socialist evils and left the gramming, computer access and other library alone. types of assistance to all regardless of The attacks on public libraries come the ability to pay, but I have a suspicion from government, too. The Patriot Act Mourdoukoutas’ article hit the spot for received pushback from librarians those who can’t wait to rid the world of across the country for its provisions public entities, such as public schools, requiring libraries to turn over readlibraries, and housing, to hand every- ing lists in secret. Here in Arkansas, we thing over to the private sector, where have our own shameful history with profit is king. library funding. In 2016, the Arkansas The attack on the public library is legislature approved a budget that cut intensely personal to me. My daugh- approximately 18 percent of the state ters and I frequently walk to the Fay- money provided to public libraries to etteville Public Library where we read, provide a capital gains tax cut for the use the computers, play with puzzles, richest Arkansans. Later, rainy day watch jugglers and musicians on Sat- money restored the funding, but the urday mornings, and admire the giant damage was done and the message was metal dragon sculpture that their dad sent. Cutting library budgets in a state played on as a kid. I still have my very as poor as Arkansas, where many are first library card I got on a summer visit without computer and internet access, to my Granny Cook’s house in Walnut is a sure way to keep us at the bottom Ridge. She and I went every afternoon, in education and opportunities, but picked out a book, read it and returned who ever said our reverse-Robin Hood it the next day for new ones. She taught elected officials really have the people’s me the joy of reading for pleasure. As best interests at heart? Why invest in a young teenager, nothing made me the future when tax cuts and privatizahappier than being dropped off at the tion is the quickest way to put money in Craighead County Library. I discovered the hands of their cronies and donors? microfilm and realized the entire world Why change the policy of rewarding the was there for me to find. haves and screwing the have-nots? arktimes.com JULY 26, 2018

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n the precipice of prior Razorback football seasons, Pearls has set forth a few questions that face the team as the season draws near. For 2018, the inquiries far outnumber the certainties, as you might expect, because there’s been a coaching change for the fourth time in 11 years, and it comes on the heels of one of the lowest points in recent memory for an Arkansas fan base that is starving for a team that actually contends. The transition from Bret Bielema to Chad Morris is a dramatic one in philosophy, and it’s one that has Hog fans excited, curious and assuredly skeptical at times, too. Morris is an undisputed offensive genius with more curb appeal than the House of Petrino ever offered, but he’s also lacking in head coaching seasoning and success, so this is the very definition of a high-risk hire, much more so than when Bielema and his impressive 68-24 record were swayed from Madison, Wis., in the winter of 2012, and for sure a chancier option than Petrino, who had won 80 percent of his games at Louisville before taking his ill-fated and truncated shot at the NFL in the fall of 2007. So you’d think that, inherently, the first question would be whether Morris can — pardon the tired expression — change the culture here. He’s not as young as some of the other prospective candidates for the job (he’ll be 50 in December, whereas Mike Norvell of Memphis, for example, is only 36), but he’s also been a proven innovator at multiple levels over the long haul. Whether Morris will “succeed” as Arkansas fans view the concept is grist for the mill over the next several years, frankly, and short of winning at an unprecedented clip and asserting some kind of baffling dominance over a conference that is chock-full of gifted young athletes, he’s not going to convince everyone all at once that he’s the savior-in-waiting. Instead, beneath that obvious threshold issue, we’re going to look at questions that, depending on how the staff and team responds, will dictate how Morris’ inaugural season will be assessed a few months from now. How much fire can John Chavis still breathe? A lot of people would have salivated at the mere idea of “Arkansas Defensive Coordinator John Chavis” flashing up on the screen or in headlines a few short years ago. That was before “Chief” had an incredibly uneven run

at Texas A&M, which culminated with Kevin Sumlin’s entire coaching staff of getting flushed summarily so the ROTC fanatics in College Station could throw an obscene sum of money at Jimbo Fisher. There was palpable disappointment in Hog ville when Morris boldly proclaimed he was about to hire the best defensive coor- BEAU WILCOX dinator in the sport and then tabbed Chavis, with many fans observing that either Morris had a skewed meaning of “best” or that an alleged bid to go snatch Brent Venables from Clemson either failed or never materialized. Chavis, make no mistake, is the most accomplished defensive coordinator ever hired by the University of Arkansas. A few rough years down in Aggieland didn’t change that fact. Petrino managed to thrive even with Willy Robinson, who hasn’t been employed since getting the ax himself in 2011, running his defense, and Bielema managed to get by for a year with someone named Robb Smith. Chavis is, by default, a massive upgrade, and he still cultivates respect in the business. Will that translate to immediate results after Paul Rhoads’ 3-4 experiment failed demonstrably last fall? You’d like to think so, because Arkansas’s defense was a macabre adventure in 2017. Will Cole Kelley stay entrenched at quarterback? Kelley’s 2017 season was fittingly circuslike. Fans clamored for the big Cajun to play after Austin Allen kept taking beatings, and when Kelley got time on the field as a gadget player of sorts, he delivered. After that, with Allen ailing, Kelley took more snaps and the results were hit and miss. Everyone remembers the bizarre “dribble” at Ole Miss that ironically ended up being Arkansas’s only SEC win, and then Kelley got himself into legal trouble with a late-season DWI. As you might surmise, a 6-foot-7, 260-plus guy isn’t necessarily the most nimble sort, but he moves better than the comparably built Ryan Mallett. He also doesn’t throw the same heat that Mallett did, which is probably an unfair comparison but nonetheless is an inescapable one. And he’s going to feel some pressure from beneath, as there is no question Ty Storey would love to get more action after spending three years basically on ice.

The Newseum

s you know if you watched this space, The Observer and family are recently returned from our summer sojourn in Washington, D.C., having hit all the monuments and a good bit of the Smithsonian museums, plus several of the greater and lesser burger joints and burrito rollers on Capitol Hill. We’re not going to make you sit through a viewing of our vacation slides, but we may revisit the trip in these pages later when we’re in a mood to get philosophical about this country of tribes we all call home. Unless, that is, Donald Trump accidentally pushes the Doomsday button instead of the “bring me KFC!” button on his desk while in the grip of his next ALL CAPS RAGETWEET on Twitter. File that possibility under “Death by National Suicide.” As we write this, The Observer has blistered feet, the result of having walked something like 22 miles over the past three days, according to the walking app on Spouse’s phone. Like every great trip we’ve ever taken, we feel like we need a vacation to heal up from our vacation. We do, however, want to dish about one place in D.C. that we visited, lest you miss it while you’re there yourself: The Newseum. As the name suggests, it’s a museum dedicated to news, which turned out to be a highlight of the trip even though we went in without much hope. Journalists are a rather rumpled lot, not given to building soaring glass monuments to their endeavors unless you count the pile of chipped coffee cups stacked in the sink of your average newspaper office break-room come quitting time. Still, as you know if you’ve turned on Twitter or the evening news lately, the profession is under assault these days, and not just from the online advertising that has kicked the financial legs out from under the business end of things. Hard-working journalists, some of whom will mope shamefacedly for days if they accidentally print the name of a Philip as “Phillip,” have been maligned as fabricators and liars from the biggest bully pulpit in the land, even though the history of the profession is littered with the unmourned graves of folks who were shitcanned the moment it was discovered they’d cooked a single quote, much less made up stories from whole cloth,

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something reporters are accused of now on a daily basis by a guy who probably hasn’t used a newspaper for anything in his whole life other than keeping his wig dry during a sudden summer shower. Forgive us, then, if the Newseum felt like a protest, with its towering wall of photos depicting 1,800 journalists killed on the job, the crushed and singed camera bag of a photographer who died on 9/11, memorials to combat journalists who gave their lives to bring us the truth about World War II and Korea and Vietnam, and the remains of a violently dismantled Datsun blown apart by an assassin’s bomb, which also took the life of an Arizona reporter whose stories had put him at odds with organized crime. Enemies of the state all, no doubt. All liars who played fast and loose with the truth, worthy of Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ scorn and scowl right up until the moment they laid their lives on the altar of bringing you, dear reader, all the news that’s fit to print. And to think they could have just stayed home and made up some shit, far from peril and foreign battlefields and the crush and smoke of falling towers. Sad! As for The Observer, some of the things on display there moved us to tears at times, and we’re stingy with those on principle. If you get to D.C., and still care about truth, justice and the American way, be sure to check it out. By the way, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention the most surprising thing we saw in the Newseum: a large display of Trump-centric merchandise in the gift shop, including several dozen red caps with the MAGA slogan/hypnotic suggestion embroidered on the front. Even there, in a temple to the sacrifices of a profession he hates, the Emolumentor-in-Chief could score his cut from the swells. Not that it mattered much. The gift shop seemed to be doing a much brisker business in hats that said: “Freedom of Speech is Not a License to Be Stupid.” But, as any journalist worth his or her salt will tell you, giving space for the countervailing viewpoint is important in any good story.

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Arkansas Reporter

THE

Gone fishin’ — but not forgotten Glory Boats are caskets for outdoorsmen. BY MOLLY MITCHELL

JULY 26, 2018

BRIAN CHILSON

n arguably the most Arkansas spin idea of the fishing possible on the creative culture boat casket stayed of disruption, a new Little Rock f i r m l y pl a nt e d start-up makes caskets shaped in Joel Schmidt’s like fishing boats for die-hard outdoors- mind. After doing men and women who want to sail into some research and eternal glory on their most beloved discovering that TROLLING THROUGH ETERNITY: It’s possible, in a Glory Boat coffin crafted by Joel Schmidt. earthly vessel. no one was making Modeled after classic aluminum jon fishing-boat caskets, boats, Glory Boats (also the name of the Schmidt called a funeral director friend is still a small fish in the big funeral people as possible.” start-up) are made from steel, will fit and said, “You’re going to laugh, but industry pond. “I had no idea what to So far the eternal fishermen buyin standard burial vaults and are lined I’ve got an idea.” expect,” Schmidt said. The company ers have typically been in their midwith a choice of three different camo The idea became Schmidt’s secret manufactured 12 boats to start, and 60s or younger. According to Schmidt’s patterns. Woodland camo is the most project for a year. “This is too weird,” it took a year to sell all of them. Five experience, generations older than the popular. Marsh grass camo is meant to Schmidt remembers thinking, and he more caskets have been made and five baby boomers like the Glory Boats, but appeal to duck hunters, and a hot-pink wanted to make absolutely sure he are in the works. ultimately go for a traditional casket. number is meant to appeal to the ladies wasn’t going overboard before he told Glory Boats is reeling in customers Boomers and subsequent generations, (though, while a few women have opted anyone, even his wife. After thinking via outdoor and sporting expos, where Schmidt hypothesizes, are more interto be buried in a Glory Boat, none so far through all of the details, it started to the boats make for very popular photo- ested in customization, even when it have gone for the pink). look like this fish tale might be feasible ops. “Some of the looks and expressions comes to their own funeral. (Buyers At $2,800 per casket, Glory Boats fall after all. are really priceless,” Schmidt said. The can further customize their Glory Boats about in the middle of the going rate for Schmidt let his family in on the idea, Glory Boats website mentions how com- with the registration number from their caskets in Arkansas. and when they turned out surprised fortable the caskets are, which turns bass boats painted on the side.) “I think The idea sprang from a lighthearted but supportive, he formed the Glory out to be a surprisingly important con- we’re going to see more and more of this joke in the midst of a frighteningly Boats company with his brother-in-law cern for shoppers interested in housing kind of thing as we get further and furclose call for Glory Boats owner Joel and son-in-law. His wife, Schmidt said, a corpse. Five models are on display ther into the boomers, you know, going. Schmidt’s father in 2016. When John “took it way better than expected!” in funeral homes, and one Glory Boat We [baby boomers] are probably going Schmidt, who is in his mid-70s and Schmidt happened to know of a steel is strategically placed in the Antiques to be the oldest generation looking to suffers from chronic obstructive pul- door company in Little Rock, National & Uniques antique mall in Bryant. “I individualize and personalize this last monary disease, took a hard fall and Custom Hollow Metal, that had the think I kind of freaked out the ladies great milestone of life.” ended up in the hospital with several capability of manufacturing the parts. at the front of the mall,” Schmidt said. Preachers are another demographic broken ribs, Joel Schmidt feared his Schmidt’s brother-in-law had the skills But they allowed him to display a Glory that get excited about Glory Boats, albeit father might not make it. Schmidt real- to weld them together to make the final Boat model in a booth and report that for different reasons. “ ‘We can’t wait ized he had to have a difficult conversa- product. The idea behind the name it is a lively conversation piece. to preach over this thing! It is rich with tion with his father that many people Glory Boats, Schmidt said, is that “our One might think Glory Boats would metaphor,’ ” Schmidt said he often hears choose to avoid: What did he want for entire life is a journey. And for most be an instant hit in outdoorsy Arkansas, from preachers. Schmidt is also quick his funeral? of us we’d like to think it’s headed to as far as caskets go, anyway, so Schmidt to point out good-naturedly that arriv“He was very generous to give me a glorious place. And that’s kind of the was surprised that he sold more boats ing at the pearly gates in a fishing boat all the details,” Schmidt said. “Just to old synonym for the hereafter and the in surrounding states like Tennessee, might get you in good with St. Peter, lighten the mood a little I offered to reward of faith. And I thought it’s just Illinois and Louisiana before his first considering the saint’s former employhim that maybe I could bury him in a good fit.” sale in Arkansas. “We have a lot of out- ment on Earth as a fisherman. his fishing boat.” John Schmidt recovGlory Boats is staying afloat after its door enthusiasts here,” Schmidt said. The bad news about these caskets, ered and left the hospital, but the first couple of years, but the business “We just need to get in front of as many besides the fact that they are caskets, ARKANSAS TIMES

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is that, no, they are not recommended for use as a water-borne funeral pyre, Viking-style. Schmidt frequently fields this question with good humor, but his message is clear: These are not boats. While Schmidt admitted that they could potentially float, the only body of water they are designed to ride is the River Styx. “People always say, ‘Can we do the Viking funeral with this?’ and I say, ‘Whatever your state law will allow is fine by us, but I’m sure Arkansas would probably frown on dead bodies drifting down the river half-charred.” Schmidt tragically abandoned an alternative name for the company, Valhalla Vessels, in order to not encourage people to illegally enact their Viking dreams. While the company doesn’t have any plans to come out with seaworthy models, Schmidt hopes to hook more customers by producing a line of crematory urns. Plans are underway for a scaled down version of the fishing boat and also an urn in the shape of a saltwater fishing reel mounted to a rod. Another possible future product is a wooden, flammable version of the boat casket for those who want to have a traditional memorial service followed by cremation, so going down in a blaze of glory in your fishing boat isn’t 100 percent out of the question. The Glory Boats website offers one other service besides caskets. After his experience with his dad, Schmidt realized how important it is to have the funeral conversation with loved ones before it’s too late. The Glory Boats website has a free guide to the conversation, which you can download and fill out so that friends and family won’t be in the dark when it comes to funeral planning while also in the midst of mourning. While Schmidt is new to the funeral business and still maintains his job as a photographer, he has found it to be an interesting and rewarding experience. “The thing that’s really encouraging about it is the reports we get back from the families. They say, ‘You know, this was their passion, it brought a nice little ray of light to a dark moment to be able to acknowledge that in this way. Because that was so them.” Schmidt’s father is still with us and in good health. But as an avid outdoorsman himself, when he saw the first prototype of the Glory Boat he said, “I want to change my funeral plans.”

THE

Inconsequential News Quiz:

BIG Tough Love edition PICTURE

Play at home, while sunbathing to get that Perme-like glow!

1) Police say a Little Rock woman had a rather extreme reaction during a recent argument with her 18-year-old son over his desire to purchase a handgun. What, according to police, did she do? A) She used her connections within the NRA to funnel over $30 million in illegal Russian contributions to the 2020 presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump. That’ll show him. B) She saw through his desperate cry for help and assisted him in getting a prescription for Viagra instead. C) She used her own handgun to shoot him in the abdomen. D) Being a Republican, she allowed him to buy the pistol, content in her belief that Nancy Pelosi would slip into his room after he was asleep, take it from under his pillow and leave 50 cents. 2) KATV, Channel 7, meteorologist Ned Perme recently announced something that might come as a shock to many viewers. What was it? A) 10-day forecast calls for a Category 1 shitstorm. B) After a lightning strike shorted out his tanning bed, Perme developed superpowers that allow him to control the weather. Now he fights crime as: The Permenator! C) Mano y mano bare-knuckle street fight with KTHV, Channel 11, meteorologist Ed Buckner ended in a draw. D) He will bring his 34-year career with the station to a close when he retires in coming months. 3) The Saline Courier recently reported on a pitbull mix named Little Man Jake, a rescue dog from Benton Animal Control Services that was adopted in 2017 by a man in St. Paul, Minn. Why did Jake warrant space in the newspaper? A) Since his adoption, he has been trained as a registered therapy dog, and now works with sick children and hospice patients to help calm their fears. B) He’s also a four-legged ambassador at the Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport, where he and his owner roam the terminals comforting nervous and harried travelers. C) He was recently nominated by the American Humane Society for their Hero Dog of the Year Award. D) All of the above. 4) Trees were uprooted and electricity was knocked out to more than 48,000 customers in the state on July 21. What was the cause? A) Unexpected, all-caps rage tweet from Donald Trump. B) Taco Bueno’s four-for-a-buck bean burrito night July 20. C) Godzilla and the Fouke Monster got in a dustup near Smackover. D) A summer storm with reported wind gusts topping 80 miles per hour in parts of the state. 5) Governor Hutchinson recently fired Sheila Sharp, the director of the Department of Community Correction, which runs the state’s overburdened parole and probation system. Why, according to Sharp, was she fired? A) Because more than three-dozen Arkansas parole officer positions are being filled by mannequins bought in bulk when the Little Rock Kmart closed. B) Sharp has steadfastly refused to allow parolees to make triumph of the human spiritaffirming escapes to Mexico, as seen in “The Shawshank Redemption.” C) She fed Hutchinson the Arkansas Department of Correction “Disciplinary Loaf” for lunch during his last visit to her office. D) She’d asked for a badly needed increase in funding for her department, which Hutchinson opposes.

Answers: C, D, D, D, D

LISTEN UP

arktimes.com JULY 26, 2018

Best get happy

BEST OF ARKANSAS - 2018

Learn who the 2018 Best of Arkansas winners are and how to party with them.

his year the Arkansas Times is not just listing the best things in life in Arkansas, it’s celebrating them Hollywoodstyle! We’re dressing up and rolling out the red carpet

for our Hollywood Nights party on Thursday, July 26, at the Albert Pike Masonic Center, an old-world setting for some old-time glamour. Appropriately, Simply the Best Catering will provide the eats for the Best of Arkansas winners that readers chose for this, our umpteenth Best of Arkansas issue. Star-studded sponsors Johnnie Walker, Smirnoff, Tanqueray, Crown Royal, Captain Morgan, Bulleit Bourbon and Baileys will provide the libations, and 107 Liquor reps — you may mistake them for the cast of “Sex and the City” — will join similarly disguised Ciao Baci, Loca Luna and Red Door servers to mix them up into Oscar-class cocktails. The don’t call it spirit-lifting for nothing. Which leads us to our list. When you’re blue, and that describes a lot of us both emotionally and politically, it helps to think of the good things we see around us, such as the people, places and things that never let us down. In keeping with our theme of Hollywood and happiness, this year’s list includes such new categories as best cosmetic dentist (extremely important to our smiles), bowling alley (because what makes us laugh like “The Big Lebowski”?) and commercial insurance (being prepared, like for the apocalypse, is good for our nerves). Along with the winners list, we offer features on several of our winners and throw in our own two cents on the best in life if life is in Arkansas. Like a Hot Springs dairy bar. Finding world culture in a bottle. The Mountainburger. The Art Department exhibitions. A $3 sandwich that will knock your socks off. Don’t forget the party: It starts at 6 p.m.; tickets are $40 a person or $75 a couple; buy them at centralarkansastickets.com. 14

JULY 26, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

MENTORING: The Art Department shows at the Thea Foundation support emerging artists, like Carmen Alexandra Thompson, whose work is above.

Editors' picks Best multicultural experience on the cheap My wife loves to cook different curries, so we occasionally find ourselves at Indian Grocers, Mr. Chen’s or other Little Rock Asian markets in search of certain ingredients not typically available at the neighborhood Kroger. While there, I invariably am drawn toward the beverage coolers. I don’t usually drink sodas, but I lived for a year in Japan and grew fond of its delightful array of canned drinks (with names like “Sparkling Beatnik” and “Pocari Sweat”), and I just can’t help myself when confronted with strange beverages from faraway lands featuring a flavor profile fundamentally different from what we usually imbibe. For example, Jeera Masala and Bisleri Spyci (both from India) seem made for people who thought the fundamental problem with New Coke was the lack of an overpowering cumin taste. And if you like your beverages with a

little bit of chew, there’s Grass Jelly Drink (Taiwan), which comes in an array of flavors from banana to lychee and contains little cubes of grass jelly, a tapioca-like substance. In a similar vein, the Hemani company of Thailand produces several varieties of basil seed drinks that have the consistency of loose Jello with little crunchy seeds held in suspension; my current favorite is lemon mint, but you can also buy roseflavored. And if you need something to quench your thirst after mowing the lawn under the hot sun, try Yeo’s White Gourd Drink (Malaysia), which tastes like a crisp cucumber crossed with caramel. But let me reassure the less adventurous that there is plenty for you, too, to sample. Quice Ice Cream Soda (Pakistan) is a pleasant variant of the classic cream soda, full-bodied and delightfully sweet, while Sosyo (India) proves an odd little fruit drink just crying out for a shot of rum.

BEST OF ARKANSAS - 2018

of Springdale/Fayetteville/Bentonville, it’s a fascinating glimpse of what were once the faces of these older parts of towns. Travelers can take U.S. 71 all the way to Canada. We hope someone we know will do this soon and take us along for the ride. — Stephen Koch

Best venue for emerging artists

TRAVEL THE WORLD WITH A SODA: Exotic drinks, like Grass Jelly Drink and Bird's Nest Nice Look Drink, will transport you to other worlds from the comfort of your own home.

However, even my expansive cosmo- there. After you hit the antique stores politanism fails when confronted with and do the Tony Alamo trail in Alma, Bird’s Nest Nice Look Drink (Taiwan), head north and make a pickup (or drop the main ingredients of which are water, off) at the vacuum cleaner hospital. See white fungus, rock sugar and bird’s nest. Winslow — birthplace of writer Douglas The nest in question is made by South- C. Jones and forever the home of the east Asian swifts from solidified saliva, Squirrels! Stop for a Mountainburger so you get bird spit and fungus, all in at Mountainburg’s Dairy Dream; it’s one little can! The actual experience of a loose mix of ground beef with onion drinking it is nowhere near worth the and mustard, and a favorite in Crawford bragging rights, I am sorry to report, County and beyond since the 1950s. Get for it tastes rather like a mushroom just a milkshake and sit for a spell on the sneezed into your mouth. But aside from newly renovated patio behind the resthat one, I highly recommend going out taurant and ponder the vistas … and is and embracing the unknown at $1.50 that a large, live pig roaming in somea can — it’s a small price to pay for a one’s front yard? Yes, it is a large, live pig. glimpse into the other side of the world. Other areas just have the skeletal — Guy Lancaster stone remains of attractions like restaurants, tourist courts and artists’ galleries slowly becoming kudzu sculpture, Best escape from but remain just as compelling to sightseers as they were decades ago. (BrentInterstate 40 wood in Crawford County — a once-haphomogeneity pening burg?) There are breathtaking It’s probably hard for the young- views of the valleys and peaks of the sters who have never known Northwest Boston Mountains throughout. Once Arkansas as anything but the hurly-burly you get into the ever-connecting hub of rampant capitalism and rampant highway ramps to fathom, but the now-sleepy section of U.S. Highway 71 in the region was once the main conduit between that part of Arkansas and the rest of the world. This section of 71 is the road to get into a literal and metaphoric lower gear — not as low as the steep, serpentine THE VIEW FROM HIGHWAY 71: The Boston Mountains are Pig Trail, but getting just one treat for travelers on the old road to Fayetteville.

Young Arkansas artists whose obvious talent could still use a boost in the public arena have an invaluable leg up: The Thea Foundation’s The Art Department, a quarterly showcase of art in all its forms. The foundation, at 401 Main St. in North Little Rock, supports Arkansas schoolchildren with its scholarships for high school students, its Arkansas A+ Schools that weave the arts into the fabric of academic work, and providing music programs and art supplies. With The Art Department, the foundation has brought high-quality work in a wide variety of styles and embodying social and cultural messages. Over the past five years, The Art Department series has shown a spotlight on the gender-focused works of Lyon College art professor Carly Dahl and the abstract, pattern-heavy work of her husband, gallery director Dustyn Bork; Emily Wood’s paintings of friends and family; John Harlan Norris’ fantasy depictions of people as occupations; Jon Rogers’ landscapes; Guy Bell’s levitating pyramid. It’s shown Michael Church’s surreal collages, Sandra Sells’ wood assemblages and video art, Kat Wilson’s “Habitat” photographs of people in their homes, Michael Shaeffer’s images of drag queens, illustrator Chad Maupin’s pulp-fiction-inspired printmaking. Coming up: “The Mind Unveiled,” an exhibition of works by painter and printmaker Carmen Alexandria Thompson that address mental illness. In her artist’s statement, Thompson writes, the work “seeks to unveil, expose and open up a discussion for everyone about the beauty and tragic workings of the human mind.” Like all Art Department shows, the Friday, Aug. 3, opening reception will feature heavy hors d’oeuvres, an open beer and wine bar and a chance to win a work of art by the featured artist. Tickets are $10. — Leslie Newell Peacock

CONTINUED ON PAGE 18

Thanks For Voting Us The Best! 2018

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FORM OVER FUNCTION: To Hursley’s eye, the Comet Rice building in Stuttgart, Ark. is ‘as good as it gets.’ The diptych is on display at the Arkansas Arts Center’s Delta Exhibition until Aug. 26.

DRIFTING SOUTH

Acclaimed Little Rock photographer Tim Hursley has turned his camera closer to home. BY BENJAMIN HARDY

hough Tim Hursley was already 500 miles of Little Rock. I didn’t get any working as a photographer when work in Memphis, any work in Dallas. he moved to Little Rock from his ... It was really all around the coasts hometown of Detroit in 1980, it took him and Chicago,” Hursley said in a recent another few decades to begin shooting interview at his studio in Little Rock. anything in Arkansas. His focus was “But slowly, I’ve gotten more regional. elsewhere: New York, Los Angeles, Se- … The South did sort of creep into my attle and wherever great contemporary work. … which is cool.” architecture called out to be captured. The South has clearly crept into his Hursley, 63, achieved international workspace, which occupies an old, dimly acclaim with soaring images of mon- lit, two-story house perched on an isoumental, glass-and-metal structures, lated bit of hillside near the Arkansas such as the Frank Gehry-designed Gug- School for the Deaf. The Pocahontas genheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, or calf is a permanent fixture, along with New York’s Museum of Modern Art. a pair of giant-sized coveralls pinned But museum-goers in Arkansas may be to the wall (from Keo, Hursley said, or more likely to recognize Hursley’s non- perhaps Scott), a homemade bench doucommercial projects, which occupy a bling as an advertisement for a trailer decidedly more human scale. In 2016, he park (acquired in Eureka Springs) and won the grand prize in the Arkansas Arts a painted mirror depicting a living room Center’s Delta Exhibition for an indel- murder scene (purchased from a detail ible shot of a two-headed, taxidermied shop in Forrest City). In a more carecalf he bought in Pocahontas. Hursley fully curated setting, such folk-art oddiwas also awarded an honorable men- ties might seem precious; in Hursley’s tion in this year’s Delta for “Pine Bluff crowded, thoroughly lived-in studio, Mortuary,” an image of a low-slung brick they’re a natural fit. building framed by lush, tangled greenLong before he began turning his ery, rusting agri-industrial buildings and camera closer to home, Hursley’s pera dusky summer sky. It’s a consummately sonal work tended toward the fringe. He Arkansan scene that feels a world away began shooting brothels in Nevada in from the sleek urban shapes Hursley the late ’80s, creating a series of lonely, shoots for his day job. gorgeously garish interiors and exteri“I used to say that I didn’t work within ors mostly devoid of human figures. (He 16

JULY 26, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

eventually published these in a collec- ings in downtown Helena. tion titled “Brothels of Nevada: Candid “We got all the way over there and Views of America’s Legal Sex Industry.”) then weren’t interested in anything In another series, Hursley visited polyg- about the levee,” he mused. “But drivamist communities in Utah and other ing through town, we did see those two states; “Pine Bluff Mortuary” is part of hearses…” an ongoing project documenting rural To a photographer who’s trained his funeral homes. eye to break down even the most imposHursley’s aesthetic sensibilities first ing buildings into geometric forms, there veered in a more southerly direction in can be as much value in a decrepit husk 1994, when he began a partnership with as a gleaming piece of new construction. the Rural Studio, a design-build program Asked to identify his favorite pieces of at Auburn University. Founded by the architecture in the state, Hursley ticked architect Samuel Mockbee, the Rural off a couple of the usual suspects, includStudio’s mission is to put students to ing Thorncrown Chapel. Real enthuwork creating innovative, affordable siasm only rose in his voice, however, houses in poor communities in Ala- once he remembered the Comet Rice bama’s “Black Belt.” Hursley has been building in Stuttgart (Arkansas County). making road trips to Hale County, Ala., Hursley’s diptych of the ruined for over two decades now to chronicle building is also on display at this year’s the program’s progress. Delta Exhibition. A hulking metal box In the process, he’s constantly sift- streaked with rust and riddled with ing the landscape for gems. In 2007, holes, it’s easy to see the structure as while driving on a rural Alabama high- grim — an emblem of the slow, painful way, Hursley’s attention was seized fade of once-prosperous farming towns by a metal silo twisted almost double like Stuttgart. But the Comet Rice buildby a tornado years earlier, a form that ing strikes Hursley as a “true industrial struck him as a kind of found sculpture. form,” a thing of beauty. This chance encounter sparked a minor “To me, it doesn’t get any better,” he obsession: He ended up buying the silo said. “I’ve seen architects try to achieve from its owner to prevent it from being [that] in Los Angeles or wherever. … To scrapped and at one point installed a me, that’s as good as it gets.” surveillance camera to capture it in a “Pine Bluff Mortuary” and “Comet variety of weather conditions. Rice” are on display at the Arkansas Arts Similarly, his current interest in mor- Center through Aug. 26. Hursley’s recent tuaries was piqued, he said, when he and photography will also be featured at the his wife, Jeanie, took a trip to Helena a Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art in few years ago. Their intent was to pho- Charleston, S.C., in an upcoming exhitograph the levees along the Mississippi bition titled “Southbound: Photographs River, which was approaching flood of and about the New South,” opening stage. Instead, they were sidetracked Oct. 19. See more of Hursley’s work at by the sight of a funeral home clinging his website, timothyhursley.com, or folto life among a row of abandoned build- low him on Instagram (@timhursley).

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arktimes.com JULY 26, 2018

BEST OF ARKANSAS - 2018

EDITORS' PICKS, cont.

Best place to pair an egg roll with a milkshake

N RIA

ILS

BEST BARGAIN: Banh mih thit, at Mike's.

Best culinary bargain

Mike’s Place at 5501 Asher Ave. is an outpost for Vietnamese food, which is good in its own right. The bun (rice vermicelli) enlivened with bean sprouts, a fried pork egg roll and bits of pig skin, once doused with fish sauce and a dash of squirt bottle hoisin, is interesting, crunchy and filling. But here’s the thing: There’s a oneline item on the appetizer list that is Little Rock’s single best food bargain. It’s the banh mih thit, or the Vietnamese sandwich. No slice of pate here. You choose beef, pork or chicken; each comes dipped in a sticky sauce. The meat is dressed with crunchy fresh and pickled vegetables, plenty of fresh cilantro and slices of fresh hot peppers (watch out!). They stuff a torpedo-shaped bun that is served hot and crusty. They call it an appetizer, but it’s easily a lunch. And it costs THREE DOLLARS. That’s right. THREE DOLLARS. — Max Brantley

the days of sock hops and cult of personality radio DJs. (Lucky Hot Springs has an embarrassment of creamy riches For the past few years, Park Avenue in this arena, with Mamoo’s ParadICE (aka “Uptown,” aka “Highway 7”) in Hot Cream and a Kilwin’s on Bathhouse Springs has been attempting an upswing. Row nearby, crosstown rivals King There’s a dope neighborhood commu- Kone on Malvern Avenue and Frosty nity garden, the much-lauded Treat on Grand Avenue, and Deluca’s Pizzeria and the with bougie Dolce Gelato crisp, clean Cottage and Scoops “Yes We Courts tourist court, Really Make It Here” which looks freshly Ice Cream holding sprung from a frozen court on time machine. the other end of The Hot Springy Highway 7.) Dingy costume Bailey’s mixes shop at 409 Park up its menu from Ave. keeps it comthe standard dairy fortingly weird. bar fare with offerBut our nation has ings of fried rice and learned that the path egg rolls and the like, to righteousness and they are a isn’t a straight WITH BAILEY'S, YOU GET EGGROLL: refreshing offline, and there Along with your burger and shake. script surprise. are still pockets of But if you’re here, Park Avenue that you’re here for are ripe for renovation — former Bohe- shakes, ice cream or burgers, probably mia Restaurant, we’re looking at you ... in that order, and that’s where Bailey’s with increasingly misty eyes. shines brightest. Long may you anchor But stalwart amongst the comings Park Avenue, Bailey’s Dairy Treat. and goings in this funky cool section of — Stephen Koch the Spa City is the tidy and tiny Bailey’s Dairy Treat, 510 Park Ave., with its distinctive neon ice cream cone serving as Best non-museum a beacon to those who not only tolerate museum lactose, but revel in it. Every Arkansas community needs at The only place that has issued me a least one of these — an ice cream and handwritten IOU this century sits on burger drive-up, hopefully from the Tru- Grand Avenue in Hot Springs, just south man era, but at least strongly evoking of historic Bathhouse Row and the Hot

Springs Farmers Market. Google Maps calls it Young’s Trading Center Inc., but the business name printed in Durango Western font across the old general store-style façade — Young’s Trading Post — gives a much more accurate indicator of what lies within. James Henry, the 83-year-old patriarch of the antique palace, sat in a rocking chair at the openair entrance last Saturday, occasionally chiming in as his daughter (and Young’s co-owner), Karrie Jackson, regaled a few curious visitors about the history of the place. Jackson pulled out a color photo she says was taken sometime between 1952 and 1955. In it, a surlier twentysomething Henry stands in front of the very same storefront, dressed in a striped linen shirt and dark blue jeans with the cuffs rolled up, with what appears to be a red pencil tucked behind his ear. Beside him are his parents, Willie Matilda and Jim Henry. James, as it turns out, had gone to California to work in the logging fields for three months or so when he was called back to help run the new family business, a store the Henrys had acquired from Monroe Young, whose family was sort of a big deal in mid-20th century Hot Springs. “One set of brothers were in the law,” Jackson said, “and the other set of brothers were in the moonshine business.” Before their ownership, as a photo with “October 1940” scrawled on the back reveals, it was a fruit and vegetable stand, with the same corruCONTINUED ON PAGE 26

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BEST LIST OF 2018 Thanks for the Compliments!

Local Entertainment Artist Barry Thomas Runner-up: Sally Nixon

Author

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Runner-up: Charles Portis

GO ON STRIKE: At the Dust Bowl.

Bowling alley Dust Bowl Runner-up: Professor Bowl

Comedian Adam Hogg Runner-up: Brett Ihler

Country band or artist Bonnie Montgomery Runner-up: The Salty Dogs

Dance club Club Sway Runner-up: Discovery

DJ Gforce Runner-up: Yuni Wa

Filmmaker Daniel Campbell Runner-up: Mark Thiedeman

Gay bar 610 Center Runner-up: Club Sway CONTINUED ON PAGE 20 arktimes.com JULY 26, 2018

BEST OF ARKANSAS - 2018

BRIAN CHILSON

THANKS FOR VOTING US THE BEST! And of course a 40% discount to celebrate!*

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BEST BOOK STORE

WHERE THE AFTER-AFTER-PARTY IS: Midtown.

Hip-hop artist or group

Museum

Big Piph

Museum of Discovery

Runner-up: Rah Howard

Runner-up: Arkansas Arts Center

Jazz band or artist

Neighborhood festival

Rodney Block

Hillcrest HarvestFest

Runner-up: Matt Treadway Trio

Runners-up: Chili Fights in the Heights

Late-night spot

Performing arts group

Midtown

Ballet Arkansas

Runner-up: Four Quarter Bar

Runners-up: Arkansas Circus Arts

Live music festival

Photographer

RiverFest

Tim Hursley

Runners-up: King Biscuit (Helena-West

Runner-up: Katie Childs

Helena)

Live music venue The Rev Room Runner-up: Stickyz Rock ’n’ Roll Chicken

Shack

Local actor or actress

ARKANSAS TIMES

Place for trivia Flying Saucer

Runner-up: Brittany Sparkles

Place to gamble

Local theater

Oaklawn Racing & Gaming

The Arkansas Repertory Theatre

Runner-up: Southland Park Gaming and

Riverdale 10 Cinema

JULY 26, 2018

Runner-up: EJ’s Eats and Drinks

Runner-up: Diamond Bear Brewery

Movie theater

Town Pump

Mary Steenburgen

Runner-up: Murry’s Dinner Playhouse

BEST LATE-NIGHT SPOT

Place for karaoke

Runner-up: Movie Tavern

Racing (West Memphis)

Poet Bryan Borland Runner-up: R.J. Looney CONTINUED ON PAGE 23

oming Soon C & n o s a In Se

#bigorangeburger arktimes.com JULY 26, 2018

BEST OF ARKANSAS - 2018

CHILDREN IN DANGER

uthor Trenton Lee Stewart would himself make a good character in a children’s book. As a boy, he was always daydreaming of adventure, writing stories in his head for days. InAnd also in charge, in Trenton Lee Stewart’s books. terrupted by a question from his parents, he’d answer, “Shhh. I’m BY LESLIE NEWELL PEACOCK thinking.” As a third-grader — when he could hold a pencil easier, he said — he started writing things down. Funny poems. He’d wander his Hot Springs neighborhood with his best friend — his neighbor’s dog — thinking up exciting tales and yearning for adventure. Then the boy grew up and his novels hit the New York Times Best Seller list. Making a best-seller list is not saving the world from evil men with designs on running the world, as Stewart’s talented heroes do in “The Mysterious Benedict Society” series and “The Secret Keepers.” But he can come up with a good story, a little science fiction that tilts toward the possible and characters kids can recognize. (And not only would he make a STEWART, BEING MYSTERIOUS: The author is working on another “Benedict Society” book. good character, he sort of is one, the boy in “The Secret Keepers.”) ern Methodist University Press; Arkan- and the prequel “The Extraordinary Stewart, 48, who lives in Little Rock sas artist Warren Criswell designed the Education of Nicholas Benedict”) was and is the winner of the Arkansas Times’ book cover.) life-changing, Stewart said. Rather than Best of Arkansas author category this Stewart’s mental composition is become an academic, which he thought year, did not intend to become a best- “often just scenes and scenarios. I’m just he might, he became a writer. selling writer of children’s books. His constantly daydreaming, which makes Did it make him rich? “Briefly,” he first novel, “Flood Summer,” was for me feel not productive, but I’ve found a said, laughing over lunch at Nexus Coffee. adults. It took three years to write and way to channel it.” His “boyish tendency” In writing for kids, Stewart said, “You made him feel disconnected from the (his words) to ponder puzzles, mystery want the kids doing the problem-solvliterary world, one in which he’d previ- and tricky situations — like mazes — fed ing.” That means you’ve got to get the ously published short stories and enjoyed his thinking for the first book. Thus the adults out of the way. An orphan hero, or the sort of positive feedback that told “Mysterious Benedict Society,” which one with only one parent who’s working him to keep at it. Working for a stretch puts the kids in a maze in the first 50 three jobs and never home — that’s the without publishing was “kind of lonely,” pages and requires them to figure out stuff of inspiration. he said, and he feared the next book he’d how to cross it, was created. In it, four So the Benedictines have sad back-stoplanned on writing would just extend children — the brainy orphan Reynie ries and end up in a scary school where the isolation as he waited for publica- Muldoon, Sticky Washington with the they must fight being brainwashed. But tion, an audience. photographic memory, kick-ass Kate Stewart’s “Secret Keepers” finds his hero, But the plot changed a bit when Stew- and cranky Constance Contraire — defeat Reuben, in an even drearier setting — in art, who was making up stories every the vile and wryly named villain Ledop- the poor Lower Downs neighborhood of night for his 2-year-old son, Elliott, thra Curtain, who has been using mental New Umbra, a place of abandoned and “started thinking about story-telling for telepathy to take over the world. decrepit buildings, with a mother barely kids.” It occurred to him that he could The publication of “The Mysterious making ends meet selling fish and the write a novel for Elliott when he got old Benedict Society” (followed by “The town lorded over by mafia-ish quartets enough to read. So he did, while wait- Mysterious Benedict Society and the Per- who face the cardinal directions to keep a ing word on whether “Flood Summer” ilous Journey,” “The Mysterious Bene- mean eye on things. Stewart said the hero, would be published. (It was, by South- dict Society and the Prisoner’s Dilemma” a loner who spends his days hiding from 22

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ARKANSAS TIMES

people, is “in some ways modeled after my own childhood. … There’s a weird sort of nostalgia that I experience for the melancholy I felt then,” his only adventures being those that a Hot Springs neighborhood offered, his best friend a dog. But even Stewart found the novel’s opening a little bleak, and decided to inject another part of his childhood — a funny mother whose exchanges with her son lighten things up. Reuben’s challenge is to part with the thing he loves most — a watch that allows him to become invisible — and if that reminds you of the One Ring that almost does in Bilbo Baggins, you’re not alone. “I wasn’t setting out to rewrite ‘The Hobbit,’ ” Stewart said, but the watch’s power of corruption did keep “The Hobbit” on his mind. Those familiar with “The Hobbit” will find what Stewart calls “Easter eggs,” references to J.R.R. Tolkien’s book dropped throughout the pages of the “Secret Keepers,” including the name of the villain and his alter ego. The sci-fi elements of his books — the “Whisperer” machine that invades minds, the watch that makes its owner invisible — are meant to be just on the verge of the plausible to young readers. “I’m not convinced myself why it is true that our brain waves are limited to our skulls,” Stewart said. Stewart will get a chance to once more challenge his four Benedict Society members. He was beginning to miss Reynie, Kate, Sticky and Constance since the publication of the first book in 2007, and now has a contract for another Benedict book. Stewart wants them to have a few years of happy childhood “after all these dangerous adventures,” so a bit of time will have passed for them since the last book. “We can see them in a new stage in their life.” Stewart’s own kids are teenagers now, but he still enjoys reading with his youngest, Fletcher. They just finished Adam Gidwitz’s “The Inquisitor’s Tale.” Like Stewart’s books, it’s a tale of children. They face danger. They’re kidnapped. They must defeat a farting dragon. And, as creative thinkers usually are, they’re accompanied by a dog.

BEST OF ARKANSAS - 2018

Rock band or artist

Food festival

Amasa Hines

Greek Food Festival

Runner-up: Adam Faucett

Runner-up: Food Truck Festival

Sports bar

French fries

The Tavern Sports Grill

Big Orange

Runner-up: Prospect Sports Bar

Runner-up: David’s Burgers

Happy hour BRIAN CHILSON

Food and Drink Arkansas-brewed beer Lost Forty

BEST BAKERY: Community Bakery, according to our readers.

Liquor store Runner-up: Legacy Wine and Spirits

Baked goods

Red Door Restaurant

Runner-up: Trio’s Restaurant

Community Bakery

Runner-up: @ the Corner

Cheese Dip

Runner-up: Boulevard Bread Co.

Business lunch

Mexico Chiquito

Bread

Cache Restaurant

Runner-up: Dizzy’s Gypsy Bistro

Boulevard Bread Co.

Runner-up: Samantha’s Taproom & Wood

Cocktail

Brunch

Runner-up: Fassler Hall

Colonial Wines and Spirits

Runner-up: Flyway Brewing Co.

Runner-up: Old Mill Bread

Big Orange

Grill

Caterer Catering to You

Milkshake Big Orange Runner-up: Purple Cow

Onion rings Sonic Drive-In

South on Main

Runner-up: Dugan’s Pub

Runner-up: Capital Bar and Grill

CONTINUED ON PAGE 24

BURNS PARK 2018

Best Park and

Best Place to Mountain Bike Thank you for choosing Burns Park! The 1,700-acre park in North Little Rock boasts miles of cycling, pedestrian and equestrian trails; top facilities for land and water sports; dog parks; playgrounds; Funland Amusement Park, and attractions like a Civil-War-era cabin and a covered bridge. Not to mention some of the best views of the Arkansas River! Come explore.

nlrpr.org

northlittlerock.org

arktimes.com JULY 26, 2018

BEST OF ARKANSAS - 2018

Outdoor dining The Root Cafe Runner-up: Brave New Restaurant

Ribs Whole Hog Cafe Runner-up: Sims Bar-B-Que

Salad ZAZA Fine Salad & Wood Oven Pizza Co. Runner-up: U.S. Pizza

Sushi BRIAN CHILSON

Kemuri Runner-up: Sushi Cafe

Vegetarian

‘CHICK CHAT’: Longtime broadcast journalist Lisa Fischer (right) joins colleague Kattie Hansen on a new YouTube series.

The Root Cafe Runner-up: 4square Deli

Wine list Petit & Keet Runner-up: Cache Restaurant

Goods and services Antiques Mid-Towne Antique Mall Runner-up: Sweet Home/Clement

Apartment complex The Pointe Brodie Creek Runner-up: Bowman Pointe

Artisan Bang-Up Betty (jeweler) Runner-up: Adrian Quintanar (ceramics)

Auto dealer Landers Toyota Runner-up: Bale Chevrolet

Auto service Austin Brothers Tire & Service Runner-up: DJ’s Auto Repair (North Little Rock)

CONTINUED ON PAGE 33 24

JULY 26, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

Pushing the reset button

ithin the first 90 seconds of conversation with Lisa Fischer, I — like her longtime radio audience — had fallen right into her rhythm. In that time, she’d covered the keto diet her husband is on, the benefits of intermittent fasting (“Food slows us down,” she said) and the delight of breaking those intermittent fasts with a Lemon Roll from Cinnamon Creme Bakery in West Little Rock. “Have you ever been there?” I tell her I haven’t, and the exclamation that followed was half ecstasy, half admonishment. “Girl!” she squealed. “It’s like a cinnamon roll,” she gushed, “but with this lemon glaze! Ooh!” On June 22, Fischer retired from her longtime gig on KURB-FM, 98.5 (“B98.5”), ending a 12-year run as one of the voices that greeted listeners on the 5:30 a.m. daily timeslot — a time when Fischer confesses she “thought even God took a little catnap.” What started as a guest spot in 2006, when Fischer filled in for a couple of days at the behest of program director Randy Cain, stuck. “I am weary of a 4 a.m. alarm,” the announcement on Fischer’s website reads. “I want to do more

things.” One of those things is being deemed one of Little Rock’s “Best Radio Personalities” for this year’s “Best Of” issue of the Arkansas Times. “That just totally shocks me,” she told me over the phone. “I’m, like, me?” Phrases like “gig economy,” “influencer” and “vlogging” weren’t part of the popular vernacular when Fischer started her radio and TV career in the 1980s. In many ways, though, that’s exactly the sort of niche Fischer was carving out for herself in the local media business. Back then, she was a part-time entertainment reporter for KARK, Channel 4, and host of an afternoon talk show on KARN-AM, 920, putting news and opinion into bitesized pieces. Or, as her bio self-deprecatingly puts it, “blather[ing] about nothing.” That so-called “blathering” turned out to be exactly the sort of guileless, mile-a-minute banter Little Rock listeners liked to hear on their morning commutes. Ratings for the morning show swelled. Fischer’s freelance schedule swelled right alongside them, and listeners stuck around to listen to Fischer even as her cast of cohorts changed. “God’s given me this

Lisa Fischer retires – sort of. BY STEPHANIE SMITTLE

gift of communication,” she told me, “and I need to use it.” On a Friday morning earlier this month, with her grandbaby cradled in her arms, Fischer and I talked over the phone as she prepared to transition from babysitting duty to filming the first episode of “Chick Chat” in the wine room at Bowman Pointe, a high-end West Little Rock apartment complex. The new YouTube series launched July 18 with Fischer and fellow “seasoned broadcasters, wives and snarky wine-drinkers” Robyn Richardson and Kattie Hansen waxing about topics like “Beauty Tips & Tricks.” The following exposition introduces its teaser reel: “Have you spent your summer wondering about the real matters affecting Americans, like Shape Tape and nipple covers? Well, three girls from Little Rock, AR, sure have. … Tune in Wednesdays at 4:30 for new episodes of Chick Chat. We’ll make you forget that you have mildewed laundry in the washer.” It’s a greatest hits tour of the trio’s favored beauty products (anti-wrinkle serum foundations! collagen eye masks! lip products you can skimp on!) and it’s

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delivered with energy and cheek (lit- a little lipstick, a little lip gloss, a little erally and figuratively). It also bears eyeliner. I like my fragrances — a little Fischer’s signature transparency and Jo Malone fragrance. Scents mean a lot warm candor; the 55-year old makes to me, so I like a diffuser going. I like no bones (or apologies) about her laser a house that smells good. Molly Maid treatments or cosmetic boosts. She also comes and uses that purple Pine-Sol. I doesn’t shy away from recognizing the could drink it! I love that stuff.” double standards that the broadcasting And what exactly does a retiree industry can employ when it comes to need to feel beautiful and prepared for? beauty and gender. “You know, Shep Retirement, in Fischer’s case, comes Smith can show that little bit of gray, with qualifiers — air quotes, maybe. but if a woman does it …. .” Fischer’s She’s doing a podcast for the Arkansas Facebook post extolling the glories of Heart Hospital, writing for AY Magasomething called “Lash Lift” isn’t a pre- zine, filming commercials for Ron Shersentation of a polished, finished face; man Advertising, recording radio ads for it’s an invitation to the process itself — longtime clients, spending some time one that makes her feel beautiful and with the grandbaby and making good prepared. I asked her what else quali- on her new mantra: “If it doesn’t bring fies for her list of must-haves. “I need you life, get rid of it.”

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EDITORS' PICKS, cont.

READY TO TRADE: Karrie Jackson and her father, James Henry, at their swap shop/antique store.

gated tin facade. want to outfit your workshed with some Now, it’s a labyrinthian warehouse vintage tin beer signs. It’s also good for with every square foot of its walls lined picking up slightly dusty things you with old farm tools and wicker baskets weren’t looking for in the first place, and light fixtures and cookbooks and which could include, but are not limited oil cans. Metal box fans circulate air to: a maroon-and-gold footstool with through the corners and wooden rafters, the Lake Hamilton Gray Wolf mascot and there’s a loft full of antique furni- where your feet should rest; a briefture up a staircase with a preemptive case bar lined in coral satin straight “Watch Your Step” sign at the top. out of a “Mad Men” episode, with its It’s more likely to smell of WD-40 rocks glasses still in their plastic packthan Old English — a sort of agrarian aging; a 1920s enamel gas range by Laucounterpart to the strain of antique rel; an oversized tin sign advertising shops lined with lace and chandeliers. Salem menthols (“Menthol Fresh!”); It’s a place people tend to recommend a pegboard full of swing locks and when you’ve searched everywhere else cabinet hinges; a vinyl record titled and still can’t find a replacement for “Good Times with The Happy Goodthe broken ceramic radiant on your mans” next to an Oak Ridge Boys cover old gas space heater, or when you album subtitled “Songs We Wish We’d

JULY 26, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

Recorded First” and a Ray Charles LP There comes a time in the peak of called “Country and Western Meets every Arkansas summer when the heat’s Rhythm and Blues”; cast iron skillets oppression feels historic: Lethargy sets in all shapes and sizes; drawers of mis- in, the body humors are overwhelmed matched silver flatware; hacksaws; by choler and sweat, and even the best old-school stand mixers; blank Scotch- conversationalists are reduced to nonbrand VHS tapes; ceramic beer steins stop complaining about the temperature. from Pabst’s and Budweiser’s classier Treats of the sweet and frozen perdays; brass doorknobs; pedestal sinks; suasion are the best salvation I’ve found snow shovels; birdhouses; birdcages; a for the proverbial dog days, and Little Royal typewriter from the Roosevelt Rock has some pretty damn good ones. era; a rack of glass soda bottles; china Here are my top three, all found at stelcabinets; a “Legend of the Lone Ranger” lar local establishments, all quick, all tin lunchbox; a tiny beige Panasonic TV easy to take on the road: with an earphone jack; empty cans of every sort of salve, remedy and house- Paletas La Michoacana from hold cleaner imaginable (something Del Campo a la Ciudad called “$1,000.00 Guaranteed Moth I was a paletas naysayer for some Killer,” for one); myriad lampshades and years, mostly because they’re usually wrenches; washboards; an elaborate sold at top-dollar by people who don’t hinged octagonal jewelry box made of speak Spanish and at a smaller-thanpopsicle sticks; box fans from the days appropriate serving size for adults. when box fans weren’t plastic; and at Enter Del Campo a la Ciudad, a taqueleast a hundred items whose original ria mercado on South University with intended function eludes me. One of countless festive and culinary treasures these items, I’m certain, is the perfect — delightful paletas de hielo o crema (ice purchase to make with that lingering or cream), crispy chicharrón (fried pork $7.50 IOU burning a hole in my pocket, belly) and an immaculate piñata display. and Young’s is a perfectly fine place to The paletas with a cream base are get lost in, realizing that you’ve whittled where it’s at, particularly those de coco away your afternoon muttering “Look (coconut), arroz con leche (rice pudat this” and “What is it?” to yourself at ding), café (coffee), fresa (strawberry) turns for a few more quarter hours than and mango (mango). They are exceptionyou’d planned. ally rich and velvety, with some nota— Stephanie Smittle ble chunks of fruit or nuts of cookies dispersed throughout. Take the coconut paleta. Something about an opaque Best summertime sweet white popsicle is just plain satisfying, and the shredded coconut flakes are a treats under $3 CONTINUED ON PAGE 30

2018

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EDITORS' PICKS, cont. welcome addition. Del Campo a la Ciudad, at 6500 S. University Ave., is open 9 a.m. until 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday.

SO COOL: Icy lemonade at Shark's.

Frozen lemonade from Shark’s Sharks Fish & Chicken is a chain with a down-home feel and delicious food: Each franchise is locally owned and has specialty menu items, striking real-life shark photography, a bold teal and yellow color scheme, signature lemon-pepper dust (ask for it on everything!), and a brilliant condiment caddy that I give thanks for every time I set foot inside. The frozen lemonade is of premium quality, and because there’s a new Shark’s popping up every which way in this town, they are easy to acquire. People tend to have views on ice, and they know what they like — I’ve heard

the term “soft ice” uttered affectionately on many occasions. The frozen part of the drink is exceptionally cold, and the iciness falls somewhere on the spectrum between margarita and snow cone; it’s somehow both crunchy and soft, and there’s an unexpected delight that comes when the lemonade concentrates at the base of the cup. Last I asked about flavors, I was told each brick and mortar has its own selection (all have classic lemonade, my favorite), including Orange Tang, Pink Lemonade, Cherry Lemonade, Grape, Green Apple, Strawberry and Fruit Punch. I have yet to make this pairing, but I believe any aforementioned frozen drink would pair well with clear liquor. Shark’s Fish & Chicken is open 10 a.m. until 11 p.m. or midnight every day of the week at all of its locations in Central Arkansas.

High church and hot yoga are for the devout. And, while the net serenity yielded is, no doubt, commensurate to your 90-minute investment in mindfulness, sometimes you have more like … 17 minutes. Tops. And an affinity for sleeping in on Sunday mornings. And perhaps a commitment to the idea of divinity that vacillates between lukewarm and “I’m not religious, but I’m spiritual, you know what I mean?” So, for the rest of COKE FLOATS: At K. Hall and Sons. us, there’s the weekly Compline service at Christ Episcopal Church — a quarterSlide open the door on the glass-top hour of sung prayers, short readings and freezer near the checkout and reach for silences, intoned by candlelight every the unmarked Styrofoam; it looks like Sunday at 6:45 p.m. in a 179-year-old a coffee cup with a pull-back drinking church downtown. If you’re looking to tab. The homemade ice cream some- get right with the universe, and feel like how maintains its softness, even after that’s better accomplished with psalm being immersed in a deep freezer. I rec- than with pranayama, pull up a pew (or Sugarcane Coke float from K. ommend purchasing a bottle of sugar- a kneeler) at the corner of Scott Street Hall and Sons cane sweetened Coca-Cola from the ice and Capitol Avenue every now and again. bath, consuming about half that vanilla — Stephanie Smittle K. Hall and Sons holds a special place cup, then pouring your soda inside the in the heart of the Little Rock commu- cup (may I suggest creating a few shalnity for a host of wonderful reasons. For low caverns with your spoon for eas- The best county for cool me, it’s a nostalgic spot, reminding me ier saturation?). What results is a coke relief of my days of cutting class at Central float of the highest order, one that both High School to pick up a fried chicken quenches my thirst and brings me back Last week, some old friends who to-go box and a bottle of Orange Fanta. to what it felt like to skip school look- used to live in Arkansas but now live K. Hall hosts a legendary Seafood Sat- ing for treats. in New Jersey came for a visit with their urday during the hot months of the year K. Hall & Sons Produce, at 1900 kids. It’s somehow remained light jacket with shrimp, lobster, crawfish and a line Wright Ave., is open 8 a.m. until 6 p.m. weather at night in New Jersey and our of customers around the block. And, for Monday through Saturday, 8 a.m. until friends came off the plane in long sleeve those who know where to look, it sells 3 p.m. Sunday. shirts and hoodies to 100 degrees. We soft-serve homemade vanilla ice cream —Rachael Borne´ in Styrofoam cups. CONTINUED ON PAGE 32

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BEST OF ARKANSAS - 2018

EDITORS' PICKS, cont. spent several days talking about frying an egg on the sidewalk. Then we did one of the few things you can do outdoors in Arkansas in July and feel cool, even cold sometimes: We drove to Stone County and plopped our butts into the Sylamore, the mostly spring-fed creek that originates somewhere in the Ozark Mountains. The water was so cold that, even though I’d been cursing the sticky triple-digit heat for weeks, it took me a few minutes of hemming and hawing before I let anything above my knees get wet. It was also crystal clear; you could watch little bream nibbling at your toes. Swimming kept us occupied for the bulk of three days, but on our way home we made the obligatory visit to check in on the stalactites and stalagmites and bats of Blanchard Springs Cavern, where it was a blissful 57 degrees. — Lindsey Millar

Best pizza night shortcut

I can cook, but I can’t bake. Whether that’s due to some misunderstanding of the craft or some unnamable necrosis of the spirit infecting my being, I’m not sure. I’ve just never had success with yeast. My attempts at homemade bread or pizza always end up as airless and dead as the surface of the moon. So, I was pleased to make the discovery recently that Vino’s sells fresh pizza dough at a bargain rate. For $3, you can get a double-fist-sized portion of dough, equivalent to a large pizza. It comes ensconced in the same plastic clamshell used to package a calzone or a

salad — flour-dusted and pregnant with are, and I catch ’em,” Gallina said in a possibilities, like some great ghostly radio segment on KUAF-FM, 91.3, “I’m mushroom harvested from a distant, gonna make ’em learn how to crochet!” malt-scented forest. Would that social divisions in Little I like Vino’s pizza. But honestly, I Rock could be woven of such stuff. like what I’ve made at home from their — Stephanie Smittle dough quite a bit more — maybe from simple pride of ownership or maybe because I get to use exactly the ingredients I want. I suggest jalapeno escabeche (homemade, if possible), a little chorizo from Farm Girl Meats and a modest layer of shredded cheddar. Or, if you can get past the perversity of turning on the oven in August, a summertime Margherita with fresh Arkansas tomatoes and front-yard basil. It’s lifeaffirming even for those of us dead at heart. — Benjamin Hardy

Best local spat

OUR TYPE OF FUN: @letterrockarkansas on Instagram.

In September 2017, the Eureka Best Little Rock Springs Independent reported that six box elder trees in the quaint, quirky collection mountainside town’s North Main Music Earlier this summer, an anonymous Park had been vandalized. Well, sort local started the Instagram account @ of. The vibrant crochet coverings that letterrockarkansas to document the decorated the tree trunks — created by wonderful and varied typography found crochet artist Gina Gallina for the city’s around town. It’s an essential follow “Art of Crochet” Festival — had disap- for those who enjoy design ephemera peared. Rumors circulated. Conjectures or simply delight in trying to figure out flew. Letters to the editor were writ- where they’ve seen that type. Favorten. Dendrological hypotheses about ites include the massive wooden “Club whether yarn-wrapped trees are more Jimmy” sign, once wired with 255 lightsusceptible to disease and stunted bulbs, but knocked down by a storm long growth were formed and discussed. ago, that leans against the side of Jimmy The breathability of yarn was called Doyle’s Country Club off Interstate 40; into question. “If I find out who they a modernist Church of Christ sign with

a letter missing that reads “Church O Christ” with the caption “All out of F’s”; and the chunky, hand-painted dropshadow Sims Bar-B-Que sign outside the Barrow Road location. — Lindsey Millar

Best collection of business cards Foster’s Garage, the classic, no-frills body shop mainstay at 409 W. Eighth St., has been collecting the business cards of patrons and vendors apparently since the Eisenhower administration. They’re contained within the span of an arm’s-length corkboard on the wall in the garage’s unceremonious lobby, and the card collection is augmented so gradually and delicately that each card is gingerly tucked into the folds of the cards that preceded it; our own tiny, greasy, secular version of the Wailing Wall. — Stephanie Smittle

Best political protest

Look, when you manage to piss off Willie Nelson — the unofficial ambassador of stoner serenity and goodwill toward men — your path is surely strewn with hubris and folly. The 85-year-old played a June 29 set at Verizon Arena — the finale to an Outlaw Music Festival that began at 4:30 p.m. that Friday — and included a rendition CONTINUED ON PAGE 38

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ARKANSAS TIMES

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Car Subaru Outback Runner-up: Ford Fusion

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Arkansas Children’s Hospital Runner-up: Youth Home Inc. CONTINUED ON PAGE 34 arktimes.com JULY 26, 2018

BEST OF ARKANSAS - 2018

GREEN GROCER: Edwards Food Giant, which carries plenty of Arkansas produce, was our readers' pick for the best local grocery story.

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Diet/weight loss center

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Dry cleaners

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Box Turtle

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Runner-up: The Crown Shop

Runner-up: Burrow’s and Mr. Frank’s Optical

Grocery store

Farmers Market

Kroger

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Local winner: Edwards Food Giant

Runner-up: Little Rock Farmers Market

Florist 34

JULY 26, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

Runner-up: Whole Foods Market

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Charlotte Potts (State Farm, North Little Rock) Runner-up: Jay Snider (Shelter Insurance, North Little Rock)

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CONTINUED ON PAGE 37

501.568.3160 • 10210 I-30, LITTLE ROCK • www.rockcityhd.com arktimes.com JULY 26, 2018

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ARKANSAS TIMES

FOREST PARK ELEMENTARY

Landscaper/Landscape design

Pest control and termite service

Chris Olsen

Central Termite and Pest

Runner-up: Mark Robinson

Runner-up: Curry’s Pest Control

Lawyer

Pharmacy

Blake Hendrix

Cornerstone Pharmacy

Runner-up: Phil Kaplan

Runner-up: Walgreens

Lingerie

Physical therapist

Cupids Lingerie

Ortho Arkansas

BEST OF ARKANSAS - 2018

Runner-up: Advanced Physical Therapy

Central High School

Plumber

Runner-up: Forest Park Elementary

Sanders Plumbing

Residential real estate agency

Runner-up: Ray Lusk Plumbing

Private school The Anthony School Runner-up: Little Rock Christian Academy

Public school

Runner-up: Dillard’s

The Janet Jones Co. Runner-up: The Property Group

Retirement community Parkway Village Runner-up: Fox Ridge Assisted Living CONTINUED ON PAGE 39

Massage therapist Massage Arkansas Runner-up: Wellness Revolution

Med spa Rejuvenation Clinic Runner-up: Novah Natural Therapy

Men’s clothing Dillard’s

THE POINTE BRODIE CREEK

Runner-up: Baumans

Mobile phone AT&T

BEST APARTMENT COMPLEX

Runner-up: Verizon

Motorcycle dealer

BOWMAN POINTE

Rock City Harley-Davidson Runner-up: Riggs Outdoor

Music equipment Guitar Center Local winner: Jacksonville Guitar Center Runner-up: Sunrise Guitars (Fayetteville)

Nail salon

BEST APARTMENT COMPLEX

Ethereal Spa Runner-up: Heights Nail Spa

Outdoor store Ozark Outdoor Supply

THANK YOU FOR MAKING US YOUR HOME!

Runner-up: Gene Lockwood’s

Pawn shop Braswell & Son Pawnbrokers Runner-up: iPawn

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501-725-9055 | 3321 S Bowman Rd www.bowmanpointe.com

CONTINUED ON PAGE 39 arktimes.com JULY 26, 2018

BEST OF ARKANSAS - 2018

EDITORS' PICKS, cont. of his 1986 release “LivJoe Cripps, the Little Rock a big music festival feels like participa- travel to and from SXSW in Austin, ing in the Promiseland.” native and famed percussion- tion in an overwrought performance art allowing it to attract a fantastic spread The song, sung as a ist, helped pay for an album piece on the pitfalls of consumerism. of under-recognized national and intertrio with Nelson from the sessions and You’re looking for a special experience, national talent. This spring, a day pass and his two to distribute it. When a fun time, a little reward for your weeks was $10. The music is mostly to be sons, is a bitterCripps went miss- of toil. You pay way too much money to found at one of two venerable venues sweet anthem ing in 2016 (he gain entrance to a gated community that in town, Low Key Arts — the driving of an America st ill ha sn’t promises unique access to an array of force behind VoV — and Maxine’s. There that, theoretibeen found), precious goods — the bands and artists are also a few “secret shows” that pop cally, anyway, t he re cord you adore — and spend hours of extra up in unexpected places. Around 4 p.m. counts Lazarus’ fell into limbo. labor finagling the logistics. It’ll all be on a rainy Sunday this March, about “New Colossus” “Snowfall” rep- worth it, though — because just look at two dozen of us crammed into a Wafas part of its resents a scaled- that lineup. fle House on Central Avenue to watch ethos: “Give down version of You wind your way through an acre a goofily too-cool-for-school Brookus your tired that album. It’s five of security and get stamped with the lyn rocker named Zuli churn out swagand weak/And songs, many famil- imprimatur of elite access. Then, once gering guitar riffs, occasionally using WILLIE: Singing of broken promises in we will make iar to longtime Crop- inside, plot twist, YOU’RE the ones a sugar dispenser as a slide. Later, at the "Promiseland." them strong/ duster fans, like “Hey trapped in a borderline humanitarian Low Key Arts, I was treated to a succesBring us your Wonder,” “England” crisis. It’s hot, it’s crowded, everything sion of artists playing everything from foreign songs/And we will sing along.” and “Marry Them for Free.” The other smells like a urinal cake. Induced scar- country to bouncy indie pop to gloomy, And, performed at such a crucial junc- EP, “Woodstock,” was recorded more city jacks up the price of basic com- Eels-esque bedroom ballads on a tiny ture of the family separation crisis at recently in Woodstock, N.Y., at a stu- modities (bottled water, kebabs) and electric keyboard. Some of it was good, the nation’s southern border, it read as dio owned by Jukes’ former bandmate you grow to loathe the hordes of fellow some of it was not and at least two acts a blistering indictment of our broken in The Gunbunnies, Chris Maxwell. sweaty mammals jostling for limited were genuinely terrific. immigration policy. There’s a cryptic beauty to Jukes’ lyr- resources. You retreat inward menWhat makes VoV truly special, — Stephanie Smittle ics that emerges after repeated listens. tally, become beady-eyed and narrow- though, is the miracle of your fellow That’s easy to do because his warble and minded, jealously protect the pitiful concertgoers: You don’t despise them. general pop sensibilities will have you patch of turf you’ve staked out in front of There’s just something about being Best return immediately bopping along. The records, whatever beer-branded stage is present- crammed into a big festival that breeds After a long hiatus, David Jukes, one via Max Recordings, are available for ing whatever performer you’ve come to contempt. At Valley of the Vapors, that of Little Rock’s greatest — and least her- purchase at maxrecordings.com, and see. You damn well better see them up sour note of impersonal hostility turns alded — singer/songwriters, dropped on streaming platforms. close, and you damn well better enjoy to one of, well, actual community. It’s two EPs under his Magic Cropdusters — Lindsey Millar yourself after all this trouble, because an all-ages affair, so you’ll see teenagmoniker this summer. “Snowfall” colyou paid for it with your own money, ers, a handful of families, older folks. lects songs Jukes recorded with Jeff goddammit. You’re in it together, and you’re there Matika (Green Day) playing bass and Best, no, actually, the Then there’s Valley of the Vapors, the to hear music you’ll probably never get Max Recordings head honcho Burt Tag- only music festival worth antithesis of all that. the chance to hear again. What could gart (Big Cats) playing drums in the VoV, in case you haven’t heard, is a be better than that? attending mid-2000s in a Denton, Texas, studio five-day nonprofit-run festival in Hot — Benjamin Hardy owned by Matt Pence (Centro-Matic). The whole experience of attending Springs that captures bands as they

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JULY 26, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

RV/camper dealer Moix RV Supercenter Runner-up: Camping World

Shoes

Thank you for recognizing Red as one of your favorites! 2018

RUNNER-UP

BEST SALON

Dillard’s

THANKS FOR VOTING US THE BEST IN ARKANSAS!

Local winner: Rock City Kicks Runner-up: Warren’s Shoes

Spa Ava Bella Day Spa

BEST RV/CAMPER DEALER

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Runner-up: Rejuvenation Day Spa

Sporting goods Ozark Outdoor Supply

For choosing us as the best garden store for 13 years! We are only here today because of YOU. Our team is excited to grow with you and proud to be part of our wonderful community!

Runner-up: Academy Sports + Outdoors

Tattoos 7th Street Tattoos & Piercing Runner-up: Black Cobra

Toys The Toggery Runner-up: The Knowledge Tree

Travel agency Poe Travel Runner-up: Sue Smith Vacations

Vape shop Rogue Vapors Runner-up: Abby Road

Veterinarian Hillcrest Animal Hospital Runner-up: ALLPETS Animal Hospital

Vintage clothing Crying Weasel Vintage Runner-up: American Jane Vintage (Conway)

Women’s clothing E.Leigh’s Runner-up: Indigo

where wonder

Yoga studio Barefoot Studio Runner-up: Arkansas Yoga Collective

BEST GARDEN STORE

GROWS

THEGOODEARTHGARDEN.COM LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS

CONTINUED ON PAGE 44 arktimes.com JULY 26, 2018

JULY 26, 2018

ARKANSASâ&#x20AC;&#x2C6;TIMES

Thank you, Arkansa s!

Thanks For Voting Us Best Caterer! BEST CATERER

DRIVERS PLEASE BE AWARE, IT’S ARKANSAS STATE LAW:

USE OF BICYCLES OR ANIMALS

The driver of a motor vehicle overtaking a bicycle proceeding in the same direction on a roadway shall exercise due care and pass to the left at a safe distance of not less than three feet (3’) and shall not again drive to the right side of the roadway until safely clear of the overtaken bicycle.

AND CYCLISTS, PLEASE REMEMBER...

Your bike is a vehicle on the road just like any other vehicle and you must also obey traffic laws— use turning and slowing hand signals, ride on right and yield to traffic as if driving. Be sure to establish eye contact with drivers. Remain visible and predictable at all times.

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Every person riding a bicycle or an animal, or driving any animal drawing a vehicle upon a highway, shall have all the rights and all of the duties applicable to the driver of a vehicle, except those provisions of this act which by their nature can have no applicability.

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arktimes.com JULY 26, 2018

BEST OF ARKANSAS - 2018

BRIAN CHILSON

HYPERLEAP'S LOU MCALISTER: He calls his service "Google Fiber without Google or the fiber."

AN ISP TO LOVE

Hyperleap offers no-hassle, blazing internet speeds. BY LINDSEY MILLAR

uick show of hands: Who loves their internet service provider? Not tolerates, endures, accepts — but loves in a way that makes them evangelical about the company? I’m guessing that few of you have your hands up. You’ve been burned one too many times by outages, high costs and service calls happening between the hours of “8 a.m. and noon.” But sitting just a few feet from me is Jordan Little, the director of digital strategy at the Arkansas Times, with his hand raised. When he’s not making the trains run on time here at AT HQ, he runs or contributes to several start-ups, while also, like most millenials, conducting all of his home-based leisure and socializing through the web. At the best, lags in internet service drive him crazy. At the worst, they cost him money. That’s why Little is so bullish about Hyperleap, the wireless internet service from Little Rock-based start-up the Broadband Development Group. Its CEO, Lou McAlister, jokingly describes

JULY 26, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

it as “Google Fiber without Google or the fiber.” Times readers voted it runnerup to AT&T in this year’s Best of poll. Like Google Fiber, the ISP company from Google parent company Alphabet, Hyperleap positions itself as the antitelecom. It offers super-fast internet for a competitive price with no hidden fees, no contract, no data caps, no throttling, no limits on using multiple devices at once and no equipment to rent or buy. When Little moved into a new apartment recently, he transferred his Hyperleap service from his old place to his new one within minutes just by logging into Hyperleap’s online service portal. McAlister says he knows of clients who “move into an apartment, have us for a few months, then go on a trip for a month. They turn us off, come back and turn us back on.” McAlister is a North Little Rock native and graduate of UA Little Rock. His career includes time at AT&T, cofounding the Arkansas-based telecom Navigator Telecommunications and co-

founding 7X7 Networking, a San Francisco-based ISP. He co-founded Hyperleap in 2015 with Tom Flak, whose resume includes stops at AT&T, SOMA Networks and Redseal Networks; and James Hendren, co-founder of Arkansas Systems Inc. and a longtime player in the Arkansas tech and start-up community. When McAlister moved back to Arkansas several years ago, he became entrepreneur-in-residence at the Venture Center, the Little Rock-based startup accelerator. The question he always asked of would-be entrepreneurs, he said, was, “ ‘What’s the biggest hurdle between you and doing your start-up?’ After we got through the funding talk, they’d say, ‘Our internet sucks. You have to pay too much for it. It’s too slow. It’s too unreliable. It’s a hassle to deal with the companies. We’re small-business guys. We need the speed, the affordability.’ ” McAlister knew how to fix that. Hyperleap buys access to the internet from a large Tier 1 provider, i.e. one of the companies that, through fiber-optic cables, serves as the backbone of the worldwide internet. The company then taps into that connection at its Union Plaza headquarters in downtown Little Rock. From that skyscraper’s roof, its antennas beam microwaves to antennas on other multitenant buildings in downtown Little Rock, which, through the magic of technology that you don’t care about, provides all the character-

istics of fiber-optic fixed broadband. Which is to say, it’s super fast. Hyperleap offers internet speeds of 35 mega-bits per second ($39 per month), 100 mbps ($54) and 300 mbpsplus, i.e. up to 1 gigabit ($70). People who simply want to stream Netflix — even at 4K — and be able to play around on their phones at the same time probably only need 35 mbps, which is what most Hyperleap customers sign up for, according to McAlister. The company’s largest footprint is downtown Little Rock, where it’s available in MacArthur Commons, Rock Street Lofts, the Lafayette Building, River Market Tower, the Kramer School, Quapaw Tower and in other apartment and condo complexes. But it also links up to its Tier 1 connection in tall buildings in Midtown and Riverdale, which allows it to service the likes of Rivercliff Apartments. Hyperleap also has a number of commercial clients, including the Arkansas Times. The Broadband Development Group’s future plan is “global domination,” McAlister jokes, but don’t expect to be able to get Hyperleap at your house anytime soon. The business model behind Hyperleap is taking advantage of density. If it can develop relationships with landlords and wire entire apartment complexes for Hyperleap — as it has with the likes of MacArthur Commons — it’s easily able to predict growth. Hyperleap doesn’t advertise; all of its growth up to this point has been word-of-mouth. McAlister declined to provide revenue or customer numbers, but says, at this point, the customer base is really small. The company only has 10 employees. But again, it’s got big plans. Because Little Rock is relatively small without much density, it’s at the small end of markets BDG envisions for itself. The company is already in Dallas, and McAlister says it’s working on another round of funding that would allow it to further expand its footprint there and maybe go into the Bay Area. Nashville and Memphis might be next. Hyperleap touts its speeds and price point and instant activation on its website (bdg.link), but McAlister says the company is especially focused on being the best in the business at customer service: “We don’t want to be the company you hate to buy something from. We want to be the company you love to buy something from.” So far, Little says that’s been his experience. It’s been “phenomenal,” he said. “Real people with real names emailing back very quickly” when a problem arises.

2018

BEST RESIDENTIAL REAL ESTATE AGENCY

ADVANCING INDEPENDENT & EXCITED LEARNERS SINCE 1944

Thank you for voting us Best Residential Real Estate Agency!

he attorneys and staff of Fuqua Campbell are pleased to congratulate our partner, Blake Hendrix, on being selected by the readers of Arkansas Times as Best Lawyer in Arkansas. Blake has repeatedly demonstrated his commitment to both ethics and excellence, and has been recognized for his service to clients, his profession, and the bar. We recognize, understand, and appreciate that this type of recognition can only be achieved through hard work and dedication, and are truly honored that he is a part of our firm. Congratulations Blake! You make us all proud!

BEST LAWYER

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3700 CANTRELL ROAD, SUITE 205 LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS 72205 | 501.374.0200 arktimes.com JULY 26, 2018

BEST OF ARKANSAS - 2018

FAMILY LIFE: Readers gave Best Instagram feed to Hannah Carpenter for her photographs of her children.

Local Media

Max Brantley

TV sports person

People and Politics

Blog

Runner-up: John Brummett

Steve Sullivan

Athlete

Arkansas Blog

Radio personality

Runner-up: Wess Moore

Hunter Henry

Runner-up: The Mighty Rib

Heather and Poolboy

TV station

Runner-up: John Daly

Instagram feed

Runner-up: Lisa Fischer

KATV, Channel 7

Best Arkansan

@hannahacarpenter

Radio station

Runner-up: KARK, Channel 4

Bill Clinton

Runner-up: @missboddington

KUAR-FM, 89.1

Website

Runner-up: Aaron Reddin

TV meteorologist

Runner-up: Alice-FM, 107.7

arktimes.com

Todd Yakoubian

TV personality

Runner-up: katv.com

Best Little Rock City Board member

Runner-up: Ed Buckner

Craig O’Neill

Newspaper writer

Runner-up: Chris May

JULY 26, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

Kathy Webb Runner-up: Capi Peck CONTINUED ON PAGE 46

THANKS FOR VOTING US

BEST PHARMACY FOR THE PAST

5 YEARS IN A ROW!

WHERE TO FIND US: CORNERSTONE PHARMACY

4220 N. Rodney Parham, Ste. 101 | Little Rock (501) 223-2224 CORNERSTONE PHARMACY at Greers Ferry

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CORNERSTONE PHARMACY at Chenal

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cornerstonepharmacy.com arktimes.com JULY 26, 2018

BEST OF ARKANSAS - 2018

Best Little Rocker

Politician

Warwick Sabin

Clarke Tucker

Runner-up: Tippi McCullough

Runner-up: Warwick Sabin

Celebrity

Worst Arkansan

Mary Steenburgen

State Sen. Jason Rapert (R-Conway)

Runner-up: Justin Moore

Charity

Runner-up: Jan Morgan

Runner-up: Bill Dillard

Runner-up: 10 Fitness

Hiking trail Pinnacle Mountain State Park

Recreation

Runner-up: Petit Jean Mountain

Cheap date

Marina

Big Dam Bridge

Little Rock Yacht Club

Runner-up: I-30 Speedway

Runner-up: Heber Springs Marina (Greers Ferry Lake)

Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance

Park

Runner-up: Lucie’s Place

Burns Park

Charity event

Runner-up: Allsopp Park

Eggshibition (Youth Home)

Place to canoe/kayak/tube

Runner-up: Little Rock Heart Ball (Arkansas

Buffalo River

Conservative

Runner-up: Caddo River

Gov. Asa Hutchinson

Place to mountain bike

Runner-up: U.S. Congressman French Hill

Burns Park

Liberal

Runner-up: Mount Kessler (Fayetteville)

BRIAN CHILSON

Heart Association)

Clarke Tucker Runner-up: Kathy Webb

Misuse of taxpayer funds/ property Ten Commandments monument Runner-up: GIF funds

Philanthropist The Walton Family Runner-up: Rick Fleetwood

SECOND WORST ARKANSAN: Only state Sen. Jason Rapert is a worse Arkansan than failed Republican primary candidate Jan Morgan.

Place to swim Little Rock Racquet Club Runner-up: Jim Dailey Fitness & Aquatic

Center

Worst Little Rock City Board member

Golf course

Erma Hendrix

Pleasant Valley Country Club

Runner-up: Joan Adcock

Runner-up: Rebsamen Golf Course

Worst Little Rocker

Gym/place to work out

David Bazzel

Little Rock Athletic Club

Resort The Lodge at Mount Magazine Runner-up: Mountain Harbor Resort & Spa

Weekend getaway Eureka Springs Runner-up: Hot Springs

BEST HAIR SALON 46

JULY 26, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

HOPE IS HERE Q

A psychiatric and behavioral health professional from Rivendell answers your questions

: My wife has been struggling with

to know that you aren’t the only who has

home. Before a patient leaves the

When the appointment is made, it is our

depression for a while now, and

felt this way and that there is hope on the

hospital, an appointment with a licensed

policy to make sure it is within seven

just the other day she confessed

other side of pain.

therapist is secured. If you already have

days of discharging from the hospital,

a therapist, we will contact that therapist

so that healing will continue. Our goal

to me that she has been thinking about

We also have close contact with the

ending her life. I feel like the main thing

family to ensure that they know what

and secure the appointment. If you don’t

is to provide a safe, compassionate,

keeping her from finding a doctor or

it going on during treatment and how

have a therapist, we will use our networks

judgement free place to help you find

getting help is that she feels like she

to better help their loved one transition

to find the best fit for you in your area.

hope and healing. n

“should” be able to deal with it on her own—that if she is a good wife and mom she “shouldn’t” be having these thoughts or feelings at all. And neither one of us knows what to do or what kind of treatment she needs or where to begin. She says she believes we will be better off without her, and I can tell she can’t hear me when I tell her that’s not true. I am scared for her and I don’t know what the first step is.

: We have a lot of patients who come in feeling overwhelmed, hopeless, helpless and thinking of

attempting (or have attempted) suicide. Because of the stigma surrounding mental health and suicide, a lot of our patients are dealing with shame on top of all the other stressors that have led to these thoughts. At Rivendell, we make sure that each patient knows they are cared for, that they aren’t being judged,

At Rivendell, we make sure that each patient knows they are cared for, that they aren’t being judged, and that they have found a safe place to begin to heal. and that they have found a safe place to

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SPECIAL ADVERTISING CONTENT TO ARKANSAS TIMES • JULY, 26 • 2018 47 arktimes.com JULY 26, 2018

Arts Entertainment AND

ALLIGATOR RECORDS

‘FROM THE INSIDE OUT’: Friends, fans, family and bandmates honor Michael Burks with a tribute at CALS Ron Robinson Theater Friday night.

A tribute to the Iron Man

CALS event honors the late bluesman Michael Burks. BY STEPHEN KOCH

hen guitarist Michael world, Burks was nicknamed “Iron Burks died in May 2012, Man” for his marathon concerts. the blues lost a rare “Michael Burks was bigger than life,” thing for the genre — Deb Finney, host of Friday afternoon’s a still-rising star. Burks, who grew “Blues House Party” radio show on up in Camden, had released only five KABF-FM, 88.3, and emcee for Frialbums. And at age 54 — still youth- day’s tribute, said. “His performances ful in the blues world — Burks seemed are legendary. Nonstop playing and poised for ever-bigger things. Now, six full force. It wasn’t uncommon for years after Burks’ death, the Central him to play three or four hours withArkansas Library System’s “Arkansas out a break.” Sounds” project will pay tribute to the Arkansas Sounds music coordinator bluesman on Friday, July 27, at CALS’ John Miller called Burks, the son and Ron Robinson Theater. grandson of blues musicians, an “heir A truly beloved figure in the blues apparent” in the blues world. Except48

JULY 26, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

ing perhaps Luther Allison, Miller said, “Michael made the biggest worldwide impact of any modern Arkansas blues artist.” This concert “came together as a celebration of his July 30th birthday, which would have been his 61st,” Miller said, “and as a way to keep his blues flame burning bright.” Finney said Burks’ “impact on the blues community was different than a lot of other artists.” What set Burks apart? “People were drawn to Michael, and he took time to get to know them. Many of his fans all over the world became his friends,” she said. In fact, Josh Parks — the vocalist/guitarist performing Burks’ music at the tribute concert — was mentored by Burks. Because of Burks’ outsized personality and real connection with his fans, this tribute isn’t simply a star-studded jam, but an event that will include recollections of the man by family, fans and friends — all one and the same to Burks. One of Finney’s own Burks anecdotes comes from a Thanksgiving dinner where Finney was asked to bring dessert. She brought two chocolate pecan pies to the Burks home. “He took them from me and put them on top of the refrigerator,” Finney said, saying, “Shhh.” He never put them out for dinner, but kept both pies for himself. “I was a fan,” Finney told us, “but what meant more to me was that he was my friend. Losing Michael left a big hole in my heart.” Burks was born May 6, 1957, in Milwaukee, Wis., and, family lore has it, was playing guitar by age 5. The family moved to Ouachita County in South Arkansas in the early 1970s, and Michael’s dad opened a club called the Bradley Ferry Country Club on Bradley Ferry Road in Camden. Burks noted in a 2010 interview with the UK’s Earlyblues.com that it was the third blues venue the family had had — “the biggest and the best club we owned.” Four nights a week, every week, Burks led the house band, which opened for — and often backed — the club’s touring blues headliners. According to Burks, the band played funk, R&B, blues, “everything that was on the jukebox.” Through the mid-1990s, Burks’ buzz grew in the blues festival cir-

cuit and beyond as word spread about this newcomer with the brash Albert King-influenced guitar style. Burks recorded his 1997 debut album, the independently released “From The Inside Out,” at keyboardist Stuart Baer’s home studio on Rock Street in downtown Little Rock. “Living Blues” magazine cited it among the year’s best debuts; “Blues Access” called it “the most impressive [independent release] in recent memory.” Burks issued four more albums on Chicago’s vaunted Alligator Records. The last, “Show of Strength,” was completed just before his May 6, 2012, death. Burks collapsed at HartsfieldJackson Atlanta International Airport upon returning stateside from a European tour. He had been scheduled to play Stickyz Rock ’n’ Roll Chicken Shack in downtown Little Rock a few weeks later. In 2016, “I’m A Bluesman,” a “lost” Burks album recorded in 1998 and co-produced by longtime Burks compatriot and former manager/booking agent Wightman Harris, was released. The session tapes had spent nearly 20 years in Harris’ closet before their revival. Harris said he’s “thrilled” about the tribute. Burks “was known worldwide for his eagerness to greet his legions of fans after his shows,” he said. “We were all fortunate to play a part in the making of this great bluesman.” Harris joins panelists Bobbie Burks (Michael Burks’ widow), Lance Womack, Baer and Parks for a discussion of Burks’ legacy at Friday’s event. Finney will moderate. After the discussion, members of the Michael Burks Project — Womack, Baer, Parks and Heather Crosse on bass — will perform works from Burks’ repertoire. While bittersweet to the blues fans around the world, a gathering with Burks stories told by those who loved him followed by a blues jam seems a wholly appropriate tribute for this Iron Man, who to his fans and friends was really a softie underneath. The Michael Burks Tribute takes place at CALS Ron Robinson Theater at 7 p.m. Friday, July 27. Tickets are $10. See arkansassounds.org for tickets.

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A&E NEWS THE ARKANSAS CINEMA SOCIETY announced a portion of the star-studded lineup for “Filmland,” its annual film festival, set Aug. 23-26. Richard Linklater’s 1998 heist film, “The Newton Boys,” is the first screening, at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 23, and he and fellow filmmaker Jeff Nichols will discuss the film afterward. The after-party will be at Cache Restaurant. Friday’s screenings are devoted to Arkansas filmmakers: Jennifer Gerber’s “The Revival,” 12:30 p.m.; Amman Abbasi’s “Dayveon,” 4 p.m.; and the Arkansas premiere of Daniel Campbell and Graham Gordy’s “Antiquities,” 7:30 p.m. (All screenings are followed by a discussion with the filmmakers with Nichols moderating. The “Antiquities” discussion will include actor Mary Steenburgen and executive producer Gary Newton.) Steenburgen returns Saturday for a screening and discussion of episodes of Will Forte’s Fox series “Last Man on Earth,” 12:30 p.m., with Forte, Steenburgen John Solomon and Ted Danson joining Nichols onstage for a Q&A session. Next up: Forte’s “MacGruber,” 4 p.m., after which Forte and Solomon will be joined by Steenburgen, Nichols and director (and “Lonely Island” star) Jorma Taccone. Finally, the documentary “Survivor’s Guide to Prison” screens, 7:30 p.m., with a discussion from producers Christina and David Arquette and writer/director Matthew Cooke afterward. Saturday’s after-party kicks off at 9 p.m. at the Rev Room, with music from Phoenix. Finally, a block of Arkansas Shorts screens 12:30 p.m. Sunday, followed by Josh and Miles Miller’s “All the Birds Have Flown South,” 4 p.m. For announcements to come, visit arkansascinemasociety.org.

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AT PARTIES LAST WEEK in Little Rock and El Dorado, the Murphy Arts District announced the lineup for its 31st annual Musicfest, to take place Oct. 1820 at MAD’s outdoor amphitheater and in the adjacent Griffin Music Hall. Last year marked the beginning of a reinvented downtown El Dorado, where a two-phase development plan hopes to transform the former oil boomtown into a hub of art and culture in south Arkansas. The first phase opened to great fanfare with concerts from Brad Paisley, Ludacris, Train, Smokey Robinson, Migos, ZZ Top and more. The 2018 lineup includes: Cardi B, Toby Keith, Gucci Mane, Sammy Hagar & The Circle, George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic, Morris Day & The Time, Sheila E., Lita Ford, Justin Moore, Bret Michaels, Carly Pearce and Jimmie Allen. Get tickets at eldomad.com or by calling 870-4443007. Follow Rock Candy on Twitter: @RockCandies

arktimes.com JULY 26, 2018

THE

TO-DO

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BY STEPHANIE SMITTLE

THURSDAY 7/26

ARKANSAS TIMES BEST OF PARTY

6 p.m. Albert Pike Masonic Center. $40-$75.

The Albert Pike Memorial Temple — that gargantuan edifice at 712 Scott St. in downtown Little Rock — was closed to the public until 2014, but those fortunate enough to have laid eyes on its interior knows those hallowed halls are lavishly appointed and stately, just right for a red-carpet affair celebrating the finest movers and shakers in the Greater Little Rock area. Toast your favorite poet, bread baker, chiropractor, bowling alley or hiking trail with us at “Hollywood Nights,” a datamax-sponsored, Hollywood-themed Arkansas Times shindig we’re holding in conjunction with our annual Best of Arkansas readers survey. See our cover story this week for the winners, listen to smooth crooning and big horn riffs from Dizzy 7, and hang with 107 Liquor reps dressed up as the stars of “Sex and the City” making Smirnoff vodka and Bulleit Bourbon cocktails, folks from Ciao Baci dressed as mariachi gunfighters and serving Palomas, Loca Luna employees in character as “Pirates of the Caribbean” serving Black Pearl Punch made with Captain Morgan rum; and staff from Red Door channeling “Tombstone” and serving a Johnny Ringo Old Fashioned. 109 & Co., Petit & Keet, Southern Table and others will also be serving, and Simply the Best Catering will temper the cocktails, wine and beer with Royale with Cheese Sliders (inspired by “Pulp Fiction”), Bubba Gump Shrimp and Watermelon Ceviche (inspired by “Forrest Gump”), a “Nacho Libre” nacho bar, “Fried Green Tomatoes,” gazpacho shooters, potato sticks and all sorts of gourmet popcorn. Glazer’s Beer and Beverage are behind the booze offerings from sponsors Johnnie Walker, Smirnoff, Tanqueray, Crown Royal, Captain Morgan, Bulleit Bourbon and Baileys. Oh, and Colonial Wine and Spirits will be on hand for photos, so break out the good eyeshadow.

COUCH JACKETS, GINSU WIVES, SPIRIT CUNTZ, JAMIE LOU AND THE HULLABALOO 9 p.m. White Water Tavern.

“Two Star Kinda Band” is the name of the new cassette release from Spirit Cuntz, and despite the self-deprecating title, the trio has been low-key raging across Little Rock for a solid couple of years now, accruing devotees with lo-fi earworms like “Two Cents” and a screamy audience participation number called “Stranger Anal.” The band members also happen to be friendly with some of the most inventive outfits in town, and have recruited them to help kick off this tour and tape-release show, which includes the perennially sexy/horrific performance art of Ginsu Wives, the perennially rapturous/robust tones of Jamie Lou and The Hullabaloo and the latest band to wax frenetic on the Chicago-based Audiotree Live series, Couch Jackets. This is a hell of a lineup, but if you still need convincing, check out Couch Jackets’ layered, meandering “Fake Internet” on the aforementioned Audiotree sessions. JULY 26, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

THURSDAY 7/26

SELWYN BIRCHWOOD 8 p.m. Rev Room. $10-$13.

THURSDAY 7/26

GUILTY PLEASURES: Blues guitarist and songwriter Selwyn Birchwood plays the Rev Room Thursday night.

Whether or not Florida counts taste/I don’t like no reefer/Except evas part of the Deep South depends on ery day”), but he’s pretty crystal clear who you ask, but if you’re listening to about where he stands on other tracks Tampa native Selwyn Birchwood play from 2017’s “Pick Your Poison,” as in while you ponder the question, your “Police State”: “Can’t ignore the headanswer’s more likely to lean toward lines/Citizens getting beat/Can’t help a “yes.” The prodigious guitarist was but wonder/Who’s policing the police?” spurred to pursue blues music when, Sartorially polished as he is, Birchas an 18-year-old, he heard Buddy Guy wood looks endearingly out of place play a concert in Orlando, and the path when he’s interviewed on morning teleseems to suit him pretty well. In the vision spots plugging an upcoming perlast five years, Birchwood’s become an formance — electric mane, goofy grin, A-lister at blues fests across the globe, boyish delivery — an image that earns writing his own music, pursuing sea- him the uncontested right to sing the soned mentors and surrounding him- lyrics he wrote to “Corporate Drone”: self with stellar players — saxophonist “They love to make cuts/Like they don’t Regi Oliver, for one. Birchwood may got a dime to spare/They cut my days equivocate like a politician under fire and they cut my pay/They even wanna on his latest, “Guilty Pleasures” (“I cut my hair.” The John Calvin Brewer don’t like no whiskey, I just like the Band opens the show.

IN BRIEF

THURSDAY 7/26

FRIDAY 7/27

BONE THUGS-N-HARMONY 8 p.m. Clear Channel Metroplex. $40-$50.

Bizzy Bone, Wish Bone, Layzie Bone, Krayzie Bone and Flesh-n-Bone rose to fame after giving an audition in Eazy E’s dressing room, having pursued Eazy on a dogged quest that sounds like the stuff of biopics (and is, actually, in F. Gary Gray’s N.W.A. epic “Straight Outta Compton,” in a cinematic moment Bone Thugs is reportedly pitching as a starting point for its own movie tale). Bone Thugs went on to dominate the rap charts in the mid-’90s with all the tunes you’ll walk in to this concert wanting to hear live: “Tha Crossroads,” “Thuggish Ruggish Bone” and that payday rallying cry, “1st of the Month.” Come to sing along to “Foe tha Love of $,” stay to see if slow jams like “Weed Song” make it onto the set list.

If you liked Rick Gutierrez’s comedy special “I’m Not Mad, I’m Just A Parent” on Netflix, catch him in person at The Loony Bin this week, 7:30 p.m. Thu.-Sat., 10 p.m. Fri.-Sat., $10-$15. It’s your last chance to catch The Studio Theatre’s production of “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas,” 7:30 p.m. Thu.-Sat., 2:30 p.m. Sun., 320 W. Seventh St., $20-$25. The Arkansas Travelers take on the Tulsa Drillers at Dickey-Stephens Park, with fireworks after the Friday game, 7:10 p.m. Thu.-Fri., 6:10 p.m. Sat.-Sun., $7-$13. Red Shahan’s music touches on the messier corners of West Texas culture, and the Ozarks-born songwriter performs at Stickyz Rock ’n’ Roll Chicken Shack, 8:30 p.m., $10. Smokey plays at Cajun’s Wharf for its weekly Big Swingin’ Deck Party, 5:30 p.m., free. Preserve Arkansas hosts Arkie Pub

Trivia at Stone’s Throw Brewing, 6:30 p.m., free. “Camp Hoochwood” is the theme for the Museum of Discovery’s “Science After Dark” series, featuring “all the joys of summer camp, but with booze,” 6:30 p.m., $10. Mark Christ, community outreach director for the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, presents “Letters From World War I,” a Brown Bag Lunch Lecture on Lt. Paul Remmel, noon, Old State House Museum, free. The Whigs frontman Parker Gispert plays a solo set at Maxine’s in Hot Springs, 8 p.m., with Sean Alexander Dixon. Singer-songwriter Brad Byrd performs at Nexus Coffee + Creative, 7:30 p.m. Arnaudville, La., sculptor George Marks of NUNU Art Collective speaks at The Joint Theater & Coffeehouse as part of the Potluck and Poison Ivy storytelling series, with live music by Karen Jr., 7:30 p.m., $35.

FRIDAY 7/27

JOSH REED

PEACEMAKER: Guitarist, vocalist and songwriter Grace Potter performs at the Peacemaker Festival this weekend in Fort Smith.

FRIDAY 7/27-SATURDAY 7/29

PEACEMAKER FESTIVAL

“Delta Exhibition” Grand Award winner Lisa Krannichfeld gives a gallery talk at the Arkansas Arts Center, noon. Author A’Lelia Bundles gives a talk, “Arkansas Roots: From Helena and Pine Bluff to the Mosaic Templars and Madam C.J. Walker,” 6 p.m., Kendall Science Center, Philander Smith College (800 W. Daisy L. Gatson Bates Drive), free. Oklahoma multi-instrumentalist, producer and mentor Travis Linville takes “Wishes” and other gems to Four Quarter Bar with a full band, 10 p.m., $8. Slobberbone frontman Brent Best shares a bill with Isaac Hoskins, Bark and Kenny Roby at the White Water Tavern, 9 p.m. Ten Penny Gypsy teams up with Buddy Case at Ya Ya’s Euro Bistro, 6:30 p.m., free. Melody Pond takes its tight harmonies to the mountain stage at Ozark Folkways in mountainous Winslow, 22733 U.S. Highway 71 North, 7 p.m., $5. Tragikly White returns to the stage for a dance party at Stickyz, 9:30 p.m., $10. Greasy Tree brings its blues rock to Kings Live

7 p.m. Fri., 5:30 p.m. Sat. Harry E. Kelley River Park, Fort Smith. $39-$175.

SATURDAY 7/28

While Central Arkansas festival lovers have hemmed and hawed over the fate and thrust of Riverfest, Fort Smith’s been doing its own riverfront thing — for four years straight. This year, the Peacemaker Festival includes among its headliners earthy soul rocker, guitarist and co-conspirator to the likes of Kenny Chesney and Flaming Lips, Grace Potter; soul revivalist/reinventor Anderson East; hard blues purveyors Rival Sons; bassless (but not baseless) Nashville Southern rock trio The Cadillac Three; Funky Meters, torch-carriers for the funk sound pioneered by the original Meters; silver-tongued Tupelo, Miss., savant Paul Thorn; and smartass storytelling legend Ray Wylie Hubbard. As long as you’re there, you may as well stick around for something called “Praise God and Pass the Biscuits,” a free-admission Sunday morning breakfast, 10 a.m., with a 15-minute sermon, gospel music and a self-professed mission of “feeding the homeless and hungover.” Get details and tickets at peacemakerfest.com.

DeFrance returns stateside for a driving Southern rock set at Stickyz, with Arkansas Dave, 9 p.m., $6. Hallow Point, Eddie & The Defiantz, My Hands to War and Project Eden share a bill at Vino’s, 8 p.m., $10. Knox Hamilton takes its breezy beach pop to the stage at Rev Room, with Brother Sundance and Josh Tilley, 8:30 p.m., $12-$15. Funk Factory takes the outdoor stage at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art for the Forest Concert Series, with The Crusades, Bentonville, 7 p.m., $10. Foul Play Cabaret proves that less is more with a burlesque show at Maxine’s, 9 p.m., $12-$15. Harrisong performs at Hibernia Irish Tavern, 7:30 p.m. Canvas boogies at Cajun’s, 9 p.m., $5, or come earlier and catch a set from Alex Summerlin, 5:30 p.m., free.

Music in Conway, with an opening set from Tyler Sellers, 8:30 p.m., $5. “The Ultimate Prince Tribute” returns to the stage at the Rev Room, 9 p.m., $15. New Orleans-based rocker Jack Sledge gets introspective at Maxine’s, with Jamie Lou and The Hullabaloo and Cons of Formant, 9 p.m., $7. Elsewhere in Hot Springs, Downday entertains at Oaklawn Racing & Gaming’s Silks Bar & Grill, 10 p.m. Fri.-Sat., free. Some Guy Named Robb kicks off the weekend with a happy hour set at Cajun’s Wharf, 5:30 p.m., free, and later, catch Polly Baker, 9 p.m., $5. Christian Lewis, also known as CLEW, performs at South on Main, 9 p.m., $10. The Cody Wayne Band takes the stage at West End Smokehouse, 10 p.m., $7. Longtime Bethesda, Md., bluegrass outfit Seldom Scene plays a set at the Ozark Folk Center in Mountain View, 7 p.m., $14. At Thirst N’ Howl Bar & Grill, Westbound Revival plays in celebration of a new EP, with an opening set from Bad Habit, 8 p.m.

TK Cowboy and Mattie Neumayer play Dueling Pianos at Kings Live Music in Conway, 9 p.m., $5. Against the Grane plays a free show at Markham Street Grill & Pub, 8:30 p.m. Oliver Elders Jr., former head football coach at Horace Mann, will sign copies of his book, "Fruit of the Spirit," at Pyramid Art, Books & Custom Framing, 2 p.m. Opal Agafia & The Sweet Nothings bring their mountain boogie to the stage at Four Quarter Bar, 10 p.m., $8. Travis Bowman entertains at Core Brewing in Argenta, 7 p.m., free. Harrisong plays a set at Hibernia Irish Tavern, 7:30 p.m. Price the Poet, Justice, Qui Shanti, DQ Emcee, Icon, Langston Okinawa and Q.G. share a bill at Afrodesia, 9700 N. Rodney Parham Road, Suite I-3, 9 p.m., $6. CONTINUED ON PAGE 53

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arktimes.com JULY 26, 2018

THE

TO-DO

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BY STEPHANIE SMITTLE

SATURDAY 7/28 BRIAN CHILSON

BLOCK ON ROCK 5TH BIRTHDAY BASH 4 p.m. Stone’s Throw Brewing. $5.

The home beermakers-turned- sas Circus Arts will be whirling and pro beermakers at Stone’s Throw twirling, and the brewery will feature Brewing have been carrying the collaborations with fellow fermenters. Quapaw Quarter suds torch for half Arkansas Rice Council sponsors the a decade now, and they’re throwing event, kids 10 and under get in free, a block party bash as a birthday par- and your admission supports Prety, with live music by musicologist- serve Arkansas. See stonesthrowbeer. pickers The Creek Rocks and brass com for a detailed parking map, and bonanza The Big Dam Horns. Neigh- check out the full range of festivities bors at the Arkansas Arts Center will at the brewery's Facebook page. have a marketplace set up, Arkan-

ON THE BURNS PARK RIVERFRONT: Charlotte Taylor kicks off the 19th annual Blues on the River this weekend in North Little Rock.

TEACHERS ONLY: Public school teacher-turned-comedian Eddie B. performs at Robinson Center Performance Hall on Saturday night.

SATURDAY 7/28

BLUES ON THE RIVER

SATURDAY 7/28

3 p.m. Burns Park. $29-$50.

As it turns out, the Arkansas River has not one, but two shores, and one of them is home to the 19th annual Blues on the River Festival this Saturday, with sets from seasoned vets like the 77-yearold Hall of Famer Latimore, Chicago blues icon “Steady Rollin’” Bob Margolin and plenty from the new guard, the local guard and the blues-adjacent: Charlotte Taylor, Rikki D, Ed Bowman, Heather Crosse, Billy Jones, Gil Franklin, The Michael Burks Project (fresh from their Burks tribute the night before), Arkansas Brothers, Clarksdale’s Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, Carter Thomas, Rodney Block, Robert Kimbrough, Tragikly White, Preston Shannon, Theodis Ealy, Bigg Robb and more. Use your ticket stub to get $10 off the $20 ticket for the festival after-party at Gigi’s Soul Cafe & Lounge, hosted by Sonta Jean of KOKY-FM, 102.1, and featuring performances from Dino D & The D Train Band and Katrice “Butterfly” Newbill.

JULY 26, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

EDDIE B 8 p.m. Robinson Center Performance Hall. $25-$65.

Teachers don’t get paid enough While Calling Roll,” “What Teachers to teach the subjects they’re hired to Really Say About What They Get Paid” teach during the school day, let alone and “What Texas Teachers Really Say all the extra roles and hours they About Hurricane Harvey,” and they’re take on to make our children smarter going to Eddie Brown’s shows to hear and less insufferable. And, truth be it. The Houston comedian, who goes told, given the opportunity to peek by Eddie B., taught public school — behind the curtain and hear what fifth grade, heroically — at Houston’s teachers really think, I’m not certain Varnett School East when the Youall of us would want to know. Turns Tube series he made as a comedic outout I’m wrong about that, though; let took off, and now he’s touring on a audiences all over definitely want to “Teachers Only” tour, doing stand-up know things like “What Teachers for a chronically underappreciated Really Say About Students’ Names segment of the workforce.

IN BRIEF, CONT.

SUNDAY 7/29

FRIDAY 7/27-SUNDAY 8/12

‘BARE: A POP OPERA’ 7:30 p.m. Fri.-Sat., 2:30 p.m. Sun. The Weekend Theater. $18-$22.

Imbued with all the layers of symbolism that Catholicism and Shakespeare afford, the story of clandestine love between two high school boys at a boarding school unfolds in this 2000 rock musical. Sets have ranged from Instagram mosaics to live feeds of cell phones onstage, and it’s no wonder “Bare” has been such an inspiration for stage designers: At the play’s core are young people grappling with self-image and sexual identity. It is unquestionably a coming-of-age story, but, as Director Trent Reese said in a press release, it would be a mistake to pigeonhole it as such. “In reality, it is far more than that,” Reese said. “It tackles issues of inclusion and revelation, love and acceptance, and the roles we play in our everyday lives. It is a beautiful example of the courage it takes to be your authentic self and the perils of not being heard.” Max Churchwell and Ethan Patterson, two young actors you may have spotted in Argenta Community Theater’s “A Christmas Carol” or in The Studio Theater, play Peter and Jason, the two young men at the core of the love story. A reception follows the opening night show on Friday, July 27.

A wildly eclectic, multigenre bill this week goes up for the Sabbath at Stickyz, with sets from Pancho Casanova, Klubhouse, The Chemtrails and Holy Smokes, 8 p.m., $5. Across the river, Doug Dicharry takes his stupefying one-man band routine, Dance Monkey Dance, to the stage at Four Quarter Bar, 8 p.m., free. Singersongwriter Gene Reid performs at the Faulkner County Library in Conway, 2 p.m., free. Weezer and the Pixies share a bill at the Walmart AMP in Rogers, 7:30 p.m., $35-$179. First United Methodist Church features music from the Broadway Musical “Kinky Boots” as part of its “The Gospel According to Broadway” series, 9 a.m. and 11 a.m.

* w Ƅ CQ

4-10 PM

SATURDAY JULY 28 402 E. NINTH ST.

TUESDAY 7/31 The Brian Nahlen Band, Jason Lee Hale, Big Red Flag and Good Foot team up for “Immigrant Reunification Benefit Show,” a bill to benefit RAICES, 7 p.m., White Water Tavern, donations. Prog-ish provocateurs Coheed and Cambria take their latest space epic to the Walmart AMP, 6:30 p.m., $30-$60. The Faulkner Chamber Music Festival presents “Motives,” a concert of works by Franck, Gubaidulina and Zlabys, 5:30 p.m., Stella Boyle Smith Concert Hall, UA Little Rock, $15. Ashtyn Barbaree takes the stage at Bear’s Den Pizza in Conway, 10 p.m. CALS Ron Robinson screens “Little Shop of Horrors” as part of its Terror Tuesday series, 6 p.m., $2.

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BEER | FOOD TRUCKS

MONDAY 7/30 Catch the Arkansas Travelers at Dickey-Stephens Park as they take on the Northwest Arkansas Naturals, 7:10 p.m. Mon.-Wed., $7-$13.

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ARKANSAS TIMES

WEDNESDAY 8/1

SATURDAY 7/28

JAMES & THE ULTRASOUNDS 9 p.m. White Water Tavern.

James & The Ultrasounds play like they came to tear the roof off. Or maybe like they’re out to prove that surfy guitar riffs only sound dreamy and chill when they come from a place with actual surf, and that the licks born out of landlocked Memphis are meaner and rowdier. With a sonic profile that’s equal parts Link Wray, “Ringo Buys a Rifle” and fellow Memphian John Paul Keith, this show’s for good shoes and big hair, and for anyone who prefers their watusi a little wild.

The Windgate Center of Art + Design at UA Little Rock opens the exhibition “Memory/Commitment/Aspiration” about political oppression, the Brad Cushman Gallery, and the installation “Water Memory” by Jowita Wyszomirska, Small Gallery, 9 a.m. Vocalist Martha Burks and The Rodney Block Collective give two concerts as part of the Art Porter Music Education’s “A Work of Art” celebration, 7 p.m. and 9 p.m., Cajun’s Wharf, $35-$50. Spiritualist/rocker Israel Nash takes tunes from “Lifted,” inspired by a stint in a quonset hut in Texas Hill Country, to the stage at South on Main, 8 p.m., $10. Georgia superstar Luke Bryan takes his 2017 album “What Makes You Country” (and other polarizing tunes) to the Walmart AMP, 7 p.m., $56-$165. Works from incarcerated poets are read at Fayetteville’s Stage Eighteen as part of Decarcerate’s “Inside Out,” 18 E. Center St., 7 p.m., donations. Follow Rock Candy on Twitter: @RockCandies

arktimes.com JULY 26, 2018

Dining WHAT’S COOKIN’

RUMORS OF A NEW bar coming to Main Street in Little Rock are beginning to look like fact. A plumbing permit has been pulled for a business called the Atlas Bar at 1224 Main St. The owner of the bar has been keeping a low profile. Will it look like the elaborate Atlas Bar in Singapore? If the owner is who we think it is, he’s probably dropped into the Asian gin bar a time or two. MEANWHILE, LOVERS OF Latin American food are on the edge of their seats waiting for Dos Rocas, the beer and taco bar that a partnership arising out of the ownership of the Root Cafe is putting at 1220 S. Main St. One of those owners, Jack Sundell, has described the food that Dos Rocas (two rocks) will serve as “authentic Latin American street food … sort of like an indoor taco truck,” with pupusas, empanadas, yucca fries and more. The chef will be Luis Vasquez, the breakfast cook at The Root and a native of Honduras. Sundell’s wife, Corri Bristow Sundell; The Root kitchen manager Cesar Bordon-Avalos; and BordonAvalos’ wife, Adelia Kittrell, are the other partners in the venture. Corri Sundell said they’re working hard to open by the end of summer. THE HAWAIIAN RAW FISH MOVEMENT is swimming westward and northward, and soon Central Arkansas will be able to boast that its first six purveyors of raw fish bowls opened in 2018 alone. The owners of Ohia Poke (the poke restaurant in the former home of Lulav, at 220 W. Sixth St.) are opening a second Ohia Poke in The Promenade at Chenal shopping center. (The restaurant’s Facebook page tells us that it’s opening “across from Nike,” as in the shoe store.) Poke Hula, which opened its raw fish bowl eatery at 415 E. Third St. in February, opened a second Poke Hula in May at 5621 Kavanaugh Blvd., the former home of frozen yogurt purveyor Red Mango, and was to open a third Poke Hula this week at 1115 Oak St. in Conway. It’s announced plans for a fourth Poke Hula at 2607 McCain Blvd., North Little Rock. AFTER SEVERAL CONSTRUCTION SETBACKS, Ira Mittleman has finally opened Ira’s, his long-in-the-works restaurant in the historic Rose Building at 311 Main St. Chef Mittleman and chef Jeffrey Moore offer up an haute-cuisine American menu with Italian touches and a curry dish, too. Hours are 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Michael Hollis is bartender and the creator of the Arkansour, a concoction of gin, Cappelletti (a wine-based aperitif), vermouth, lemon, sugar, egg white and bitters. Hog fans will consider the Bacon Old Fashioned: bourbon, bacon, maple flavoring and bitters. Happy hour is 4-6 p.m. 54

JULY 26, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

TAE THIS ONE ON: The Blackened Shrimp + Grits with pork-fat “redneck gravy.”

Mixed signals

TAE shows promise, but needs to get its act together.

ating is a straight-up, bona- Southern dishes with twists and surfide hard thing to do. We’re prises. We heard good things from all on our best behavior in friends, so we set out to give it a try. that initial stage, right? We Our trouble began when we tried to maybe dress a little better than usual, find out the basics of TAE. Despite being we trot out our funniest stories to peo- open for several weeks, TAE has no ple who haven’t heard them yet. Heck, functional web presence — only a home there might even be dancing involved. page. The restaurant’s Facebook page Is there anything more maddening, shows only photographs of its menus. then, than a new romantic prospect who Even the “About” section of TAE’s Faceruns hot and cold? One who inspires book page only says, “Description?! ... fears about whether the problem is actu- Fun Arkansas-inspired food that tastes ally you? Draining. real good. Yep, that’s definitely the best What I’m trying to say: I’m not sure way to put it.” No other information is what’s going on at TAE but, after three to be had. dates, I get the feeling it’s not that seriTaking a chance, we popped in for ous about us. lunch, where we were roundly ignored TAE (“True Arkansas Eatery”) is a for several minutes as staff scurried recent addition to the Hotel Frederica, about. After a few unsuccessful attempts which was until recently the Legacy to ask about a table, we left and pursued Hotel on Capitol Avenue. It’s the brain- other lunch options. Indifference burns. child of Justin Patterson, owner of the After licking our wounds for a bit, we late, lamented Southern Gourmasian tried TAE again for a Saturday morning restaurant, and focuses on upscale brunch. We were the only table, and disSouthern dishes. It offers traditional covered that TAE offers what it calls a

Follow Eat Arkansas on Twitter: @EatArkansas

“Brunch to Brinner” menu from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekends. Happily, our choices were nothing short of outstanding. TAE’s Blackened Shrimp + Grits ($12) dish was a real treat, featuring six plump shrimp atop tender grits and covered with “redneck gravy” — nothing like redeye, but rather a pork-fat-based concoction. The other hit was TAE’s hot and fluffy Biscuits + Gravy ($7) offering, which came with either chocolate gravy or cream gravy. We opted for the chocolate version, a thick and sweet choice that left us nearly licking the bowl at meal’s end. Additional “Brunch to Brinner” options include the Twice-Fried Chicken + Waffle ($11), the “Li’l John” ham and cheese sandwich ($9.25), and a variety of sides, such as smoky greens, purple hull peas and candied yams. Riding the high of our good meal, and on our recommendation, we invited two friends for dinner at TAE on a Sunday evening. Sadly, from the outset this meal turned out to be a disappointment. Our waitress wasn’t knowledgeable about the beer selections, so after a bit of backand-forth, we went to the bar and dis-

BELLY UP

Check out the Times’ food blog, Eat Arkansas arktimes.com

covered TAE had no beer whatsoever, only wine and various cocktail offerings. Two wines and one cocktail eventually arrived, 20 minutes later, and only after two separate inquiries to waitstaff who happened by. Though the TAE Facebook page features a separate menu of vegan and vegetarian options, it was not available the weekend we took our vegetarian companion. Forging on, we ordered two appetizers: the cheese dip ($6.25) and the Basket of Biscuits ($5.25). When the biscuits arrived, they were scorched on the bottom and hard, resulting in jokes about broken teeth. The cheese dip was good, however, with salty tortilla chips that seemed to have been made in-house. Other appetizers available on the weekend menu include Fried Green Tomatoes ($8) and Maple Bacon Popcorn ($5) Our entrees did not raise the bar. TAE’s weekend menu features a section headed “Burgers, Sandwiches, Etc.,” which — in its entirety — consists of the aforementioned Li’l John ham and cheese sandwich, the Twice-Fried Fried Chicken Biscuit ($9) and the Homestyle Patty Melt ($9). One companion chose the latter, which is served with pimento cheese on “Arkansas Toast” — which is pretty much just toast. He was not impressed. Our vegetarian friend sought to cobble together a meal from various sides, ordering a simple salad, sauteed zucchini and squash and an order of “country potatoes.” The best part of the meal was the salad, which was dressed in an apple vinaigrette. The bowl of sauteed zucchini and squash proved relatively bland until the end, when the spices were found lurking at the bottom of the bowl. The coup de grace was his bowl of “country potatoes,” which were simply chopped up french fries! To round out the meal, we ordered Note from client: Lets put the “Arkansas Toothpicks” ($12), a

TAE (True Arkansas Eatery) 625 W. Capitol Ave., inside the Hotel Frederica 301-0892 truarkeat.com Quick bite

The blackened shrimp and grits are fantastic, along with the biscuits and chocolate gravy. The vegan/vegetarian menu is not available on the weekend.

Hours

11 a.m. to 2 p.m. weekdays, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

Other info

serving better than bar food all night long July

We were told this week that there now is beer, along with wine and some cocktails are available.

country-fried spare rib, with a light coating of barbecue sauce and more sauce on the side. The meat was tender, but the flavor and consistency of breaded and fried spare ribs was unappealing. Frankly, this entire meal was a disaster. For Act Three, we gamely returned later in the week for lunch and had a much better experience. Our friend ordered the “Twice-Fried Fried Chicken Gyro” ($9.25), a giant pile of fried chicken served on gyros, with hand-cut fries. The portion was too big to eat as a sandwich, but he reported excellent flavor, with special kudos for the fries. We also ordered a fantastic “Feed Ya Soul” bowl ($10): rice, smoky greens, zucchini, squash and purple hull peas. In sum: When it comes to TAE, we’re unsure about our relationship status. Sometimes she clearly cares, sometimes she clearly doesn’t. There’s clearly potential for something here, but our partner needs to put in some work and end this confusion about where we stand. There’s plenty of flavor out there elsewhere.

27 - Travis Linville 28 - Opal Agafia and the Sweet Nothings 29 - Dance Monkey Dance (8pm - Free Show)

August

1 - Trey Johnson and Jason Willmon (8pm - Free Show) 3 - Tom Houston Jones Band 4 - Grid Squid 6 - The Reverend Horton Heat w/ The P 47’s Check-out the bands at Fourquarterbar.com Open until 2am every night!

415 Main St North Little Rock • (501) 313-4704 • fourquarterbar.com

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Seafood Boils and Catering! Book your event today! 1619 REBSAMEN PARK RD. 501.838.3888 thefadedrose.com arktimes.com JULY 26, 2018

CONCERT REVIEW

Follow Arkansas Blog on Twitter: @ArkansasBlog Follow us on Instagram: ArkTimes

Michael Burks Tribute Friday • July 27 • 7 p.m. • $10

CALS Ron Robinson Theater Hear recollections and stories by family and friends, followed by a live performance. Tickets available at ArkansasSounds.org.

Libraries Rock!

Saturday • July 28 • 10 a.m. • Free

Hillary Rodham Clinton Children’s Library & Learning Center Enjoy a day of musical activities and games.

The Greatest Showman Sing-Along Version (PG) Monday • July 30 • 6 p.m. • Free CALS Ron Robinson Theater Teens and adults, this is the moment you’ve waited for.

The Roots of American Music Concert Friday • Aug 10 • 7 pm • $10

CALS Ron Robinson Theater An acoustic band of Danny Dozier, Tim Crouch, Irl Hess, Ken Loggains, and Gary Gazaway trace the roots and branches of American music. Tickets available at ArkansasSounds.org.

BEYOND THE SWIMSUIT CROWD: There aren’t a lot of drawbacks to Timberwood Amphitheater, unless you detest the idea of having to go into a theme and water park to watch a show there.

Less cowbell Foghat and Blue Oyster Cult rock at Magic Springs. BY JIM HARRIS

Terror Tuesdays Tuesdays • $2 • 6 p.m.

CALS Ron Robinson Theater July 31: The Little Shop of Horrors (1960/NR) CALS Ron Robinson Theater is located on the Main Library campus, 100 Rock St.

CALS.ORG 56

JULY 26, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES

dozen years or so separated visits to the Timberwood Amphitheater for me and my son. But one thought was the same, and at the same time reminded me that a dozen years of watching your kid grow up flies by like a flash. That thought: Man, I wish Little Rock had an outdoor music site like this. Yes, Little Rock has had an amphi-

theater on the river over those years and more. That venue, which originally was never intended for anything much more than a place for the Arkansas Symphony to play outdoors, somehow found a way into be a pretty great outdoor rock venue for a short time in the 1990s (remember the Soul Asylum, Screaming Trees and Spin Doctors show?). Then they built all kinds of crap in and around

JULY 12 - 29

MUSIC & LYRICS BY CAROL HALL BOOK BY LARRY L. KING & PETER MASTERSON

320 W. 7TH ST. - DOWNTOWN LITTLE ROCK follow us on social media @studiotheatrelr

OPERA IN THE ROCK PRESENTS

it, ruined some pretty nice sightlines, suit crowd hanging around the water shrank the workable seating areas down park in high-90-degree weather all by several thousand, made parking for day, too; we encountered several folks the masses a real pain and, well … ). from Little Rock and beyond Saturday I’ll revisit this, but we know Little night, July 14, who were eager to see Rock is in pretty much in the same shape ’70s rock bands Foghat and Blue Oyster for outdoor music venues as it was 12 Cult and who drove over just for the years ago, around when Magic Springs show (when asked by the emcee, several Theme and Water Park in Hot Springs hundred people raised their hands to was opening its outdoor amphitheater indicate they were season-ticket holdto add one more attractive feature that ers to Magic Springs, but you can buy would boost season ticket sales. See, entrance just to one show). then as now, you buy a season ticket My son, now 16, was enthusiastic to Magic Springs for the summer for enough to mention more than a month around $60 and you get access to a sum- ago that he wanted to go to the twin bill mer Saturday night lineup of shows, and of classic rock. Flash back 12 years ago: something will suit your fancy — coun- As entertainment editor of the Arkantry, classic rock, Christian rock, modern sas Times, I’d brought home a demo CD and heavy rock, Disney pop. The plan of a Boston-area band of Berklee Colappeals to more than just the swim- lege of Music seniors, the now-defunct

FRI, AUG 17, 7:30PM • SUN, AUG 19, 2:30PM AT THE STUDIO THEATRE • 320 W 7TH STREET • LITTLE ROCK Get tickets at centralarkansastickets.com

CONTINUED ON PAGE 59

arktimes.com JULY 26, 2018

HOT SPRINGS HAPPENINGS

august 2018 in Hot Springs

For a complete calendar of events, visit hotsprings.org SPONSORED BY OAKLAWN

STARDUST Stardust Big Band welcomes the return of Gary Meggs on tenor sax to replace Dr. Earl Hesse who has retired from Stardust after 18 years on the band. Gary, a student of Dr. Hesse, has performed with Stardust on Flute, Alto and Tenor Sax alternately for 15 years. Stardust plays from 3:00 p.m. to 5:45 p.m. at the Arlington Resort Hotel & Spa. Admission is $10 and free for students K-12. Call 501-767-5482 or visit stardustband.net for more information.

AUGUST 3-12 LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE The Pocket Community Theatre presents the popular musical Little Orphan Annie! Performances of all Pocket Community Theatre productions are 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, with a 2:30 p.m. Sunday matinee. General admission is $15 for plays and $20 for musicals. Admission for children through age 12 is $5 for all shows! Visit pockettheatre. com for reservations and more information!

AUGUST 12 JUSTIN MOORE Country sensation Justin Moore will hold a free concert on the weigh-in stage at the Bank of the Ozarks Arena, beginning at 4:00 p.m., before the world’s premier bass anglers weigh their final-day limits at the 2018 Fishing League Worldwide (FLW) Forrest Wood Cup – professional bass fishing’s world championship. Fans of all ages are encourage to attend! More details at FLWFishing.com. AUGUST 30 SEPTEMBER 2 HOT SPRINGS JAZZFEST The Hot Springs Jazz Society presents the 27th Hot Springs JazzFest in Hot Springs National 58 58

JULY 26, 2018 ARKANSAS TIMES JULY 26, 2018 ARKANSAS TIMES

Park with tickets ranging from free to $40. Artists include saxophonist, pianist, composer, musician extraordinaire Matt Catingub along with the Arkansas Jazz Orchestra, Henderson State’s NuFusion, the University of Arkansas in Monticello’s Jazz Band, and Arkansas High’s Jazz Band. An intimate concert in the historic Ohio Club with the Clyde Pound Trio, the unique Classical and Jazz Blow Out concert combining jazz with a classical brass quartet and the free outdoor concert in Hot Springs’ Entertainment district are all included over the four days of jazz music. For a full schedule and to purchase tickets, visit hsjazzsociety.org or email hsjazzsociety@gmail.com.

AUGUST 31 SARA EVANS WITH THOMPSON SQUARE AND JERROD NIEMANN Oaklawn’s 2018 Finish Line Theater Concert presents Sara Evans with Thompson Square and Jerrod Niemann! Multi-platinum entertainer Sara Evans is among country music’s leading ladies. Her distinctive country sound has earned her Academy of Country Music Top Female Vocalist honors as well as nu-

ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT

AUGUST 11 DENNIS DEYOUNG: THE MUSIC OF STYX AND NIGHT RANGER Oaklawn’s 2018 Finish Line Theater Concert Series presents Night Ranger and Dennis DeYoung: the Music of STYX.” Night Ranger has earned widespread acclaim, multiplatinum and gold album status while leaving their indelible mark on the music charts with a string of best-selling albums. Their most recognizable hit singles include “Sister Christian,” “Don’t Tell Me You Love Me,” “When You Close Your Eyes,” and “(You Can Still) Rock in America.” Dennis DeYoung is best known for being a founding member of the rock band STYX and served as the groups lead vocalist and keyboardist from 1970 until June 1999. He was the band’s most successful writer, penning seven of the band’s eight Billboard Top 10 singles as well as a solo Top 10 single. Tickets are on sale for $55 and $70. Concert at 7 p.m. Must be 21 and up.

merous American Music Awards. She will be performing with Thompson Square, best known for “Are You Going to Kiss Me or Not” and “If I Didn’t Have You,” and Jerrod Niemann, whose hits include platinum certified multi-week #1 “Drink To That All Night,”“Lover, Lover” and his current single “I Got This.”Tickets go on sale August 14 at 9 a.m. Concert at 7 p.m. Tickets $55 and $70.

LOW KEY ARTS presents the

8TH ANNUAL HOT WATER HILLS MUSIC & ARTS FESTIVAL on October 5 and 6, 2018! Friday night’s headline will be Larkin Poe, with more confirmations coming soon!

MAGIC SPRINGS THEME AND WATER PARK 2018 SUMMER CONCERT SERIES

July 28: Skillet August 4: Lauren Alaina August 11: En Vogue Concerts are included with park admission. Season passes are on sale for $64.99. More info at magicsprings.com.

CONCERT REVIEW, CONT.

3:15 p.m. Saturday, Clarion Hotel, Lake Hamilton

SMILES, SELFIES AND MOMENTS TO SHARE SHARE. f ind t his place.

HotSprings.org. 1-888-SPA-CITY.

Click Five, talked by their manager into adopting sort of a Dave Clark Five look and a somewhat throwback sound of ’60s-influenced pop. Then 4-year-old Scott loved it (figures, right?). So, one of his first shows in his young life was seeing The Click Five with a few hundred other curious fans at Timberwood. Now, 2018, we’re among several thousand graying, wrinkling rock fans and their kids and grandkids to see two bands I grew up with. The place was packed, all reserved seats had been sold and the comfortable green lawn hill in back was filled with fans on blankets or in canvas folding chairs. Scott plays the guitar and, while he hasn’t added Foghat’s “Slow Ride” to his playlist yet, he’s long gotten “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” down pat. Getting to see Buck Dharma of BOC play it live still probably meant less to him than it did to me. “Who’s Buck Dharma, dad?” he wondered, leading up to the show, when I expressed excitement about the prospects of not only seeing the band play, but getting to meet them backstage. (One of the perks of some ticket-holders as well as winners of a few contests at the park on Saturday was getting meet-and-greet passes. Foghat’s original drummer, Roger Earl, and his three newer mates seemed more genuinely interested in the “greet” portion than Buck and BOC did, to be honest). While each band had their three or so definitive hits that still get regular spins on the area’s classic rock radio, their musical approaches for hour-long sets vastly differed. Foghat boogied and rocked out on its bluesy, slide-guitar dominated song list. Charlie Huhn nailed all the vocals as the late Lonewsome Dave Peverett would have. Guitarist Bryan Bassett, an enormous guy compared with the other musicians, made his guitars look like something my son started out with at age 7 (Fender Mini Squier, that is), and he played them like a toy. He was spectacular. My son the occasional guitarist was wowed. And this was before he got to see that Buck Dharma was more than just a guy who created one of the most famous arpeggio riffs in the rock era for “The Reaper.” Dharma and the band’s most virtuosic number was brilliant “The Vigil,” which conjured memories I was keeping to myself of what I might have been doing while kicking back to “deep album tracks” in the ’70s. The funniest moment to us was co-guitarist/covocalist Eric Bloom, Buck’s lone original bandmate remaining in BOC (though the “newer” others have been in the outfit for decades), pretending to bang the

cowbell to the opening of “The Reaper.” Even the band seems to embrace the “more cowbell” irony of the Christopher Walken and Will Ferrell/“Saturday Night Live” skit about the band’s recording of the mega hit. Frankly, it didn’t need cowbell; the vocal harmonies on this and all of Blue Oyster Cult’s songs were impeccable. “That was a great concert,” was the 16-year-old’s assessment on our way to a filled and quickly emptying parking lot. The old man concurred. A pretty good bonding moment was had, too. There aren’t a lot of drawbacks to Timberwood Amphitheater, unless you detest the idea of having to go into a theme and water park to watch a show there. Granted, if this were solely an amphitheater on its own surrounded by tall pines and carved out of a hillside and not surrounded by a theme park and next to the ever-present clickityclack Arkansas Twister roller coaster, there would probably be easier access to bathrooms and even more concession areas than the ones in back and another on the right side of the grass area. There would probably be nicer reserved seating than the ballpark-like aluminum rows in the front. You might have something a little on the lines of the fabulous Walmart AMP in Rogers, which for the past several years has had some pretty fantastic shows covering all genres of music. Which, naturally, brings us back to here, Little Rock. We don’t know if we’ll even have another renewal of the second-generation RiverFest, or something else like it, in the future. We have the wonderfully modernized Robinson Center Performance Hall and the various incarnations of setups that Verizon Arena can manage for indoor concerts year-round, but the summer outdoor scene is terribly lacking. You can’t tell me that for a season ticket of all-encompassing summer music shows, or for $20-$25 one-time admittance to one that suits a music fan’s fancy, a fairly easily accessed outdoor amphitheater in the woods of West Little Rock/Chenal/Roland/Crystal Hill et al. wouldn’t be just the ticket for an entertainment boost in the capital city. I guess it just takes money. Until then, our choices are to drive elsewhere. We suggest taking in Timberwood Amphitheater at least once. Upcoming are: Lauren Alaina of “American Idol” fame, Aug. 4; R&B vocal stars En Vogue, Aug. 11; pop star Jacob Sartorius, Sept. 1; and Grammy-winning Sinaloan band Banda Carnaval, Sept. 2. See magicsprings.com for details. arktimes.com JULY 26, 2018

JULY 26, 2018

ARKANSASâ&#x20AC;&#x2C6;TIMES

MUSIC @ THE GRIFFIN

7/28: Emily & Matt 8/2: An Evening with Casey James 8/3: Kiefer Sutherland – Reckless Tour 8/4: Monty Russell 8/9: The Salty Dogs 8/11: Beaux Atkins, Gen-X Summer Tour 8/16: The Bottle Rockets 8/30: deFrance Tickets are on sale now for the ACANSA Arts Festival (September 18-23) at acansa.org. All tickets for the UCA Reynolds Performance Hall 2018-19 Season go on sale August 6. Buy in person or online at uca.edu/reynolds or call 501-450-3265.

JULY 27

Get your tickets to THE ULTIMATE PRINCE TRIBUTE IV at Revolution Music Room, 9 p.m. Tickets are $15 at arkansaslivemusic. com or call 501-548-5811 for VIP, tables or balcony. ■ TRAVIS LINVILLE plays from 10:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. at Four Quarter Bar. $8.

Food, Music, Entertainment and everything else that’s

FUN!

The Weekend Theater presents BARE: A POP OPERA, a rock musical about two gay high school students and their struggles at private Catholic boarding school. It resonates with audiences as it provides truthful accounts of the common complexities that teenagers face. Tickets and information at centralarkansastickets. com.

Don’t miss the EL DORADO FILM FESTIVAL 2018! The El Dorado Film Festival is entering its fifth year and could not be more excited to bring audiences and filmmakers together with a unique, engaging and inviting cinematic experience. The goal is to bring quality local and international films to their audience as well as encourage the audience to engage with the filmmakers through Q&A, panels and workshops. To see a list of 2018’s selections, visit eldofilmfest.com. To see and purchase available film festival packages, visit eldomad.com/eldoradofilmfest2018.

Celebrate NATIONAL RUM DAY at La Terraza Rum & Lounge! Try some of the best rum available with Central Arkansas’s most knowledgeable reps from 5 to 8 p.m. Sample Cruzan Rum, Rocktown Distillery of Little Rock, Pampero Venezuelan Rum, and Ron Zacapa while enjoying live music and a Venezuelan/Spanish fusion menu. Tickets at centralarkansastickets.com.

AUGUST

JULY 27-29, AUGUST 3-5, 10-12

AUGUST 2-5

AUGUST 16

Hey, do this!

AUGUST 17

Help celebrate Hall High’s newly renovated Scott Field at the HALL HIGH POW WOW. Festivities begin at 6:30 p.m. and will include: football scrimmage, band & dance performances, concessions, field tours & a ribbon cutting ceremony. Gates open at 6:00 p.m.

AUGUST 23

AUGUST 6

JULY 28

JASON D. WILLIAMS will be playing at the MAD Amphitheater in El Dorado, 7 p.m. This Arkansas native has spent a lifetime behind the piano connecting with country rock ‘n’ roll greats while creating a persona that’s entirely original. Get your tickets at eldomad.com. ■ OPAL AGAFIA AND THE SWEET NOTHINGS play from 10:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. at Four Quarter Bar, $8.

THE REVEREND HORTON HEAT returns to North Little Rock at Four Quarter Bar. Doors open at 6 p.m. Show from 8:00 to 11:45 p.m. Tickets are $25 in advance and $30 day of. Get yours at centralarkansastickets. com.

AUGUST 17, 19

AUGUST 10

JULY 26-29

The Studio Theatre presents THE BEST LITTLE WHOREHOUSE IN TEXAS. This happy-go-lucky view of small-town vice and statewide political side-stepping recounts the good times and the demise of the Chicken Ranch, known as one of the better pleasure palaces in all of Texas. Curtain is at 7:30 p.m. The Lobby Bar is open at 6:00 and you may take your drink into the theatre. Tickets at centralarkansastickets.com.

Art lovers, don’t miss SECOND FRIDAY ART NIGHT, the after-hours art night held every second Friday of the month. Hosts include Historic Arkansas Museum, Matt McLeod Fine Art Gallery, Bella Vita Jewelry, Nexus Coffee and more! More info at facebook. com/2ndFridayArtNight.

OPERA IN THE ROCK presents SOUVENIR: A Fantasia on the Life of Florence Foster Jenkins at The Studio Theatre. Floundering pianist Cosme McMoon reminisces about the astonishing musical career of Florence Foster Jenkins, a wealthy New York socialite infamous for singing out of tune. McMoon teamed up with Jenkins and for a dozen years, their odd partnership yielded hilariously off-key recitals and the duo became the darlings of high society, earning cultish renown. Christine Donahue and Timothy Smith inhabit these two larger-than-life characters for only two special performances benefitting Opera in the Rock. On Friday, curtain is at 7:30 p.m. On Sunday, curtain is at 2:30 p.m. The Lobby Bar is open an hour and a half prior to show time. Tickets are $30 at centralarkansastickets.com.

The Progressive Arkansas Women PAC is celebrating the 98th anniversary of women’s right to vote in Arkansas with their THIRD ANNUAL DAMES, DEMS, AND DRINKS PARTY, supporting progressive women running for office in Arkansas. Enjoy an evening of great drinks, food and fun with other progressives from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Albert Pike Masonic Center. Meet the Dameocrats – the women PAWPAC has endorsed for the General Election in 2018 – and help support them! Tickets are $75. Buy now at centralarkanastickets.com.

AUGUST 11

RICKY SKAGGS & KENTUCKY THUNDER performs at 7:00 p.m. at The Center for Humanities and Arts at UA Pulaski Tech. Get your tickets online at uaptc. edu/charts or at the door one hour before the show. VIP Tickets are available and include access to the Trio’s VIP room with great food and libations, private parking and entrance to the show.

AUGUST 18

Verizon Arena presents WINGSTOCK WING AND BEER FESTIVAL, a unique event featuring more than 30 local restaurants and vendors presenting their best chicken wings, from noon to 3 p.m. Tickets are $20 in advance and $25 day of. For tickets and more information, visit verizonarena. com/concerts-shows.

AUGUST 24

JULY 29

DOUG DICHARRY FROM DIRTFOOT plays from 8:00 to 11:00 p.m. at Four Quarter Bar. Free show!

NOW THROUGH AUGUST 25

Murry’s Dinner Playhouse presents GREASE! Dust off your leather jackets, pull on your bobby-socks, and take a trip to a simpler time with Danny, Sandy, the T-Birds, the Pink Ladies and everyone else at Rydell High. Featuring all the unforgettable songs from the hit movie! Call 562.3131 for tickets.

DON’T MISS HOT SPRINGS HAPPENINGS ON PAGE 58!

FOR MORE EVENTS, GO TO CENTRALARKANSASTICKETS.COM

RASCALL FLATTS: BACK TO US TOUR plays at the Murphy Arts District Amphitheater in El Dorado at 7 p.m. Regular tickets and exclusive VIP packages are available at eldomad.com/event/ rascalflatts ■ Quapaw Quarter Association presents their Preservation Conversations Lecture Series 2018: QUAPAW TREATY OF 1818, by Carrie Wilson, Quapaw Native American Graves Protection Repatriation Act Program Director. Reception starts at 5:30 p.m., lecture at 6:00 p.m. Held at Curran Hall, 615 Capitol Avenue. Free and open to the public!

STARTING AUG 28

Murry’s Dinner Playhouse presents SOCIAL SECURITY, a warm, feel-good, hilarious Broadway hit about an 83-yearold “Cinderella” who teachers her unusual family that “it’s never too late” to find Prince Charming. Just when you were beginning to think that you might never laugh again, along comes Social Security. Call 501-562-3131 for reservations and visit murrysdp.com.

arktimes.com JULY 26, 2018

JULY 26, 2018

ARKANSASâ&#x20AC;&#x2C6;TIMES

ARKANSAS TIMES

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ARKANSAS TIMES

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arktimes.com JULY 26, 2018

August OAKLAWN

BEST PLACE TO

GAMBLE

… for Good Times? Whether it’s exciting gaming action, awesome live concerts or incredible prize giveaways, there’s plenty of good times to be had at Oaklawn Gaming! This month, join the fun at the TournEvent of Champions. Earn entries to win up to $2,000 in free play and a chance to go to Las Vegas to play for $1,000,000. Oaklawn’s Concert Series brings the music of Sara Evans, Thompson Square and Jerrod Niemann to the Finish Line Theater Friday, August 31. For ticket information, visit Oaklawn.com. Also, register to win a new Ford F-150 truck to be given away September 2. Best of all, these good times are just a short drive away in Hot Springs National Park. Are you in?

TOURNEVENT OF CHAMPIONS August 4

Earn entries at July promotions or get a wild card entry by earning 50 points from August 3–4 The top two players will win a trip to Las Vegas to compete for over $1,000,000! Win up to $2,000 in free play

SARA EVANS, THOMPSON SQUARE AND JERROD NIEMANN CONCERT Friday, August 31

Tickets on sale at Oaklawn.com Tuesday, August 14 Must be 21+

TRUCK GIVEAWAY September 2 Ford F-150 Entries can be earned August 1–September 2

August HOT SPRINGS

OAKLAWN.COM S I LV E

GOLD

ELITE

EARN B IG DISCOU OAKLA WN REWNTS WITH ARDS!

2018 FORREST WOOD CUP August 10–12

Lake Ouachita and Hot Springs Convention Center Justin Moore Concert August 12

27TH HOT SPRINGS JAZZFEST AugUST 30– SeptEMBER 2

Downtown Hot Springs

Go to Oaklawn.com for more details on these great promotions. 1808ARTIMES

y a l P e e Fr

GOOD FOR NEW MEMBERS ONLY ON INITIAL SIGN-UP. VALID I.D. REQUIRED. MUST BE 21. EXPIRES 8/31/18.

GAMBLING PROBLEM? CALL 1-800-522-4700. 64

JULY 26, 2018

ARKANSAS TIMES