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FEATURE
JULY 2022
23 BEST OF ARKANSAS
AHEM: The Phlegms join Peach Blush, Moonmane and Benadriil at the White Water Tavern this month.
The results of our annual readers poll, plus nods to painter Adaja Cooper and Mountain Home fitness guru Hampton Liu, the enduring charm of K Hall & Sons, what’s behind the curtain at North Little Rock Elks Lodge, selling fun at Moix RV Supercenter, Courtney Pledger’s vow to transform Arkansas PBS, a Q&A with Best Budtender Jennifer Burr and why TikTok documentarian Ashlyn Gulbranson is the Wes Anderson of the Ozarks. By Austin Bailey, Rhett Brinkley, Griffin Coop, Debra Hale-Shelton, Rebekah Hall Scott, Sean Grigsby, Stephanie Smittle and Mary Ruth Taylor
9 THE FRONT
90 FOOD & DRINK
Q&A: With Jennifer Glasgow, Little Rock’s chief education officer. Big Pic: A 2022 Arkansas music roundup.
Why Jonesboro could be the state’s next big beer town.
13 THE TO-DO LIST
On Joe Weston, the editor behind the crude and crusading Sharp Citizen.
Trust Tree at Museum of Discovery, saxophoniost Joel Frahm at The Joint, ‘The Masked Singer’ and extreme timbersports at Simmons Bank Arena, ‘A Divided Landscape’ at the Momentary and more.
19 NEWS & POLITICS
Sarah Huckabee Sanders is an heir to Trump’s corrupt legacy, and that could spell trouble when it’s time to govern. By Ernest Dumas
81 SAVVY KIDS
Making the most of the outdoors for a screen-free summer. By Katherine Wyrick
ON THE COVER: Painter Adaja Cooper with her mural “Ain’t I A Woman,” which Cooper re-created time and time again after it was defaced by vandals. Photo by Brian Chilson. 4 JULY 2022
ARKANSAS TIMES
By Brian Sorensen
96 HISTORY By Ernest Dumas
100 CANNABIZ
Touring the grow operations at Natural State Medicinals. By Lindsey Millar
106 THE OBSERVER Squirrels: one, internet connectivity: zero.
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PUBLISHER Alan Leveritt EDITOR Lindsey Millar CREATIVE DIRECTOR Mandy Keener SENIOR EDITOR Max Brantley MANAGING EDITOR Austin Bailey ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR Stephanie Smittle ASSOCIATE EDITOR Rhett Brinkley CANNABIZ EDITOR Griffin Coop REPORTER Mary Hennigan REPORTER Debra Hale-Shelton EDITORIAL INTERN Mary Ruth Taylor CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Mara Leveritt PHOTOGRAPHER Brian Chilson DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL STRATEGY Jordan Little DIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENT Wythe Walker ADVERTISING ART DIRECTOR Mike Spain GRAPHIC DESIGNER Sarah Holderfield DIRECTOR OF ADVERTISING Phyllis A. Britton ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES Brooke Wallace, Lee Major, Terrell Jacob and Kaitlyn Looney ADVERTISING TRAFFIC MANAGER Roland R. Gladden IT DIRECTOR Robert Curfman CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Jackson Gladden CONTROLLER Weldon Wilson BILLING/COLLECTIONS Charlotte Key PRODUCTION MANAGER Ira Hocut (1954-2009)
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THE FRONT Q&A
A NEW CITY LEADER FOCUSED ON EDUCATION JENNIFER GLASGOW IS LITTLE ROCK’S NEW CHIEF EDUCATION OFFICER.
I think an outcome of the pandemic that we realized was how we rely on our education system as childcare, for good or bad. So I’m trying to research and find out what would be a way to support that. You hear anecdotally about moms leaving the workforce because there wasn’t an appropriate childcare option, but it’s not just important so mom can go to work. It’s important that those children are on track to be kindergarten ready, to be reading by third grade, to graduate from high school. BRIAN CHILSON
Jennifer Glasgow was named chief education officer of the city of Little Rock in April. She succeeds Jay Barth, who left to take a job leading the Clinton Presidential Library and Museum. Barth inaugurated the position in 2019, and since then much of its focus has been on community schools, a joint effort between the city and the Little Rock School District. Community schools provide “wraparound services” like dental and health care, tutoring and family support for students, their families and the surrounding neighborhoods. The first four community schools — Chicot, Stephens, Washington and Watson elementary schools — started offering these extra services in September 2020. Thanks to a two-year state grant, Mabelvale elementary and middle schools will become community schools this fall. We spoke with Glasgow about her background and vision for directing education policy for Little Rock.
What is the city’s commitment to community schools? The city has committed $500,000 [per year] toward community schools. But we also applied and received a Byrne Grant FAVORITE BOOK? through the Department of Justice, with the Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights.” goal of reducing violence with communityREADING ANYTHING GOOD RIGHT NOW? led initiatives instead of police-led. That “Parent Nation” by Dana Suskind. It’s about how is focused on Stephens Elementary, which to support families of children from birth to 5, how is connected to the Stephens Community to make it easier to be a parent. There are a lot of Center, which makes it kind of a unique space. challenges for all parents, some more than others, The grant will provide two social workers who and this is about how to get the support they need, will get to work with the students, but also whether through policy change or other. with community members. Then in the fall What’s your experience in education? we’ll be collecting community input to find FAVORITE PLACE TO TRAVEL IN ARKANSAS? Most recently I was with an organization out what they are interested in. As far as the Greers Ferry Lake. called Excel by Eight, formerly the future, I think it comes down to what schools Arkansas Campaign for Grade Level would want to become community schools. Reading. The goal of that organization Leadership at all levels has to want that, all the was to get kids reading on grade level way down to the principal, they have to feel by the end of third grade, because that’s when instruction transitions. like that’s a good fit for their students. If you’re struggling in reading by fourth grade, you’re going to be struggling across the board. So we looked at things that worked outside How do you address skepticism about city involvement? Some of the classroom, making sure kids were kindergarten ready, making wonder why the city needs to be involved with education at all. sure that parents were engaged and [encouraging] attendance. We also In anything, especially something using tax dollars, you’ve got to show shifted a lot of our focus on birth to 3 because we found that there was your value. That’s something I’m working with the district on. We little awareness about how important that was. The most significant know what we should be measuring, so how do we start collecting that development of a child’s brain happens before you turn 3, and a lot of data? It’s not just attendance and test scores; there are other ways to that is language and literacy before they’re even talking. measure success. I think some of that is engagement, and just taking it a little step beyond families served. So you know, if 10 kids went to the To the extent that Little Rock residents know what the city’s chief vision clinic, and eight of them got glasses, right, we can measure that education officer does, they probably mostly think of the community and talk about it. Some of these grants that the city has received, the school partnership with the LRSD. But there’s more to the job, right? fact that it’s a city/district partnership is what makes us so competitive. Community schools are a big part of it, certainly, because there’s just I think it makes our applications compelling to show that we’ve got this a lot going on to talk about. Because of my background, I am actively united front. looking for ways that the city can support families from birth to age 5. — Mary Ruth Taylor ARKTIMES.COM
JULY 2022 9
THE FRONT BIG PIC
GOOD NOISE FOR A BETTER YEAR A 2022 ARKANSAS MUSIC ROUNDUP. BY BRAD CAVINESS
T
hough day-to-day numbers can range from off-putting to mildly terrifying, life is steadily returning to a semblance of normal for musicians and audiences. Tours are taking place with only the odd city or date postponed due to illness. Venues are open and full of fans eager to see and hear new music again. For all the bands that have seemingly dissolved over the course of the pandemic, as many took the opportunity to develop, record and release new material. In fact, there’s barely a week that goes by where there isn’t at least a handful of new singles, EPs or albums freshly sprouted on your favorite streaming service and eager to make your ears all happy for giving them a listen. Below, you’ll find 10 of them we definitely think you should check out.
Zemi, “Zapocrypha (Apocrypha Deluxe Edition)” Last October, we received the sad, startling news that Elijah “Zemi” Ash was killed in an accident in which he was struck by a car. He was just days away from releasing “Zapocrypha,” the expanded deluxe edition of his recent album “Apocrypha.” The recording is a pop-lover’s dream. Dancefloor beats propel the melodious hooks, above which Zemi’s falsetto tenor enchants like a siren. Lyrically, the songs can be playful, flirtatious and occasionally deeper and even seemingly prescient of his mortality. “Follow Me to Hell” is an absolute showstopper of a ballad, like one of the songs that Prince used to farm out to the artists he would mentor. It is heartbreaking that such a talent should pass on the cusp of releasing such a stellar work, and one has to wonder what songs he may have gifted the world in the future.
10 JULY 2022
ARKANSAS TIMES
Kvng Moses One of the best bits about being hyperfocused on local musicians is they aren’t stars or celebrities. They’re just people, lots of whom you’ve probably known for years, and there’s always a chance you’ll just randomly run into them out in public. But the first time you see one of your favorite rappers exiting the gas station, that “Oh shit!” moment can feel a lot like being starstruck. Kvng Moses is one of those artists that ought to have lots of people having that starstruck moment when he enters the room. He’s spent the last three years building a catalog of songs, a couple of albums and a torrent of singles that feature impeccable production, deep wordplay and a machine-gun vocal delivery that’ll make you play each verse three times to catch every syllable. The most common theme in his music is that a lot of people underestimate Moses — and that it is a mistake to underestimate Moses. But his verbal dexterity and catchy, polished hooks make him one of the most interesting, if mostly unheard, new artists.
Joshua Asante, “I Don’t Act Like I Used To” If you’ve heard Joshua Asante perform at some point over the years, either solo or with the bands Velvet Kente and/or Amasa Hines, then it’s likely you have a favorite song or dozen you’ve heard on stage that has never been officially released. It’s possible you may be able to hear one or more of those songs now as Asante has released “I Don’t Act Like I Used To: a retrospective of rarities,” a collection of demos and song drafts spanning the last decade, each recorded live in one take using the recorder app on his phone. The sound quality befits the recording method, which also strangely suits the “in the momentness” of these sonic experiments captured in digital amber.
Shawn James, “A Place in the Unknown” Even in quiet moments, Shawn James’ barrel-chested baritone has a power that’s undeniable. The one-time Fayetteville resident came to prominence several years ago when one of his songs was used in the video game “The Last of Us.” His latest release, “A Place in the Unknown,” is 12 songs of gospel-haunted, soul-tinged, doomy-folk/metal/blues. James’ success on this album is getting all that to work together in a way that’s powerfully emotional, transporting and even cathartic to experience, if you let yourself be swept away by it.
Chainsaw Lassy, “Money in Motion” EP Every once in a while you come across a new artist and you know from the first notes: “Oh yes, this is my jam!” From the opening guitar hook to the final chord and cymbal fade, Chainsaw Lassy serves up an unrelenting energetic punk rock debut with enough melody to sing along and enough snarl to feel a little bit dangerous. This five-song demo is a home recording by wife-and-husband duo Kori and Blake Foster, who promise that a full-length, fully produced LP with a full band will land later this year.
Sad Daddy, “Way Up in the Hills” Eureka Springs-based bluegrass/folk quartet Sad Daddy gets even more rustic for their third album, “Way Up in the Hills.” The band isolated together at guitarist/ singer/songwriter Brian Martin’s cabin near Greers Ferry to record the album outside the traditional studio setting. About half of the songs have been part of Sad Daddy’s live shows for a while, and the rest showed up during the recording sessions. All four members of the group — Martin, Melissa Carper, Rebecca Patek and Joe Sundell — contribute lead vocals and songs in a variety of folk and traditional music styles. To say this is Sad Daddy’s most “down home” record is nearly an understatement. There’s a closeness, a familial intimacy to this recording that will mark it as a favorite for many fans of the band.
Yebba, “Dawn” Raised on gospel and weaned on R&B, West Memphis native Yebba (real name Abbey Smith) has seen her star rise in the last year or so. Prominent features on tracks by Mark Ronson and Drake have led to her debut LP, “Dawn,” produced by Ronson and aimed squarely at the earholes of fans of big-voiced diva singers. Yebba’s voice is not quite (yet) as impressive an instrument as, say, Adele’s. But Ronson smartly builds the tracks for each song, from atmospheric ballads, earthy pop songs and glorious torch songs in a way that gives Yebba plenty of moments to shine and highlights why Yebba deserves to be heard in her own right.
Go For Gold, “Cope” Pop-punkers Go For Gold have made a name for themselves over the last few years for high-energy live shows and polished, radioready recordings. GFG’s last recording, the long EP or short album “Color Me,” came out in 2020 just as the pandemic was starting to look like it might not be over by that Fourth of July. Their new LP, “Cope” is out now just as the pandemic is starting to look like it might actually be behind us by this year’s Fourth of July. Fans of the band will definitely find a lot to enjoy on this new LP. All the band’s strengths are at play here: strong, catchy songwriting, earnest vocals and upbeat songs balanced by the occasional heartfelt ballad.
Tiny Towns, “On Tape” EP Chances are you’ll listen to this on digital streaming, or maybe on a CD, but Tiny Towns are out to earn their analog bona fides on their new EP, “On Tape,” recorded the old-fashioned way at Little Rock’s Fellowship Hall Sound. The EP strikes a more reflective, mid-tempo vibe, saving the rock ‘n’ roll high energy for the final couple of songs. What’s evident on all five songs, however, is the band’s extraordinarily strong musicianship and clever turns of phrase, both musical and lyrical. If I had a complaint about this, it’s only that it’s not a full album.
Whoa Dakota, “Rhinestones & Rodeos” Several years ago, Jessie Ott moved to Nashville, Tennessee, and made a number of dreamy pop records under the nom de l’art Whoa Dakota. Now she’s back in Arkansas and has released a new EP of original country songs as a parting note to Music City. Ott’s voice is honey-sweet and perfectly suited to these modern takes on classic country sounds. Her focus is razor sharp on these songs with lots to say about the struggle artists go through to make ends meet while making music. Far from being about giving up, these songs are about the passion to create and the drive to keep going, even as success is elusive. Definitely not to be missed. ARKTIMES.COM
JULY 2022 11
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KATIE CHILDS
BY MARY HENNIGAN, STEPHANIE SMITTLE AND MARY RUTH TAYLOR
DISCOVER TRUST TREE
SATURDAY 7/16. MUSEUM OF DISCOVERY. 7-10 P.M. $20-$50. Since 2017, a group of musicians and educators has been holding a summer music and arts camp called Trust Tree — focused, in their own words, on “helping girls ages 8-18 overcome self-limiting beliefs and bring their creative visions to life.” (Hey, can we have one for adults, too?) Over time, the program’s grown and expanded, and we’ve watched Trust Tree campers start bands of their own, release albums and begin to develop promising careers in the arts. Maybe more importantly than whether its graduates stick with the arts, though, is the way the program’s become a bastion of affirmation and empowerment for Arkansas girls at an age when they’re otherwise bombarded with messages that are neither affirming nor empowering. See for yourself at this fundraiser, which features performances by Trust Tree campers, music to get the dance party started, a photo booth, heavy hors d’oeuvres, a signature “Girls Rocktown” cocktail from Rocktown Distillery and a raffle for a rainbow concert ukulele with accessories. All proceeds from the event benefit Trust Tree’s programming, scholarships and instruments for campers. Admission is free for people under 18; $20-$50 on a sliding scale for adults. SS ARKTIMES.COM
JULY 2022 13
THE PHLEGMS, PEACH BLUSH, MOONMANE, BENADRIIL FRIDAY 7/1. WHITE WATER TAVERN. 8 P.M. $10.
Born of a fortuitous meeting between Avery Lee and Grant Williams in 2012 while the two were studying at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, The Phlegms have been churning out straight-ahead rock anthems in DIY spaces and house shows since 2016, squishing eight-bar guitar solos and minimalist lyrics about queerness and alienation into two-and-a-half minutes the way God intended. They’re one of a handful of local acts booked at the upcoming Waltonpalooza-esque FORMAT Fest in Northwest Arkansas, and they’re joined at the White Water Tavern for this beach-themed show (bring your best shades) with a stacked lineup: Peach Blush (who’s releasing new music on tape at the show!), the ever-frenzied and fierce Moonmane and Benadriil, whose noise rock straddles elation and rage on the emotional dial. Defy you to go to this one and maintain the illusion that punk rock in Arkansas is dead. SS
STIHL TIMBERSPORTS
FRIDAY 7/22-SATURDAY 7/23. SIMMONS BANK ARENA. NOON FRI., 3 P.M. SAT. $10/DAY. Lumberjacks are gonna lumberjack, and since the late 1800s, they’ve been doing it competitively. What started in Tasmania and Australia as a little casual competition between forestry workers — “the original extreme sport,” Stihl boasts — is now a fully souped-up stadium showdown with bright lights, Jumbotrons and vociferous sportscasters giving the play-by-play and starting the stopwatch countdown with a booming call: “Stand to your timber!” If you’re into watching svelte athletes grimace and groan as they obliterate hunks of poplar and pine, each trying to ax harder and faster than the logger before him (or her; though it’s pretty dude-centric nowadays, women have historically been competitive loggers, too!), this is your chance. SS 14 JULY 2022
ARKANSAS TIMES
RACHEL TRUSTY’S “THE NEW SAINTS”
KURTIS CONNER
SUNDAY 7/24. ROBINSON CENTER. 7 P.M. $45-$75. Saddle up, we’re going to KurtisTown … or, actually, KurtisTown is coming to us. Kurtis Conner is a Canadian comedian, YouTuber and podcaster whose videos primarily explore the more absurd offerings of the internet. Perusing his channel, you’ll find commentary videos on media trends scaling from bizarre to cringe, accompanied with a healthy side of ridicule. Conner’s been doing stand-up since 2014, but you may also remember him from Vine. If you’re into dad jokes, he’s your guy. Join him at Robinson for a night of fun-filled comedy. Really, he came all this way. And remember to be nice to him: It’s the law! MRT
‘THE MASKED SINGER’
SATURDAY 7/9. SIMMONS BANK ARENA. 8 P.M. $50$100. If you’ve seen the show, you can only imagine what this tour will entail. Headlined by Natasha Bedingfield, “The Masked Singer” is bringing a squad of performers with hidden identities to Little Rock. This quirky television favorite will scoop up one local celebrity to perform undercover as the audience attempts to unmask them by deciphering clues — hope you’ve been brushing up on your talented Arkansans! Expect a unique two hours of singing and dancing from outrageous, oversized characters from the show. You can even get a photo with your favorite characters with a VIP meet-and-greet ticket. Tickets range from $50 to $100. MH
JOEL FRAHM
MONDAY 7/11. THE JOINT THEATER & COFFEEHOUSE. 7:30 P.M. $30. What’s better than an evening of jazz, and on a Monday night? I can’t think of anything. Award-winning saxophonist Joel Frahm is coming to bless our ears with some smooth jazz. With three decades of the New York City circuit under his belt, appearances on more than 100 recordings and as an instructor at several universities, Frahm is moving his career to Nashville — but not before he stops in Little Rock. MH
ARKTIMES.COM
JULY 2022 15
‘A DIVIDED LANDSCAPE’
ROYAL ARTIST GROUP
THROUGH 9/25. THE MOMENTARY, BENTONVILLE.
SHAUN MARTIN TRIO
WEDNESDAY 7/27. STICKYZ ROCK ’N’ ROLL CHICKEN SHACK. 7:30 P.M. $20. Pianist Shaun Martin got word of his first Grammy win via text message while he was in church. Priorities! The gospel-anchored player and producer is behind the ivories of some of the biggest Kirk Franklin tunes to sweep modern American churches, but Martin’s known in jazz circles as one of many creative engines behind the touring supergroup Snarky Puppy (riyl: Chick Corea, Weather Report, being rendered dumbstruck at what humans can do with musical instruments). Listening to his solo work makes evident the seemingly impossible: that even in a room with the likes of Cory Henry and Mark Lettieri, Martin has made an indelible imprint on the band’s sound. He’s at Stickyz with his trio; eat first, because it’s gonna be hard to focus on chicken tenders when Martin’s band kicks into melodic overdrive. SS
16 JULY 2022
ARKANSAS TIMES
Consider what you know about the American West. Maybe you imagine a lawless land, a vast expanse of rolling plains and towering mountains, untouched by civilization. Now forget all that, because the Momentary’s latest exhibit is rethinking the traditional frontier narrative. Nineteenth century painters liked to romanticize the beauty of the West, but in doing so left out the darker realities of settler colonialism. In the exhibit “A Divided Landscape,” seven contemporary artists are sharing the full story of the American West with paintings, drawings, sculpture and mixed media installations throughout the grounds of the Momentary. Their work will be featured alongside historical drawings and paintings from Crystal Bridges’ collection. Admission is free. MRT
SUICIDE COMMANDO, LUNA13
MONDAY 7/4. AREA 51, SHERWOOD. 8 P.M. $25. There’s never a bad time to get creepy, right? The Belgian band Suicide Commando brings haunting, synthesized beats together to form eerie — but incredibly catchy — electric music. For 30 years, the band has shown innovation in the industry through its tracks “Hellraiser,” “Bind, Torture, Kill” and “When Evil Speaks.” Some may call it nightmarish mayhem, but others live and breathe the energy of these goth shows. If that’s you, you’ll be headbanging, screaming and dancing to these apocalyptic-sounding beats. To match the mood, Luna13 will open with its bonechilling hits. This one might not be for the faint of heart. MH
Flexible treatment for an unforgiving disease
The BridgeWay is more than a hospital-it’s a place of hope and recovery from substance use disorders and mental illness. With the belief that each person can change and heal, we offer a program and treatment plan unique to each patient. Our outpatient treatment represents our least restrictive and most flexible care options. Our Partial Hospitalization Program (PHP) and Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP) offer either day or evening schedules. These options allow patients to receive recovery-focused treatment that addresses a full range of psychiatric and addictive issues while attending to daily family and work obligations. In addition, our outpatient programs provide specialized group therapy for adults 18 and older with specific mental health or substance use disorder needs.
PHP vs IOP: What is the difference?
Quality Care Rooted in Arkansas
While each program is different, they are similar in some ways
INPATIENT CARE
PHP PROGRAM
21 Bridgeway Road North Little Rock, AR 72113
1-800-245-0011 thebridgeway.com
IOP PROGRAM AFTERCARE
Inpatient Care - Outpatient Care - Aftercare Continuum
JoSué RivaS
Josué Rivas (Mexica and Otomi) is an Indigenous Futurist, creative director, visual storyteller and educator working at the intersection of art, technology, journalism, and decolonization. His work aims to challenge the mainstream narrative about Indigenous peoples, co-create with the community, and serve as a vehicle for collective healing.
SebaStián Hidalgo
Sebastián Hidalgo is a civic-oriented visual and investigative journalist born and based in Chicago, IL. He covers issues related to the current state of belonging––immigration policy, low wage labor, and environmental justice.
Free • CALS Ron Robinson Theater | July 28, 6:30 PM CALS SPEAKER SERIES
The Central Arkansas Library System presents two exciting photojournalists--Sebastián Hidalgo and Josué Rivas--as guests for the 2022 Speaker Series. They will show some of their photographs and speak about their work. Register: CALS.org/Speaker-Series This program honors J.N. Heiskell. He was former editor of the Arkansas Gazette and the longest-serving member of the library’s Board of Trustees. 18 JULY 2022
ARKANSAS TIMES
NEWS & POLITICS
GAGE SKIDMORE/CREATIVE COMMONS
RELIANT ON TRUMP: Sarah Huckabee Sanders, favored to be Arkansas’s next governor, has no experience beyond her years lying for Donald Trump.
THE WORST I DONALD TRUMP’S CORRUPT LEGACY. BY ERNEST DUMAS
t has been firmly established for a long time now — five years, to be exact — that Donald Trump is the most corrupt and thoroughly amoral leader in American history, not just among presidents, but all political leaders. No one comes close to him — not Richard Nixon or John Mitchell, not Albert Fall, not even Aaron Burr. Benedict Arnold maybe, but he was not a leader — only a greedy soldier who sold out his commander, George Washington, and his country to King George. Trump would have understood Arnold perfectly. He just wanted the money, and he saw no sense in fighting for your country. The January 6 congressional committee’s formal hearings have cemented beyond a reasonable doubt the fact that Trump organized an insurrection against the United States to keep himself as the nation’s ruler. They also showcased the rarest of all American political phenomena — an endless stream of aides, advisers, cabinet members, military leaders and even family members jumping at the chance to expose their leader’s lies and treachery. It didn’t start in June with Attorney General Bill Barr, or with a revered retired Republican appellate judge, or with so many others — such as daughter Ivanka Trump, or running mate Mike
Pence, or even Pence’s staff — all of whom had covered up Trump’s treacheries and seditious acts for nearly four years until they realized that they had to repair their place in history, for the sake of their own souls and for their families, before it was too late. The real process started with the first Russia investigation of 2016 and 2017 and the scandals that it produced almost daily. That investigation led to firings, resignations, trials and sometimes prison for Trump’s men — followed by Twitter recriminations, would-be bestselling books and television interviews where they revealed their boss’ lies, corruption and frequent imbecilities to those Americans who might care. That first investigation was not fruitless, for it proved the Russian-Trump plan to undermine the 2016 election. It will be remembered that Trump’s first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, never denied calling the president “a fucking moron” after one crazy session with him. A global oil baron who got the job because he was supposed to be a pal of Vladimir Putin, Tillerson criticized Putin for poisoning one of his own former spies and, within a few hours, was fired by Trump. But Tillerson hasn’t (yet) hired someone to write a tell-all memoir for him, and hasn’t (yet) consented to be interviewed about Trump’s ARKTIMES.COM
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deceits and crimes — unlike everyone else. OK, maybe not everyone. John Eastman isn’t doing it. Mark Meadows isn’t doing it. Ginni Thomas, the wife of a Supreme Court justice and Trump protector, isn’t doing it. Let’s see, who else? Anyone close to home? Sarah Huckabee Sanders, for one. Sen. John Boozman, for another — and, really, the whole Arkansas congressional delegation, with some deference allowed U.S. Rep. Steve Womack of Northwest Arkansas. Womack furiously attacked Rep. Kevin McCarthy, his party’s leader in the House — but not Trump himself — for going along with the Trump lie that his giant loss in the 2020 election (he trailed his foes by 10 million votes) was the result of fraud in a few states where the election, ironically, happened
Hutchinson will surely have a chance in the next two years to clarify his contrasting behavior toward those two impeached presidents — or perhaps to formulate his own Clintonesque apology. None of Hutchinson’s many hosts on national TV has yet put him on the spot about it. Once the criminal and civil proceedings commence, as they are certain to do, let it be established that the events of the past five or six years have confirmed the great fear historians have long had for American democracy: that even this citadel could fall prey to a fascist and nationalist movement, that the nation could be captured by a cult leader like Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin or Putin. Professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat, the world’s leading scholar on authoritarianism, wrote a while back about the recurrence and
ONCE THE CRIMINAL AND CIVIL PROCEEDINGS COMMENCE, AS THEY ARE CERTAIN TO DO, LET IT BE ESTABLISHED THAT THE EVENTS OF THE PAST FIVE OR SIX YEARS HAVE CONFIRMED THE GREAT FEAR HISTORIANS HAVE LONG HAD FOR AMERICAN DEMOCRACY: THAT EVEN THIS CITADEL COULD FALL PREY TO A FASCIST AND NATIONALIST MOVEMENT, THAT THE NATION COULD BE CAPTURED BY A CULT LEADER LIKE HITLER, MUSSOLINI, STALIN OR PUTIN. to have been run by the dominant Republican Party. You’ve got to forgive Womack for not going all the way; he needed those dyed-in-thewool Trump voters to get reelected. You might give some deference also to Governor Hutchinson, who said that Trump really did lose the election. Hutchinson has let it be known that he probably will run for president in 2024. For more than four years, Hutchinson always said Trump should not be impeached for any of his many transgressions with the Russians or for his violations of the Constitution (and of federal statutes, including the emoluments clause). You may remember that, as the House prosecutor of President Bill Clinton at the Senate trial in 1999, U.S. Rep. Hutchinson demanded that Clinton be convicted and removed from office for his Oval Office dalliance with a female aide. The dalliance was not illegal, only disgraceful, but Hutchinson maintained (with his own brother sitting as a member of the Senate jury) that Clinton was so cagey in his sworn testimony about Monica Lewinsky that he might have committed perjury, or perhaps obstructed justice, by coyly encouraging the woman or others not to rat out his embarrassing conduct. In Hutchinson’s mind, Trump’s multiple seditious acts — and his unmistakable act of treason on Jan. 6, 2021 — apparently pale beside Clinton’s smutty behavior. (Clinton, unlike Trump, apologized.) If he does indeed run for president,
growing seriousness of the old conspiracy theories, which were once limited to a few crackpots and cult followers like the Jim Jones flakes who poisoned themselves, or the Branch Davidians. “It’s more striking,” Ben-Ghiat said, “what hasn’t changed — the hyper-nationalism, the leader cult, the idea that this is a leader who is going to save us, the fear of white-population decline, anti-feminism, anti-left, things like that. None of those things have changed.” She could have added a couple of other elements of this terrible brew. For example, she might have cited the transformation of the Second Amendment, which once was James Madison’s way of allowing Virginia, Georgia and the Carolinas to tamp down slave rebellions (like the one Napoleon was trying to crush in Haiti) but which became, starting with the civil rights movement, a literal worship of guns as God’s gift to good Christian people to solve all their problems, whether those be rude classmates, spouses, parents or co-workers, or more sinister threats, such as socialists or dark-skinned people. (Ben-Ghiat could also have cited Arkansas’s own long history of regulating guns with the help of the NRA, partly to keep arms out of the hands of Blacks; see the legislature’s firearms act of 1923 and gunregulation decisions of the Arkansas Supreme Court.) History will recall that, in the 1980s, thenProsecutor Asa Hutchinson shut down some of
these armed nationalist and white-supremacist groups quite emphatically. But history will also show that these sentiments, and the dangers they present, exploded nationally with the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and have culminated (so far) with several of our most horrific mass shootings — and, of course, with January 6. BenGhiat’s prescription came so very close to fruition on that day that the old retired Republican federal judge (and hardcore Reagan disciple) J. Michael Luttig testified at a congressional hearing in June that the insurrection will almost certainly happen again if his party nominates Trump or his anointed successor for president in 2024. They aren’t likely to win, Luttig said, but that would make no difference. The cult of fanatics developed by Trump, which still controls the Republican Party, will unleash so much violence and discord that none of the branches of government will function again, he asserted grimly. It was a terrifying proclamation from a sage so revered by generations of Republican leaders. But much of the country, including most of Arkansas, was tuned out. Many, though not all, of the Trump cult’s millions knew generally but sort of admired his sordid past — a psychopath who had dissipated much of his father’s ill-gotten fortune and a serial adulterer who promoted himself in the tabloids as a ladies’ man pursued by all the sexy models in New York and who would be described by two of his opponents for president in 2016, Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham, as a man morally unfit to be president. So Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who is hopelessly reliant on Donald Trump (or otherwise she would have had strong opponents in the GOP primary), will have no problems for a spell, at least until she starts to govern. The same is true for French Hill and everyone else on the ticket. But what happens to their plans, their future, their legacies, after the real legal proceedings finally begin in both civil and criminal courts, this year or next? Grim as it seems, the Justice Department will finally have to bring criminal charges, as every real or acting attorney general since Jeff Sessions — including Rod Rosenstein, Bill Barr, and the others — always knew would be required by the Constitution if the nation’s commitment to the rule of law were to be maintained. Barr is at the end of his career, and his final act of repentance will not remove the disgrace that history will record of him. (And history might not even remember Barr’s own role in the Clinton prosecutions of the 1990s, which wasn’t insubstantial, or his efforts to save the presidency of George H.W. Bush by pardoning the Iran-Contra criminals.) Many others are in that same boat; Mike Pence hopes Americans, including some of the Trump cult, will give him another chance. I promise you that Hutchinson, Boozman and most other Republican congresspersons all hope, privately,
that Trump will disappear from the political landscape and that they will have a chance to leave a legacy their grandchildren can be proud of. As for Huckabee Sanders, what can she do? She has no record of public service or legislative policy; she has only her talent for using her daddy’s connections to land political jobs. Her defining achievement has been her time as a White House spokeswoman, explaining away Trump’s lies and camouflaging his failures with the media — which she, presumably like her boss, considers to be “the enemy of the people.” She certainly can’t emulate her daddy’s legacy. In his nearly three terms as governor of Arkansas, he embraced what his party had already come to call “socialized medicine” by adopting Hillary Clinton’s plan to provide health insurance for all the state’s children; he bragged at the time that it was his proudest achievement. Donald Trump says such Christian behavior is socialism, something to be repealed instead of emulated, and Sanders seems to have adopted his stance on that matter — as well as on issues regarding Black people, immigrants, planetary carbon reduction, rich people’s tax burdens, the Democratic Party and everything else. Her only real campaign commitment is that she has promised war against all of them. Her father raised more taxes, including income taxes, than any governor in Arkansas history — although in 2008, when he was running for president and was attacked by a club of rich men for his policy achievements, he would proclaim that he never raised a single tax. When he says (or his daughter says) that it ain’t so, I will happily provide the detailed record. History will confirm Mike Huckabee as one of Arkansas’s five most liberal (and, in those terms, successful) governors since the state’s founding in 1836. His daughter seems to be swearing not to emulate him but, instead, the nation’s most conspicuously failed president. What will she do when she discovers, probably in her first month in office, that the state’s fiscal system is totally dependent on revenue sources she’s sworn to eliminate? Remember that she first promised to totally end personal and corporate income taxes in Arkansas, which would shut down Arkansas’s schools and colleges — unless, of course, she dramatically raised other taxes that land most heavily on the poor and working people. If she unwinds the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid reforms, as she seems to expect to do, she will face the biggest budget crisis since the governor of Kansas’ fiscal catastrophe a decade ago. You’ll recall that this colossal misjudgment sent him fleeing from office. Would Sanders suffer a similar fate? Probably not. Her most valuable political skill, and perhaps her only one, is to vociferously blame all challenges and mistakes on the “radical left.” It’s an excuse Arkansas voters seem happy to accept.
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’all love some local brews and fried foods, and we at the Arkansas Times took note. The voters have spoken on their 2022 favorites, tipping us off on such varied topics as where to find the cutest kids’ clothes (The Toggery), who to hit up for the best ink (7th Street Tattoo) and the best guys to call in a roach-related emergency (Adams Pest Control). We couldn’t resist amplifying some of your picks and adding a few of our own. K Hall & Sons delivers on fantastic food and an unbeatable Facebook game, and food writer Rhett Brinkley gladly sampled a full Soul Food Sunday spread with Sweet Stella country fried chicken wings, macaroni and cheese and candied yams to bring you the story. Then he double-checked his first assessment by sampling their strawberry cake, a cheeseburger and a Sweet Stella fried chicken sandwich. It held up. Balance is key, so we also feature Mountain Home fitness savant Hampton Liu, who woos us with possibilities of friendship and better posture. We talked with Courtney Pledger about the changes in store for Arkansas PBS, we talked with muralist Adaja Cooper and interviewed Jennifer Burr of Natural Relief Dispensary, your pick for Best Budtender. We explored maxed-out adventure vehicles at Moix RV Supercenter and scoped out the best drinking hole that’s possibly a friendly cult, aka the Elks Lodge in North Little Rock. Do you follow @pineacre, the TikTok influencer Wes Anderson would try to be if he ever hung out in the Ozarks? Now you will.
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BRIAN CHILSON
Arkansas artist Adaja Cooper finds a way
IF VANDALS ATTACK YOUR WORK REPEATEDLY BEFORE YOU EVEN GRADUATE FROM COLLEGE, SURELY YOU’RE DOING SOMETHING RIGHT. BY MARY RUTH TAYLOR
24 JULY 2022
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PERSISTENT MURALIST: Adaja Cooper didn’t let the vandalism of her Seventh Street mural get her down.
I
n the heat of summer 2020, Adaja Cooper was in a creative state of mind. She’d just wrapped up her first solo show (Adajavu) at the House of Art in North Little Rock, and Jose Hernandez of the 7th Street Mural Project invited her to paint her first mural. Titled “Ain’t I A Woman,” Cooper’s contribution to the vibrant corridor of socially conscious street art is a tribute to Black women who’ve been harmed by systemic racism, particularly by the medical community and police. The piece’s vibrant background and striking, expressive figurative work capture Cooper’s signature style. A few days after it was unveiled, however, someone obscured the entirety of the piece with black paint. Cooper restored the mural with dedication, but in a matter of days it was defaced again. This felt like a devastatingly personal attack for a young artist. But with an outpouring of support from the community the mural was once again made new. “I think the biggest takeaway from it was to just keep painting and keep going,” Cooper said. “You know, regardless of what happens to a mural, it is a public piece. So anything could happen, but you just keep a brave face on and you keep painting.” She’s done exactly that. Not deterred by vandals or critics, Cooper established a name for herself and secured her place in the Little Rock art scene. A rising senior at Hendrix College, she’s collected numerous honors and accolades in just a few years, from national awards to magazine publications to gallery shows. An artist from the start, Cooper fielded requests in her elementary school days from classmates requesting cartoon doodles — her first commissions. After dabbling in the arts on her own for years, her first painting class at Central High School set her path in earnest. She found mentorship with teacher Rex Deloney, a fellow artist who encouraged Cooper’s creative pursuits. “We had a lot of deep conversations about what art means and why it’s so important for people of color to paint each other,” Cooper said. “Basically, if you go to a museum and you look at the things that are up, you might not see someone that looks like you. And because of that, it should inspire you to create.” As a student at Central, Cooper was intimately familiar with the school’s charged racial history. That history became a source of inspiration, and while working on the Elizabeth Eckford Bench Project it occurred to her how historical preservation can be a form of art, and
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Vibrancy is the cornerstone of ' Cooper s style. Each painting holds layer upon layer of color, with a deliberate combination of acrylic to make the background pop and oil to sculpt the bold expressions that have become a signature OF her work. PLAYING HER CARDS: The Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac are Kings in Cooper’s “Two Sides of the Same Card” series (above), and she repainted her Seventh Street mural (right) twice after it was vandalized.
vice versa. She realized how well art and history, particularly Black history, complement one another, and began to incorporate it into her art. “Growing up, having certain experiences really just sparked even more passion and motivation for me to paint not only the hard parts, but just the beautiful parts, the calm parts. I think they deserve to be showcased as well,” Cooper said. Her recent series, “Two Sides of the Same Card,” is a celebration of Black history and culture. Each of seven paintings features two notable figures mirroring one another in the style of playing cards. Her subjects include a wide range of cultural icons, from civil rights heroes to musical legends. Though grand in scale, the Two Sides series offers only a small window into Cooper’s portfolio. Her Instagram is a vast digital museum of her art, showcased in an explosion of color. Last year Cooper completed her largest painting to date, a commission for the Central Arkansas Library System to inspire children to read that was featured on a billboard downtown. An older work, “African American Gothic,” was done in the style of Kehinde Wiley, who is perhaps best-known 26 JULY 2022
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‘FOR THE CULTURE’: Cooper favors bold expressions and vivid backgrounds in her work. for his 2018 presidential portrait of Barack Obama. Cooper’s piece drew Wiley’s praise on social media. Another favorite is a portrait of Erykah Badu, full of vivid colors and dynamic patterns. This vibrancy is the cornerstone of Cooper’s style. Each painting holds layer upon layer of color, with a deliberate combination of acrylic to make the background pop and oil to sculpt the bold expressions that have become a signature of her work.
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Through her success, Cooper gives lots of credit to everyone who supported her along the way. She emphasizes that without those who left their mark on her, she would not be the same person she is today. Cooper received an award this spring at her school’s honors convocation, but they pronounced her name incorrectly (it should be Uh-Day-Juh). She reports it’s a common mistake. Disheartened but unsurprised, Cooper checked her phone after the ceremony and noticed a text from her mom. “One day … everyone will know how to pronounce your name.”
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Pledger Pledges Progress ARKANSAS PBS BOSS MAKES MOVES.
BY DEBRA HALE-SHELTON PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRIAN CHILSON
OUT IN FRONT: Arkansas PBS CEO Courtney Pledger leads public programming to the next level.
E
lmo may not be any older than he was a decade ago, and the Cookie Monster may still be hungry, but many other things have changed at Arkansas PBS since Courtney Pledger took over the network in 2017. We’re not talking about Elmo’s new puppy, Tango, either. We’re talking about educational media tools developed to help children learn at home after the coronavirus pandemic forced schools to shut down across the state in 2020. We’re talking podcasts, and we’re talking prep sports on live television. And much more. Pledger became executive director and chief executive officer of Arkansas PBS in 2017. “We have … really raised the bar over the
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past couple of years,” Pledger said during an interview in her office on the University of Central Arkansas campus in Conway. “There’s been a tremendous amount of change here since 2017.” For one thing, the network expanded its media reach from television to digital in what Pledger called “a huge transformation.” The network’s channels can be livestreamed online or watched with a phone or computer. And, unlike Netflix, there’s no charge to access that content. A set of rabbit ears will do the job. Born in Arkansas and raised in Mississippi, Pledger brought a three-decades-long career in the arts to the job. Her acting and producing resume took her from Hot Springs to Hollywood
and London, and now to Conway, where Arkansas PBS is based. She appeared in the TV series “Walking Tall” and produced various programs, including the Emmy-winning “A Killing in a Small Town” in 1990. She has worked for Hearst Entertainment, Rastar and the IndieProd Company and has held senior leadership roles at film and television organizations, including Universal’s Illumination Entertainment, where she focused on intellectual property rights for familyfriendly films. She’s worked at the Londonbased Jigsaw Films/Miramax, Radical Pictures and the United Kingdom’s Aardman Animation. She received the Women in Film’s Lillian Gish
THANK YOU ARKANSAS FOR VOTING US: BEST RV/CAMPER DEALER Producing Award. From 2012 to 2016, Pledger was executive director of the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival and helped rebuild “the oldest documentary film festival in North America.” One of the more visible changes Pledger brought to Arkansas PBS is the addition of high school sports tournament coverage — a move that appeals to people across the political spectrum, including some of the most conservative Republican legislators who oppose state funding of the network. Folks can now watch their children and grandchildren hit home runs and score touchdowns on live television. There’s no streaming network to join. Just turn your television to your primary local PBS station (Channel 2 in Little Rock and Conway) and watch. When Arkansas PBS began airing prep sports, it also “committed not only to producing and airing the games, but also to producing short documentary stories and profiles of student athletes, coaches, legendary teams and the pageantry that surrounds the games — like the school band and cheer teams,” Pledger said. Those stories have ranged from how a Conway football player tackled his mother’s battle with terminal cancer to the high school junior “who is leaving her mark as a play-by-play announcer while overcoming Tourette’s Syndrome.” Other figures profiled have included a football coach who adopted his one-time player, and a basketball league for homeschooled children. In May, Arkansas PBS launched “The Growing Season” podcast, a monthly production that follows six Arkansas farmers as they work through a year on their land. Farmers, agriculture students and anyone interested in the people who grow our food or raise the sheep that provide our wool can find the podcast at myarpbs.org/thegrowingseason or wherever podcasts are found. Hosted by Arkansas-born musician and actor Ben Dickey and produced in cooperation with the Arkansas Department of Agriculture, the podcast addresses issues ranging from the rising costs of farming to suicide rates among farmers. Pledger and the network faced perhaps their biggest challenge in March 2020 when schools across the state sent students home as the coronavirus gripped the nation. “We went to the Arkansas Department of Education and said, ‘What can we do?’” Pledger recalled. “We proposed school on the air — something that educational television originally did.”
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Then, “We were sent home, too. We had to work virtually. That was ... a defining moment.” Called Arkansas AMI, the effort saw the network broadcasting curriculum-based programming for the state’s pre-kindergarten through eighth-grade students. Teachers of the Year hosted each segment. Parents and educators had access to accompanying bilingual lesson plans and curriculum materials. “The team took on that building of the airplane in the air — and succeeded wildly,” Pledger said. “Meanwhile, due to demand for our educational programming during COVID, the AR Cares Act Committee unanimously agreed to fund an expansion of our transmitter infrastructure to take our [over-the-air television] signal coverage from 76% of the population to somewhere over 96%.” In 2021, the network, again with the Education Department, launched a summer program called Rise and Shine to address learning gaps for kindergarteners through fifth graders in fun ways. They again used the talents of Arkansas Teachers of the Year, as well as PBS Kids programs and dozens of field-trip segments from across the state. Power Packets — English and Spanish workbooks on math, science, social studies and literacy — went out to youngsters throughout most of Arkansas. Arkansas PBS plans to premiere a second round of Rise and Shine in July and August. It will run for six weeks, three hours daily. The network is trying to boost audience engagement in other ways, too. In December 2020, Craighead County students in grades three through six talked with astronauts aboard the International Space Station. Arkansas PBS later televised the event on the network and on YouTube, with speeches by former President Bill Clinton and Governor Hutchinson. The network also recently livestreamed Dolly Parton’s visit to the Arkansas Governor’s Mansion, which it will soon augment with an
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interview about Parton’s Imagination Library book donations to children. In October the network premiered a documentary it commissioned in partnership again with the Education Department, “7 Days: The Opioid Crisis in Arkansas,” at the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival. The documentary is available on YouTube. Under Pledger’s leadership, the network moved into locally produced children’s programming with “Blueberry’s Clubhouse” and an upcoming series that teaches social studies to 5- to 7-year-olds. Earlier this year, Arkansas PBS took home five major Public Media Awards, the only national awards in public media. Weeks earlier, it won five Regional Emmy Awards. As for what she would say to legislative foes of Arkansas PBS, Pledger said the network has “pivoted strongly to a focus” on “local content and services — information that Arkansans cannot receive anywhere else.” She said Arkansas Citizens Access Network (AR-CAN) promotes government transparency in our state through livestreaming of state government meetings. And there’s a major safety fact many in the state may not know. “Our life-saving towers serve as the backbone of the early warning system in Arkansas, helping keep us safe,” Pledger noted. Despite a recent flirtation with Louisiana PBS, where she was a finalist for the director’s job, Pledger withdrew from that job search and said she hopes to stay in Arkansas. That decision came even as an Arkansas legislative committee delayed on raising her $152,581.94 annual salary, which includes a merit raise, to $180,000 because some lawmakers said they detected some liberal leanings in national broadcasting. Pledger said Arkansans also appreciate the national PBS programming, “where they can access everything from children’s programming to history, science, art and music. “Arkansas PBS belongs to the people of Arkansas, and it reflects all of them,” she said. As for what Pledger most enjoys on PBS, she said, “On the national schedule, ‘Finding Your Roots’ is one of my favorites.” She also loves the Masterpiece shows, especially “All Creatures Great and Small.” On why she wants to stay in Arkansas, Pledger said, “I love living in this place. To be able to give back to the state where both my parents were born and raised and my grandparents before through public media is so meaningful to me.” Pledger said she has no retirement plans. “That word is not in my vocabulary.”
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HAMPTON LIU BEAMS HAPPINESS AND FITNESS TIPS FROM MOUNTAIN HOME TO THE WORLD. BY AUSTIN BAILEY PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRIAN CHILSON
I
HANG WITH HAMPTON: He says you can do this, but you’ve got to work your way up to it.
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t doesn’t actually matter if you’re the exercising type, or even if you’ve never heard of Hampton Liu, the Mountain Home fitness guru with a global and growing following. Once you meet him, you’re going to want to be his friend. The great news here is that he probably wants to be your friend, too. And if, as you spend internet time with your new friend Hampton, you find yourself progressing toward your goal of doing a few full pushups or even a pull-up (!), then that’s a pretty great perk, now, isn’t it? The 28-year-old Lui rolled into the online fitness scene only a couple of years ago, and while he’s picked up TikTok and Instagram followers by the millions, he’s still bashful about the “influencer” label. To be fair, it’s not a perfect fit. Buff but not bulky, relaxed and relatable, Liu is a fitness influencer like Mr. Rogers is a childhood influencer, or Tom Hanks is an actor influencer. “My goal is to help people cultivate long-term fitness and happiness through creating fitness content and building community,” he explains at hybridcalisthenics. com. It’s that endearing combination of expertise and warmth that prompted one YouTube follower to dub Liu “the Bob Ross of working out.” The first thing to know about Liu’s workout program, Hybrid Calisthenics, is that you don’t have to pay for it. Anyone with an internet connection can follow along. “This routine is provided free of charge so that it may help as many people as possible,” the website says. You can buy branded T-shirts or send donations via Patreon, but no pressure. And he’s big on gravity and body weight as strength-building tools, so there’s no pressure to buy any fancy equipment, either. Most of Liu’s workout videos show him exercising on his deck, using the railing or walls as props to correct posture or perfect a backbend. He’s also prone to a parkour approach, seemingly unable to resist turning
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The first thing to know about Liu's workout program is that you don't have to pay for it.
rock walls and tree limbs into fitness props from which he balances and hangs in gravity-defying ways. The second thing to know is that Liu does not expect you to be able to do any of these gravity-defying stunts, especially not at first. He champions gradual progress, made over the course of a lifetime. Take, for example, his 3-minute YouTube video “You CAN do pushups, my friend!” Starting as all his videos do with his standard greeting, “Hello, my friends! It is your brother Hampton,” the video follows what his fans will recognize as a reliable formula: reassurance that the challenge before us is tough but achievable; a sequence of suggested variations to build up strength over time; and his signature sign-off to “Have a beautiful day.” Escalating degrees of difficulty keep plainjane pushups from being either too off-putting for beginners or too boring for the more muscled among us, Liu explained. Start where you are and go from there. “The concept embodies a lifetime of progress.” You should absolutely jump in on this with some wall pushups, then progress to incline and knee versions and then to the real deal if you feel so called. (In fact, why not go do 25 wall pushups right now? Good job!) But it’s Liu himself, more than the nuts and bolts of his content, that draws a crowd. Here’s a sampling of viewer comments: I trust this guy with my life without ever meeting him. This guy is one of the most wholesome and selfless people I’ve ever heard of. I know this means nothing to you, because you don’t know a single thing about me, but I’m 16, you give me comfort. You remind me of my older brother a lot, and he isn’t with me anymore, so your content makes me really happy and at peace. And I really hope something in your life makes you feel the same. He’s like the most wholesome creator on here. I just love his positivity and light.
IN LIU OF FANCY EQUIPMENT: Fitness influencer Hampton Liu exercises anywhere. 38 JULY 2022
ARKANSAS TIMES
And he takes the occasional negative comment in stride. Liu has been criticized for being too skinny and not muscular enough. Some commenters said he looks like a woman, probably because of his enviably glossy shoulder-length hair. “It’s never made me upset. We need to accept these things we know to be true. Once we accept them, they no longer can be used against us,” he reasoned. “I do have long hair and slightly round features.” Liu meets viewers’ vulnerability with his own, augmenting fitness content with podcasts and musings usually presented with his signature coffee cup in hand. A recent offering, “In the Event of My Death,” has Liu sharing some pretty deep thoughts on being at peace with his inevitable demise. He has more insight into this topic than most people his age, having recently nursed his mother after a serious stroke and through the final years of her life.
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ALL THE WORLD’S A GYM: Mountain Home’s Hampton Liu, having a normal one.
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She died in 2020. That experience, he said, was “a catalyst of a fundamental personality shift and a revelation about myself.” The revelation: “I wanted to be able to give to other people without any expectation of anything in return. That’s fundamental in both my content and my routine.” No doubt this experience added to the emotional intelligence and empathy that are Liu’s superpower, every bit as much as the surreal upper body strength that allows him to hang perpendicularly from light poles. Not that he’s in a rush to meet death, he said, but there will be some perks when the final moment comes. Specifically, Liu admits part of him will welcome freedom from an repetitive intrusive, irrational fear that he might step on a crawling baby. There he goes again, breaking down a topic that’s dreaded and intimidating into something relatable and a little less terrifying. Liu earned a degree in international business from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, and he earned his high energy and full-throttled interest in health from his dad. Both Liu’s parents came to the United States from Taiwan before he was born. Liu’s dad helps run an integrative medical center in Mountain Home, focused on martial arts and traditional Chinese healing. Combining that business degree with his genetic predisposition for promoting wellness and his off-the-charts emotional intelligence makes for an unlikely but winning combination, even when he doesn’t charge a penny. “You can give a tremendous amount of things away for free and still make a living,” Liu explained. “I have a website where I sell fitness equipment. I never push, but I let people know, if you need this, I have it.” That site generates some income, and so do the online ads that appear with his content. Add money from Patreon subscribers and a potential book deal, and Liu is doing OK. There’s no hard sell on the business side of things, just like there’s no hard sell on the fitness side. Liu’s favorite exercise of all, walking, generates zero dollars in revenue for him. But how many pull-ups does one person really need to do? “At some point, the strength pursuit really becomes more of a hobby than a necessity,” Liu admits. He plans to continue pursuing this hobby/ livelihood hybrid in Mountain Home. He started offering his routines online around the time COVID-19 hit, fundamentally changing the way the world does business and allowing him to beam out content from anywhere, even Baxter County. Liu was born in Utah but has lived here since he was 2. “I love Arkansas,” he said. “A lot of people are surprised when I tell them I’m from Arkansas.”
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HALLS OF FAME: From Left: David Hall Jr., Daron Hall, David Hall Sr., Devin Hall
Food with soul
FROM A SMALL PRODUCE STAND TO THE BEST COMFORT FOOD IN LITTLE ROCK, K. HALL & SONS APPROACHES ITS 50TH YEAR ON WRIGHT AVENUE. BY RHETT BRINKLEY PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRIAN CHILSON 42 JULY 2022
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F
or nearly half a century, three generations of the Hall family have been operating a business on Wright Avenue in Little Rock’s Paul Laurence Dunbar School Neighborhood Historic District. In 1973, the late Knoxie Hall rented the former gas station at 1900 Wright Ave. to sell produce grown on the family farm in Wrightsville, 15 miles away. It’s been a family business from the jump. Hall’s youngest son, David Hall Sr., the store’s current owner and operator, can recall working at the produce stand with his father when he was in junior high school. “I was here with him from the very beginning,” he said. Back then the former gas station was not enclosed, and the produce tables were set up out front. When school was out for summer, Hall Sr. worked with his dad every day. “Didn’t sell much, just sold a little bit, and what we didn’t sell in the evening, we’d load on the truck and take home,” Hall Sr. said. Knoxie Hall ended up buying the former gas station, renovating it and moving the operation indoors. His wife, Estelle Hall, worked as the manager. Hall Sr. eventually took over the operations. “I don’t remember what year it was,” he said. “Probably about 20 years ago.” Much like Hall Sr. himself, his three sons, David Jr., Daron and Devin, grew up in the business. “We grew up working there, probably 5, 6 years old, stocking shelves, taking old ladies’ bags to cars, sacking greens, even working on the farm some, picking watermelons and squash, okra and peas and all that good stuff,” Daron Hall said. Working there is a family tradition, instilling a strong work ethic and sense of community. “That was one of the things with my boys and all the siblings’ kids, nieces and nephews, it wasn’t an option, it was a matter of when do you start,” Hall Sr. said. “My boys, they laugh about it now, but it was like, every morning, getting up and turning on the light in their room, you know, ‘Get up, get up, get up, time to go.’ Quite naturally like most kids, like myself, didn’t want to but had to.” “Definitely instilled in us some hard-working effort and dedication for sure,” Daron Hall said. Hall Sr. has grandchildren working shifts now. Many of the customers are also close, and greet each other warmly. If Hall Sr.’s sister Katherine Hall is working, you’ll likely hear her greet someone with her signature “Hey, baby.” When Hall Sr. took over operations, he kept the family and community focus but made two major changes. First, he started delivering
produce to restaurants and schools. Then he started cooking. “We didn’t start cooking to sell,” Hall Sr. said. “We started out cooking to feed ourselves.” But when customers in the store caught a whiff of what was going on, they wanted to buy more than just produce and groceries, and they let it be known. Their instincts were correct. If you live in Central Arkansas and haven’t been by K. Hall & Sons to pick up lunch, you’re missing out on something special. You’re not going to find a better value in town, and the food is top-notch. K. Hall’s cheeseburger wowed me more than any burger has in years. It’s one of those burgers you bite into and immediately say, “Oh, my God.” It’s an unpretentious classic, my favorite kind. And it’s neat and tidy, not so big that you have to cut it down the middle for a successful first bite, although they offer a “jumbo” size and that one is definitely a twohander. The fries are great, too, and with a 12-ounce soda, the whole meal was less than $8. Another item you should try for lunch is the pork chop sandwich ($3.29), fried golden and crispy and served between two slices of white bread with mayo, mustard, lettuce, tomato and onion. A new item we recently enjoyed is the Sweet Stella chicken sandwich ($3.99), which is a fried chicken sandwich with mayo, pickles and the Hall brothers’ signature Sweet Stella sauce, which won best wing sauce at the 2018 Arkansas Wing Festival. For dessert, grab some peach cobbler or choose between a wide variety of cakes, available both whole and by the slice. You can also pick up meals to serve at home later. Refrigerators are stocked with prepared items such as Hall’s “Big Dave’s Homemade Chili,” chicken salad, greens and purple hull peas. The award-winning Sweet Stella sauce is also for sale. Named after their grandmother Estelle — “Stella Mae is what we used to call her,” Daron said — the sauce was created when brother Devin Hall was messing around with some flavors in the kitchen at their parents’ house. In 2018 the brothers launched the food truck HallBros2Go. The idea percolated for a while, but they didn’t pounce until their father’s friend put a food truck up for sale that was fully equipped and had only been used for one year. “My dad was like, ‘Y’all want it?’ So we talked about it and prayed about it, and he was like, ‘Let’s go ahead and get it,’ ” Daron Hall said. The truck can be found in the front parking lot at K. Hall & Sons for a twice-monthly event known as Soul Food Sunday, a must-stop for all comfort food seekers. Although soul food wasn’t the original focus,
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YES, PLEASE: (Clockwise from top), chicken and pork chops fried golden and crispy; the Hall brothers’ food truck; an unassuming storefront belies the wonders inside; a perfect and unpretentious classic burger.
the first time the brothers decided to try out a soul food-focused Sunday, the community took note. “We sold out the first day,” Daron Hall said. “Didn’t have a crumb of anything left.” So the brothers realized what they had to do. “Not really surprised,” Daron said, “it just became clear what people wanted to eat on tHe cHaRlOtte JOHn cOMp Sundays.” The brothers started cooking more food tot H e c H a R l O t t e J O H n c O M p a n Y keep up with the demand. Little Rock City Director and Trio’s owner Capi Peck often reminds people to go visit Soul Food t H e c H a R l O t t e J O H n c O M p a n Y BEST HIP CLOTHING BEST TOYS & BEST GIFT SHOP Sunday on her Facebook page. H e10-5•2616 c H a KAVANAUGH R l O t BLVD. t e LITTLE J O ROCK•501.661.1167•SHOPBOXTURTLE.COM Hn cOMpanY “Nothing makes me happier than Hall MON-FRI 10-5:30t SAT brothers Soul Food Sunday,” Peck said. “You’ll most likely see me there every single time. People laugh that I buy so much food for a family of two, but we feast all day Sunday, lunch tHe cHaRlOtte JOHn cOMpanY and dinner, on the best soul food in town.” The menu varies some, but you’re likely to find country fried wings (try them with Sweet Stella sauce), catfish, pork chops, pork roast, spaghetti with beef and sides such as mac and BEST RESIDENTIAL cheese, greens, candied yams, purple hull peas REAL ESTATE and cabbage. Desserts from K. Hall are also on the menu. One plate featuring a meat and two AGENCY & veggies is around $12, and is enough for two BEST REALTORS, meals. Hall Sr. said he and his wife are proud that JONIE BURKS & their sons want to continue the family tradition APRIL FINDLAY of cooking. “They’ve become pretty good at it,” Hall Sr. said. The Hall brothers also serve food at private events. What’s the wildest event they ever catered? “Wild game dinners,” Daron Hall said. “It’s always a hit. It’s a fundraiser my high R eschool s i d e n t i a l s a l e s s p e c i a l i s t s alumni association throws and invites people Little Rock Conway to bring the wildest game. We have R edone s| 501-664-5646 i d e n t i a l s a l e s s p e1300 c iOak a Street l i s| 501-327-5646 t s 5813 Kavanaugh charlottejohn.com smothered rabbit and barbecue raccoon with sweet potatoes.” Daron said people initially recoil at the thought of eating racoon. “Then they try it and they say, ‘Man, that’s so good.’ My dad cooks it and it tastes like barbecue brisket.” The Hall brothers also have a line of “Bromade” lemonades available in the store featuring flavors like Blue Magic, Watermelon Lemonade, Bro-Made Greenade and Purple Reign Grapeade. Years before Soul Food Sunday began, K. Hall established itself as a Little Rock seafood destination with its weekly Seafood Saturday boils, which began with seasonal crawfish, Hall said that on one of the last Saturdays of a season, he had some shrimp a friend brought from Louisiana. “While we were cooking the crawfish, we R e s i d e n t i a l s a l e s s p e c i a were cooking the shrimp for ourselves, not to R e s i d e n t i a l s a l e s s p e c i a l i s t s sell,” he said. Little d e e n ii aa ll ssaal le es s sR pep eRock RR ee ss ii d nt tLittle s e tls sConway s| c i ic daielanilstitissa a l e s s p e1300 c iOak a Once again, the community spoke. Rock 5813 Kavanaugh 501-664-5646 charlottejohn.com R e s| 501-664-5646 i d e n t i a l s a l e s s p e c i a l i s t s Little Rock 5813 Kavanaugh Conway 1300 Oak Street | 501-327-5646 “People wanted to buy ’em,” he said. Little R eRock s501-664-5646 i d e n t i a l s a l e scharlottejohn.com s p e c iOak a Street l i sConway t s 5813 Kavanaugh R e s|| 501-664-5646 i d e n t i charlottejohn.com a l s a l e s s p1300 e1300 c iOak a Street l | i501-327-5646 s| 501-327-5646 t s Shrimp boils led to people asking about crab 5813 Kavanaugh charlottejohn.com
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SEAFOOD SATURDAY: David Hall Jr. prepares crawfish (above left) and Cajun turkey necks (below right). Lines of customers wait their turn for what’s always an impressive spread.
We didn't start cooking to sell. We started out cooking to feed ourselves.
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legs, and that’s how Seafood Saturday came to be what it is today: a year-round Saturday boil featuring shrimp, crab legs, lobster tails, sausage, Cajun turkey necks, corn, potatoes and seasonal crawfish. Seafood Saturday is known for its long lines, which typically stretched around the building before COVID times. In line you might see Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott Jr., who recently posted a picture of his Seafood Saturday spread to his Instagram page with the hashtag #EatBigLR. “I love their Seafood Saturday,” Scott said. “K. Hall and Sons is a significant staple in the city of Little Rock and I daresay Arkansas. Mr. David Hall is someone who’s been a family friend for quite some time and is a stellar leader. We’re grateful to their commitment to entrepreneurship and the city of Little Rock.” If there was a “Best of” for business social media, K. Hall would certainly have my vote. It’s the kind of social media promotion that can’t be taught. I’ve been following it for a few years now, watching full 6- to 7-minute Seafood Saturday updates on Facebook Live, which Daron Hall typically hosts, taking the viewers around the store, visiting with co-workers and displaying what’s available. Around the boil outside, Devin Hall will often give a hilariously informative crawfish eating tutorial that involves a dance and sprint away from the camera that you have to see for yourself. There’s also the K. Hall & Sons Facebook church announcements featuring the character Hattie Mae, an elderly church-going woman who warns against all kinds of tomfoolery, ending each announcement with the directive: “Now govern yourselves accordingly.” Here’s a church announcement from a snow day: “I’m gone let y’all young bucks know NOW we have cameras on each side of the building and drones in the air. Let us catch y’all doing donuts in the parking lot this year. This ain’t ‘Fast and Furious.’ My God.” You get the sense, watching the videos and visiting the store, that even though the Halls are working, they’re having a good time with each other and the community. “We just try to entertain, man, keep people wanting to come in,” Daron Hall said. “We’re a family business, and with everything going on, we just want to be a place where people can come in, have a good time and eat good food.” They’ve succeeded at that. In addition to collecting many community awards over the years, K. Hall & Sons was inducted into the Arkansas BlacK. Hall of Fame in 2016. Asked about his proudest accomplishment, Hall Sr. mentioned the Hall of Fame induction but said he’s especially proud to be part of the community he serves every day. “It makes you feel proud when you have people come in and tell you they appreciate you being here. That’s always good.”
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THE LODGE: Once a railroad bunkhouse, the building at the corner of Poplar and Broadway streets is now home to the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks.
The Best People / on Earth /
BEHIND THE CURTAIN AT THE NORTH LITTLE ROCK ELKS LODGE. BY SEAN GRIGSBY PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRIAN CHILSON
W
inding my way through the labyrinth north of the river, I considered what I might be walking into. Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble used to attend a raucous, male-centric organization called the Loyal Order of Water Buffaloes, where they’d eat brontosaurus steaks and communally drink beer out of an unliftable chalice. And I needed a drink. At the corner of Poplar and Broadway streets, on the front of an old, two-story red-brick building, a neon sign displays “BPOE, No. 1004,” and bears the image of an elk head. The antlers reach up to a star. Behind the horned
48 JULY 2022
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mammal is an analog clock, whose hands are forever fixed to the eleventh hour. I rang the doorbell and waited to be let in. A sign in red letters warned: Members Only. A few seconds later, I was welcomed into the North Little Rock lodge of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks by Jackson Pruss, Esteemed Leading Knight. The image sat firmly in mind. This was going to be like some Skull and Bones, occult goatriding descent into hell. Black robes, candles, Republicans, the lot. Nothing could have prepared me for what I actually encountered: regular people, like you and me, enjoying drinks,
the company of fellow adults, and a connection to something greater than themselves. Secrecy? Hardly. Unlike Fight Club, the first rule of the Elks is to tell everybody. The lodge’s foyer would remind anyone of an old city hall, with a marble staircase, pictures and names of current and former leadership, and the lodge’s Bible, encased with two different black-and-white pictures of firefighters hosing down a burning building. The Bible has been featured in Ripley’s Believe It or Not for having survived not one, but two fires. “We hope there isn’t a third time to be the charm,” Pruss told me as he led me through two
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GHOSTS, ANTLERS AND BROTHERLY LOVE: (From the top), the women’s powder room, the dining hall and the ritual flags at the Elks Lodge in North Little Rock. glass doors. Like any good bar, there’s enough seating and space for at least a hundred people — though I only counted about a dozen there for a Thursday evening. Illuminated dart boards line the wall to the right, a jukebox lays in wait at the front, while a large bar stands in the back, serving members as they chat and smoke. I did not spy any wooly, horned hats … nor any forced machismo. In this room, I met Joy Gunter, Lodge 1004’s newly elected Esteemed Ruler, and the lodge’s first woman to hold the top Elk position. Her father was an Elk, and after she joined 22 years ago, she was immediately placed in the position of treasurer. It wasn’t until 1995 that women could even join the BPOE, let alone lead, a change that barely predates Gunter’s membership. As Pruss brought me a pint of Flyway Brewing’s Bluewing, Gunter was showing me the renovations to the building, including a new dining hall where they serve dinner every Tuesday. The lodge was originally a bunkhouse for the railroad in the ’60s, a place where workers could rest between grueling shifts. The Elks were around then, but they were taking up residence in what is now North Little Rock’s Junior League building on Fourth Street. That’s when I learned about the ghost. “There’s actually a few of them,” Gunter said. I’d expected a tour, but I had no idea our first stop would put me in the Ladies Room — a dimly lit lounge full of plush couches and vanities. One of the ghosts claims this spot as hers. “Her name is Minnie,” Gunter said. When a paranormal investigator stayed the night in Minnie’s bathroom, the evening ended with a cold presence brushing past Gunter and a motion detector going on the fritz. Many Elk members have seen the “Lady in Blue.” Gunter told me, “You walk in and she says, ‘I think it’s time you should leave.’ ” I agreed with Minnie’s sentiment, and the tour moved on, taking me up white, marble stairs to where the Elks hold their rituals. The walls outside the entrance are lined with the names of members who have passed, all plated in bronze. Inside the hall, four throne-like chairs had been placed on each wall. These are the four positions of leadership, representing the four pillars of the Elks: Charity, Justice, Fidelity, and Brotherly Love. Taking up these pillars, from the top down, are the Esteemed Ruler, followed by the Esteemed Leading, Loyal and Lecturing Knights — all of which anacronyze to ELK. The Order was formed by New York thespians in 1868 because they were looking for a place to 50 JULY 2022
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NEW SEASON BEGINS JULY 8! “Blueberry’s Clubhouse” – the original pre-K-2 children’s program featuring Blueberry, a curious puppet guide, and her friends at Camp Onomatopoeia participating in fun, engaging and insightful summer activities across The Natural State – returns to Arkansas PBS with an all-new third season Friday, July 8, at 9:30 a.m. The series, produced in partnership with the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, will air each Friday morning at 9:30. Visit myarpbs.org/blueberry for more information.
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NO ‘OLD WHITE DUDES CLUB’: Joy Gunter (left) and Jackson Pruss want the lodge to be a safe, caring and inclusive place.
drink on Sundays. They were known as the Jolly Corks, but as membership expanded and a name change was decided, they became the Elks over the Buffalo by one vote. Since then, they’ve had a hand in developing some national hallmarks: Flag Day was proposed by the Elks, for one. And Joy Gunter wants to bring back some of the old traditions — like their formal Christmas Ball and Mother’s Day ritual — while also welcoming people from every demographic. Different from organizations like the Shriners, who focus on one area of philanthropy, the Elks have their hands in everything. They collect school supplies for kids going into the second semester, since other drives take place at the end of summer, and they also consistently raise money for local human development centers. They want the lodge to be a place for families, minorities and especially people who might assume they’re something nefarious. “People look at the Elks Lodge like the old white dudes club,” Pruss told me. “We’re trying to bring back the positive reputation of the Elks. We have Latino members, African American members. I myself am a member of the LGBT community and we have several others who are as well.” Pruss is also a millennial, and it’s his hope that of our generation would consider joining the BPOE. I consider how difficult it is to make new friends in your 30s. Recently, the New York Post reported that one in every five millennials is lonely and has no friends. So why not the Elks? “We’re there to do whatever we can to help other people,” Gunter said. Pruss nodded. “Our motto is Elks care, Elks share.” Membership requires you to be an American citizen and to have never been a member of an organization that tried to overthrow the U.S. government. Sorry, QAnon Shamans need not apply. Admission also requires you to believe in a higher power, though the Elks concede that a potential member’s answer to the question “Do you believe in God?” can be complicated. Some agnostics have joined, for example, while an avowed atheist cannot. “We care about people,” Gunter told me when I asked what it all means. Pruss smiled and said, “That’s why we’re the BPOE, the Best People on Earth!” So if you’re looking for a safe place to hang out any day of the week, meet new people, and support good causes, you could do worse than the Elks. The least you have to do is pay the annual dues of $119.50. And in this economy, that’s a damn good deal. 52 JULY 2022
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“People look at the Elks Lodge like the old white dudes club. We're trying to bring back the positive reputation of the Elks.”
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JULY 2022 53
Pastry Cases and Liminal Spaces THE ARTIST BEHIND THE POPULAR PINE ACRE ACCOUNT DOCUMENTING SMALL-TOWN LIFE IN NORTHWEST ARKANSAS. BY REBEKAH HALL SCOTT
SCENES FROM PINE ACRE: Ashlyn Gulbranson’s popular TikTok documents the small-town delights of Northwest Arkansas.
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neon cowgirl blows smoke from the tip of her gun in downtown Bentonville. Flyers, business cards and printed prayers layer the bulletin board at Ma and Pa’s Bent ‘N Dent Discount Groceries in Huntsville. Glazed donuts glisten in their case at Daylight Donuts in Elkins. These video snapshots have each earned tens of thousands of views on the TikTok account @pineacre, where artist Ashlyn Gulbranson documents life in the Arkansas Ozarks. Gulbranson, 27, lives in the country outside of Fayetteville with her husband and 2-yearold daughter. After growing up “all over” the South and Midwest, Gulbranson moved to Siloam Springs in 2013 to attend John Brown University, where she studied graphic design and photography and met her husband. The pair moved to downtown Fayetteville in 2017 after getting married, and Gulbranson said the area quickly became home. “On a heart level, we love the scenery, we love getting out on the river, and the nature aspect up here was a huge draw,” she said. “I’ve lived in a lot of places, and I can truly say living in this part of Arkansas has felt most like home.” After moving from downtown Fayetteville to a house in the hills, Gulbranson learned her way around dirt roads and settled into the quiet land and clear night skies. In January 2021, she began making video collages of her days as a stay-at-home mom. “In the beginning, it was really just me and my videos, and no one followed me,” Gulbranson said. “I was fine with that because it was an exercise for me and my mental health, to slow down and really savor the moments of my day and stitch them together for a little time capsule that I could watch later, that would then inspire me. It was a really good practice.” She knew she wanted to branch out from her personal videos, though. In April 2021, she posted the first video in her “Spaces” series, which makes up the majority of her feed today.
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The 12-second video captures a handful of scenes inside Hart’s Family Center, a grocery store in Eureka Springs. It has over 179,000 views. “It’s still one of my favorite videos because it just reminds me of taking an idea I had and going out and filming it,” Gulbranson said. “I’m really proud of that video because I thought, ‘Oh, no one’s going to see that,’ and then the next morning I woke up to so many people loving the vibe and loving what I created. It did fire me up to ask, ‘What else can I create with my surroundings, with my everyday life?’ They are moments that I appreciate, and it was really heartwarming to see other people appreciate those small, nuanced moments as well.” Gulbranson’s account now has 60,000 followers, and her videos have over 1 million combined likes. Many of the comments she receives on her THE ART OF THE MUNDANE: Ashlyn Gulbranson is on the lookout for it. videos address a sense of stuck-intime slowness in small towns. At CV’s Family Foods in Ozark — which has since been rebranded as a Harps — twinkly synthesizer music plays under clips of store aisles, pastry cases and carts stacked inside the entrance. One user commented, “You have a gift for capturing the present fading into the past. It’s happening all around us, every day, but mostly we don’t notice.” This same video, which has over 238,000 views, received three very different comments: “It’s giving Republican vibes”; “These videos remind me of my own mortality”; and “Why did this make me feel like I’m gonna cry,” to which another user responded, “Spoke to your inner child.” Gulbranson said that when she initially saw comments about how her videos made people feel sad or scared, she was taken aback. “But the more I got comments and sat with those feelings, I realized that a lot of my favorite art is contentious and does bring out those feelings. I also have those feelings sometimes when I go into these spaces,” she said. “I do understand where they’re coming from. I think growing up in small towns and in the South, it’s not always peachy and quaint. There’s so much hardship here, too. “I do like pouring into those feelings, because they’re real, and they’re what we experience. I’m not trying to just be liminal or happy. I don’t know what TikTok would say my niche is, but I
I think for me, because I witness my 2-year-old look at every single thing ' in a store, it s about becoming aware of the beauty around you, and accessing that sense of childlike wonder through putting yourself in your child's shoes./ /
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like that a lot of my viewers don’t know what is coming next, either.” The concept of “liminal spaces’’ began trending on TikTok in 2021, deep into the second year of the pandemic. These are defined loosely as spaces that are somewhere in between: literally in between, such as hallways, train stations or airports; and spaces with in-between “vibes,” captured in the transition between their original purpose and irrelevance — think fuzzy images of children’s play places from the ’90s, dull office cubicles or, such as the case of Gulbranson’s @pineacre, quickly aging outposts in rural life. As with anything on the internet, reactions to #liminalspaces videos are polarizing: Some people feel soothed by them, others scared. Though she often receives comments on her videos about their liminal quality, Gulbranson didn’t set out to make videos within this category. She’s more interested in capturing the beauty of “mundane” moments, places and things. “I think for me, because I witness my 2-year-old look at every single thing in a store, it’s about becoming aware of the beauty around you, and accessing that sense of childlike wonder through putting yourself in your child’s shoes,” she said. “Just slowing down and actually seeing an image that’s not super popular, it’s something you wouldn’t think to take a picture of. I look for the in-between moments, or interesting design, craftsmanship and architecture.” Gulbranson said she became very inspired by American realist painter Edward Hopper during the pandemic, “just really relating to that abstract loneliness.” “It was a time when I hadn’t been out into the world a lot, and I think my Spaces series reflects that,” she said. “Because after the pandemic, I was just so excited about going out again. I missed all those small little details that Hopper painted.” Gulbranson also lists photographers William Eggleston and Vivian Maier as influences on the way she sets out to capture the world around her, in its action and stillness. “A lot of their photographs are mundane moments, but they also hold so much beauty and value, and they’re often what we miss most, are those in-between moments,” Gulbranson said. “I love art like that, that appreciates the small moments
you cherish. A lot of the artists that I’m drawn to pick up on that, or elements of the South that I relate to.” In a video featuring scenes from the Dickson Street Bookshop in Fayetteville, one user commented “The Wes Anderson of TikTok.” Gulbranson said comments like this are “super flattering,” and she thinks the comparison is drawn from her eye for visual patterns and pleasing juxtapositions. “Being a designer, I notice fonts and colors and shades together,” Gulbranson said. “I think it’s about the matching of color to the environment and how I frame. I’m always looking for colors and shapes that repeat themselves, and I think it’s just that what I pick as interesting is visually satisfying.” Gulbranson said she films many of the videos with her young daughter in tow, and she appreciates how the video project has allowed her to capture moments she’ll look back on as her daughter grows. As a “mother of the pandemic” whose daughter was 3 months old when lockdown began, Gulbranson said she emerged with “more anxiety and isolation” and contemplated, “what kind of mom am I going to be?” “For me, it’s about living your life for your daughter, and being that example of doing what you love,” Gulbranson said. “Because it’s so easy to put things aside and be like, ‘I’ll do it later. I’ll do what I want when everyone else is taken care of.’ So these videos are such little gems for me because they are the moments that I’ve pieced together for myself to remember, that she might look at one day.” Gulbranson’s meditations on motherhood, as well as her experiences growing up in the Bible Belt, are among her many ideas for stories she’d like to tell in the future. She often receives comments on her videos asking if she plans to “get into cinema,” which Gulbranson said “feels like this huge dream.” “I would love to be a director of photography,” she said. “I have so many stories and plotlines in my head that I would like to get out there on the big screen or in the world. But being a mom does take up a lot of my time right now. Hopefully, it does lead to that.” In the more near future, Gulbranson said she’s excited for summer in the Ozarks and is planning to film a river floating video with friends. She’s interested in creating longer videos in landscape view, rather than the vertical frame of TikTok. In addition to her @ pineacre account, Gulbranson said she also enjoys working on freelance videography, photography and art direction projects in the Northwest Arkansas area — all while keeping up with a busy toddler. “Right now, I just feel like I’m in a season of life where I’m soaking in all this information and ideas,” Gulbranson said. “Hopefully, they’ll get to flourish one day. It feels like I’m planting seeds right now.”
Conversations over cocktails turned into a talk show. Because, why the hell not?
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Fanciest Bug Out Plan MOIX RV SUPERCENTER SELLS FUN AND FREEDOM, AND DEMAND IS HIGH. BY STEPHANIE SMITTLE PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRIAN CHILSON
SELLING FUN: Moix RV Supercenter in Conway has been at the center of the RV boom.
W
alking the lot with sales manager Brad Barnett at Moix RV Supercenter in Conway, it’s pretty easy to get swept up in the dream. The thought of the wide open road before you in the front windshield, the feeling of self-sufficiency and freedom, the impossibly adorable teardrop trailers. On a Friday morning with the heat index hovering around 100 degrees, the Moix lot had the air conditioning on full blast in a $150,000 big rig fifth wheel, decadent and intoxicating. “Gives my guys a place to cool off,” Barnett said, “and customers can come and sit.” Not only could you make a three-layer cake in the posh stainless steel residential oven with loads of Corian countertop space to frost it, it feels like the bake time would barely make a dent in the room temperature. Barnett, who is 6 feet tall, can turn around comfortably in the bathroom shower, which is outfitted with a fold-down teak wood seat and a gridded rainfall-style shower head. There’s another half bath off the kitchen, by the way, an entertainment center with multiple couches and twin recliners, an electric fireplace, earth-tone paneling and a four-burner gas stove. (Think: coastal
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grandmother, vacation version.) Oh, to be free of stops in grimy public bathrooms! To never again find yourself stripping the comforter from a hotel bed, knowing good and well that a perfect stranger (or five) wallowed in it only a few hours ago! To be blissfully exempt from inflated Airbnb fees forever! How swiftly would such an investment pay off, one wonders — say, that $21,900 pre-owned Cherokee travel trailer over there with the Grey Wolf nightscape etched above the hitch? Moix RV Supercenter “sells fun,” to put it in Barnett’s words. Maybe that’s why he’s stuck around a whole 23 years, nearly half of the 47 years the RV seller has been in business. And yet, it’s only been in the recent years of his tenure that he’s seen sales skyrocket, clamoring to meet unprecedented demand. #RVlife, #vanlife, #campervan, #airstream — these are all hashtags that, while they had dedicated followings before the pandemic, have skyrocketed in popularity, along with the vehicles and lifestyle they portray. Opulent on-the-road amenities once reserved for celebrity trailers (Simon Cowell’s had a spiral staircase) have sparked interest in recreational vehicles far beyond
VAN LIFE, BUT MAKE IT POSH: A high-end fifth wheel trailer with an entertainment suite, a roomy kitchen and one and a half baths.
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to everyone who voted for CareLink! We are honored to have been named a finalist for Best Charity Event: Cupcakes for Goodness Sake, Best Chief Executive Officer: Luke Mattingly, Best Company To Work For, & Best In-home Care We are overwhelmed with gratitude by the trust families have put in us to care for their older loved ones for more than 40 years and for the wonderful team members who make it possible. Central Arkansas’s Area Agency on Aging has been caring for families together since 1979. If you or someone you know could use a little help aging safely at home, contact us today. 501 372 5300 | 800 482 6359ARKTIMES.COM | CareLink.org JULY 2022 59
CAMP MOIX: Teardrop trailers at Moix take the tiny home aesthetic on the road (left), and the Storyteller Overland “Beast Mode” (right) outfits a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van with some heavy-duty bells and whistles.
“They've got a video of one of these rock climbing behind a rock climber. Pretty amazing to watch.”
the retirement-age set. Music festivals are buying Airstreams from which to broadcast cozy concerts. Tiny home mania? There’s a completely mobile version of that! Horse trailers, too, lest your equine companions have acquired a taste for the finer things in life. And the 75-ish employees at Moix, with an outpost in Springdale and two more in Conway augmenting its sizable lot off U.S. Highway 64, have seen the industry boom firsthand. “The last two years have been something we never thought we would ever see,” Barnett said. “Not a lot of sleep went on. We tripled the amount of units, then quadrupled the amount of units we’d sold in previous years. It’s absolutely amazing how many people are doing this right now.” He attributes the demand to the pandemic curbing international travel, and the abundance of parks in Arkansas ready to fill the gap. There’s also a healthy dose of defiance fueling the boom. (See: the “Don’t Tread on Me” flag rippling in the wind behind a Toyota Tacoma on Moix’s website.) “People don’t like to be told that they can’t do something. If you tell somebody, ‘Hey, you can’t go see your buddy over here’ … ? People figured out that they could go camping and be away from everyone and do what they want to do.” Moix’s business demographics used to skew older, Barnett said, “but in the last 10 years or so we’ve seen the age shift to younger generations getting out and doing this.” Gas prices and economic turbulence have slowed business a little; it costs around $25060 JULY 2022
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$300 to fill the 50-gallon tank of a motorhome these days. “Folks are still going,” Barnett said, “but they’re taking shorter trips.” You don’t necessarily have to have a massive truck to haul one, either. Smaller teardrop trailers can be pulled by a Subaru, and a Honda Pilot can pull a 5,000-pound travel trailer. And what about the customers who come in looking to invest in their “bug out” plan, looking for the rugged wilderness-ready vehicle of their doomsday dreams? Options abound. “A lot of folks are looking for what they call ‘boondock’ rigs that you can take out in the middle of nowhere, away from anybody, and pretty much have a bug-out shelter.” For around $200K, you can nab yourself a Storyteller Overland’s “Beast Mode,” a meticulously designed Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van with four-wheel drive, solar panels, hydraulic lifts, high-performance headlamps, two convertible sleeping beds and dimmable LEDs galore. No throwing a brick through the window of these things; the windows are made of unbreakable polycarbonate. Further out on the lot, survivalist types can swoon over an Australian-made, Californiaassembled Black Series travel trailer, a roughand-ready off-road travel rig with an allaluminum frame, a full indoor kitchen and pull-out outdoor kitchen, an off-grid lithium battery, power awning, a master bed and two bunk beds. “They’ve got a video of one of these rock climbing behind a rock climber,” Barnett said. “Pretty amazing to watch.” Only about 10% of the customers buying at Moix live in their recreational vehicles full-
time, Barnett said. But all of them go through an extensive tutorial on how to operate the vehicle — toilet output and all — and make minor repairs, like taking off the thermostat and resetting it. If you forget how to do something and call the dealer, you’re going to get a representative at Moix, not a robot, and if you’re looking to immerse yourself in the camper van subculture, Moix hosts quarterly “Camp Moix” outings with live music (“mostly ’50s, ’60s, ’70s music,” Barnett said) and food at base camp. They’re headed to Hutchinson, Kansas, in July. There’s also an enormous service center being constructed on the lot right now, which will increase Moix’s service bays from eight to 20, and dramatically expand the center’s sales offices and delivery area — the place where customers pick up their new rigs. “Mike puts almost every penny he makes back into the company,” Barnett said. “He’s in it for the long haul.” Seems like Barnett is, too. With nearly a quarter-century selling Moix RVs in his rearview mirror, he’s not going anywhere, and has even let the marketing folks talk him into doing some TV commercials with a puppet dubbed “George,” despite the fact that puppetry is apparently not Barnett’s passion. He sold cars for a while before his stint at Moix, he told us, a culture that tends to make a sale and then hope they never see the buyer again. “That’s not who we are. Folks call up and they ask for you by name. They’ve gone on our campouts and had dinner with us. They know who we are.”
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Arkansas s best budtender '
JENNIFER BURR OF NATURAL RELIEF DISPENSARY IS THE PEOPLE’S CHOICE. BY GRIFFIN COOP PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRIAN CHILSON
J
ennifer Burr of Sherwood’s Natural Relief Dispensary has been voted Best Budtender in the Arkansas Times’ annual Best of Arkansas readers survey. As a wellness consultant, the 30-year-old Burr studies cannabis and its effects so she can give patients the best recommendations. Ultimately, she said, the best advice she can offer any new cannabis consumer is to have patience.
What drew you to working as a budtender? For me, it was the compassionate care aspect of it. I have always been understanding of people’s pain, people’s needs. My ultimate goal coming into this was to help people live abundantly and, for some, to help people die peacefully, and in that we have attacked a lot of physical pain, mental pain, PTSD. We’re big on our veterans here. So being a part of that has been truly awesome. Did you have previous experience in the industry in another state? This was a new experience for me. I came in having minimal knowledge. Natural Relief really supports its wellness consultants and budtenders by giving us knowledge. They put us through what I would consider like college cannabis courses. We have to pass tests. I’m still testing even though I’ve been here for a year and four months. We test over things as far as terpenes and CBD, CBG (cannabigerol), CBN (cannabinol). What makes us different, I feel, compared to other dispensaries, is having that knowledge as the backbone. That way we can truly help our patients with whatever they’re needing. 62 JULY 2022
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PATIENCE AND OPENNESS: Those are important qualities for a budtender to have, Jennifer Burr says.
What makes a good budtender? I think what makes a good budtender is one who is receptive. They’re open. They listen and they truly comprehend what products need to go to that person in order to help them with whatever they’ve got going on. Another thing for a budtender is, you need to have patience and understand that just because they come in the dispensary, they have a whole life outside of that dispensary and we may not understand it on the inside. So when someone comes in and they’re in a lot of pain, they may be aggravated. Understanding where that aggravation is coming from makes a big difference. Knowing someone’s not coming in, for the most part, trying to be malicious. They are truly trying to feel better. What questions do you get most often from customers? A lot of times people ask about the legality at this point, because Arkansas is so new to the cannabis scene, just making sure that they have their legal receipt, that they are covered legally, that we’re responsible, that things are weighed correctly, that every business opportunity that we have, we do it in a professional manner. I think
for a lot of people that come to our dispensary, they notice that we’re very professional with what we do and we have our end goal to help our patients feel better, whether it be mentally, physically, spiritually, whatever it is. Anecdotally, we’ve heard that customers often gravitate toward marijuana with the highest THC even though that’s not necessarily going to lead to a positive experience for everyone. Do you try to steer customers in other directions, or educate them on other considerations? We definitely do have some people who are THC chasers and this is what I tell them. They’ll see a strain of 11 or 13% THC and think that it’s not going to be effective. We steer them right back to the terpenes and how essential those are. Those are our essential oils of cannabis. And then I have to prepare them for the future. If you keep getting 28-30% strains, in the future you can have problems getting medicated because that’s all that your system knows is high THC. So we go back to focus in on the terpenes. It doesn’t matter if it’s 13% or 11% as far as the THC is involved.
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Are the customers receptive to that? Yes, because in the long term I think a lot of people have experience where they keep getting the higher THC, and they can’t get medicated. And it’s very frustrating to not be able to get what you need and have to pay the price that we pay here in Arkansas as far as a cost. You definitely don’t want to ever get down that road. So I think for a lot of people, they’re receptive because they look long term. What strain is especially popular these days? [Osage Creek Cultivation’s] Eleven Roses, that’s a pure indica. [Osage’s] Durban Poison, a straight sativa. It’s high in THCV, which means it’s an appetite suppressant as well. I think a lot of people don’t want the munchies and they want to feel energized. . . [Osage’s] Cluster Bomb has been very, very popular. Any of the new Cheech and Chongs [grown in Arkansas by BOLD Cultivation], I feel like they sell very, very quickly and that’s just because people know that name.
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If you had one piece of advice for a new consumer, what would it be? Patience. Just like you would go to a doctor and they would write you a prescription and let’s say that prescription didn’t work well for you. You go back to the doctor and you try something else. It’s the same thing we do here. If something doesn’t work or if you have a bad reaction or it doesn’t work well with your body, we come back and we try something else. Do you get tips? If so, what’s an average week look like? We’re all paid very, very well for what we do, considering that we’re coming in not having very much knowledge. And then having the hunger for knowledge is another difference from one budtender to another. I train new people that come in as well, and you have to be passionate about what you do. You have to have that hunger for knowledge. There’s many nights that I would go home and I would study and that’s just to make me a better budtender to help people in the long term. But yes, we do get tips, but we split our tips. They’re going to range anywhere from $160 to $200 a week per budtender. And then we get our hourly on top of that. So we’re paid pretty well here. They take very good care of us. ARKTIMES.COM
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CONGRATS TO THE 2022 WINNERS! 2017, 2018, 2019
RECREATION
BIKE TRAIL Arkansas River Trail Finalists: Mt. Nebo State Park Monument Trails (Dardanelle), Northwoods Trails (Hot Springs), Pinnacle Mountain State Park Monument Trails (Roland), Slaughter Pen (Bentonville) CHEAP DATE Pinnacle Mountain State Park Finalists: The Garage Arcade (Russellville), The Rail Yard, Riverfront Park, Rock Town River Outfitters FAMILY ATTRACTION Little Rock Zoo Finalists: Museum of Discovery, Pinnacle Mountain State Park (Roland), Arkansas Skatium, Magic Springs Theme and Water Park (Hot Springs) GOLF COURSE Rebsamen Park Golf Course Finalists: Burns Park Golf Course (North Little Rock), Country Club of Little Rock, Eagle Crest Golf Course (Alma), Indian Hills Golf Resort (Fairfield Bay) GYM/PLACE TO WORK OUT 10 Fitness Finalists: 365 Fitness (Conway), Orangetheory Fitness, Jolly Bodies, Little Rock Athletic Club HIKING TRAIL Petit Jean State Park (Morrilton) Finalists: Devil’s Den State Park (West Fork), Emerald Park (North Little Rock), Pinnacle Mountain State Park (Roland), Lake Ouachita Vista Trail (Mount Ida) MARINA Mountain Harbor Resort and Spa (Mount Ida) Finalists: Brady Mountain Resort & Marina on Lake Ouachita (Royal), Eden Isle Marina on Greers Ferry Lake (Heber Springs), Heber Springs Marina on Greers Ferry Lake, Fairfield Bay Marina (Shirley)
OUTDOOR ATTRACTION Buffalo National River Finalists: Garvan Woodland Gardens (Hot Springs), Loco Ropes, Oaklawn Racing Casino Resort (Hot Springs), Little Rock Zoo PARK Two Rivers Park Finalists: Allsopp Park, Burns Park (North Little Rock), Murray Park, Emerald Park PLACE TO CANOE/KAYAK/TUBE Buffalo National River Finalists: Two Rivers Park, Little Maumelle River, Spring River, White River PLACE TO MOUNTAIN BIKE Pinnacle Mountain State Park Monument Trails Finalists: Coler Mountain Bike Preserve (Bentonville), Northwoods (Hot Springs), Mt. Nebo State Park Monument Trails, Rattlesnake Ridge PLACE TO SWIM Greers Ferry Lake Finalists: Jim Dailey Fitness and Aquatic Center, DeGray Lake, Lake Hamilton, Little Rock Racquet Club RESORT The Lodge at Mount Magazine (Paris) Finalists: Gaston’s White River Resort (Lakeview), Mountain Harbor Resort and Spa (Mount Ida), Oaklawn Racing Casino Resort (Hot Springs), Club Wyndham Resort at Fairfield Bay (Fairfield Bay) WEEKEND GETAWAY Eureka Springs Finalists: Gaston’s White River Resort (Lakeview), Bentonville, Oaklawn Racing Casino Resort (Hot Springs), Buffalo National River
LOCAL ENTERTAINMENT
ARTIST Kevin Kresse Finalists: Milkdadd, Adaja Cooper, Meikel Church, Lisa Krannichfeld
AUTHOR Kat Robinson Finalists: Ayana Gray, Michael Combs, Eli Cranor, Frederick McKindra COMEDIAN Big Dre Finalists: Nate Williams, Stef Bright, Michael Brown, Chase Myska COUNTRY BAND/ARTIST Ashley McBryde Finalists: Cliff & Susan (Susan Erwin and Cliff Prowse), Bonnie Montgomery, Salty Dogs, Erin Enderlin DANCE CLUB Discovery Finalists: C4 (Fayetteville), Club 27, Electric Cowboy, Cannibal & Craft DJ Mike Poe Finalists: DJ Baldego, DJ Courier (Hot Springs), g-force, JJ Wilson FILMMAKER Brent Renaud Finalists: Jeff Nichols, Graham Gordy, Kathryn Tucker, Craig Hodges GAY BAR Discovery Finalists: 610 Center, C4 (Fayetteville), Sway, Triniti Nightclub HIP-HOP ARTIST Penn Davis Finalists: Kvng Moses, Big Piph, 607, Bankroll Freddie JAZZ BAND/GROUP The Rodney Block Collective Finalists: Funkanites, The Goat Band, Trap Jazz Giants, Ted Ludwig Trio LATE NIGHT SPOT White Water Tavern Finalists: Four Quarter Bar (North Little Rock), Willy D’s, Midtown Billiards, Town Pump ARKTIMES.COM
JULY 2022 65
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66 JULY 2022
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esults
Proud sponsor of the Arkansas ArkansasTimes TimesBest BestOf ofArkansas Arkansas2022 2022 Little Rock • Hot Springs • Dallas/Forth Worth Tyler • Longview • Lufkin • El Dorado Texarkana
LIVE MUSIC FESTIVAL King Biscuit Blues Festival Finalists: Fayetteville Roots Festival (Fayetteville), Hillberry Music Festival (Eureka Springs), Valley of the Vapors Independent Music Festival (Hot Springs), Yadaloo Music & Arts Festival LIVE MUSIC VENUE White Water Tavern Finalists: The Hall, Murphy Arts District (El Dorado), Four Quarter Bar, Stickyz Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicken Shack LOCAL ACTOR Judge Reinhold Finalists: Natalie Canerday, Verda Davenport-Booher, Barry Clifton, Duane Jackson LOCAL THEATER Arkansas Repertory Theatre Finalists: Argenta Community Theater (North Little Rock), Murry’s Dinner Playhouse, The Studio Theatre, The Weekend Theater
PLACE TO GAMBLE Oaklawn Racing Casino Resort (Hot Springs) Finalists: Cherokee Casino and Hotel (Roland, Oklahoma), Choctaw Casino (Pocola, Oklahoma), Saracen Casino Resort (Pine Bluff), Tunica, Mississippi
2017, 2018, 2019
POET Crystal C. Mercer Finalists: Bryan Borland, Kai Coggin, Drekkia Writes, R.J. Looney ROCK BAND Adam Faucett and The Tall Grass Finalists: Colour Design, Lucero, Pallbearer, Joe & The Feels SPORTS BAR Brewski’s Pub & Grub Finalists: Legends Sports Bar at Saracen Casino (Pine Bluff), Twin Peaks, Prospect Sports Bar and Grill, Silks Bar and Grill at Oaklawn Racing Casino Resort (Hot Springs)
MOVIE THEATER Riverdale 10 VIP Cinema Finalists: AMC Chenal 9, Cinemark Colonel Glenn and XD, Movie Tavern, Regal UA Breckenridge
LOCAL MEDIA
MUSEUM Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (Bentonville) Finalists: Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, Historic Arkansas Museum, Mid-America Science Museum (Hot Springs), Museum of Discovery
COLUMNIST/REPORTER Max Brantley Finalists: John Brummett, Ernie Dumas, Dwain Hebda (Ya!Mule Wordsmiths), Rex Nelson
NEIGHBORHOOD FESTIVAL Hillcrest Harvestfest Finalists: Arkansas Cornbread Festival, SoMardi Gras, Handmade in the Heights, Hot Water Hills Arts & Music Festival (Hot Springs) PERFORMING ARTS GROUP Arkansas Symphony Orchestra Finalists: Arkansas Circus Arts, Ballet Arkansas, Praeclara, Red Octopus Theatre Group PHOTOGRAPHER Ashley Murphy Images Finalists: Amber Lane Photography (Russellville), Jason Masters, Aaron Brewer (Hot Springs), Dero Sanford PLACE FOR KARAOKE White Water Tavern Finalists: Town Pump, Brewski’s Pub & Grub, Dust Bowl Lanes and Lounge, Khalil’s Pub & Grill PLACE FOR TRIVIA Flyway Brewing Finalists: Brewski’s Pub & Grub, Dugan’s Pub, Flying Saucer Draught Emporium, Stone’s Throw MacArthur Park
BLOG The Mighty Rib Finalists: Arkansas Blog, Blue Hog Report, Tie Dye Travels, Rock City Eats
MARKETING FIRM CJRW Finalists: Campbell Ward, Cranford Co., MHP/ Team SI, Thoma Thoma NEWSPAPER WRITER Max Brantley Finalists: Austin Bailey, Dwain Hebda (Ya!Mule Wordsmiths), Eric Harrison, Philip Martin PODCAST Arkansas Times: Week in Review Finalists: BlackbeltVoices, Conversation Cocktails + Connections, Southern Fried Geekery, Not For Prophets Stereo Podcast RADIO PERSONALITY Heather Brown (Alice 107.7) Finalists: Justin Acri (The Buzz 103.7 FM), Tom Wood (Arkansas Rocks), Roger Scott (103.7 The Buzz), Tommy Smith (The Buzz 103.7 FM) RADIO STATION KUAR-FM 89.1/KLRE-FM 90.5 Finalists: KABF-FM 88.3, 103.7 The Buzz, KUAFFM 91.3, KSSN-FM 96
THANKS FOR VOTING FOR US!
The mission of Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families is to ensure that all children and their families have the resources and opportunities to lead healthy and productive lives and to realize their full potential.
BEST CHARITY EVENT, SOUP SUNDAY
BEST NONPROFIT
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JULY 2022 67
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2017, 2018, 2019
TV METEOROLOGIST Todd Yakoubian (KATV) Finalists: Tom Brannon (THV11), Barry Brandt (KATV), Melinda Mayo (KATV), Skot Covert (THV11) TV PERSONALITY Craig O’Neill (THV11) Finalists: Hayden Balgavy (THV11), Alyson Courtney (KATV), Donna Terrell (FOX16), Marlisa Goldsmith (THV11)
BEST BOOKSTORE
THANK YOU ARKANSAS READERS FOR VOTING US BEST BOOKSTORE! Open 10 AM - 6 PM Monday - Saturday, 12-5 PM Sunday 5920 R St, Little Rock • 501-663-9198 • www.wordsworthbookstore.com
TV SPORTSCASTER Steve Sullivan (KATV) Finalists: Hayden Balgavy (THV11), Troy Lynch (FOX16), Wess Moore (FOX16), Tyler Cass (THV11) TV STATION KTHV (THV11) Finalists: KATV (Channel 7), Arkansas PBS, KARK (Channel 4), KLRT (FOX16) WEBSITE arktimes.com Finalists: myarkansaspbs.org, arkansasonline. com, encyclopediaofarkansas.net, bluehogreport. com
PEOPLE AND POLITICS
ARKANSAN Joyce Elliott Finalists: Matt Campbell, Crystal C. Mercer, Eric Musselman, Ryan Taneja ATHLETE Jaylin Williams Finalists: Bobby Portis, Danielle Gibson, KJ Jefferson, JD Notae CELEBRITY Mary Steenburgen Finalists: Billy Bob Thornton, Symone the Ebony Enchantress, Torii Hunter, Bonnie Montgomery CHARITY EVENT Soup Sunday (Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families) Finalists: Cupcakes for Goodness Sake (CareLink), Taste of Little Rock (UA Little Rock), Chili Fights in the Heights, Paws on the Runway, It Takes a Village (5k)
For ! s k n e Tha ur Vot “Simply people helping people” “Simply people helping people” Yo MEMBERFDIC FDIC MEMBER
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BEST BANK
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER Courtney Pledger (Arkansas PBS) Finalists: Luke Mattingly (CareLink), Kellee Mitchell Farris (Lee County Cooperative Clinic), Nicole Hart (Hartworks Strategies Inc.), Chris Seay (Runway)
BEST BUDTENDER, JENNIFER BURR
BEST BUDTENDER, BEN BRADLEY
Thank you to everyone who voted for us!
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BEST DISPENSARY
Thank you Arkansas! We are here for you and are ALWAYS 100% Gluten, Wheat, Soy and Nut-Free!
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Proud sponsor of theProud Arkansas Times of Best the Of Arkansas 20 Tyler sponsor Longview Lufkin El Dorado Little Rock
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THANKS FOR VOTING US BEST DERMATOLOGIST! COME GET YOUR SPOT CHECK!
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CONSERVATIVE Asa Hutchinson Finalists: Steve Landers, Rex Nelson, Tom Cotton, Jim Hendren LIBERAL Joyce Elliott Finalists: Chris Jones, Clarke Tucker, Judson Scanlon, Denise Ennett LITTLE ROCK CITY DIRECTOR Capi Peck Finalists: Antwan Phillips, Kathy Webb, Dean Kumpuris, Virgil Miller LITTLE ROCKER Joyce Elliott Finalists: Emily Fenton, Crystal C. Mercer, Tommy Smith, Jay Barth MISUSE OF TAXPAYER FUND/PROPOSALS Tom Cotton Finalists: 30 Crossing, Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, Jason Rapert’s cemetery marker with 24-hour surveillance on the Capitol grounds, hamburger tax NONPROFIT The Van (The One, Inc.) Finalists: Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, Our House Shelter, Thea Foundation, Lucie’s Place PHILANTHROPIST Alice Walton Finalists: Johnelle Hunt, Dorthy Morris, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Kirk Bradshaw
BEST DERMATOLOGIST LITTLE ROCK MIDTOWN | 500 S. UNIVERSITY AVE., SUITE 708 • 221-2700
POLITICIAN Joyce Elliott Finalists: Chris Jones, Clarke Tucker, Denise Ennett, Kathy Webb WORST ARKANSAN Jason Rapert Finalists: Tom Cotton, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Leslie Rutledge, Steve Landers
personal training
FOOD AND DRINK
ARKANSAS-BREWED BEER Lost Forty Finalists: Flyway Brewing, Ozark Beer Co., Superior Bathhouse Brewery (Hot Springs), Gotahold Brewing (Eureka Springs)
Thanks ForVoting Me The Best! ResultsStudioLR.com
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BEST PERSONAL TRAINER, TINA GLASS
BAKED GOODS Community Bakery Finalists: Wild Sweet Williams (Searcy), Boulevard Bread Company, Cinnamon Creme Bakery, Dempsey Bakery
JULY 6 – AUG 13 BIRTHDAY OR SPECIAL OCCASION CAKE Blue Cake Co. Finalists: Community Bakery, Mickey’s Cakes & Sweets, Flake Baby Pastry, Cheesecake on Point BREAD Boulevard Bread Company Finalists: Community Bakery, Serenity Farm Bread (Leslie), Old Mill Bread, Stone Mill Bread Co. (Fayetteville) COCKTAIL Rocktown Distillery Finalists: Brave New Restaurant, Cypress Social, Cache, Brood & Barley COMFORT FOOD K Hall & Sons Produce Finalists: Soul Fish Cafe, Loca Luna, Flint’s Just Like Mom’s, Rosie’s Pot & Kettle
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CURBSIDE RESTAURANT SERVICE Taziki’s Mediterranean Cafe Finalists: Star of India, Trio’s, Soul Fish Cafe, Gadwall’s Grill FOOD FESTIVAL Main Street Food Truck Festival Finalists: International Greek Food Festival, Arkansas Cornbread Festival, World Cheese Dip Festival, UA Little Rock’s Taste of Little Rock
LIQUOR STORE Colonial Wines & Spirits Finalists: Legacy Wine & Spirits, 107 Liquor, O’Looney’s Wine & Liquor, Sullivant’s Liquor Store MILKSHAKE Purple Cow Finalists: Big Orange, Loblolly Creamery, The Original ScoopDog (North Little Rock), Winks Dairy Bar (North Little Rock)
It’s a declaration. It’s a call to action. A promise being made. At the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, you get more. Excellent academics. Faculty support. Community internships and partnerships.
IT’S TIME TO EXPECT MORE. FROM YOURSELF. FOR YOURSELF. FOR YOUR FUTURE.
ualr.edu
MOST CREATIVE MENU Brood & Barley Finalists: Brave New Restaurant, Cache Restaurant, Table 28, Star of India MUNCHIES FOOD Stickyz Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicken Shack Finalists: Four Quarter Bar, Cheba Hut, TOPDOG Hotdog Co., White Water Tavern ONION RINGS The Purple Cow Finalists: Town Pump, K. Hall & Son’s Produce, Buffalo Grill, Black Angus PLACE FOR A GUY’S NIGHT OUT Vino’s Finalists: Town Pump, The Fountain, Ohio Club (Hot Springs), Fassler Hall
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HANGOVER FOOD The Root Cafe Finalists: Leo’s Greek Castle, Four Quarter Bar, Hillcrest Little Bakery, Waffle House
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PLACE FOR A GIRL’S NIGHT OUT Raving Results Petit & Keet Finalists: Ciao Baci, Cypress Social, Agasi 7: Rooftop Bar + Kitchen, La Terraza Rum & Lounge PLACE TO EAT ON A SUNDAY Raduno Brick Oven & Barroom Finalist: Loca Luna, Soul Fish Cafe, Star of India, The Root Cafe RESTAURANT FOR A FIRST DATE Pantry Crest Finalists: Brave New Restaurant, Cache Restaurant, Ciao Baci, Loca Luna RIBS Whole Hog Cafe Finalists: Sims Bar-B-Que, Corky’s Ribs & BBQ, Count Porkula, Knightfire BBQ (Searcy) WINGS Four Quarter Bar Finalists: Buffalo Wild Wings, Waldo’s Chicken & Beer, Town Pump, Certified Pies
SHOPPING
ANTIQUES 2017, 2018, 2019 Midtown Vintage Market Finalists: Fabulous Finds, Flip Flop Flea Market (Bryant), Sweet Home/Clement
BRIDAL STORE Low’s Bridal (Brinkley) Finalists: The Bridal Cottage (North Little Rock), Unveiled Bridal Collection, Danielle’s Bridal & Special Occasions (Clarksville)
ART GALLERY M2 Gallery Finalists: Boswell Mourot Fine Art, Gallery 26, Justus Fine Art Gallery (Hot Springs), Cantrell Art Gallery
CBD STORE Healing Hemp of Arkansas Finalists: Green Cross Naturals, Heights Apothecary and Hemp Co., Good Earth Organics, Your CBD Store
AUTO DEALER Steve Landers Auto Group Finalists: Parker Lexus, Gwatney Chevrolet Company (Jacksonville), Mark McLarty Toyota (North Little Rock), Puckett Auto Group (Conway)
CHILDREN’S CLOTHING The Toggery Finalists: Basic Blake Boutique (Springdale), Serendipity Kids Boutique (Van Buren), Clara Jane & Jax (Batesville)
BICYCLE SHOP Angry Dave’s Bicycles (North Little Rock) Finalists: Arkansas Cycling & Fitness, Jackalope Cycling (Russellville), The Community Bicyclist, Gearhead Cycle House (Jonesboro)
FABRICS AND DRAPERY Cynthia East Fabrics Finalists: JOANN Fabrics, The Quilt House (Clarksville), Stitchin Post, Marshall Dry Goods Company (Batesville)
BOOKSTORE WordsWorth Books Finalists: Dog Ear Books (Russellville), Bookish (Fort Smith), Paper Hearts Bookstore, Dickson Street Bookshop (Fayetteville)
FARMERS MARKET Me and McGee Market (North Little Rock) Finalists: Hillcrest Farmers Market, Argenta Farmers Market, Little Rock Farmers Market The Bramble Market, White Water Market
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72 JULY 2022
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Proud sponsor sponsor of ofthe theArkansas Arkansas Times Proud Times Best BestOf of Arkansas 2022 2022 Little Rock • Hot Springs • Dallas/Forth Worth Tyler • Longview • Lufkin • El Dorado Texarkana
FLOORING STORE Raving Results Akels Carpet One Floor & Home Finalists: Cantrell Furniture Design Center, Ron Pack Carpet Center, Carpet Barn (North Little Rock), McElroy Tops & Floors (Benton) FLORIST Tipton & Hurst Finalists: Petal to the Metal Floristry, Frances Flower Shop, Cabbage Rose Florist, Tanarah Luxe Floral FURNITURE Midtown Vintage Market Finalists: Ashley Furniture HomeStore, Hank’s Fine Furniture, Cost Plus Furniture, Sweet Home/ Clement GARDEN STORE The Good Earth Garden Center Finalists: Botanica Gardens, Cantrell Gardens Nursery, Hocott’s Garden Center, Plantopia GIFT SHOP Bang-Up Betty (North Little Rock) Finalists: Box Turtle, Bella Vita Jewelry, Domestic Domestic, AR-T’s, Moxy Modern Mercantile
GROCERY STORE Trader Joe’s 2018, 2019 Finalists: Edwards Food Giant,2017, Kroger, Natural Grocers, Whole Foods Market, The Fresh Market
LINGERIE STORE Cupid’s Finalists: Aphrodite’s Love Boutique (Rogers), Seductions, Angie Davis (Conway)
HARDWARE/HOME IMPROVEMENT Fuller & Son Hardware Finalists: Ace Hardware, Kraftco Hardware, McCoy’s Lumber & Hardware (Searcy), Lowe’s
MEN’S CLOTHING Dillard’s Finalists: Baumans Fine Men’s Clothing, J. Duke & Co., Gearhead Outfitters, Walker Brothers (Fayetteville)
HIP CLOTHING Box Turtle Finalists: Anthropologie, AR-T’s, Crying Weasel Vintage, Fringe Clothing, E. Leigh’s Contemporary Boutique
MOBILE PHONE PROVIDER AT&T Finalists: Straight Talk Wireless, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless
HOBBY SHOP Argenta Bead Company Finalists: Dark Star Visuals (Fayetteville), ART Outfitters, The Coin & Stamp Shop, Hobby Lobby, HobbyTown (North Little Rock)
MOTORCYCLE DEALER Rock City Harley-Davidson Finalists: Mike Johnson’s Powersports (Russellville), Sunrise Yamaha Motorsports (Searcy), Rodney’s Cycle Shop
JEWELER Bang-Up Betty Finalists: Sissy’s Log Cabin, Bella Vita Jewelry & Gifts, Cecil’s Jewelry, Roberson’s Jewelry
OUTDOOR STORE Ozark Outdoor Supply Finalists: Bass Pro Shop, Domestic Domestic, Ken Rash’s of Arkansas, Ozark Mountain Trading Company (Conway)
THANK YOU ARKANSAS! THANK YOU FOR VOTING BLACKBIRD BEST HOME INSPECTORS 2 YEARS IN A ROW.
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Discover your wellness. COUNSELING, MEDICATION MANAGEMENT AND WELLNESS SERVICES INCLUDING MASSAGE, INDIVIDUAL YOGA AND NUTRITION COUNSELING FOR AN INTEGRATED APPROACH TO WELLNESS.
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PAWN SHOP Braswell & Son Pawn Brokers Finalists: Pacer Ltd., Cabot Pawn Shop, USA Loans Pawn Shop RV/CAMPER DEALER Moix RV Supercenter (Conway) Finalists: Crain RV (Benton), Gander RV & Outdoors (North Little Rock), Goss Camper Sales, Kiko’s Kountry RV (North Little Rock) SHOES Dillard’s Finalists: DSW, Rock City Kicks, Maude on Main (Van Buren), Munro Factory Outlet Store (Hot Springs), Warren’s Shoes
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SPORTING GOODS Gene Lockwood’s Finalists: Academy Sports + Outdoor, Dick’s Sporting Goods (North Little Rock), Rock City Running, Fort Thompson Sporting Goods (Sherwood) TOYS Knowledge Tree Finalists: The Toggery, Box Turtle, Kindness & Joy Toys (Fayetteville) VAPE SHOP Abby Road Finalists: Toddy Tobacco & Vape Shop, Rogue Vapers, Emerald’s Triangle (Jonesboro) VINTAGE CLOTHING Crying Weasel Vintage Finalists: America Jane Vintage (Conway), Oak Forest Vintage, The Retro Fit (Hot Springs), Thriftpologie WOMEN’S CLOTHING Dillard’s Finalists: Anthropologie, Crying Weasel Vintage, Beyond Cotton, E. Leigh’s, Vesta’s Boutique
THANKS FOR VOTING US BEST BIRTHDAY OR SPECIAL OCCASION CAKE!
Blue Cake Bowman 315 N. Bowman Rd. Little Rock
Blue Cake Cantrell 6800 Cantrell Rd. Little Rock
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EDUCATION
PRE-K OR PRESCHOOL Little Rock School District Finalists: The Anthony School, Pulaski Academy, Pulaski Heights United Methodist Church Early Learning Center COMMUNITY COLLEGE UA Pulaski Tech (North Little Rock) Finalists: Southeast Arkansas College/SEARK (Pine Bluff), National Park College (Hot Springs), University of Arkansas Community College at Morrilton
FOUR-YEAR COLLEGE/UNIVERSITY University of Arkansas (Fayetteville) Finalists: Arkansas State University (Jonesboro), Hendrix College (Conway), University of Arkansas at Little Rock, University of Central Arkansas (Conway)
2017, 2018, 2019
PRIVATE SCHOOL Mount Saint Mary Academy Finalists: The Anthony School, Pulaski Academy, Little Rock Christian Academy, Episcopal Collegiate School PUBLIC SCHOOL Little Rock Central High School Finalists: Forest Heights S.T.E.M. Academy, Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts (Hot Springs), North Little Rock High School, Parkview High School
GOODS AND SERVICES
ACCOUNTING FIRM Frost PLLC Finalists: Denman, Hamilton & Associates; EGP, PLLC; HCJ CPA’s & Advisors; Landmark APARTMENT COMPLEX The Fitzroy Chenal Finalists: Argenta Flats Apartments, Bowman Pointe Apartments, Fountaine Bleau Maumelle, The Pointe Brodie Creek ARCHITECT Herron Horton Architects Finalists: AMR Architects, Cromwell, Polk Stanley Wilcox Architects, Taggart Architects ARKANSAS-BASED COMPANY Tacos 4 Life Finalists: First Orion, Stephens Inc., Superior Senior Care, Walmart ARTISAN Bang-Up Betty (Stacey Bowers) Finalists: Bella Vita Jewelry (Brandy McNair), Electric Ghost (Justin Sharp), Newton Pens (Shawn Newton), Tommy Farrell AUTO SERVICE Discount Tire & Brake Finalists: Austin Brothers Tire Service, Foster’s Garage, Jett’s Gas & Service, Parkway Automotive AUTOGLASS REPAIR Safelite AutoGlass Finalists: Capitol Glass Company, Discount Auto Glass, Dr. B’s Windshield Repair Co., Mobile Glass Pros
BANK Arvest Finalists: Bank of Little Rock, Centennial Bank, Encore Bank, Simmons Bank COMMERCIAL INSURANCE AGENCY State Farm Finalists: Arkansas Farm Bureau, Brown & Brown Insurance, The Hatcher Agency, Shelter Insurance COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE AGENCY KW Commercial Finalists: Colliers, Kelley Commercial Partners, Moses Tucker Partners, The Property Group COMPANY TO WORK FOR UAMS Finalists: CareLink (North Little Rock), The Janet Jones Company, Moses Tucker Partners, Saracen Casino Resort CONTRACTOR Nabholz Construction Finalists: American Structure Inc., CDI Contractors, Cornerstone Construction, Kinco Constructors DESIGNER/DECORATOR Garry Mertins (mertinsdykehome) Finalists: Debi Davis Interior Design, Kelley Kolettis Designs, Brittany Nixon Creative, Johnna Novak (Novak Design) EVENT VENUE Robinson Center Finalists: First Security Amphitheater/River Market Pavilions, The Hall, Heifer International, Oaklawn Casino and Resort
VOTED BEST
GYM/PLACE TO WORK OUT
FUNERAL HOME Roller Funeral Homes Finalists: Griffin Leggett Healey & Roth Funeral Home, North Little Rock Funeral Home, Ruebel Funeral Home, Smith Family Funeral Homes HANDYMAN Top Notch Home Services (Steven Long, Conway) Finalists: The Dryer Vent Guy (Matthew Young, Conway), Fix-It Quick, Lash Remodeling (Maumelle), Mr. Fix-It Inc. HOME BUILDER Graham Smith Construction Finalists: Hines Homes, Kerr Building Services, Markus Homes, Mike Orndorff Construction HOME INSPECTION Blackbird Inspections (Eric Young) Finalists: Joe Cummins, GQ Inspection Services (Dennis Evans), Pillar to Post Home Inspectors (The Paulson Team), Reliable Choice Home Inspections HOME, LIFE, CAR INSURANCE State Farm Finalists: Arkansas Farm Bureau, Citizens Fidelity Insurance Company, The Jenkins Agency, USAA
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Raving Results HOTEL Capital Hotel Finalists: Aloft Little Rock West, Embassy Suites, Hilton Garden Inn, Oaklawn Racing Casino Resort (Hot Springs)
LAW FIRM 2017, 2018, 2019 Wright Lindsey Jennings Finalists: Duncan Johnston & Collins; LaCerra, Dickson, Hoover & Rogers PLLC; Mitchell Williams Law Firm; Taylor King Law
HVAC REPAIR Middleton Heat & Air Finalists: Airmasters Heating & Air Conditioning, DASH Heating & Cooling, Ski Brothers Heat and Air, Yates Maintenance Heating & Air
LAWYER Taylor King (Taylor King Law) Finalists: Erin Cassinelli (Lassiter & Cassinelli), Lauren Collins (Duncan Johnston & Collins), Bill James (James Law Firm), Giana Messore (Cordell & Cordell)
INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDER AT&T U-verse Finalists: Comcast, Conway Corp, Cox, Hyperleap, Starlink LANDSCAPER/LANDSCAPE DESIGN The Good Earth Garden Center Finalists: Botanica Gardens, Plantopia, Pugh’s Earthworks (Maumelle), River Valley Horticulture Products
MOVER Two Men and a Truck (North Little Rock) Finalists: Brandon Moving & Storage (North Little Rock), Elite Movers, Mustard Seed Moving of Arkansas, Prompt Moving & Transportation MUSIC EQUIPMENT Guitar Center (Little Rock) Finalists: Fry Guitars, Palmer Music Co (Conway), Renown Music (North Little Rock), Shuffield Music Company (Arkadelphia)
CONGRATULATIONS to COURTNEY PLEDGER Arkansas PBS Executive Director and CEO for being voted BEST CEO for the second consecutive year!
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PEST CONTROL Adams Pest Control Finalists: Arkansas Pest Control (North Little Rock), Clark Exterminating, Curry’s Termite, Elkins Pest Control (Maumelle), Legacy Termite and Pest Control PET GROOMERS Hounds Lounge Pet Resort and Spa Finalists: Amber’s Goochie Poochie, Doggie Do’s, Fairview Kennels, Pet Scene PLUMBER Ray Lusk Plumbing Finalists: Associated Plumbers Inc., Hall’s Affordable Plumbing, Merrick Plumbing (Benton), Russell & LeMay Plumbing & Heating REALTOR Debbie Teague (The Janet Jones Company) Finalists: Jonie Burks (The Charlotte John Co.), April Findlay (Charlotte John Co.), Jamie Grantham (Coldwell Banker RPM Group), Allison Pickell (Coldwell Banker RPM Group)
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RESIDENTIAL REAL ESTATE AGENCY Keller Williams Realty Finalists: The Charlotte John Company, The Janet Jones Company, PorchLight Realty, The Property Group SIDING, WINDOWS AND ROOFING Wilson’s Home Improvement (Hot Springs) Finalists: Accountable Roofing, Arkansas Roofing Kompany (Conway), Cornerstone Construction, Sideco/Windco (North Little Rock) SOLAR COMPANY Seal Solar (North Little Rock) Finalists: AEV Solar, Entegrity, Peak Power Solar, Sunpro Solar TATTOOS 7th Street Tattoo Finalists: Black Cobra Tattoos (Sherwood), Love Spell Tattoo, Lucky Bella Tattoos (North Little Rock), Smoky Row Tattoo (Russellville)
TRAVEL AGENCY 2017, 2018, 2019 Poe Travel Finalists: Friends Tours & Travel, Peacock Travel Group, Sue Smith Vacations (North Little Rock), The Travel Shop WEALTH MANAGEMENT Kelly Ross Journey (Edward Jones) Finalists: Conger Wealth Management, Chris Harkins (Harkins Rafferty Wealth Management of Raymond James), Encompass Financial Partners, Tim Rafferty (Harkins Rafferty Wealth Management of Raymond James) WEB DESIGN Rock City Digital Finalists: iProv, Lapero, Matmon WINDOW TINTING D&D Sun Control, Inc. (North Little Rock) Finalists: 007 Window Tinting (Benton), Arkansas RockStar Window Tinting, Jay’s Window Tinting (Sherwood), SunStop Window Tinting (North Little Rock)
MEDICAL AND PERSONAL CARE
ASSISTED LIVING FACILITY Fox Ridge Luxury Senior Living Finalists: The Manor Senior Living Community, Memory Care of Little Rock at Good Shepherd, Woodland Heights, Indian Rock Village (Fairfield Bay) BARBERSHOP Dogtown Barber Lounge (North Little Rock) Finalists: Blade and Barrel (Jacksonville), Handle Barbershop, Jerry’s Barbershop, Morrison’s Capitol Barber Shop BUDTENDER Jennifer Burr (Natural Relief Dispensary) Finalists: Ben Bradley (Natural Relief Dispensary), Buffy Montgomery (Suite 443 in Hot Springs), Ashley Strawser (Good Day Farm), Dustin Watson (Red River Remedy)
THANK YOU ARKANSAS TIMES READERS FOR VOTING
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An Arkansas Favorite. Year After Year. Dr. Bev Foster has been named to numerous “best of” lists for Best Chiropractic Physician since she opened her doors. Ask her loyal patients and you’ll hear comments like: “Her staff are both professional and always helpful,” “I would trust her skills with anyone in my family,” “…loves what she does and cares for her patients,” or our favorite, “Best chiropractor in the world!”
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CHIROPRACTOR Dr. Beverly Foster (Chiropractic Health & Rehabilitation) Finalists: Dr. Brad Chambers (Chenal Urgent Chiropractic), Brady DeClerk (Omnis Rehab: Joint and Performance Center), Lee Hodge (Abundant Health Chiropractic & Therapeutic Massage), Dylan Machycek (Elite Spine & Joint) COSMETIC DENTIST Dr. DJ Dailey (Smile Dailey General and Cosmetic Dentistry) Finalists: Dr. Stephen Deal (Deal Family Dentistry, Greenbrier), Dr. Montgomery Heathman (Heathman Family and Cosmetic Dentistry), Dr. Sam Strong (Dentalways), Dr. Jeff Wisner (Wisener, Cooper & Fergus, DDS; Rogers) COSMETIC SURGEON Dr. Gene Sloan (Aesthetic Plastic Surgery) Finalists: Dr. Rhys Branman (Cosmetic Surgery Center), Dr. Melanie Prince (Melanie Prince, MD Plastic Surgery), Dr. Kris Shewmake (Shewmake Plastic Surgery), Dr. Suzanne Yee (Cosmetic & Laser Surgery Center)
BEST SALON
COUNSELOR/THERAPIST Argenta Counseling Finalists: Catalyst Counseling (Conway), Stacy Kinzler, Rachel Pinto, Dr. Kathleen Wong (Bridges 2 Wellbeing, Fayetteville) DERMATOLOGIST Arkansas Dermatology Finalists: Franks Dermatology, Dr. Jay Flaming, Dr. Ray Parker (Dermatology Group of Arkansas), Pinnacle Dermatology
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DIET/WEIGHT LOSS CENTER Baptist Health Weight & Nutrition Center Finalists: Arkansas Heart BMI Institute, Arkansas Health & Nutrition, Encore Medical Center, Natural State Health Center DISPENSARY Natural Relief Dispensary (Sherwood) Finalists: Berner’s by Good Day Farm, Harvest Cannabis Arkansas (Conway), Native Green Wellness, Suite 443 (Hot Springs) EYEWEAR UAMS Health Harvey & Bernice Jones Eye Institute Optical Shop Finalists: Burrow’s and Mr. Franks Optical, Eye Care Arkansas, James Eyecare & Optics Gallery, Kavanaugh Eye Care
FAMILY DENTIST Little Rock Family Dental Finalists: Downtown Dental Care, Burchman Family Dental, Jolly Family Dental, UAMS Delta Dental of Arkansas Foundation Oral Health Clinic FAMILY PHYSICIAN Dr. Alison Richardson (Arkansas Family Medicine) Finalists: Dr. Kent Covert (Little Rock Family Practice), Dr. Kenneth Johnston (Little Rock Family Practice), Kevin Roberts (Little Rock Family Practice), Dr. Stephen Tilley, Dr. Daniel Watson (Autumn Road Family Practice)
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HAIR SALON Red Beauty Lounge Finalists: Carter|Miller Hillcrest, Salon Joseph, Tease Salon, Heather Young HOSPITAL Arkansas Children’s Hospital Finalists: Arkansas Heart Hospital, Baptist Health, CHI St. Vincents, UAMS IN-HOME CARE Baptist Health Hospice Finalists: CareLink (North Little Rock), Conway Regional Home Care Services, Home Instead, Superior Senior Care (Conway) MASSAGE THERAPIST Ava Bella Day Spa Finalists: Abundant Health Chiropractic and Therapeutic Massage (Conway), Arkansas Healing Arts Massage & Wellness, Massage Arkansas, Zach Turner at Little Rock Massage and Wellness (North Little Rock)
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BACK ROW: DRS. ANTHONY ELIAS, KIM SKELLEY, JERRY BYRUM, JOSHUA LYON FRONT: DRS. ASHLEY HALPAIN, DAWN MARTIN, SEPTEMBER WESTBROOK
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MED SPA Rejuvenation Clinic and Day Spa Finalists: Ava Bella Day Spa, Doctors MedSpa, Radiant Wellness by S&S, Skin Fix Med Spa MENTAL HEALTH FACILITY Pinnacle Pointe Finalists: The BridgeWay (North Little Rock), Conway Behavioral Health Hospital (Conway), Methodist Family Health, Rivendell Behavioral Health Services of Arkansas NAIL SALON Best Nails Finalists: Cherish Nails & Spa, Chic Nails & Spa, Ethereal Nail Spa, Fashion Nails, Glitz & Glamour Hair & Nail NURSING HOME Briarwood Nursing and Rehabilitation Center Finalists: Andover Place, Chenal Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center, Encore West Little Rock, Garland Nursing & Rehab, Nursing and Rehabilitation Center at Good Shepherd OPHTHALMOLOGIST Dr. Katherine Baltz (Central Arkansas Ophthalmology) Finalists: Dr. Laurie Barber (Little Rock Eye Clinic), Dr. Joseph Chacko (Harvey & Bernice Jones Eye Institute Clinic, UAMS), Dr. Romona Davis (Harvey & Bernice Jones Eye Institute Clinic, UAMS), Dr. Lydia Lane (Little Rock Eye Clinic) ARKTIMES.COM
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Proud sponsor sponsor of ofthe theArkansas Arkansas Times Proud Times Best BestOf of Arkansas 2022 2022 Little Rock • Hot Springs • Dallas/Forth Worth Tyler • Longview • Lufkin • El Dorado Texarkana
Raving Results OPTOMETRIST Dr. Kathryn Brown (UAMS Health-Harvey & Bernice Jones Eye Clinic) Finalists: Dr. Julie Dolven (James Eye Care), Dr. Brian Guice (Kavanaugh Eye Care), Dr. Derek Scott Long (Maumelle), McFarland Eye Care
ORTHODONTIST Vondran Orthodontics Finalists: Daniel Orthodontics, Hodge Orthodontics, Phelan Orthodontics, Wardlaw Orthodontics ORTHOPEDIC SURGEON Dr. C. Lowry Barnes (UAMS) Finalists: Dr. William Hefley Jr. (Bowen Hefley Orthopedics and Arkansas Surgical Hospital), Dr. Ken Martin (Martin Orthopedics), Dr. P. Allan Smith (OrthoArkansas), Dr. Jonathan D. Wyatt (OrthoArkansas) PEDIATRICIAN Dr. Dawn Martin (All for Kids Pediatric Clinic) Finalists: Dr. Liza Murray (UAMS), Dr. Josh O’Neill (Little Rock Pediatric Clinic), Dr. Aaron Strong (Little Rock Pediatric Clinic), Dr. Leah Youngblood (Little Rock Children’s Clinic)
PERSONAL TRAINER 2017, 2018, Tina Glass (Results Studio LR)2019 Finalists: Anna Bolte (Bolte Fitness), TJ Brown (Westside MMA), Lee Ann Jolly (Jolly Bodies), Brooke Walker (365 Fitness)
RETIREMENT Fox Ridge Finalists: Andover Place, Chenal Pines Retirement Resort, Good Shepherd Community, Superior Senior Care
PHARMACY The Pharmacy at Wellington Finalists: Achor Family Pharmacy (Maumelle), Cornerstone Pharmacy, Kavanaugh Pharmacy, Rhea Drug Store
SPA Rejuvenation Clinic & Day Spa Finalists: Arlington Resort Hotel & Spa (Hot Springs), Ava Bella Day Spa, Copper Well Retreat, Doctors Med Spa
PHYSICAL THERAPISTS OrthoArkansas Finalists: Advanced Physical Therapy, Chance Osburn (Hot Springs), Harris & Renshaw Physical Therapy (Sherwood), Physical Therapy Institute
VETERINARIAN Hillcrest Animal Hospital Finalists: Allpets Animal Hospital, Pinnacle Valley Animal Hospital, Pleasant Valley Veterinary Clinic, Shackleford Veterinary Clinic
PROSTHETICS Snell Prosthetics & Orthotics Finalists: Arkansas Prosthetics and Pedorthics (Benton), Horton’s Orthotics & Prosthetics, New Hope Prosthetics & Orthotics (North Little Rock)
YOGA STUDIO Barefoot Studio Finalists: Arkansas Yoga Collective, Big Rock Yoga, Blue Yoga Nyla (North Little Rock), Eden Salt Studio
Forward thinking, just like you. Since 1900, Wright Lindsey Jennings has promoted progress and positive social change. We are dedicated to growing our state and our communities, annually supporting more than 120 organizations through philanthropy and volunteerism. We strive to advance the practice of law, proactively developing knowledge in emerging legal areas and industries. Wright Lindsey Jennings’ pioneering spirit serves our clients, our communities and our firm well.
Thank you to the readers of Arkansas Times for choosing WLJ for the Best of Arkansas 2022.
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How to Avoid the Summer Slide THE THEPULASKI PULASKICOUNTY COUNTYSPECIAL SPECIALSCHOOL SCHOOLDISTRICT DISTRICTboasts boastsmany manydedicated dedicatededucators educatorsand andadministrators administratorsfrom from26 26 schools schoolsacross acrosscentral centralArkansas, Arkansas,which whichnow nowincludes includesthe theDRIVEN DRIVENVirtual VirtualAcademy. Academy.These Theseeducators educatorshave havededicated dedicated their theircareers careerstotoinvesting investingininyoung youngpeople. people.With Withsummer summerininfull fullswing, swing,some somePCSSD PCSSDprincipals principalsare areoffering offeringtips tipstoto students studentsand andfamilies familiestotoavoid avoidthe thesummer summerslide. slide. Yolanda YolandaHarris, Harris,Chenal ChenalElementary ElementaryPrincipal Principal Find Findengaging engagingactivities activitiesthat thatstudents studentsare areinterested interestedin. in.One Onething thing I Ilike likethat thatisisfun funfor forstudents studentsare areboard boardgames. games.Board Boardgames gamesare areaa great greatstrategy strategyfor forlearning learningmany manyuseful usefulthings. things.But, But,why whynot notdesign design aanew newboard boardgame? game?All Allwe weneed needare aregame gamepieces, pieces,dice, dice,and andan anidea. idea. The Thebest bestquality qualityofofsuch suchgames gamesisisthe thefact factthat thatnot notonly onlydo dothey theyhelp help introduce introducechildren childrentotovarious variousareas areasofoflearning, learning,but butthey theyalso alsoteach teach them thempatience patienceand andcompetitive competitivespirit. spirit. Masako MasakoChristian, Christian,Daisy DaisyBates BatesElementary ElementaryPrincipal Principal I Iencourage encouragestudents studentstotoexperience experiencenew newand andfun funplaces placesininArkansas Arkansaslike likemuseums, museums, state stateparks, parks,water waterparks, parks,and andothers. others.Students Studentsalso alsolearn learnaalot lotby byparticipating participatinginin outdoor outdoorlearning learningexperiences experienceslike likegolf, golf,fishing, fishing,hiking, hiking,skating/skateboarding, skating/skateboarding,etc. etc. Dr. Dr.Lisa LisaWatson, Watson,Mills MillsMiddle MiddlePrincipal Principal Read Readatatleast least1515toto20 20minutes minutesaanight nighttotokeep keepyour yourreading readinglevels levelsprogressing. progressing. Keep Keepaajournal journalofofyour yourreading readingby bywriting writingwhat whatyou youread readabout. about. Yvone YvoneWest, West,Sylvan SylvanHills HillsJunior JuniorHigh HighPrincipal Principal Parents Parentscan caninvolve involvestudents studentsininvacation vacationplanning: planning:Calculating Calculatingdistance, distance,mapping mapping out outdirections, directions,times, times,etc. etc.This Thishelps helpscritical criticalthinking thinkingskills skillswhile whilealso alsoallowing allowing them themtotoplay playaapart partininplanning. planning.For Forthose thosewho whogo gototosummer summercamps, camps,find findcamps camps that thathave haveaacurricular curricularfocus. focus.There Thereare aremath mathand andscience sciencecamps campsthat thathave haveaa curricular curricularfocus focusbut butare areproject projectbased basedwith withhands-on hands-onexperiments experimentsand andactivities. activities.
REGISTER REGISTER NOW NOW pcssd.org/register pcssd.org/register 82 JULY 2022
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ABOUT ABOUTPCSSD PCSSD
Pulaski PulaskiCounty CountySpecial SpecialSchool SchoolDistrict Districtspans spansmore morethan than600 600square squaremiles milesinincentral centralArkansas Arkansasand andrequires requireshighly highlyskilled skilledand and passionate passionatepersonnel personneltotoadapt adapteducational educationalpolicies policiesand andpersonalization personalizationtoto26 26schools. schools.Every Everyschool schoolisisaccredited accreditedby bythe theArkansas Arkansas State StateBoard BoardofofEducation. Education.PCSSD PCSSDhas hasserved servedschools schoolsacross acrossPulaski PulaskiCounty Countysince sinceJuly July1927. 1927. PCSSD PCSSDisiscommitted committedtotocreating creatingaanationally nationallyrecognized recognizedschool schooldistrict districtthat thatassures assuresthat thatall allstudents studentsachieve achieveatattheir theirmaximum maximum potential potentialthrough throughcollaborative, collaborative,supportive supportiveand andcontinuous continuousefforts effortsofofall allstakeholders. stakeholders.
JULY 2022 NEWS & NOTES NATIONAL WATERMELON MONTH Hope’s 46th Annual Festival isn’t until next month, but there’s no reason you can’t start celebrating now with a storebought melon. One strategy for picking a good one? Give it a thump and listen for that satisfying deep hollow sound.
FRONTIER FOURTH OF JULY AT HAM
July 4,
10 a.m.-noon Celebrate the holiday with some old-fashioned fun. Listen to a rousing reading of the Declaration of Independence while cooling off with watermelon and lemonade. The event is FREE.
BREAKFAST WITH A TWIST AT THE LITTLE ROCK ZOO
July 9,
8 a.m. This month’s guests of honor? Tigers! The event includes a boxed continental breakfast, keeper talk and the opportunity to create a custom animal painting. Afterwards, guests are invited to stay and enjoy the Zoo. Reservations required. All guests must be 6 years old or older.
FAIRY AND WIZARD TEA PARTY
July 12,
3-5 p.m. This fanciful tea party at Garvan Woodland Gardens includes three different courses of delicious sweet and savory delicacies each accompanied by a special tea. Tea servers will have their fairy wings fluttering, and Pinkerbelle will read stories. All ages welcome. Festive fairy and wizard finery encouraged! Call 501-262-9603 for tickets.
SUMMER READING CLUB 2022 CALS Summer Reading Club encourages reading and engagement in library activities for all ages. Readers can get book recommendations, keep track of their reading through a log, and earn digital badges to win weekly prizes. The theme this summer is “Oceans of Possibilities.” Pick up a free book bag at CALS branches while supplies last. CALS will also be giving away Travelers baseball tickets for the August 2 game to Summer Reading participants. Register online cals.beanstack.org.
WHAT DAY IS IT? July 1 : July 14 : July 18 : July 23 : July 31 :
AMERICAN ZOO DAY NATIONAL MAC & CHEESE DAY NATIONAL SOUR CANDY DAY HOT ENOUGH FOR YA’ DAY UNCOMMON INSTRUMENT AWARENESS DAY
MORE GREAT NEWS TO NOTICE CRAFT NEEDLE-FELTED WOOL HEDGEHOG
AN UPDATE ON MACARTHUR UNLIMITED PLAYGROUND
12:30 pm - 3:30 pm Who can resist a needle-felted wool hedgehog? No one! Join Debbie of @ whisperingwool at South Main Creative to make your own hedgehog as you learn the basics of needle felting. 12 and up only.
They are in the building process but do not have a set date for completion. They are also still fundraising for certain components needed to finish the project. You can help by donating www. macarthurparklr.org/playground. This will be a universally accessible playground, designed for all children regardless of their challenges.
July 16,
HAPPY BIRTHDAY AACF! Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, a nonprofit, celebrates their 45th anniversary this year. Since 1977, AACF has successfully lobbied to help create ARKids First (the state’s child health insurance program), increase the number of schools participating in the school breakfast program, reform the state’s juvenile justice system; and more. For over four decades, they’ve been a strong voice for children at the state and federal government. Learn more here: aradvocates.org.
SAVVY kids
Brooke Wallace, Publisher, brooke@arktimes.com | Katherine Wyrick, Editor, katherinewyrick@arktimes.com | Lesa Thomas, Senior Account Executive, lesa@arktimes.com | Sarah Holderfield, Art Director | Find more at SAVVYkidsAR.com ARKTIMES.COM
JULY 2022 83
Natural Escapes in Urban Environs
Arkansas Department of Parks Heritage and Tourism
By Katherine Wyrick
Two Rivers Park
S
ummer doldrums setting in? Hitting the pool lost its shine? Sure it’s hot as all get out, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you shouldn’t — get out. In these dog days of summer, there’s still plenty to do in the great outdoors, if you plan accordingly. Just make sure you take precautions to avoid heatrelated illness. Wear loose-fitting, lightweight clothing, drink plenty of fluids and apply sunscreen and bug spray liberally. Here we focus on the urban outdoor adventure. You can explore natural settings right in the heart of the city that provide respite during these long summer days.
Since opening in January, the Big Rock Quarry Bike Park Pump Track is already a huge hit. Located in the old rock quarry along the bank of the Arkansas River in North Little Rock, the track draws cyclists of Big Rock Quarry Bike Park Pump Track all stripes, young and old, beginners and pros. In my family’s experience, it’s an open, encouraging environment, not to mention super fun. At the pump track, it’s all about the flow; if you know, you know. And this is just the first phase; the Big Rock Quarry Bike Park is a multiphase development that will also include mountain bike downhills. Mitchell Allen — dad of two, lifelong outdoors enthusiast and Trail Project Manager of the Arkansas Parks and Recreation Foundation — shared his recommendation: “To me, Fox Tail and the small Pump Track at Two Rivers Park is one of the best places to take young kids on bicycles. It gives you options to ride the River Trail, but also take alternate routes off through the woods on a narrower trail. It’s still paved so can be used any time.” 84 JULY 2022
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PADDLE
Here are a few options for getting out on the water.
THE LITTLE MAUMELLE RIVER
The Little Maumelle River flows east to the Arkansas River. Its towering cypress Little Maumelle River trees, lily pads the size of bus wheels and diverse birdlife draw paddlers seeking a little serenity. There are no rapids so it’s perfect for beginners. You can find river access at Pinnacle Mountain State Park Access, Two Rivers Park Access or River Mountain Park. Contact Rock Town River Outfitters or Pinnacle Mountain State Park for guided float trips and canoe and kayak rentals. (Better yet, head to The Ranch for a free ride! See below.) Pinnacle Mountain State Park Access to Two Rivers Park Access is 8.2 river miles. As you cruise along, you may spot wading birds, ospreys, redshouldered hawks, barred owls, migrating waterfowl and even bald eagles. Beavers, white-tailed deer, raccoons and opossums also call the area home, as do harmless broad-banded water snakes, the occasional alligator and several species of turtles.
Katherine Wyrick
Arkansas Department of Parks Heritage and Tourism
BIKE
FOUCHE CREEK
Arkansas Department of Parks Heritage and Tourism
Fourche (rhymes with push) Creek is an often overlooked and underappreciated water trail that rises in Saline County and winds through Little Rock. It flows more than 20 miles generally eastward and empties into the Arkansas River. Its meandering channel braids and connects numerous wetlands, the largest being more than 2,500 acres — and sections of it are floatable! (Fun fact: Fourche Creek is one of the nation’s largest urban wetlands and drains 108,000 acres of Little Rock and surrounding areas.) The water trail length from Benny Craig Park to Interstate Park is 4.4 miles. Head upstream from Interstate Park Access for a scenic, out-andFouche Creek back paddle into Fourche Bottoms. (Another fun fact: The 1,800 acres of bottomland hardwood is the largest greenspace in the city!) Despite years of abuse and neglect, Fourche Creek continues to support a diverse population of plants and animals. It is lined with bald cypress and water tupelo trees. You can spot migratory songbirds in the spring and wood ducks in fall and winter. You may even spy a beaver, mink or otter doing a bit of foraging. It’s important to note that urban streams present unique challenges. Since the creek and its tributaries filter the majority of Little Rock’s runoff, they can flood quickly and carry pollutants during storms. It’s wise to avoid going in the two to three days following heavy rain.
MEET DALE: TROOPER, HUNTER, FAMILY MAN
“You’re going to stumble, you’re going to fall, you just have to roll with it and keep going.” read more about dale donham at snellarkansas.com
RESTORING MOBILITY AND INDEPENDENCE SINCE 1911
800-342-5541
SLEEPY HOLLOW WATER TRAIL
Little Rock n Bryant n Conway n Fayetteville n Fort Smith n 800-342-5541 Hot Springs n Mountain Home n North Little Rock n Pine Bluff n Russellville
HIKE, BIKE & PADDLE
And speaking of The Nature Conservancy ... one of my favorite spots maybe anywhere, The William Kirsch Preserve within Ranch North
LOCO R
A D V S E E P N O
TURE
There’s a new trail in town. Bufflehead Bay Trail, completed in fall of 2021, is an easy 2.3-mile loop with pretty views of Lake Maumelle and the Ouachita foothills. The first half-mile is paved; the rest has a Rattlesnake Ridge natural surface. A caveat: it may not be well maintained in the summer months though you could still brave the overgrown brush. Same goes for Farkleberry Trail to the west — a 1-mile, out-and-back hike with views of the lake. For an outing that combines hiking and a little fishing, Allen suggested Rattlesnake Ridge off of Barrett Road — always a sound choice, in this casual hiker’s opinion. It’s the go-to getaway for my family because of its close proximity to town and beautiful trails and views. The pond is stocked by the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, and you can do the short, easy hike on Cliffbrake and fish before or after.
Mountain View
HIKE
Arkansas Department of Parks Heritage and Tourism
The Sleepy Hollow Water Trail is a 5-mile loop along the wooded Bringle Creek and Maumelle River and the open water of upper Lake Maumelle. Paddlers can explore upstream into Bringle Creek and the Maumelle River and downstream to the Arkansas Highway 10 bridge. Canoes and kayaks may be used only in the area of the lake west of the Arkansas Highway 10 bridge. From I-430 in Little Rock, turn west on Arkansas Highway 10 (Cantrell Road) and travel 19 miles. After crossing the causeway over Lake Maumelle, the access is one mile on the left.
locoropes.com 888.669.6717
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GAMING, GO-KARTING, MINI-GOLFING & MORE
So not exactly the great outdoors, but still great and outdoors — Big Rock Fun Park and Loco Ropes. With over 35 obstacles, or “elements,” Loco Ropes Treetop Adventure Park is fun for the whole gang. It’s located at the Ozark Folk Center State Park in Mountain View and makes a nice
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day trip for the fam. Big Rock Fun Park is always a homerun. As I sat writing this, my 10-year-old came bounding in — drenched and exhausted but in high spirits — after three hours at Big Rock. He proceeded to give us an animated play-by-play of the afternoon’s activities, which included mini-golf, arcade games and water bumper cars. (Pro-tip: maybe skip the nachos before the water bumper cars.)
A WORD ON ARKANSAS GAME AND FISH COMMISSION
Arkansas Department of Parks Heritage and Tourism
Arkansas Department of Parks Heritage and Tourism
Woods (a.k.a. The Ranch). Not only can you meander through a forest and wide-open fields (with a stunning view of Pinnacle), you can take out one of their two canoes — at no charge. They also provide life jackets and Little Maumelle River paddles. This paddle through cypress trees on the Little Maumelle is as magical and serene as any you’ll find. On our many outings there, we’ve spotted a bald eagle, cranes, snakes and deer. (We also had an unfortunate run-in with a skunk, but that’s a tale for another time.) Not up for getting out on the water? Take a mountain bike and ride the trails — all flat, easy and great for kids. And now for the pièce de resistance — a secreted away floating campground! The camping platform is the perfect spot to stay the night for an immersive experience in the natural world. (Just imagine the sound of those peepers!) The platform is available by reservation only.
AGFC hosts ongoing programs and Loco Ropes summer camps for youth, from those designed to teach archery skills to Paddling-Kid Kayak classes. Check their website for details. Weekly events at The Witt Stephens Jr. Central Arkansas Nature Center — like Wild Tales Story Time on Wednesdays at 10 a.m., Fish Feasting on Wednesdays at 2 p.m. and Alligator Feeding on Fridays at 2 p.m. — are good in-town fun with an educational bent. *The Arkansas Parks and Recreation Foundation is a nonprofit that works with state parks and cities to fund trail and outdoor projects. They worked on the Monument Trails at different state parks as well as River Mountain and Two Rivers Trails.
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Learn about Little Rock’s celebrated Akbash guardian dogs at Heifer Village & Urban Farm Read the captivating story of sheep guardian dogs Sam and Uno in this beautifully illustrated book for dog lovers of all ages. Learn how this special breed of Akbash guardians work as a team to protect the sheep in their charge. Introduced to the wary sheep at Little Rock’s own Heifer Village and Urban Farm, Sam and Uno prove themselves in a frightening episode. These dependable guardian dogs earn a place in the hearts of the sheep...and they’ll win your heart as well. Learn how guardian dogs Sam and Uno were trained to protect herd animals in this unique, training manual by Dr. An Peischel, a world-renowned small ruminant specialist and breeder of guardian dogs. With more than 30 years managing guardian dogs to protect her commercial and registered goats, Peischel has vast experience in the selection, facilitation and use of these animals. In this book Peischel hones in on the particulars of using these dogs with goats. Whatever one’s uses for guardian dogs, this book is chock-full of important information for putting these animals in service. Buy your autographed copy of Sam and Uno and Guardian Dogs for Goats among the many selections of books for dog and pet lovers of all ages at DogTalkTV. Same-day shipping when you order online at:
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JULY 2: MILLION DOLLAR REUNION Celebrating the music of Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins with the stars of the hit Broadway musical “Million Dollar Quartet”! Doors open at 6 p.m. Show starts at 7 p.m.
AUG. 6: CLINT BLACK The Grammy-winning Country superstar will perform live at the Oaklawn Event Center. His new self-produced album “Out of Sane” is available on all digital streaming platforms June 19. Tickets must be purchased in advance on oaklawn.com and guests must show mobile barcode or ticket printouts at the door for entry. Doors open at 7 p.m. Show starts at 8 p.m.
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July 22-23: Wesley Pruitt Band July 29-30: Liquid Kitty
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FOOD & DRINK
ARKANSAS’S NEXT BEER BOOMTOWN JONESBORO HAS ALL THE INGREDIENTS. BY BRIAN SORENSEN PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRIAN CHILSON
SELLING BEER IN THE ‘WETTEST DRY COUNTY IN ARKANSAS’: Native Brew Works co-owners and partners Jackson Spencer, Heath Gammill, Ellen Hundley, Dustin Hundley (left to right).
L
ooking at a map of Arkansas breweries, you’ll notice most of the action takes place in the western half of the state. The largest cluster of breweries is in the far northwest corner. Nineteen of the state’s 51 breweries operate in Benton and Washington counties. Fayetteville alone has seven. Fayetteville got its first brewery in 1994, when Ozark Brewing Company opened on Dickson Street. Back then, there were only two others making beer in the state: Weidman’s Old Fort Brew Pub in Fort Smith and Vino’s Brew Pub in Little Rock. Several years passed before Fayetteville saw its next brewery. West Mountain Brewing Co. started making beer on the downtown square in 2011. Tanglewood Branch Brewing Co. and Fossil Cove Brewing Co. launched the following year. More breweries followed, and the city’s taprooms have been bustling ever since. Reminiscing about the early days of brewing in Fayetteville has me thinking about the next beer boomtown in Arkansas. Bentonville, Rogers and Springdale have
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boomed already. They all have multiple breweries within their city limits. Hot Springs, Little Rock and North Little Rock each have several established breweries as well. Most Arkansas towns with a brewery, however, have only one. Is there another Natural State municipality that can support a multitude of beermakers within its boundaries? For a moment, consider what Jonesboro brings to the table. Sure, Jonesboro is located in a dry county and has only one brewery to speak of. But the conditions seem right for a surge in local brewing. First and foremost, a law passed in 2019 made brewing in dry counties possible. Act 681 came with restrictions that brewers in wet counties don’t have to deal with, but something is better than nothing when it comes to brewing beer. That’s why Jonesboro has a brewery (and Mena, too). Jonesboro’s population exploded in recent years. According to the 2020 census, Jonesboro
has 78,576 residents, which represents 16.8% growth since 2010 (67,263 residents) and 41.5% growth since 2000 (55,515). It has become the hub of Northeast Arkansas, drawing new residents by the droves, and attracting people who live elsewhere to eat, drink and shop. Jonesboro is also home to Arkansas State University, the second-largest college in the state, with 13,772 students. A steady supply of upperclassmen, graduate students, faculty and staff usually means a bevy of taproom customers. Fayetteville has a higher percentage of its population with bachelor’s degrees (50.3%) than Jonesboro (29.7%), but median household income in Jonesboro is comparable to Fayetteville’s. Both cities have low unemployment and robust service industries. There is at least some disposable income in both places to spend on beer. There is a homebrew supply shop in Jonesboro, an important ingredient for a healthy beer culture. There’s also a local homebrew club. Hobbyists have a passion for
craft beer, which tends to spread throughout the community over time. Jonesboro seemingly has all the ingredients for a future beer boom. Let’s meet some of the people working to make that happen. *** Native Brew Works opened in August 2021, making it the first to operate inside the city of Jonesboro. Co-owners Dustin and Ellen Hundley and partners Heath Gammill and Jackson Spencer are all in their 30s and native to Jonesboro. They have watched attitudes toward alcohol change as the city’s population swelled. “When I was young, I remember people talking about private clubs becoming a thing,” Ellen Hundley said. “There was a lot of pushback in those days. Alcohol has become more acceptable over time, though there is still some opposition.” Although Craighead County is dry — one of 31 counties in the state that prohibits the sale of alcohol at bars or in stores — it could be considered the “wettest dry county in Arkansas” due to the large number of private clubs (that is, restaurants with token membership books that sell alcohol by the drink). The 2019 law that made brewing beer legal in dry counties served as the spark for Native Brew Works. “Dustin and I were living in Memphis at the time,” Hundley said. “Jackson had just moved back to Jonesboro. He texted Dustin and said, ‘We should open a brewery.’ A few months later we sold our house in Memphis and moved back home.” The quartet decided to locate their brewery on Gee Street, in an area of town that had fallen on hard times. Ellen Hundley said it’s common for breweries to locate in such places due to ample space and low rent. “Historically, brewers go into these kinds of abandoned places because they’re cheaper,” she said. “We hope our presence helps bring revitalization to Gee Street.” Native Brew Works operates on a five-barrel system, with two 10-barrel fermenters and several five-barrel tanks for conditioning. Dustin Hundley said the brewery is on track to produce 400 barrels of beer this year. Every drop will be sold in the taproom because to-go sales are prohibited, and distribution of packaged beer requires a third-party partner. “Breweries are a big tourist attraction, and unfortunately, people passing through for work or other reasons can’t take any of our beer home with them,” Ellen Hundley said. “We have to tell a lot of people ‘no’ when they ask if we sell growlers.” Another challenge for breweries in dry counties is not being able to showcase their beer on social media or through other advertising outlets. You won’t find references to
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beer on Native Brew Works’ Facebook page. The brewery hides pints of beer in Facebook photos by superimposing the word “censored.” Even though Jonesboro is the hub of Northeast Arkansas, it is isolated from thriving beer scenes. It’s an hour to Memphis and two hours to Little Rock. The lack of exposure to good beer and local beer culture means educating customers is a part of the Native Brew Works game plan. “Jonesboro is insulated from what we feel is a true craft experience,” Ellen Hundley said. “When we opened last August, people came in looking for Michelob. Since then we’ve been able to educate a lot of people about what craft beer is.” *** Patty Wilson and her family own and operate Northeast Arkansas Brewers Supply in Jonesboro. They’ve been selling homebrew ingredients and equipment for nearly 10 years. “Our store was born by accident,” she said. “We opened Kountry Kupboard 22 years ago. It was a specialty food store that carried spices and seasonings, food items for gourmet cooking. Because I didn’t brew at the time I didn’t notice at first, but some of my customers were buying ingredients for brewing.” Sensing an opportunity, Wilson started researching homebrew supply shops. She visited as many as possible when away from Jonesboro to see what they offered and how they set up their retail spaces. She eventually carved out enough square footage at Kountry Kupboard to start Northeast Arkansas Brewers Supply as a standalone business. “There were only a few guys brewing when we opened,” Wilson said. “Some of the older people were harvesting fruit and making wine because that’s what their grandparents taught them. But brewing beer wasn’t that common.” Five years ago, Wilson sold Kountry Kupboard, but the buyer didn’t want the homebrew shop. Wilson and her family decided to keep it, and they recently moved to a new location at 517 Southwest Drive. “We went into a bigger space,” said Wilson. “But it doesn’t feel bigger because I brought in a lot of new products.” Wilson said she was cautiously optimistic when she opened Northeast Arkansas Brewers Supply. She didn’t know how the concept would be received in Jonesboro since the city was still somewhat conservative when it came to alcohol. But the numbers don’t lie. When the shop opened there were only two kinds of hops available. Now there are 113 varieties, and a wide assortment of other ingredients and equipment. The surge in inventory was due in part to shifting attitudes. Simply put, there is growing demand for beer and beer-making products. “We have a fermentation social that meets once a month at the store,” Wilson said. “The Jonesboro Area Brewers [a local homebrew 92 JULY 2022
ARKANSAS TIMES
ON GEE STREET: Native Brew Works’ brew system, taproom art and back patio.
club] are starting back up, so there is growing interest in the area.” Jonesboro Area Brewers President Marc Bunnell and his wife, Amber, have been with the club since its founding in 2014. Like many organizations, the club’s meetings went dormant during the pandemic, but they are now meeting in person again. Marc Bunnell said he’s been brewing beer since a friend gifted him a Mr. Beer kit in 2008. “We turned it into a monthly get-together,” he said. “We’d bottle a batch, brew another batch, and put some meat on the smoker while we put it all together. We’d drink what we made and pray the next batch turned out just as good.” There weren’t many homebrewers in Jonesboro at the time, so Bunnell learned more about the hobby through books, podcasts and YouTube. He started buying ingredients from Kountry Kupboard. “I was having a hard time finding ingredients,” Bunnell said. “I found out about Patty’s store. She had raw barley and oats and other ingredients I needed to make beer.” After Smith opened the homebrew shop, Bunnell and his wife started teaching homebrewing classes at the store. Native Brew Works brewmaster Dustin Hundley was in one of those early classes. Bunnell said the brewer at the brewpub in Paragould also learned to brew at Northeast Arkansas Brewers Supply. Eventually the Bunnells and a few other homebrewers decided to form a club. What started out as a handful of hobbyists has turned into about 40 club members, with about half actively involved in meetings and other club events. Despite the growing homebrew scene, Amber Bunnell feels the county’s dry status is preventing Jonesboro from meeting its full potential. “Craighead County has to go wet,” she said. “The way the law stands right now, we can’t even have meetings at Native Brew Works because we can’t bring our homebrew onto their property.” On the other hand, Northeast Arkansas Brewers Supply owner Patty Wilson thinks the legislation that allows breweries to operate in dry counties is the seed that will help Jonesboro become a beer destination of the future.
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SPROUTING A BEER CULTURE: Northeast Arkansas Brewers Supply owner Patty Wilson (right) in the shop with daughter Holly Bradley. “When it sprouts, Northeast Arkansas will be completely different,” she said. “It can be a lot like Fayetteville, with a variety of breweries to choose from.” ***
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A second brewery is in the works for Jonesboro. Former Speaker of the Arkansas House of Representatives Davy Carter is partnering with Gearhead Outfitters founder Ted Herget to open a yet-to-be-named brewery between the downtown area and the Arkansas State University campus. “Ted and I are buddies, and this is something that fits with what he has been pushing in Jonesboro,” said Carter, who met Herget while attending Arkansas State in the mid-’90s. Herget’s retail concept has taken off since the company was founded in 1997. The outdoor clothing and equipment chain now includes 18 stores across the country. Despite this national expansion, the founder’s commitment to his hometown remains strong. He has spearheaded several projects in recent years to help revitalize Jonesboro’s downtown corridor. The new brewery will be located in the vicinity of Main Street and Cate Avenue. In addition to the brewery, there will be two or three restaurants on the same site, overlooking the nearby railroad tracks. “I hate to say it, because nobody wants to compete with Northwest Arkansas, but we’ve learned a lot from going back and forth up there,” Carter said. “Jonesboro is a big town and has a lot of momentum. We are at that threshold where people are begging for stuff like this.”
Carter said he and Herget are still working through the project’s planning stages. They are visiting a lot of breweries right now, finding inspiration along the way. “We travel a lot and we try to find all the local places and experience the best each town has to offer,” he said. “We pay attention to the overall experience, but at the same time, we know we’ll need to serve high-quality beer.” Carter said Jonesboro is a fast-growing college town, and there’s no doubt a vibrant beer scene is needed. He envisions a fun environment where locals can kick back, relax and talk with one another. He is no longer front-and-center when it comes to politics, but Carter serves on the board of Common Ground Arkansas, whose mission is to bring people from across the political spectrum together in the “spirit of cooperation and civility.” For Carter, beer can play a role in bridging the political divide. “The world needs a lot more people drinking beer together instead of people arguing on social media,” he said. Jonesboro is not without its challenges, but there are a number of reasons why the city can become the next beer boomtown in Arkansas. Even though Craighead County remains dry, the new law allows breweries to operate there. The homebrewing community is established and growing. The population is exploding, industry is strong and there’s a college campus to keep a steady flow of beer drinkers in the taprooms. And just as importantly, there are people in Jonesboro who are willing to be “the first” at what they are doing.
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Independence Weekend Fireworks
Highway 7 South Bridge, Lake Hamilton The annual free public Independence Day fireworks display on Lake Hamilton will be held Sunday, July 3, at dark. The fireworks will be shot from the middle of Lake Hamilton from barges located on the east side of Highway 7 at the first Highway 7 bridge opposite the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel. Visit Hot Springs will sponsor the free show. Those who want to watch the pyrotechnics display from the water are urged to keep a safe distance from the launching area and keep watch for fellow boaters. In case of rain, the fireworks will be rescheduled for the evening of Monday, July 4.
WEDNESDAYS IN JULY
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Wednesday Night Poetry
JULY & AUGUST
Expedition Dinosaur: Rise of the Mammals
Mid-America Science Museum, 500 Mid-America Blvd. The Expedition Dinosaur : Rise of the Mammals Exhibit will be on display from May 28-Aug. 20. The excitement of Jurassic Park collides with the adventure of Indiana Jones in this new, fully interactive exhibit. Join fossil hunters as they set out to understand more about dinosaurs, the catastrophic event that wiped them out, and the other factors that set the stage for the “rise of the mammals.”
Kollective Coffee & Tea 6-9 p.m. Free and all ages. Hosted by Kai Coggin. Local and touring poets typically do 20-25 minute sets. Open mic lets anyone step up and read, recite, sing or just say what’s on their mind. All we ask is that you do only one piece per turn and please keep your presentation to 3-4 minutes. Visit facebook.com/ WednesdayNightPoetry/ for more info.
THURSDAY-SUNDAY, JULY 7-10
SATURDAY, JULY 23 AT 7 P.M.
Bank OZK Arena, 134 Convention Blvd. The Spa City Pickleball Championship will take place at the Hot Springs Convention Center in the Bank OZK Arena, June 7-10! Register at pickleballbrackets.com.
Magic Springs Theme & Water Park, 1701 E. Grand Ave. ‘90s hip-hop legend Vanilla Ice will perform live at Magic Springs Theme and Water Park at the Timberwood Amphitheater on Saturday, July 23! Concert Venue opens at 6 p.m. Show starts at 7 p.m. Bring your blankets and chairs and enjoy the show!
Spa City Classic Pickleball Championships
Vanilla Ice Live at Magic Springs Theme & Water Park
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HISTORY
JOE, THE ONE-MAN TERRORIST BAND HE EARNED NOTORIETY FROM HIS SHARP CITIZEN NEWSPAPER. BY ERNEST DUMAS This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture.
J
oe Weston, who referred to himself as “Editor Weston,” was a journalist who retired to the mountains of Sharp County in 1962 and became famous for a crude but crusading newspaper called the Sharp Citizen. The paper’s lurid headlines and stories packed with scandal and scurrilous descriptions of business and political leaders kept him in trouble with the law. His arrests ultimately led the Arkansas Supreme Court to invalidate the state’s 105-year-old criminal-libel law. In the six years that he printed the paper, he twice ran for governor, unsuccessfully. Joseph Harry Weston was born in Little Rock Aug. 6, 1911. Little is known of his life from then until his retirement to a farm near Cave City except what he told reporters. He said he had delivered the Arkansas Democrat as a youngster and, at the age of 14, reported for the Little Rock Daily News, which operated for 10 years. In 1934, he married Louise Grace Gulley of Portsmouth, Virginia, in Benton and they had four children. They divorced during or soon after World War II, when he was in the Army Air Corps. He married Lou Jean Fairchild, who, with her daughter, Ann, moved to Sharp County with him in 1962. He later divorced Lou Jean and married the stepdaughter so that she could bear him a son, whom he named Benjamin Freepress Weston. They also had two more daughters. The two women — mother and daughter — helped him produce the Sharp Citizen. He said that he had been a reporter for newspapers in San Diego, Salt Lake City and other cities. Salt Lake City was the home of
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the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (aka the Mormon Church), a frequent subject of his writing, although he professed at different times to be a Jehovah’s Witness and a Mormon. Weston told a reporter that he had once been a copyeditor for National Geographic magazine. After the Veterans Administration hospital in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, diagnosed him as having diabetes in 1971 and set him on the path to recovery, he decided to start a newspaper with the help of an old friend, John F. Wells, who ran a printing company and published a weekly newspaper in Little Rock, later called the Daily Record. In 1973, shortly after he began printing the Sharp Citizen, Weston published a 64-page booklet that he titled “The Incredible Story Of The Sharp Citizen and Its ‘Infamous’ Editor, Joseph H. Weston—The Weekly Newspaper That Survived the Beating and Jailing of Its Editor to Become a National Institution, Creating a Political and Social Revolution in Arkansas and Changing the Leadership of the Congress of the United States.” In it, Weston wrote that he had suffered from an incurable illness and had moved to 80 acres outside Cave City to live his last days. The Sharp Citizen was a small, crudely produced tabloid. Since Weston could not afford printing machinery, Wells told him to write his stories on standard stationery using a typewriter with a good ribbon and compose the headlines with a felt-tip pen. Wells’ offset cameras at Little Rock would capture the images and print the paper at little cost. Two thousand copies of an eight-page paper cost $80. Weston’s first paper came out on Feb. 1, 1972, calling itself “Sharp County’s only metropolitan newspaper — professional journalism with
conscience and vision.” His first issues attacked Eagle Street, a Cave City banker and former state senator, calling him “the bastard tyrant of Sharp County.” He accused the banker of graft, blackmail and sexual misconduct. Subsequent issues branched out to adjoining communities. A few headlines provide the flavor of Weston’s journalism: “Rat Poison Deliberately Fed into Public Drinking Water for More Than a Quarter of a Century,” “Immoral and Promiscuous Sex Scandal Continues in Batesville,” “Is Judge Ransom C. Jones Operating His City Court in Cave City as a Racket Under Order from Elvis?” and “Two Devilish Lawyers And A Sadistic Judge Conspire To Rob Young Chris McFadden, Aged 23, of His American Citizenship and Place the Entire McFadden Family into Political Slavery Because of Fear That Sheriff Roy Lee Barker Will Revoke Chris’ Parole and Send Him to State Prison for Five Long Years.” A favorite target was state Rep. John E. Miller of Melbourne, whom the paper referred to as “the Lizard of Izard.” Weston thrived on tips from people who had grievances with local leaders, usually printing their stories of graft and illicit sex without corroborating them. Eventually, Weston turned his attention to state government and even the national government, often attacking Gov. Dale Bumpers — Weston called him “Bumpsy” — and Sen. John L. McClellan. He barged into the pressroom at the state Capitol one day, handing out his latest issue, which reported on the front page that State Highway Director Ward Goodman had secretly taken millions of dollars out of the agency. An Arkansas Gazette reporter told him that Goodman had died a year earlier upstairs in the Capitol while testifying on a labor bill before a Senate committee. “The hell you say!” Weston said, pausing briefly before continuing to circulate the paper. While the Arkansas media treated Weston and his paper with ridicule or contempt, his fame quickly spread. A lengthy article in The New York Times in December 1972 began: “Joseph Harry Weston, 61 years old, is a oneman terrorist band. His weapon is a weekly newspaper, and he runs it on the creed that all the outrage that he can muster is fit to print,” a takeoff on the Times’ motto, “All the news that’s fit to print.” The American Society of Newspaper Editors printed a blistering letter from Weston in its journal and then invited him to address the group at its convention in May 1973. He was on a panel with Gloria Steinem, the editor of Ms. magazine and a leading feminist, and Ben Bagdikian, the famous media critic. Weston rebuked the editors for publishing organs for government propaganda. Weston sought to convert his sudden fame into a political career. He opposed the Republican candidate for governor, Ken Coon, in the 1974 primary but lost badly. Weston ran again in 1976, and the party, lacking a strong candidate, scrambled at the last minute to find someone to run and prevent Weston from being the party’s
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WESTON THRIVED ON TIPS FROM PEOPLE WHO HAD GRIEVANCES WITH LOCAL LEADERS, USUALLY PRINTING THEIR STORIES OF GRAFT AND ILLICIT SEX WITHOUT CORROBORATING THEM. standard bearer. The candidate, plumber Leon Griffith, got 57 percent of the votes against Weston but lost the general election to Governor David Pryor. Weston’s paper had printed only a few issues when his next-door neighbor swore out a warrant for his arrest. Weston had written that the neighbor was stupid and ran a still that he had inherited from his father. Weston avoided arrest for several weeks by leaving the state and printing his paper secretly. The issues carried the banner “Edited in Exile.” The Arkansas Supreme Court upheld Weston’s prosecution under the criminal-libel statute in 1973. In a second case in 1975 brought by the sheriff of Clay County, who complained about a Citizen story accusing him of running a narcotics racket and suggesting that he was complicit in a man’s murder, the court ruled that the law was unconstitutional. In still another criminal proceeding in 1979, the Supreme Court refused Weston’s request that it quash an indictment against him in Independence County for perjury before a grand jury that was called to investigate his articles about a prostitution ring in the county. Weston told the Supreme Court that the grand jury was a tool of corrupt law-enforcement officers and judges who were trying to drive his newspaper out of business. Another lawsuit (Weston v. Bachman), this one brought by Weston in the U.S. District Court in Little Rock, claimed that a number of people — he named all the Supreme Court justices, the attorney general and the Mormon Church, as well as lawyers, prosecutors, judges and grand jury members in northeastern Arkansas — had conspired to violate his civil rights and close his newspaper. The court denied Weston’s claims, but the U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals returned the case in July 1982 for the district court to settle several legal questions. Weston, his health failing, had ceased to print the Citizen. He died Nov. 15, 1983, at a veterans’ hospital in Poplar Bluff. He is buried in Cave City Cemetery.
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the most stringent standards in the country. But even ave you spent any time learning about Arkansas’s so, “organic is still the best way to grow medicinal canmedical marijuana industry? If so, then you likely nabis,” said Mr. Berger. Not only does organic cannabis know that the overwhelming majority of our medical have far less environmental impact, but the levels of cannabis is grown by a select few licensed commercial We can at Harvest Dispensary these Imagine sitting in acultivators. tiny cell, up that and toxinsCannabis and heavy metals are evenfind further reduced. Butlocked did you know every dispensary According to Mr. Berger, grow a limited amount of cannabis As it turns drug ill-conceived laws and our inherently racist, unjust languishing for years, decades, or, sometimes, even as well? “Conventional cannabis cultivation is a very wasteful out only about 5 oflonger our 38 dispensaries currently takesystem unconscionable. criminal After reading this, life, convicted of an activity that is no even process. Harvestwhy we’vewe’ve completely redesigned proadvantage ofathe opportunity.new Why so few?perhaps In part, this you do too?Here Wellatthat’s partnered considered a crime. Meanwhile booming around a reductionist, sustainable, minimal-impact is due to the significant financial investment required with Arkansascedures Cinema Society and Dream Corps cannabis industry emerges and prospers from enmodel, which still provides cannabis everything it needs to set up an operation in the first place, along with the Justice to present three July screenings of “The First gaging in that very same activity. Sadly, that’s the to thrive. Just without relying on synthetic nutrients or limited experienced workforce available to carry out Step”,ofan newThe documentary on Van precise scenario faced byoperations thousands people with it’s because chemical pesticides. organic fertilizers and nutrient onceof built. But primarily theaward-winning Jones’ reform twomaintain of which will occur cannabis convictions in jails and prisons theseverely regimentsefforts, I’ve created beneficial microbes, very language of theacross law, which limits prison the behind walls atdelivering the Pulaski County Detention Center. country today. And that’s why of weplants at The Rahman elements from the soil to the plants, just like in number that can be grown by dispensaries the natural world. Growing organically allows cannabis to at any givenDispensary time. In short,firmly it’s too great a risk with Family Fund of Harvest Cannabis reach its true potential, free from excess nutrient retention little promise reward. believe that anyone fortunate enoughofto benefit from or synthetic compounds. And the difference is profound.” But instead of seeing risks and the legalization of cannabis has a moral obligation tolimitations, Harvest Cannabis Dispensary saw a golden opportunity. fight for those still suffering the devastating effects Family-owned and operated, Harvest was intent of its criminalization. on cultivating from day one and did just that. We’ve seen a rapid cultural shift in towards Yet much likeattitudes other craft industries, such as cannabis over the past decade yet the criminal justice microbreweries, the process evolved with each system has failed to keep and pace. Cannabis isas now legal every grow cycle Harvest discovered its foothold. Robbin Rahman, Executive Director of for medical use in 38 states (plus DC), for recreational Harvest, said “After our first year of cultivation, use in 19 states, and it’s widely predicted that federal we wanted to move a direction legalization will occur within the next 3-5inyears. Yet,more in line with our fundamental mission - to offer the even as the US moves away from the criminalization highest quality and safest cannabis possible, of cannabis, there remains the fundamental injustice with the smallest environmental impact - but inflicted upon those suffering from quite criminal convictions we didn’t know how to get there. Then and the consequences ofwethose convictions, while, found Justin. ” simultaneously, the failed war onBerger, drugs marches on presented a Justin hailing from Utah, simple message: with more and more arrests each year.“Organic does matter.”Equally adept on thefrom ski slopes he is espousing great phio why doesn’t everyone do it? While the current According to a 2020 report theasACLU, losophers in a greenhouse, Berger was armed with size of the organic cannabis industry is growing cannabis arrests have fallen by more than halfMr. from the so, vision, experience, andabout know-how to pave a new by the day, there are only a select few commercial their peak in 2008, but even there were still path forward - towards organically grown cannabis. cultivators doing so. Mr. Berger explains, “automating 350,150 nationwide arrests in 2020 (91% of them for According to Elizabeth Barnett, Owner and CEO of and managing microbially rich feed is difficult and possession). Even more troubling impact of le- organic wherever Harvest, “Asisathe family, we choose inherently problematic for both the machines and galization on the racial disparities in cannabis arrests.even our cleaning we can - our food, our garden, the microbes. On a commercial scale difficult things Despite using cannabis at similarWe rates, evenabout today, products. are careful what we put into our are even more difficult, whereas craft-sized cultivawith state after state legalizing black people bodiescannabis, and the chemicals we expose ourselves to. So tion allows for adapting and shifting gears in a more why likely shouldto thebe medicine we for offer our patients be malleable way.” Furthermore, very few standardized are a whopping 264% more arrested any different? When that Justinblack presented this concept protocols exist for organic cannabis cultivation. He possession. The ACLU report makes clear InWe partnership with to us, the decision really ato no brainer. Besides, adds “Imagine how difficult it justice might be to grow all Sponsored by hope to raise awareness on criminal reform people are still far more likely than whitewas people we’ve never really done things the traditional way.” vegetables at home, organically, without any and highlightyour some of the incredible work of local be arrested in every part of the country, even in states So in the height of a pandemic, Mr. Berger packed up sort of guidebook and few resources to turn to. Now and regional justice impacted individuals. We hope that have legalized cannabis. and moved to Arkansas as Harvest’s new Cultivation scale that up 100-fold, and add on a tight schedule, you’ll join this exciting event because it’s not Sadly, the same pattern holds right here in transitioning Director, andtrue immediately set about the us for enclosed environments, narrow margins, and intense justice when we lock up kids caught antrial ounce Arkansas. According to data Arkanwholeobtained operation tofrom organic - a slow, arduous process regulatory oversight. It’s still with a lot of and error, of pot, while yet multistate operators make sas’s NIBRS database, we full have experienced a steadyto this day. of challenges and set-backs I don’t get cannabis to see the results of tiny adjustments Sodrug/narcotic why does organic matter? We allbillions know that months. also a whole lot of data collection, off theforlegal saleSo,ofit’smarijuana. upward trend in arrests for all offenses medical marijuana is without a doubt much safer whiteboards, spreadsheets, and log books. And plenty over the last decade. In 2021, out of an astounding unregulated marijuana. After all, it’s subject to Step, of restless nights. But we’re getting there.” The First an award-winning new documentary 23,294 total arrests for allthan drug/narcotic possession intense regulatory testing and Arkansas has some of Cost is also a huge factor as organic is always more
By Dr. Johanna Rahman
Presents
S
expensive initially. Mr. Berger estimates, “It costs about double the amount of conventional out of the gate. With investments already being well into seven figures for any large project, most can’t take any more risk.” andHarvest Executive Producers & David Arquette. Co-Owner, MizanChristina Rahman, added “From a purely business perspective, The screenings on July 7this andmakes 9 willlittle takesense. place at the Maybe even no senseand at all. But we don’t do thingsCenters, Pulaski County Men’s Women’s Detention from aofpurely business perspective. make good with as part Dream Corps Justice’sWe collaboration todayto forscreen a better tomorrow. ” people directly thedecisions filmmakers the film for Clearly, conventional methods are cheaper, easier, impacted by the criminal justice system. and faster, but Harvest is committed to taking the road Thetraveled First Step is a compelling and nuanced film less and hopes by eventually perfecting the about what takes to reach across divides in these process at aitmicro-scale, other commercial cultivapolarized times. The film practices premiered the Tribeca Film tors might adopt organic at a at macro-scale. Festival in 2021 andthehas been an official in “Sometimes taking hard way pays off in theselection end. Growing soilfestivals using microorganisms, more thanin30 nationwide.fermentation The film follows and rock minerals is the original The overall progressive advocate Vanway. Jones andquality an unlikely medicine will profoundly different cross coalitionofofthe advocates, asbe they controversially from the rest of the flower in the state. Always party lines to win bipartisan support for criminal compare and contrast, but I can guarantee once justice reform and a more humane response to the you’ve tried it, you’ll never want to go back.” addiction crisis during the divisiveness of the Trump said Mr. Berger. administration. The film documents a unique Mrs. Barnett concluded “While we don’t shout story about progressives and conservatives attempting it from the rooftops, we’re really quite proud of what we’redifferences trying to accomplish here. Ourimpact to overcome their on issues that patientsfeaturing deserve the highest quality and safestcast of both groups, an extraordinary We hope to someday players, medication includingpossible. Kim Kardashian, Corybe Booker, the first certified organic cannabis grower in the Rand Paul, Kellyanne Conway, Kamala Harris, and state. When it’s ready for the shelves, we hope Donald you’ll Trump. The First Step recounts a narrative come try it yourself and experience the rarely seen on film everyday people difference. Weabout also hope other cultivators willin both political follow parties together into historic ourdrawn lead. And if they need help,awell, we fight for freedom justice in for a divided mightand just have a plan that too.” nation. Harvest’s to organic cannabisare cultivation Tickets fortransition the public screening $12 and can is ongoing but anticipate completion in mid-late be purchased atwe www.arkansascinemasociety.org. An 2022. Please website more information afterparty willvisit beour hosted byforSonny Williams and across the be sure to join our mailing list for news and updates.
street from the theater following the event.
Dr. Johanna E. Rahman is Harvest’s Medical,
and Impact Dr.Creative, Johanna E.Social Rahman isDirector a physician Justin Berger is Harvest’s Cultivation DirectorSocial epidemiologist and Harvest’s Medical, Impact, and Creative Director. 1200 Thomas G Wilson Dr, Conway, AR 72032 (501) 504-6065 • harvestcannabisarkansas.com
The Rahman Store Hours: Family Fund is an Arkansas-based philanthropic organization Monday-Saturday: 9am-8pm actively engaged in Sunday: 12pm-6pm leveraging the resources of the cannabis industry to Online positively impact a wide array of social Ordering Hours: Monday-Saturday: 9am-7pm inequity and injustice issues at the state and Sunday: 12pm-5pm national levels.
Friday, July 8, 2022, 6 PM Ron Robinson Theater on Van Jones’ prison reform efforts, will have three charges in Arkansas, marijuana alone accountedCALS for screenings in July presented by Dream Corps Justice nearly 40% (or 9,054) of those arrests. (Anecdotally, in partnership with Arkansas Cinema Society and some even presented valid medical marijuana cards Little Rock, AR 1200 Thomas G Wilson Dr, Conway, AR 72032 sponsored by the Rahman Family Fund. at the time of arrest and were charged nonetheless, A public viewing will take place on July 8, 2022, but more on that at a future time). And, just like the (501) 504-6065 • harvestcannabisarkansas.com Tickets: $12 at 6 p.m. in the CALS Ron Robinson Theater. All films rest of the country, we are not immune from the racial Store Hours: will be followed by a panel discussion led by Harvest disparities of the criminal justice system. Last year, www.arkansascinemasociety.org Monday-Saturday: 9am-8pm Cannabis Dispensary Director of Medicine and Social black men accounted for 51% of arrests for marijuana Marijuana is for use by qualified patients only. Keep out of reach of children. Marijuana use during pregnancy or breastfeeding poses potential harms. Marijuana is not approved by the FDA to treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Do not operate a vehicle or machinery under the influence of marijuana.
selling/manufacturing offenses and 41% of arrests for marijuana possession, despite making up only about 7.3% of our total population. Again, this is despite the fact that black people are no more likely to use or sell marijuana than white people.
Impact, Dr. Johanna Rahman, featuring Campaign After Party hosted byExecutive DiCoordinator Dream Corps Justice and rector of F.E.L.O.N. Ruby Welch, RestoreHER President Pamela Winn, Mississippi Center for Reentry Executive Director Cynetra Freeman, Producer Lance Kramer,
Sunday: 12pm-6pm
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CANNABIZ
GROWING SEASON
NATURAL STATE MEDICINALS OPENS ITS DOORS. BY LINDSEY MILLAR PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRIAN CHILSON
WHERE LIFE BEGINS: In one of Natural State Medicinals’ “veg rooms,” where the lights remain on for 18 hours per day.
O
n a rainy Thursday in May, Robert deBin toured me around Natural State Medicinals, the Jefferson County medical marijuana grow operation he runs. Like most Arkansans, I’d never been inside a cannabis cultivation facility before, and I was partially and inadvertently to blame for that. In 2019, I assigned a reporter and photographer to tour BOLD Cultivation in Cotton Plant, the first marijuana grower up and running, and the Arkansas Times subsequently ran a story about the operations and pictures of marijuana plants. The state Alcoholic Beverage Control Division, which also regulates the medical marijuana industry, followed up by fining BOLD $4,700 and putting it on six months’ probation for violating an ABC rule that prohibited allowing unauthorized personnel inside limited access areas where cannabis was “grown, harvested, processed, and stored.” So the inner workings of cannabis producers remained opaque for several years, thanks to the ABC treating a relatively mild intoxicant like it was enriched uranium. Cultivators only got the greenlight to welcome visitors after the 2021
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Arkansas General Assembly passed Act 919, which allows entry to anyone 21 or older who has been invited by cultivation staff, as long as they have a valid government ID. Because the ABC’s initial rules prevented legislators from entering the facilities, the industry had little trouble persuading them to change the rules. My May visit fell at a pivotal time for Natural State. An expansion is underway at the facility between Redfield and White Hall. And while he didn’t want to talk about it on the record for competitive reasons, deBin said the building project was necessary to meet demand in the medical marijuana program, but conceded that it would also favorably position the company to respond to a dramatically expanded market should a constitutional amendment to allow adults to use marijuana recreationally make the ballot and pass. Natural State and the other cultivators in that first batch authorized to begin operations — BOLD, Good Day Farm in Pine Bluff, Osage Creek Cultivation near Berryville and Revolution in West Memphis — each contributed $350,000 to
Responsible Growth Arkansas, the campaign committee advocating for the passage of the marijuana amendment. Responsible Growth raised $1.94 million as of mid-June and said it’s far surpassed its signature-gathering goals. Should it make it to the ballot, deBin believes the measure will pass. With all that excitement swirling in the background, deBin seemed even-keeled, or at least he projected calm in May. In a striped polo shirt, khaki pants and cowboy boots, he was tall and loping and looked younger than his 32 years. He met us inside the lobby of Natural State’s 32,000-square-foot headquarters, situated in what he describes as “the middle of a pine forest,” just off Interstate 530. The nondescript metal building isn’t a place you stumble upon by accident. There’s no signage. A chain link fence capped with razor wire surrounds the property. My colleagues and I couldn’t get through the gate before confirming our appointment through a call box. After getting buzzed into the front door, we had to enter our names and other information on wall-mounted computers and stand still for a camera to snap our
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headshots for temporary badges. Before we launched into our tour, we got fitted with surgical gowns and stomped and shimmied the soles of our shoes on a sanitizing mat. When it came time to touch the plants, Matt Dedman, vice president of marketing, was ready with black plastic gloves. The plants spread out among Natural State’s nine grow rooms, each around 2,000 square feet, take up half of the building’s square footage and represent millions of dollars of inventory. Any pests or organic matter riding in on someone’s clothes could throw that all in jeopardy. “We’re growing plants indoors in basically a rainforest environment that we create,” deBin said. “It attracts mold and insects, so we have to be careful.” Our first stop was a “veg room,” where hundreds of mid-sized plants in 5-gallon buckets were stacked in orderly rows atop tables. Industrial fans mounted along the walls blared and abundant lights hanging from the ceiling gave off a golden glow. “There are two main life cycles of cannabis: the vegetative cycle and the flowering cycle,” deBin explained. “Cannabis is photo-period sensitive, meaning that the amount of light per day tells it what stage of life it needs to be in. That kind of mimics regular outdoor agriculture: You plant in the spring and harvest in the fall, so at some point during the summer, when the amount of light per day reaches a certain level, it switches from vegetative to flowering. Growing outside, you get to harvest once a year. Here, we harvest about 36 times a year, or three times a month.” Where the plant is in that cycle determines how much and what type of light it receives. The light in the veg rooms isn’t as bright as that in flower rooms, but it stays on longer. In the veg rooms, the light remains on for 18 hours a day. In the flower rooms, the artificial “sun” shines for 12 hours. “Controlling the environment is the single most important thing for us,” deBin said. Growers have to monitor the amount and spectrum of light plants receive, the air movement, the temperature and humidity. They infuse the rooms with carbon dioxide. In the veg room, deBin points out the “babies” on the wall. These are plants that have recently been cloned from a mother plant. Natural State growers take a clipping from a plant, dip it in a rooting hormone and put it in a growing medium that resembles rockwool — something that holds moisture while allowing room for roots to spread. Growers mostly rely on clones to ensure consistency. “When you clone, you’re taking a genetic copy of the plant,” deBin said. Cloning also ensures that the new plant is female, the only type of marijuana plant growers want anything to do with. The resinous buds of the flower are meant to capture the pollen male plants produce, but when the female plants get pollinated, they stop producing flowers. It’s a common misconception that marijuana growers start with seeds. There’s too much 102 JULY 2022
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GROWING GREEN: (Clockwise from top left) Natural State CEO Robert deBin; Frank Yelland works with cloned “babies”; a sea of marijuana in a flowering room several weeks away from harvest; cannabis drying in a quality control room; and Matt Dedman, vice president of marketing, admires a fledgling bud.
variability with seeds, deBin said. “If we got a 10-pack of seeds and eliminated the males out of them — after they start growing they’ll show their sex — and say we get five females out of that, and we grow all five, they’re going to have significantly different attributes. They’re going to be different shades of colors, different smells, different effects, different yields. Some will like this environment more than others. It’s a pretty tricky process.” Cloning streamlines the process, but it isn’t a failsafe. Over time, cloned strains can fall victim to what’s known as genetic drift. “When you take a clone from a clone of a clone, it makes it more susceptible to disease,” deBin said. Natural State and other growers slow that phenomenon by keeping a “mother plant” from which they take clippings. Natural State wants its plants to live a stressfree life. “Every little thing wants to reproduce. If the power went out and we lost light for a long stretch, the plants will self-pollinate.” The industry term for that is “herm,” like the verb form of hermaphrodite. When the marijuana you buy has seeds in it, a male plant has somehow snuck into a grow operation. “When you get seeds in your weed, you catch hell,” deBin said. “We’ve destroyed hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of product because we don’t want to deal with the reputational hit.” When a plant gets pollinated, it stops using its energy to grow flowers and instead uses it to grow seeds, which could affect the potency. Outside in the hallway, we pass large tanks where growers mix water and certain nutrients. Different plants in different stages require different types and levels of nutrients. The actual watering is automated. In a flower room where the cannabis is 2-3 weeks from harvest, the smell is pungent, and the light is brilliant. Long exposure to it is harmful to your eyes; Natural State employees wear protective glasses with spectrum-altering filters. A grid of PVC pipe and string netting support the flowering plants, which vary dramatically in terms of height and color. A strain called Funky Charms with grayish blue leaves and fledgling buds will turn a deep, dark purple as it nears harvest time, Dedman noted. What’s selling well lately? “Whatever is new,” Dedman said. “The market really cares about freshness more than repeating strains.” But building on the initial success of a strain can be difficult, deBin said. “We release something and the people say, ‘This is amazing, we want more of this.’ It’s like, ‘OK, we’ll start to propagate more of this. You won’t see it for 130 days.’ But at that point is it still trending?” When it’s time to harvest, Natural State employees cut down the nets, cut the plants at the base of their stalk, calculate the “wet weight” of the harvested cannabis and report it in the state tracking system. Once growers cut the plant at the stalk, it’s finished, but state regulators require cultivators to thoroughly destroy the dirt and whatever else is left over. Natural State had to
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IN FLOWER: A strain several weeks away from harvest (left) and Funky Charms, days from being picked, bookend Trevor Swedenburg, Natural State’s executive chef, holding court in his kitchen.
“WE RELEASE SOMETHING AND THE PEOPLE SAY, ‘THIS IS AMAZING, WE WANT MORE OF THIS.’ IT’S LIKE, ‘OK, WE’LL START TO PROPAGATE MORE OF THIS. YOU WON’T SEE IT FOR 130 DAYS.’ BUT AT THAT POINT IS IT STILL TRENDING?” upgrade its industrial grinder three times already to satisfy the state. After they’re harvested, plants go to quality control where they’re hung to dry. When we visited, the marijuana had just been picked the day before. Already it had started to shrivel. “As a grower, this is kind of the sad part,” deBin said. “You leave that grow room and it’s the most beautiful flower you’ve ever seen, and then you have to hang it up to dry.” The air conditioning is going full tilt in quality control. “You can’t dry it out too fast. It’s a careful balance,” deBin said. Nearby is a room that houses the cryo cure or lyophilization machine, a large, cylindrical metal tank that looks like a deep-sea submarine, or the sensory deprivation tank from “Stranger Things.” Lyophilization has long been used to preserve food and pharmaceuticals, but Natural State was the first marijuana cultivator in the country to install the patented freeze-drying system, which preserves the size and color of the buds and promotes a better, more efficient cure. “Some people who have been smoking their whole lives say, ‘[The freeze-dried weed] is weird. I’m not coughing when I smoke this.’ ” By utilizing lyophilization, Natural State is removing the moisture and the lipids, which make you cough. The process also preserves more of the plants’ terpenes, the aromatic chemical compounds that produce various therapeutic effects, which deBin says leads to better looking and tasting marijuana. “This is the future of cannabis,” deBin said. “I’d like to see all of our product cryo’d. However, I 104 JULY 2022
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anticipate some resistance from legacy customers who are accustomed to the texture of traditionally dried cannabis and the coughing that comes with it.” From there, our tour took a decidedly Willy Wonka turn. When we reached the kitchen, effervescent head chef Trevor Swedenburg quickly offered us samples of (no THC) Sour Glass Apple, with a punch similar to a Warhead. “It’s glutenand dairy-free, vegan, diabetic-friendly, kosher and halal,” Swedenburg said. He showed us his new chocolate machine, which melts, tempers and molds the finished product. A new white chocolate bar called Cereal Milk tastes just like its name, he said. Natural State is unique in that it makes gelatin gummies, Swedenburg said. Other companies make pectin-based jellies or chewies. Natural State gets its gelatin from a company that makes Jell-O shots for bars. Gelatin is like a traditional gummy bear, while chewies break down more easily in your mouth. Swedenburg creates all sorts of multitasking gummies: Some have equal parts CBD and THC. Others have melatonin added, or Bragg’s Apple Cider Vinegar for gut health. A chili and watermelon-flavored gummy has vitamin C for immunity. Swedenburg uses decarboxylated, winterized crude THC in all the edibles to give “a little bit of a green flavor, so you know you’re not eating regular candy.” When marijuana is legal recreationally, he plans to make some using THC distillate, which has no flavor. How do Swedenburg and other Natural State employees test their products? They can’t just
sample their wares in house before putting it on the market in Arkansas dispensaries. They must first send it off for testing by a third-party laboratory. Then they have to package and label it, ship it to a dispensary and buy it like they’re regular consumers. And that happens every time they create a new product and for every new iteration of that product. The burdensome regulations don’t stop there. The state requires marijuana to be tested in 10-pound batches, meaning one third-party test is required for every 10 pounds of product. deBin points to five tables of Super Lemon Haze in one of his flowering rooms, 12 plants on each table. That’s 60 plants. Each plant has about 1.2 pounds of marijuana in dry weight, which amounts to 72 pounds. So even though the marijuana is the same strain, grown under the same conditions, harvested and cured all at the same time, it will be tested eight separate times. Through variance in testing, it’s likely there will be eight different THC percentages in the results, deBin said. Because customers have thus far considered THC percentage the most important criteria, the test results determine the price Natural State can sell to dispensaries. deBin is champing at the bit to get into his new space. The packaging operation now takes place in a hallway. “When we built [the original headquarters], we didn’t know what we didn’t know,” he said. The company has been fluid. “We’ve turned every closet and mechanical room into an office or production facility or something. We’ve learned a lot over the last couple of years.”
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THE OBSERVER
SQUIRREL!
I
f your internet goes out, as The Observer’s did recently, it’s likely the cyberattack comes not from the Russians, but from forces much closer to home. That was the case in the Kingwood neighborhood in early June, when a cluster of five houses suffered the extremely First World problem of a temporary lack of access to Netflix. Temperatures soaring and classes out for the year, the problem took on more importance than it might have in, say, April, when school and soccer practices forestalled the excessive screen time emblematic of The Observer’s seasonal parental failings. Three days after sending up a call for help (insert three tiny violin emojis here), we welcomed the AT&T troubleshooter like a liberating force, here to free us from wholesome family fun and conversation. After a quick inspection of cords and connections, though, the hangdog service tech broke the news: The squirrels went berserk on the fiber-optic network, gnawing through the toothsome cables in multiple spots and shutting down any work-from-home capabilities for the eastern side of the street. And, while the damage was inflicted by a tiny rodent, the problem was too big for him to fix alone. Two more service trucks pulled up, but it would take the crew a couple more days before The Observer could binge “Peaky Blinders” season six. With internet restored, Google sleuthing
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ARKANSAS TIMES
revealed that as with most threats large and small, mundane answers (rodents desperate to gnaw their ever-growing teeth back down to size) are more likely culprits than the more conspiratorial, fantastical ones (cyber warfare launched from enemy states, solar flares). The science is hard to pin down here, but marauding squirrels and their rodent brethren are accused of causing more damage to critical infrastructure than either malevolent hackers or powerful storms. Apparently snakes, birds and slugs sometimes get in on the act, too. Waxing philosophic on this heavy revelation that our true enemies are closer than we ever knew and hidden in plain sight, The Observer reached out to industry experts, hoping they would indulge this line of catastrophizing. They weren’t into it, though, and sent only a perfunctory, zero-fun statement: Occasionally, our aerial fiber and copper cables can be damaged by squirrels and other small rodents. While this may affect service for individual customers, it’s typically not responsible for widespread impacts. If this does occur, our technicians work quickly to repair damage and restore service. It’s a fair answer. Maybe there’s no deeper meaning, no worrisome implications, no need to look or think further. But something about the response felt a bit squirrely, if you will. A one-sentence answer to a virtually unknown threat to the nation’s vital infrastructure?
It turns out that scholars and analysts agree there’s something happening here that’s worth keeping tabs on. Researchers at the University of Nebraska were asking the important questions as early as 1989, with their groundbreaking exposè that revealed squirrels caused 24% of all power outages in Lincoln that year, long before internet cables even existed to be added to the menu. Their stats hold up. Today, squirrels can claim credit for nearly a fifth of network outages, although of course it’s hard to know for sure. Understanding the enemy felt important, so The Observer looked to @CyberSquirrel1, a menacing Twitter persona who brags about power grid destruction already wrought by the animal kingdom and threatens more. A Canadian beaver recently went viral for breaking the internet. For you dataheads out there, CyberSquirrel tracks his and fellow critters’ conquests on a global map at cybersquirrel1.com. How is it that The Observer, so often homebound and reliant on an internet connection during this pandemic that might just be our life now, had no idea of these dangers lurking in the oaks? There’s a lot to parse about powerlessness in the face of nature, and how small problems can become big ones. Luckily though, with the internet turned back on and distractions once again readily at hand, The Observer doesn’t spend too much time worrying about it.
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