Arkansas Times | July 2024

DELTA TRIENNIAL

ON VIEW JUNE 28 TO AUGUST 25

Delta Triennial is presented by Anne and Merritt Dyke.

Additional support is provided by Friday, Eldredge & Clark, LLP and the Andre Simon Memorial Trust Fund in memory of everyone who has died of acquired immune defi ciency syndrome (AIDS).

A PORTRAIT OF GEORGE WASHINGTON AND HIS SLAVES (Mischtechnik and 24k gold leaf on linen canvas) by Ajamu

was selected by three jurors for this year’s Delta Triennial.

Kojo

FEATURES

30 ‘I AM THE BLACK CHILD’

How an imaginative academic built a flourishing Afrocentric school in Little Rock in the 1980s— and why it matters now.

35 BEST OF ARKANSAS

Our annual readers poll measures the best of the best, from parks to poets to pediatricians.

36 BIG ON BOTOX

Lessons in time travel from the nurse injector at Revolution Med Spa. By Rhett Brinkley

40 ARTISAN OF AXES

Luthier Dave Fry’s handmade guitars are “just different.” By Milo Strain

46 SISTER CITY

Arkansas Diner is open for business — in Taiwan. By Rhett Brinkley

48 EVERYTHING IS VIBRATORY

Zina Al-Shukri’s portraits emulate the harmonic frequencies of sound. By Tara Escolin

52 CRAWLSPACE CHRONICLES

Eric Young of Blackbird Home Inspections isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty. By Daniel Grear

54 DIVINE DINING

Craig “Big Chef” Taylor forgoes the cookbook in favor of The Good Book. By Stephanie Smittle

59 SKIN IN THE GAME

Robert Berry of 7th Street Tattoos is all in on ink.

By Brian Chilson and Daniel Grear

65 AND THE WINNER IS

The winners and finalists in our annual readers poll.

SHOWCASE: Among the works in Arkansas Museum of Fine Art’s Delta Triennial (Page 19) is Heidi Carlsen-Rogers’ 2022 work, “Gather (Sacred Conversation),” detailed here.

9 THE FRONT

From the Vault: Revisiting our coverage of the Mayflower oil spill, 11 years later.

Q&A: With Charles Stewart, banking exec and head of the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame.

Inconsequential News Quiz: The “cheeks are in the mail” edition.

17 THE TO-DO LIST

The Delta Triennial at Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, Jen Fawkes at WordsWorth, “Footloose” at Arkansas Repertory Theatre, “Desperately Seeking Susan” at the Arkansas Times Film Series and more.

24

NEWS

Little Rock has a pedestrian death problem. What’s being done to fix it? By Matt Campbell

82 SAVVY KIDS

A new youth shelter aims to steer kids in crisis to a stable adulthood. By Milo Strain

88 CANNABIZ

How the head of security at the state lottery agency, née a sheriff, became a weed industry exec. By Griffin Coop

90 THE OBSERVER

Accidental midwives at the Golden Corral.

ON THE COVER: Pastor “Big Chef” Craig Taylor by Brian Chilson.

2024 Winner for Best Community College

• University Transfer Curriculum

• Nursing

• Emergency Medical Technician

• Health Information Technology

• Cybersecurity

• Entrepreneurship

• Business

• Airframe and Powerplant Technology

• Culinary Arts

• Welding

• Automotive Technology

• HVAC-R

• Advanced Manufacturing

• Diesel Technology

• CDL Training

• Continuing Education

• Specialized Training for Business and Industry

• Many More!

UAPTC.EDU BREAK FREE FROM EXPECTED

PUBLISHER Alan Leveritt

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Austin Gelder

CREATIVE DIRECTOR Mandy Keener

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Stephanie Smittle

MANAGING EDITOR Benjamin Hardy

ASSOCIATE EDITOR Rhett Brinkley

CANNABIZ EDITOR Griffin Coop

ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR Daniel Grear

INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER Matt Campbell

REPORTER Debra Hale-Shelton

EDITORIAL INTERN Milo Strain

EDITOR EMERITUS Max Brantley

CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Mara Leveritt

PHOTOGRAPHER Brian Chilson

DIGITAL MARKETING MANAGER Madeline Chosich

DIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENT Wythe Walker

ADVERTISING ART DIRECTOR Mike Spain

GRAPHIC DESIGNER Katie Hassell

DIRECTOR OF ADVERTISING/ SPECIAL PUBLICATIONS PUBLISHER Brooke Wallace

ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES

Terrell Jacob, Kaitlyn Looney and Evan Ethridge

ADVERTISING TRAFFIC MANAGER Roland R. Gladden

SPECIAL SECTION MANAGING EDITOR Becca Bona EVENTS DIRECTOR Donavan Suitt

DIRECTOR OF CANNABIS SALES AND MARKETING Lee Major IT DIRECTOR Robert Curfman

CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Jackson Gladden

CONTROLLER Weldon Wilson

BILLING/COLLECTIONS Charlotte Key CHAIR MAN Lindsey Millar

PRODUCTION MANAGER Ira Hocut (1954-2009)

ARKANSAS TIMES (ISSN 0164-6273) is published each month by Arkansas Times Limited Partnership, 201 East Markham Street, Suite 200, Little Rock, Arkansas, 72201, phone (501) 375-2985. Periodical postage paid at Little Rock, Arkansas, and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to ARKANSAS TIMES, 201 EAST MARKHAM STREET, SUITE 200, Little Rock, AR, 72201. Subscription prices are $60 for one year. For subscriber service call (501) 375-2985. Current single-copy price is $5, free in Pulaski County. Single issues are available by mail at $5.00 each, postage paid. Payment must accompany all orders. Reproduction or use in whole or in part of the contents without the written consent of the publishers is prohibited. Manuscripts and artwork will not be returned or acknowledged unless sufficient return postage and a self-addressed stamped envelope are included. All materials are handled with due care; however, the publisher assumes no responsibility for care and safe return of unsolicited materials. All letters sent to ARKANSAS TIMES will be treated as intended for publication and are subject to ARKANSAS TIMES’ unrestricted right to edit or to comment editorially. ©2024 ARKANSAS TIMES LIMITED PARTNERSHIP

AN ONGOING STORY:

Just last month, Exxon reached a tentative settlement agreement to pay $1.8 million for restoration of natural resources in the area affected by the spill.

THE PIPELINE IN OUR BACKYARDS

REVISITING THE MAYFLOWER OIL SPILL, 11 YEARS LATER.

The Arkansas Times turns 50 in 2024. To celebrate our golden anniversary, we’re looking back at the past half-century and sharing excerpts from some of our favorite pieces of reporting.

On March 29, 2013, an aging ExxonMobil pipeline called the Pegasus burst open behind a neighborhood in Mayflower, sending noxious fumes into the air and 210,000 gallons of crude oil gushing down suburban streets and into nearby wetlands. The spill was among the worst environmental disasters in recent Arkansas history. It came at a time when oil pipelines were in the spotlight due to controversy over the proposed Keystone XL project — which, like the Pegasus, was intended to carry notoriously dirty-burning petroleum from the tar sands of Canada south to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico.

The Arkansas Times lacked the resources to cover the Mayflower spill in depth, but theneditor Lindsey Millar had the idea — unusual at the time — to turn to crowdfunding. Together with the Pulitzer Prize-winning environmental publication InsideClimate News, we raised more than $25,000 in small donations to delve into the disaster and its aftermath, supplemented by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

We reported on health concerns in communities hit by the spill, the ecological impact on Lake Conway, and the regulatory lapses that allowed Exxon to keep operating a 65-year-old pipeline with known defects. We profiled Mayflower residents whose lives were upended by a piece of infrastructure many didn’t even know existed. And we covered efforts to keep the Pegasus closed in

light of the even worse disaster that very well could have been: Just a few miles southwest of Mayflower, the pipeline enters the watershed of Lake Maumelle, in places coming within 600 feet of the drinking water source for 400,000 people in Central Arkansas.

Just last month, on June 3, one of the last pieces of the Mayflower story fell into place when Exxon reached a tentative settlement agreement with the state and federal governments to pay $1.8 million for restoration of natural resources in the area affected by the spill. That’s on top of roughly $6 million the company paid the public in 2015 and 2019 for violating environmental law and failing to maintain the Pegasus properly (along with an unknown sum paid out in private settlements and litigation). For context, Exxon’s profits in 2023 were around $36 billion.

The Pegasus was shut down after the spill and has remained inoperative ever since. Exxon sold it to another energy company some years ago. But what happened in Mayflower in 2013 remains relevant — not only because the line could still one day be restarted, but because it’s a story that seems destined to play out again and again. Like the 2023 train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, that dumped 100,000 gallons of burning chemicals into the air of an unsuspecting community, the Mayflower spill revealed the costs of the unseen industrial infrastructure that crisscrosses the country. It’s easy enough to consider such random accidents a necessary price to pay for modern life — until your home is the one soaked in oil.

—Benjamin Hardy

THE PATH OF THE PEGASUS

In August 2013, five months after the Mayflower disaster, the Arkansas Times took a road trip alongside the Pegasus. Freelancer Sam Eifling, who has contributed to the magazine semi-regularly in the years since, teamed up with legendary Arkansas Times writer David Koon and Elizabeth McGowan of InsideClimate News to introduce us to some of the communities along its 300-mile route within the state. Here’s a sampling of what they found. (Read the full story at arktimes. com.)

The oil that erupted in Mayflower back in March began its trip in an Illinois hamlet named Patoka, 90 minutes east of St. Louis. It shot down ExxonMobil’s 20-inch Pegasus pipeline, under farms and forests, over the Mississippi River via a state highway bridge, through the Missouri Ozarks, across the Arkansas state line and, a few miles later, near the workplace of one Glenda Jones, whom you can find on a summer Saturday at her bar job, watching the Cardinals thump the Cubs.

The other bartender here at the Rolling Hills Country Club in the town of Pocahontas is named Brenda, so anyone visiting the golf course in far Northeast Arkansas is bound to meet one of the Endas, as they’re known around the club. At 5 p.m. it’s quiet in the 10-table lounge but for a Fox broadcaster making Jones’ day: “Molina deep … back to the wall … it’s gone!” Jones, the proud Enda and part-time house cleaner who refers to the Cardinals as “we,” hollers, “Yes, finally!” Ask her about Pocahontas and she’s quick to tout its famous five rivers (the Spring, the Black, the Current, the Fourche, the Eleven

Point). And the people are sure friendly. “Course they are,” she says. “We’re in the middle of the Bible Belt. Know what I mean? Everybody’s nice here.” If one thing gives her pause about this area, it might be the Pegasus. It runs right under her yard, and she worries about it rusting. “Stuff like that only lasts so long,” she says.

The Pegasus spill surprised many people in Mayflower, in part because many of them had no idea they were living atop an oil superhighway. So we got to wondering: Where does the Pegasus go? To find out, we traced its path using maps publicly available from the federal agency that regulates pipelines, the Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA). We got precise with Google Earth, following the pipeline’s easement — the broad, bald line where trees are kept off the pipe — through the 13 Arkansas counties the Pegasus crosses on its way to Texas.

“If it burst, right here, right now?” asks Derik Fitzgerald, the voluble golf course superintendent, at the Endas’ bar. “What do you do?”

Fitzgerald knows and respects the Pegasus. Tuesdays and Thursdays Exxon flies a plane over to scope it out. One time Fitzgerald and another man on his crew were fixing an irrigation line maybe 40 feet from the pipe, on Hole 5, when Fitzgerald’s friend heard the plane turn. “He said, ‘That plane just seen us doing something.’ ”

They got a friendly visit from an Exxon rep after that one, just to be sure they knew to call in any projects within 200 feet of the pipeline. They also got a visit the time a flood piled branches and logs against the exposed pipeline in a creek. Fitzgerald called, and Exxon was out in a jiffy, yanking timber off the pipe and supervising the burning of the brush.

“I hate to take up for oil companies, I hate it,” Fitzgerald says. “But they seem like they’re on top of it.” When he needs to notify the company that he’s working near the pipe, Fitzgerald rings a guy. In his cell phone the contact reads “Billy Exon.”

The trip from the clubhouse to the Pegasus takes 5 minutes. Fitzgerald steers a golf cart down a knobby asphalt path, through hairpin turns between trees, and to the creek where the pipe is exposed, parallel to a little bridge. It’s a mottled, muddled thing, speckled with lichen and splotched with some tarry coating.

When the pipe was operating, 4 million gallons of crude would shoot through here at a pressure of 700 or 800 pounds per square inch. The crack that opened in Mayflower

was some 22 feet long, roughly the length of this exposed segment. If there were another break, odds are people here would know it before the pipeline’s built-in remote sensors. PHMSA records show that of the 960 spills in the United States between 2002 and 2012, the general public reported 22% of them. Oil company employees found 62%. Sensors caught only 5%. That makes people like Jones and Fitzgerald part of the state’s first line of defense in a spill.

Fitzgerald heads back to the clubhouse for a Reuben with blue cheese dressing and to order a Miller Lite from Jones. As he picks his way through the trees he ponders life in Pocahontas. “Play golf and drink beer,” he says. “And call for a driver. … Thank God for wives. Understanding wives.”

MAYFLOWER: MILEPOST 314.77

At sunset one evening, Ryan Senia, a displaced former resident of the Northwoods subdivision, walks around his side yard, and into a wide orange clayscape. This area used to be backyards, until crude swamped it and Exxon’s crews stripped away trees and exhumed tons of earth. “This is all new dirt,” Senia says over the thrum of a generator powering a tall light. He walks behind a neighbor’s empty home where the remnants of a former yard — a bike, a hose, a lawnmower, a propane grill, part of a birdbath — clutter the back porch. “Come up over here, you can see they’ve dug up under the slab,” he says. “You can see how deep they’ve dug it. So you know the oil is underground.”

He turns to another home’s foundation. There, in a grey puddle a foot beneath the brick, floats a glossy black blob the size of a fried egg. “It’s eye-opening to see the oil right there,” Senia says. “I know it’s not a large amount, but that’s only what you can see. The oil’s under the house.”

This is 20 weeks after the spill. Unified Command has cleared 19 of the 22 homes that were under mandatory evacuation as safe for reentry, Senia’s included, and Exxon notes that some people are moving back. By an informal count, maybe three homes are back to normal. Senia, for one, just sold his home to Exxon. At sundown on a weeknight, the driveways of Starlite Road North are blank, the windows are dark and all is quiet but for the generator and the yo-yoing moans of cicadas.

CADDO RIVER: MILEPOST 233.3

One of the few people in Arkansas who would see an instant upside in case of a disaster is a property owner on the Caddo, upstream of DeGray Lake. Frank Canale —

loud, outspoken, tanned a uniform bronze — rents cabins in Glenwood, near where the Pegasus crosses the Caddo close to Mud Lake Road.

Originally from Memphis, Canale long made his living as an international real estate developer. He built the cabins on the Caddo when he came to Arkansas to care for his ailing mother, intending to sell them. Then the real estate market seized up in the credit crunch, trapping Canale in this Arkansas paradise.

His cabins on the Caddo, about 200 yards upriver from the pipeline, are picturesque: secluded, landscaped, with a terraced deck in the cool shade and steps that lead down to the waterline. The Caddo here lies in a cradle of stone rimmed by mountains, in a channel cut by a thousand-thousand years of flood. Most of the sunburnt paddlers who descend on weekends hail from Louisiana and Texas, he said, flatlanders craving trees and contours.

On a recent day, he was waiting to talk with someone from an auction company. He’s ready to cash out. He’s headed to Ecuador, he says, where some opportunities have opened. A spill? Why, that would certainly be one way out.

“Really, that would probably be my savior if that thing were to bust and wipe me out,” he says, laughing. “I’d probably get more from [Exxon] than I could ever sell the place for.”

A day later, up the river in Glenwood, Jim Smedley, owner of Arrowhead Cabin and Canoe, is shuttling canoeists back and forth in one of his white buses. A resident of Little Rock who flies helicopters for the National Guard, Smedley says he didn’t know the pipeline that ruptured in Mayflower also crosses the river he has floated dozens of times. A spill on the Caddo, he says, would be devastating.

“I understand we’ve got to have oil to function,” he says. “At the same time, if there has to be risk involved, there’s got to be some sort of inspection procedure. I’m not sure how they do it, but if that pipeline is that old, I’m sure it’s weak in a lot of places. There’s been land shift faults and everything else.”

Smedley says he’d like to think that Exxon and other oil companies would do the right thing to protect places like the Caddo River. But the spills in the Gulf and in Mayflower undermine that faith.

“I think the risk and the reward have to be balanced — the environmental impact,” he says. “I think they wait for something like this to happen to fix a problem they already knew about. Maybe they knew about it, maybe they didn’t. Maybe it was going to be too expensive to fix it.”

‘IT’S

A PUSH AND PULL’

A Q&A WITH CHARLES STEWART.

To former banking executive Charles Stewart, Little Rock will always and forever be home. Stewart was born in Sweet Home and raised in Little Rock at the height of the civil rights movement. Emboldened by the possibilities for change he saw during his youth, he worked his way up the corporate chain at Regions Financial Corp. and eventually became the first Black banking executive in Arkansas. In addition to his successful banking career, Stewart helped integrate women and other minorities into the workforce during his tenure on the Arkansas State Police Commission, and put his efforts toward ending hunger and poverty at Heifer International, where he served as interim CEO from 2009 to 2010. He razzles and dazzles as chairman, CEO and co-founder of the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame, whose philanthropic efforts benefit underserved populations across the state.

Outside of your careers, you’re highly involved in the Little Rock community. How do you view the importance of community involvement for industry leaders such as yourself?

LIFE MOTTO: “In all thy ways, acknowledge Him, and he shall guide thy path.” Proverbs 3:6

FAVORITE LITTLE ROCK RESTAURANT: Samantha’s Tap Room & Wood Grill

I think the benefits go both ways. It’s certainly something that gives the sense of worth to the time and effort you spend in those endeavors, and many times we have skill sets and knowledge and, hopefully, wisdom that we can bring into those operations to develop it into all that it’s capable of being. I had the early privilege in my career in banking to be appointed by then-Arkansas Gov. David Pryor to the Arkansas [State] Police Commission, and I think I was 27 or 28 years old, and had the opportunity to go into that environment. I was part of that commission that led the effort for the state police to enter in a consent decree, and as a result of that consent decree, the state police was integrated; it was the advent of women coming into the state police, as well as other minorities. At that time, there were no people who looked like me as troopers and certainly as leadership, so that was something I was very proud of being a part of.

ROLE MODELS: Arkansas educators Dr. Morris Holmes and William “Sonny” Walker

HIDDEN TALENT: Modeled for Dillard’s and Levi’s International in the 1980s, and did some commercials for General Motors.

in Little Rock and Arkansas. In 1971, there was a recession, and I didn’t get laid off, but I did get downgraded; I’d worked my way up to grade 10, but was downgraded to grade 2, not even running the machines but degreasing the parts. I was recently married and glad to have a job, but knew I needed, for myself and my family, something a little more dependable. So I started circulating my resume. … One of the things that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said was this: When the doors of opportunity open, we have to have people who are prepared to step into those doors, be prepared, be effective, and keep those doors open for future generations. I was too young to be marching, or an active part of the demonstrations, but that’s the challenge I saw for my generation as I went into banking and ultimately became the first Black banking executive in the state of Arkansas.

Is the world anything like what you thought it’d be at that age?

What was it like coming of age at the tail end of the civil rights movement and working your way through the finance industry as a Black man?

It was very interesting, actually. I was working in accounting at the Teletype Corp., which was one of the major industries

I’m a student and observer of history, and I used to wonder as a child why we constantly go through the same challenges over and over again. If you look throughout history, progress is made, but then there comes a point where forces try to reverse that progress, and I assess that it’s probably a 50year cycle. I saw it when people started challenging affirmative action. If you go back even further, Reconstruction was also put in place to level the playing field. Those movements start to have their desired effect, then people who have had privileges start to try and claw that back. We saw a nation that was not prepared to do what was required to implement Reconstruction, so it couldn’t achieve all it was designed to. … We see today, I think, an effort to turn back the clock in a number of different ways and places, challenging everything from affirmative action to diversity, equity and inclusion, to use these phrases and turn what I’d consider to be positive into negatives. It’s a push and pull. I think it was Frederick Douglass who said ‘power concedes nothing without a demand,’ so it’s one of the realities of life in America. It’s never a job that’s finished.

—Jack Clay

THE CHEEKS ARE IN THE MAIL EDITION

THERE’S A LOT OF NEWS THESE DAYS. HAVE YOU BEEN PAYING ATTENTION?

Laptops & Lapdances

a damn, leaving Rapert without proper accompaniment when he takes hourly fiddle breaks during board meetings.

Became the Hunted”

C. “Schlong Quixote”

D. ”Out of the Shadows: My Life Inside the Wild World of Hunter Biden”

5. Tayvia Woodfork was traveling from Hot Springs to her home in Mississippi early last month when her family stopped at the Golden Corral on Warden Road in North Little Rock. What did Woodfork do in the Golden Corral bathroom that left her family unable to finish their meal?

1. In April, Candace Scott Chapman of Little Rock pleaded guilty to federal charges of transporting stolen property across state lines and conspiracy to commit mail fraud. She faces up to 30 years in prison and a fine of up to $500,000 on the two charges. What stolen property was Chapman trafficking?

A. “Poppy Flowers” by Vincent van Gogh, famously stolen in broad daylight in 2010 from the Mohamed Mahmoud Khalil Museum in Cairo.

B. Beloved Arkansas Razorback mascot Tusk VI and his luxury travel trailer.

C. Three boxes of classified documents from a hallway bathroom at Mar-a-Lago.

D. Body parts, including “2 brains, one with skullcap, 3 hearts one cut, 2 fake boobies, one large belly button piece of skin, one arm, one huge piece of skin, and one lung.”

2. Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders appointed former state senator and forever self-important Christian nationalist Jason Rapert to the Arkansas Library Board last December. Recently, Rapert made headlines when he leveled what complaint at the other board members?

A. The women on the board continue to speak before they have been spoken to.

B. None of them can play mandolin worth

C. They were not sufficiently impressed when Rapert mentioned he’d been wearing a jail-tail style goatee for 20 consecutive years.

D. They created a hostile work environment that discriminates against straight, white, Christian men.

3. First Gentleman Bryan Sanders made headlines when he announced he would be riding his bike to work as part of Metroplan’s Ozone Action Days. Why did this announcement leave a number of Arkansans scratching their heads?

A. Sanders made the Arkansas State Police follow him solely to take pictures of his “sick wheelies and rail grinds.”

B. Sanders used a state credit card to order himself an alligator skin helmet and matching bike shoes for the ride.

C. Sarah Sanders said she would be riding on Bryan’s handlebars so the first gentleman could continue his streak of never letting her go anywhere without him.

D. Sanders said he was biking to work at the Capitol, despite not having a job there.

4. Lunden Roberts, known best as Hunter Biden’s baby mama, announced she was releasing a tell-all book about the Biden scion. What is the title of Roberts’ forthcoming opus?

A. “Laptops & Lapdances: Hunter Biden’s Life of Secrets”

B. ”From Here to Paternity: How Hunter

A. Took a particularly sulfurous dump that left three diners hospitalized and caused the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management to lock down the restaurant for a day.

B. Nearly drowned when the automatic flush on her toilet malfunctioned, pulling her face-first into the commode by her hair.

C. Got caught eating an entire meal, including peach cobbler for dessert, that she’d smuggled in from Barnhill’s Steaks & Buffet in Jacksonville.

D. Had a baby despite Woodfork and her family having no idea she was 37 weeks pregnant at the time.

6. On April 1, Arkansas Times editor Austin Gelder posted a satirical story that unexpectedly blew up on social media and caused a surprising amount of confusion for some Arkansans. What was the gist of that completely fictional story?

A. State Rep. David Ray (R-Maumelle) had released an autobiography in which he revealed that he lost his virginity with a goat when he was 24.

B. Sarah Sanders’ brother had been arrested overnight for breaking into the Little Rock Animal Village and strangling 17 dogs.

C. Scientists had discovered that cheese dip has cancer-inhibiting properties.

D. NASA had miscalculated the path of the April 8 eclipse and was now saying it would go through Marked Tree and Dumas, skipping western Arkansas entirely.

Hunter Biden’s Life of Secrets

BY DANIEL GREAR, STEPHANIE SMITTLE AND OMAYA JONES

LAKE STREET DIVE

WEDNESDAY 7/17. THE MOMENTARY, BENTONVILLE. 7 P.M. $25-$325.

Ask any Dungeons & Dragons fan and they’ll tell you: The possibilities a 20-sided die can yield are endless. You’ll get a co-sign on that, too, from Brooklyn-based jazz-pop group Lake Street Dive, who used the D&D centerpiece to generate songs for their new record. Called “Good Together,” the group’s 2024 full-length marks the first time they’ve written songs together from the point of inception, selecting tempi, meter and chords at random by rolling the dice. That, bassist Bridget Kearney said, “ended up taking us to new places we never would’ve gotten to otherwise.” That territory includes the uptempo title track, a happy accident of the dice that pairs Rachael Price’s smoky, formidable alto with a sunny synth and a disco-tinged bass riff, funky yet wholesome enough for a morning minivan commute with the kiddos. It’s one of several tracks on the record that features horns from Brooklyn-based jazz band Huntertones, and a good indicator of the “bop, then ballad” recipe Lake Street Dive will likely deliver at the Momentary. Long Island sibling rock duo The Lemon Twigs open the show. Get tickets at themomentary. org. SS

‘THE BIKERIDERS’

IN THEATERS 6/21.

ARKANSAS TIMES FILM SERIES: ‘DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN’

TUESDAY 7/16. RIVERDALE 10 VIP CINEMA. 7 P.M. $12-$14.

In Susan Seidelman’s “Desperately Seeking Susan” (1985), Roberta Glass (Rosanna Arquette) reads the personals section and is taken by the story of the bold and mysterious Susan Thomas (Madonna, in her first major screen role) and Jim Dandy, who — in contrast to her unfulfilling housewife life — appear to be involved in a torrid love affair. While attempting to get a glimpse of the couple in real life after one of their missives names the location of their rendezvous, Roberta has an accident and hits her head, causing her to suffer from a serious bout of amnesia. Finding a copy of the personal ad in her pocket, she — as well as a few other characters, including a dangerous killer — believes herself to be Susan. “Desperately Seeking Susan” falls within the subgenre coined by critic Miriam Bale as “persona swaps,” which she defined as movies about two women whose identities get magically mixed up. The films “have a recognizable, nonrealist tone, a dream logic. They’re psychological, supernatural and, at their best, illuminate very specific aspects of relationships between women. … They indicate that femininity, in particular, is performance.” Get tickets at riverdale10.com. OJ

“On one side of masculinity, you have tropes, you have a lot of toxicity, you have things that are aggressive and dangerous. But on the other side of masculinity, you have things that are really romantic and beautiful and alluring. And there’s a tension between those two things. And this film holds that tension.” That’s how Little Rock native filmmaker Jeff Nichols described the thematic preoccupations of “The Bikeriders” — his sixth feature-length movie about the tumultuous ascent of a fictional ’60s Chicago-area motorcycle gang — at an Arkansas Cinema Society press junket back in October. At that point, the film was set to come out in December, but promotional challenges due to the SAG-AFTRA actors’ strike pushed the release date to June 21. Taking inspiration from a 1968 book of blackand-white photos by Danny Lyon that shares the same name as the film, Nichols uses his biggest budget so far to stylishly capture a spirited subculture on the brink of extinction, with three magnetic leads — Jodie Comer, Austin Butler and Tom Hardy — to boot. DG

THREE DOG NIGHT

THURSDAY 7/25. ROBINSON CENTER. 7:30 P.M. $44-$334.

Three Dog Night may be touring with only one of its original members, but that won’t matter much when the opening chords to 1970 rock anthem “Joy to the World” peal out to the rafters at Robinson Center, forcing anyone within earshot to surrender to the singalong just as it has forced any kid named Jeremiah to be asked at least once by a wisecracking grownup whether or not he was, indeed, a bullfrog. For a band whose hits spanned only a few years and were largely written by other songwriters — Laura Nyro’s “Eli’s Comin’,” Randy Newman’s “Mama Told Me Not to Come” — they’ve managed to keep up an aggressive touring schedule, capitalizing on enduring nostalgia for post-Woodstock hippie rock even as its fanbase has aged into a sensible affinity for padded theater seating and weed with demonstrable origins. Get tickets at ticketmaster.com. SS

JEN FAWKES

TUESDAY 7/9. WORDSWORTH BOOKS. 6:30 P.M. FREE.

“Daughters of Chaos,” Little Rock writer Jen Fawkes’ “wildly original” (Publishers Weekly) debut novel, has a lot of moving parts. Set in Civil War-era Nashville, the book’s protagonist is Sylvie Swift, a young woman drawn to the city by an anonymous benefactor, only to get involved in the clandestine, anti-war efforts of a group of women alternatively masquerading as prostitutes and docile humanitarians. Interspersed between Sylvie’s story are excerpts from “Apocrypha,” a lost play by Aristophanes that she’s been tasked with translating. As the ancient narrative and present goings-on begin to resemble one another, Sylvie realizes that she’s embroiled in a badass, millenia-long conspiracy of feminine empowerment. “Daughters of Chaos” comes out July 9, and WordsWorth Books is hosting a launch party on the same day, where Fawkes — also the author of short story collections “Mannequin and Wife” and “Tales the Devil Told Me” — will be in conversation with Arkansas magic realism master Kevin Brockmeier. Also at WordsWorth this month: Pope County novelist Eli Cranor, who will be celebrating the release of his third book, “Broiler,” on July 2. RSVP for both at wordsworthbookstore.com. DG

‘DELTA TRIENNIAL’ ARTIST TALK

THURSDAY 7/25. ARKANSAS MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS. 6 P.M. FREE.

Seven states is a lot of geographical ground to cover in one exhibition, but the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts is doing its darndest not to cut any corners with “Delta Triennial,” its newest excavation of the Mid-South region. Comprising 46 artists who either live in or were born in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee or Texas, “Delta Triennial” will be on display until Aug. 25. To further flesh out conversations inspired by the exhibition, AMFA is hosting an artist talk featuring seven of the show’s artists — Kevin Demery, Christian Dinh, Anita Fields, Coulter Fussell, Letitia Huckaby, Jerry Phillips (who lives and works in Little Rock) and Andrew Scott Ross — each of whom will represent a different state. Their work spans and blurs the lines between the mediums of photography, ceramics, textiles, drawing, sculpture and installation. Additionally, three other artists from the exhibition — Clark Valentine, Kate Clements and Lisa Krannichfeld — are offering various workshops and demonstrations July 27-28, most of which are also free. Get tickets at arkmfa.org. DG

ANITA FIELDS

LETITIA HUCKABY

GOOD LOOKS

THURSDAY 7/25. WHITE WATER TAVERN. 8 P.M. $12-$15.

Mixing rollicking bar rock with jangly splashes of guitar sustain, Austin indie rock quartet Good Looks is going to fit right in at the White Water Tavern, but don’t let the good-natured jams fool you. Underneath the amiable sound of their new record, “Lived Here For a While,” are searching observations about wealth disguised as community (“Nice front yard garden / But I beg your pardon / Who needs free produce? / When your whole street, shops at Whole Foods”), broken familial relationships (“Just know I miss you all the time / But I refuse to be unseen / Should it grow too hard at night / Well, I’ll walk with you in your dreams”), and the ambivalence of wishing a past lover well while still holding fast to bitterness (“I hope you find true love, and money, many orgasms, and fame / And if you’re somehow still unhappy find somebody else to blame”). Get tickets at whitewatertavern.com. DG

‘FOOTLOOSE’

TUESDAY 7/9-SUNDAY 7/28. ARKANSAS REPERTORY THEATRE. $20-$65.

What’s there left to say about “Footloose,” the second show in the Arkansas Repertory Theatre’s now-summertime-situated season?

Ren McCormack, a Chicago teen with a penchant for swinging and swaying away his troubles, moves to small-town Bomont, where a local preacher has outlawed dancing in response to a tragedy. Romance blooms between Ren and the preacher’s daughter, Ariel. By the end, permission to groove is reinstated and everyone walks away happy and healed. It’s a simple story with not a ton of meat on its bones, but the infectious pop rock cheese of tracks like “Footloose,” “Holding Out for a Hero” and “Let’s Hear It for the Boy” is undeniable. Take off your thinking cap for a night and enjoy the very resolvable problems of this movie-musicalturned-stage-musical on the 40th anniversary of the original Kevin Bacon-fronted film’s 1984 theatrical run. Get tickets at therep.org. DG

RANDY GOODRUM

SATURDAY 7/27. RON ROBINSON THEATER. 8 P.M. $15.

What do England Dan & Jon Ford Coley’s “It’s Sad to Belong,” Anne Murray’s “You Needed Me,” Michael Johnson’s “Bluer Than Blue,” Steve Perry’s “Oh Sherrie,” Toto’s “I’ll Be Over You,” DeBarge’s “Who’s Holding Donna Now” and Jo Dee Messina’s “Lesson in Leavin’” have in common? They’re all written (or co-written) by Hot Springs native and Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee Randy Goodrum, who’s coming to Central Arkansas Library System’s Ron Robinson Theater in honor of the venue’s 10th birthday. Also a skilled pianist, Goodrum started his professional career as a studio and touring musician, playing with such legends as Roy Orbison, Jerry Reed and Chet Atkins. On top of that, Goodrum is a solo artist, with 2020’s “Red Eye” — which drips with Steely Dan-esque jazz grooviness — being his most recent release. In other words, it’s hard to know whether it’d be more invigorating to listen to him perform or just tell crazy stories about all the geniuses he’s done much more than brush shoulders with over the years. Lucky for us, he’s planning on doing both. Get tickets at cals.org. DG

JACKIE

LEE YOUNG

50 Thank YOU for more than years of support!

Best TV Station

UNWALKABLE

LITTLE ROCK METRO RANKS 10TH DEADLIEST IN THE U.S. FOR PEDESTRIANS.

BY MATT CAMPBELL

Victor Montgomery, 62, was a security guard for the Pulaski County Special School District helping direct traffic on Highway 10 near Joe T. Robinson Elementary on the first day of the school year.

Terry Keefe, 79, was an outdoorsman and world traveler taking his typical 3-mile, early morning walk with his wife, Kathy, on the roads of western Pulaski County.

Mark Lorge, 71, was making his way across a JFK Boulevard crosswalk in the Indian Hills neighborhood of North Little Rock.

Montgomery, Keefe and Lorge are just a few of the men and women killed by vehicles in the Little Rock area in 2023. From 2018 to 2022, the Little Rock metropolitan area logged 136 pedestrian deaths — more than twice as many as the 62 in the previous five-year period from 2013 to 2017.

Those numbers make the Little Rock metro area the 10th most dangerous for pedestrians in the United States, according to a recent study. Worse still, the metro area showed the third-largest increase in average fatalities out of 101 cities nationwide.

The study was done by Smart Growth America (SGA), an urban planning nonprofit that focuses on transportation and pedestrian safety. Researchers analyzed pedestrian fatalities over five years (2018-2022) based on data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System. The total pedestrian deaths were then converted to annual averages per 100,000 residents.

The SGA study treats Little Rock, North Little Rock and Conway as a single metropolitan area, consistent with the federal government’s grouping of the cities into one Metropolitan Statistical Area. The Little Rock metro recorded 3.63 annual deaths per 100,000 people.

The 136 deaths in the Little Rock area rep-

resent a 119% increase in pedestrian deaths when compared to the previous five years — a measure the study calls “long term trend in fatality rate.”

The least-safe cities for pedestrians tend to lack walkable infrastructure, according to Angie Schmitt, author of the book “Right of Way: Race, Class, and the Silent Epidemic of Pedestrian Deaths in America.” (Schmitt was not involved in the SGA study.)

“Unwalkable cities frequently top these lists,” Schmitt said. People in such cities who have few options other than walking must navigate impediments that place them in the path of vehicles, Schmitt said.

Demographics may also play a role. The metro area is nearly a quarter Black and just under 2% Latino. Overall, the study found Black pedestrians have a fatality rate twice that of white pedestrians, while Latino pedestrians have a 20% higher chance of dying than whites.

Similarly, the study found a correlation between income and pedestrian safety, with nearly a third of all pedestrian deaths occurring in census areas with an average annual income below $50,000. According to recent census data, 42% of people in the Little Rock metro have a household income below that threshold.

Schmitt gave a number of reasons why minority and poor pedestrians face more dangers. Systemic discrimination can manifest as dilapidated or missing sidewalks, a lack of good public transportation, and a lack of modern pedestrian-safety amenities. Another explanation will be familiar to Little Rockers: Historically, Schmitt said wide roads, inhospitable to foot traffic, are often placed in poor and minority neighborhoods because residents don’t have the political capital to prevent it.

LOOKING FOR SOLUTIONS

One way many larger cities are attempting to fix this problem is through a strategy called Vision Zero. First created in Sweden in the 1990s, Vision Zero offers a five-step plan for communities to “eliminate all traffic fatalities and severe injuries, while increasing safe, healthy, equitable mobility for all.”

Little Rock has adopted the Vision Zero approach, according to John Landosky, BikePed Coordinator for the Little Rock Public Works Department. Last month, the Little Rock Board of Directors authorized the adoption of the Central Arkansas Safety Action Plan and a Vision Zero policy. The stated goal of the policy is to reduce traffic deaths and serious injuries by 40% by 2040. What that plan will look like, however, is unclear.

“I believe the intention is to use the Central Arkansas Safety Action Plan, just released last week, as our Vision Zero Plan,” Landosky said.

Cities that are working to improve traffic safety can obtain federal funds, Schmitt said. For example, the U.S. Department of Transportation offers grants under its Safe Streets and Roads for All (SSR4A) Grant Program. Little Rock city directors authorized the city last month to apply for money under the SSR4A program, Landosky said.

Little Rock has identified a number of priorities to increase pedestrian safety, according to Landosky. These include road diets (turning four-lane, undivided roads into roads with two through lanes and a turn lane), lane diets (making lanes narrower, which has been shown to reduce speeds naturally), slowing traffic with reduced speed limits where possible, improving dangerous arterial roads, targeting the streets known to be the most dangerous, limiting cul-de-sac usage in new developments, adding pedestri-

UNFAIR FIGHT: Pedestrians rarely win in a collision with vehicles, and Central Arkansas ranks among the worst places in America for those kinds of accidents.

an crossings to arterial roads, and targeting low-income and disadvantaged communities for much-needed improvements.

Conway is also applying for SSR4A funds, according to city spokesperson Bobby Kelly. He noted several steps Conway has taken over the past five years to improve pedestrian safety. These include hiring a designated bike and pedestrian coordinator, putting “rapid rectangular flashing beacons” at multiple mid-block street crossings (with an emphasis on school zones), adding sidewalks and developing a city-wide pedestrian master plan.

Kelly said Conway is going to implement a Vision Zero plan as well. First, though, the city is updating its pedestrian and bicycle master plans “so they’re complete and up to date,” Kelly said.

In North Little Rock, the plan looks a little different. North Little Rock spokesperson Shara Hutchcraft said she was unaware of any Vision Zero plan or intent to apply for SSR4A funds.

Nevertheless, the city has increased the number of sidewalks, expanded existing sidewalks and improved lighting to boost visibility during evening hours. The city has allocated funds for these efforts in all wards of North Little Rock, said Hutchcraft.

While all three cities say they are working to increase pedestrian safety, Conway and North Little Rock were quick to note that the bulk of the fatalities referenced in the SGA study did not occur in those two cities.

“Of the 136 fatalities you reported in the metro area,” Hutchcraft said, “it appears 12 were in NLR.” Kelly said Conway saw only five pedestrian deaths from 2018 through 2022, three of which occurred on roads that are owned and managed by the state.

AN AMERICAN PROBLEM

While the Little Rock metro saw one of the largest increases in the SGA study, pedestrian deaths are on the rise across the country. Of the 101 metro areas examined in the study, just 18 showed a decrease in deaths from 2013-2017 to 2018-2022.

After falling steadily from 2005 through 2014, the U.S. has seen deaths from road accidents increase almost yearly over the past decade, according to The New York Times. But the opposite has happened in most other developed nations.

Take France, for example. According to the Urban Institute, from the late 1970s through 1994, France and the U.S. both had roughly 150 annual deaths from road accidents per million people. In 2002, then-president Jacques Chirac made reducing traffic fatalities one of his top three national priorities. France now has roughly half as many annual pedestrian deaths per capita as the U.S.

The focus on pedestrian safety led to different policy and planning decisions in Euro-

pean countries, from lowered speed limits to the use of roundabouts rather than traditional intersections. Yonah Freemark, one of the researchers on the Urban Institute study, said it also prompted vehicle standards that prioritize pedestrian safety, such as requirements that car hoods and other crumple zones be made safer for pedestrians in the event of a collision. In 2010, based on recommendations from the United Nations, the European Union introduced new safety standards designed to reduce pedestrian fatalities and injuries.

Compare those efforts with the U.S. From the 1970s through the 1990s, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration studied pedestrian-safety regulations, then failed to act upon any of them, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Today the federal government’s safety rating system assigns nearly every new vehicle a four- or five-star safety rating because the system does not account for how unsafe a vehicle might be for pedestrians. (NHTSA officials recently said they might consider adding pedestrian safety to the rating system in the future.)

With the lack of a coherent, effective national effort to reduce pedestrian fatalities in the U.S. — and with states generally failing to take steps to increase safety or reduce deaths — the task of decreasing the number of pedestrian deaths in America’s cities increasingly falls to cities themselves. A sort of laboratory of traffic safety, to paraphrase Louis Brandeis.

City officials in Central Arkansas appear to be taking the problem seriously, but they face challenges. Among them: Those making decisions are often working from assumptions that aren’t supported by the data.

In North Little Rock, for instance, Hutchcraft attributed the rise in pedestrian fatalities to one thing: increased use of cell phones and social media while driving. That appears logical at first glance, but that’s not what people studying the issue have found, according to Schmitt.

Of course, texting and cell phone distractions are “common and dangerous,” Schmitt said, but “we haven’t seen the same sort of increase [in pedestrian deaths] in a lot of other countries with high smartphone penetration.” Schmitt says the ever-increasing size of trucks and SUVs in the U.S. is a much bigger cause of the increased fatalities.

Given the limits on municipal powers in Arkansas and the populace’s predilection for large trucks and SUVs, it’s unlikely that Little Rock, North Little Rock or Conway are going to be able to do anything about vehicle size any time soon. Whether the other measures the cities are taking will be enough to decrease pedestrian fatalities remains

PHOTO BY ANDREA BRATTON/ SPACED OUT PHOTOGRAPHY

One of only 20% in the industry nationwide, Lisa Murphy is one of the few cannabis business owners fearlessly bringing cannabis to her small town and Arkansas. While representing healthy living and crossing new horizons for women, Ms. Murphy brings a unique perspective to the use of medical marijuana for wellness. She has broken the “grass ceiling,” as referenced at the “Women in Cannabis” panel discussed at the Cannabis Expo in 2023. She co-founded Fiddler’s Green with her son, Kent Thomas, and began pushing the boundaries for women while healing Arkansas one patient at a time!

A lifelong Arkansan, Ms. Murphy is grateful to be selected to help bring medical marijuana right here to Stone County Arkansas. Fiddler’s Green had the top score out of all Zone 2 applicants and has that same success with its customers. “It’s my dream to see healing occurring on a mass level from pain, addiction and so many other illnesses due to a life-giving natural product that I am able to provide.” Ms. Murphy earned degrees in education and counseling, and undertook extensive study of alternative medicine to obtain knowledge of healing methods in India, where the focus on alternatives to Western healing is strong. Even with all of this education, she says the most wisdom and healing come from prayer to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Our motto is “Be Thy Own Physician” Luke 4:23, and it is proudly displayed on our window as a reminder of why we are here. The results speak for themselves. “With Fiddler’s Green, we’ve been able to do what previously seemed hopeless,” Ms. Murphy reports. Anecdotal evidence suggests that patients with severe nausea from gastroparesis may benefit from a particular formulation offered by Fiddler’s Green. Patients who had been on very restricted or even liquid diets reported being able to eat real food again. If you suffer from severe nausea (or other qualifying intestinal issues), epilepsy, severe arthritis, PTSD or other conditions that qualify for a medical marijuana card, you may benefit from a visit to Fiddler’s Green for help mitigating your symptoms. Hats off to Kendra Thomas! Thomas’ wife found a perfect combination that has breathed new life into her, and now she is able to eat anything she wants without G.I. symptoms. Others suffering may find they can do the same. Many suffering similar severe nausea have already learned from her experience.

benefit, potentially reducing or eliminating dependence on dangerous pharmaceutical opioids or synthetic substitutes. “I was so happy to have a product to help counter our national opioid epidemic.” Fiddler’s Green was among the first dispensaries to open. “That first year we were in business, people came from all over Arkansas for help, and they still do even today. We were able to help countless people reduce their dependence on toxic prescription painkillers. Hundreds of our patients reported being able to stop taking them entirely with their doctor’s approval,” Ms. Murphy recounts.

The Fiddler’s Green team is extremely grateful for the support it has received from the community. As Ms. Murphy puts it, “This is my hometown; it’s where we were meant to be. The citizens here have given us more support than anywhere else we could be in the world!” Ms. Murphy, Mr.

success and healing to Arkansas. “I see other women in business around the country and in Arkansas making history, and I am so proud of where we have come. We’re working hard to innovate,” Ms. Murphy reports. She is particularly excited about Fiddler’s Farmacy, a new line of products Fiddler’s Green is bringing to market soon, which will include products to help not only people but animals. “The products for patients are THC products that will be reasonably priced so that everyone can afford to purchase them and hopefully obtain relief from any symptoms that ail them.” With these new products, Ms. Murphy hopes to provide relief of symptoms through a meticulously created formula.

Ms. Murphy and her son are dedicated to providing the best products and supporting staff of the highest integrity possible to serve the public. Mr. Thomas makes sure he orders a wide vari-

HEALING ARKANSAS ONE PATIENT AT A TIME

Thomas and Fiddler’s Green have tried hard to give back to the community, both through charity and by operating a welcoming business that fosters a sense of community and patient support. “From the first year we opened to today, people come to sit at our bud bar and laugh out of sheer happiness, whatever their ailments,” says Ms. Murphy.

As a result of the positive response from Fiddler’s Green’s loyal group of patients, people in Mountain View and all over Arkansas are becoming less fearful of marijuana, and it is losing its stigma. The team at Fiddler’s Green works hard to consult with and educate everyone who comes in the door about available strains, their effects, and even help patients with appropriate recipes.

ety of products to meet all the patient’s needs so patients can get what they desire. Thomas keeps our life-improving herb displayed at our budbar served deli style for your viewing and smelling pleasure!! If you need a sniff and a look to purchase, Fiddler’s is your one stop shop!

And, of course, those with intractable pain that does not respond to ordinary measures can

“We are so thankful to our customers for sharing with others what cannabis is doing for them. Our sleepy little fiddle-playing town was skeptical of marijuana at first but is now on board — Stone County now has the most medical cards per capita in Arkansas,” says Ms. Murphy. Legal cannabis has come with a fight for racial minorities, as well as women. Ms. Murphy is undeterred and will continue representing women bringing

“Our staff love their work and it shows,” Ms. Murphy proudly attests. “They assist in our Compassionate Care program to make the products more affordable and the Fiddler’s Green Loyalty Club which also brings loyalty discounts. The Fiddler’s staff cheerfully host our happy hour every day from 2 to 4 p.m. when people can get discounts on everything in the store, and locals can go for a daily portion of happiness!” A visit to Fiddler’s will put a smile on anyone’s face when arriving any time of the day, though. Upon pulling up, you will see our newly carved 10-foot “Grandfather Clock Tree eternally set at 4:20 and, then, meeting up with our mascot on the way out, Fiddler the Possum, will surely give you a chuckle! “For a top-shelf cannabis experience and a little more, come up the mountain right here in Mountain View and join the Fiddler’s Family!” Ms. Murphy invites, “We hope you’ll take away more from us than just the cannabis.”

BLACK HISTORY, FROM PRE-K UP

FOR MORE THAN A DECADE IN THE ‘80S AND ‘90S, THE MCGRAW LEARNING INSTITUTE BROUGHT AFROCENTRIC EDUCATION TO LITTLE ROCK.

BY FREDERICK MCKINDRA

Last August, as the 2023-24 school year began, the Arkansas Department of Education announced that a pilot AP African American Studies course would no longer count toward state graduation requirements. The reason? The state said the course potentially violated a new law, championed by Gov. Sarah Sanders, that banned “indoctrination” and the teaching of “critical race theory” in the classroom. In the end, the six Arkansas high schools that offered the pilot class last year kept doing so, but the move set off a firestorm of national criticism. It also sent a clear message to Arkansas teachers and schools: Tread carefully when discussing race. Speak too harshly about the country’s brutal past, and you could break the law.

But the recent maelstrom over AP African American Studies is only the latest chapter in the story of how Black history has been taught in our state. For me, it recalled memories of childhood — of my first forays into reading and of courting the praise of my evocative, culturally enigmatic teacher with the funny name, Ms. Igwe.

Forty years ago, an Afrocentric school here in Little Rock introduced hundreds of young Black students and their families to a new way of approaching history and education. Students from preschool through sixth grade were instructed in the traditional subjects in a manner that centered the impact and achievements of African people across the globe. They were also exposed to the legacy of this country’s discrimination against

FIELD TRIP: Teacher Sha’Ron Igwe (standing behind kids, at right) accompanies McGraw students to a program at the Arkansas Capitol.

those people and the guile and resilience deployed to resist and survive it.

Sanders might call that indoctrination; others would call it American history.

Patricia Washington McGraw opened the McGraw Learning Institute on Jan. 2, 1983, in a converted grocery store near the corner of 13th and Pulaski streets. The school initially had six students, including McGraw’s grandson and two cousins. Interest in the program quickly swelled: Six years later, the school had expanded to 86 students, with a waiting list of 212. Classes of no more than 10 each were taught by pairs of teachers.

McGraw believed in the potential of a student demographic routinely maligned for the nation’s stubborn achievement gap. A little over 25 years earlier, Little Rock had become a symbol of the struggle to integrate American classrooms when nine Black students entered Central High School with the federal government’s backing, despite the efforts of then-Gov. Orval Faubus and a mob of white Arkansans to prevent “race mixing” in the city’s schools. In the decades that followed, Central Arkansas’s efforts to remedy segregation — from busing to creating magnet schools — routinely privileged the retention of white students, rather than enacting specific measures to address educational disparities and help Black children.

I started preschool at McGraw in 1988 at age 4. Though I was a student there for only one year, it had a profound impact on my life. It was at McGraw that I became aware of my Blackness and how it was perceived. The school introduced me to the importance of achievement, both for myself and my community. If there was a need to trumpet one’s cultural identity in order to engender pride, then McGraw made us children aware of that need and fashioned our voices to do so.

FROM WASH U TO PRESCHOOL

Patricia McGraw was born in 1935 in Little Rock and received her diploma from the segregated Dunbar High School in 1953. Denied admission to the University of Arkansas at Little Rock (then called Little Rock University) because of her race, McGraw studied at Spelman College in Atlanta for a year before going on to obtain a bachelor’s degree in language arts in 1957 and a master’s degree in American literature, both from San Francisco State College in California.

McGraw began her teaching career in Little Rock in the 1960s at Philander Smith College, eventually becoming chair of the school’s humanities division. She became the first Black professor at UA Little Rock in 1969 when she began teaching there part time. In 1972, she was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities grant that allowed her to traverse the state for a year, visiting Arkansas schools and churches to lecture on Black history. In 1974, she joined the faculty at UA Little Rock full time.

She taught at the college level for more than 20 years before earning a doctorate in sociolinguistics and Black studies from Washington University in St. Louis in 1982. She opened the McGraw Learning Institute the next year.

It was not the first time Black Arkansans had started a school in response to discrimination in the era of integration. In 1970, three “boycott schools” were founded in three different communities: the College Station Freedom School in Pulaski County, in response to an unjust busing plan; the Black Movement School, in Wabbase-

THE MCGRAW

SCHOOL WAS A KIND OF SALVE AGAINST THE RESENTMENT I AND OTHERS WOULD UNAVOIDABLY GROW TO FEEL WHEN WE REALIZED THAT OUR SUCCESS IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS WAS AN AFTERTHOUGHT, THE RESULT OF “CRIMINAL INDIFFERENCE.”

in the mindset that some stuff was too advanced for 2½-year-olds,” Rhonda Bell Holmes, whose child attended the school, recalled. “[McGraw] said these 2½-year-olds must be potty-trained and they will be sitting at a desk learning. When they started coming home with spelling lists at 3 years old, I was like, ‘It’s a baby. They can’t spell all this.’ So she had to help us. All kids can learn what you present to them.”

Former McGraw students remember the emphasis she put on presentation and performance, her love of language and storytelling. Each day at McGraw began with a school-wide recitation of the poem, “I Am the Black Child” by Mychal Wynn.

Ryan Davis, a Little Rock activist and the head of UA Little Rock’s Children International, attended McGraw as a third-grader. “The primary mode of Afrocentric expression in the school was really just to center everything Black … especially Africa and African antiquity,” he remembers. “[There was] a lot of emphasis on how wonderful Black people truly have been, even under what we currently deal with. I hear people say there’s no ‘Black’ way to teach math, but in a school like McGraw, there was a purposeful connection made that disconnected everything from whiteness.”

For example, students learned that algebra was an invention of the Muslim world, Davis recalled. “Saying, ‘Algebra is Arabic,’ is not Afrocentric, but it’s a purposeful decentering of whiteness.”

Students were introduced to West African culture and geography through dance and drumming. The school placed particular emphasis on public presentation, with students either sitting rapt before performances from local dramatists like Curtis Tate or marveling at and mimicking Dr. McGraw’s own precise, elegant diction.

T.J. Hendrix, now an educator at Thurgood Marshall Academy Public Charter High School in Washington, D.C., attended McGraw from the third through the fifth grades. She said her dance class, taught by Sha’Ron Igwe, provided the most salient connection to Afrocentricity.

“Miss Igwe was our dance instructor and she would teach us dance that was African-inspired. She would teach us about the different cultures and tribes in Africa, and so dance class wasn’t just dance. It was also like history,” Hendrix said.

ka, in response to the firing of Black teachers; and the Soul Institute of Earle, founded to protest racist practices in the local school district. All were short-lived, but all grew out of the same rambunctious spirit that responded to the establishment of private, white academies by organizing schools of one’s own.

The institute founded by McGraw in 1983 proved to be longer lasting.

Always a believer in the innate ability of young children, McGraw encouraged students to learn at an accelerated pace. “We were still

Children also absorbed African history in the classroom. “I learned about Shaka Zulu, and I learned about Nefertiti. … I learned African geography, and I learned about revolutionaries like Nat Turner and Toussaint Louverture. I learned about all these people that my classmates in public school didn’t even know about,” Hendrix said. The early experience gave her “a deep sense of understanding about what it meant to be Black” that continued into middle school and beyond, she said.

Ruby Steward-Brown, an instructor at McGraw from 1991 to 1994, said the school’s teach-

wonder if that early influence helped make me the writer I am today.

Did I learn of the importance of storytelling there? Was the importance of performance imprinted there? Did I develop some early awareness that Blackness wasn’t a thing to be eschewed but celebrated? And that there was a value in knowing to draw from that identity some sense of pride or motivation?

Integrated schools in America provide little space for processing cultural vestiges of resentment. As a Black man who was educated in public schools, I’ve long resented the amount of effort expended to attract white students to remain in the classroom with me. And I’ve resented the fact that private academies were created so that those uncomfortable with my presence didn’t have to go to school with me.

With an air of bitter inevitability, James Baldwin said, “To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a state of rage almost all of the time. And part of the rage is this: It isn’t only what is happening to you. But it’s what’s happening all around you and all of the time in the face of the most extraordinary and criminal indifference, indifference of most white people in this country, and their ignorance.”

It is that anger, presumably, that prompts powerful white politicians to try to prevent AP African-American Studies from being taught in schools: They fear how Black students — and others — will react to a deeper understanding of the country’s shameful past.

But I believe the McGraw school was a kind of salve against the resentment I and others would unavoidably grow to feel when we realized that our success in the public schools was an afterthought, the result of “criminal indifference.”

Beneath Patricia McGraw’s performative air was a woman with enough nerve to create a space where my growth and development were the institution’s paramount aim.

Perhaps McGraw awakened within me some desire to see a publicly funded institution that sets about addressing centuries-old issues of racial injustice. A public school classroom could be that venue, encouraging students to begin the dialogue of truth and reconciliation America has barely stuttered through since Reconstruction.

Two decades ago, I and other Black classmates at Little Rock’s Central High petitioned against the elevation of European and American History into AP courses as long as contributions of people of color around the world went disregarded, angered by the subtext of white supremacy. Today, at last, the College Board has created an AP course that gives African American history its due. I now hope to see that anger being given space in more public school settings, and I hope students are taught to reapply that resentment to an academic pursuit.

It appears the state has lost momentum in its effort to marginalize AP African American Studies. Now that it is no longer a pilot program,

the state Department of Education has said the course will be treated like other AP courses in the coming school year. And, in the face of a federal lawsuit filed by Central High students, teachers and parents, state officials have effectively retreated on the state law that prohibits “indoctrination” and “critical race theory” in the classroom.

African American Studies may produce feelings of anger, bitterness or shame in both Black and white students. But such negative reactions are only the beginning. Teaching students to

harness their feelings and deploy them toward productive means could reveal a radically mature method of processing historical trauma. Rather than ignoring the painful history of our nation and our state, schools should help students understand the past, acknowledge their feelings, and set their passion and drive toward the pursuit of a better future.

Frederick McKindra is the associate editor of the Oxford American magazine.

TODAY: Former McGraw students like Khiela Holmes (left) and Ryan Davis say their early childhood experiences at the school left a lasting impression.

WHOLE KID EDUCATION: Khiela Holmes (front left, in gray shirt) with other children at a family reunion, including fellow McGraw students.

BEST OF ARKANSAS

THE WINNERS, FINALISTS AND FAVORITES IN OUR 2024 BEST OF ARKANSAS POLL.

BY RHETT BRINKLEY, BRIAN CHILSON, TARA ESCOLIN, DANIEL GREAR, STEPHANIE SMITTLE AND MILO STRAIN

While pundits ponder the intricacies of polling data in the first U.S. presidential election to feature a convicted felon on a major party’s ballot, we asked our readers to complete ballots of a different kind, measuring the best of the best in Arkansas, from dance clubs to dry cleaners to dermatologists. You chimed in with gusto on your favorite milkshakes and massage therapists, cemented Sen. Tom Cotton’s status as a perennial contender in our “Worst Arkansan” category and name-dropped your most trusted health care providers in the Little Rock area.

To dig deeper into the zeitgeist that produced this year’s poll results, Arkansas Times food editor Rhett Brinkley traced the trajectory of botox’s popularity in the state from ill-advised party trick to widely adopted self-care protocol in a clinical setting, erasing the ravages of time and sun exposure — including those pesky frown lines between your eyebrows. Then, Brinkley crossed time zones to interview Landis Wayne Shook, a Natural State native who took up residency in Taiwan and decided to open an Arkansas-inspired diner in Kaohsiung City, where you’ll find Southern-style biscuits and gravy that one diner deemed “too filling.” Times contributor Tara Escolin sat down with Zina Al-Shukri, a Little Rock-based, Baghdad-born portrait artist whose work as an art therapist reaches inmates incarcerated at the Pulaski County Jail. Editorial director Stephanie Smittle sang the praises of TikTok star Craig “Big Chef” Taylor’s oxtail special at It’s Time to Eat, a soul food restaurant that adjoins the nondenominational church Taylor pastors in North Little Rock. Our culture editor, Daniel Grear, peeked into the crawlspaces of Central Arkansas with McCrory native Eric Young of Blackbird Home Inspections — a business that our readers have named a trustworthy favorite year after year. Arkansas Times summer intern Milo Strain peeled back the innards of custom guitars with boutique luthier Dave Fry of Fry Guitars, who’s been making dreamy custom axes for Central Arkansas’s pickers since 2010, while staff photographer Brian Chilson captured the ink at longtime reader favorite 7th Street Tattoo. Read on for those stories, and for a full list of the winners and finalists in our annual readers poll.

NURSE INJECTOR: Amber Moody of Revolution Med Spa in Cabot relaxes the muscles that cause facial wrinkles with neuromodulators like Botox.

BEST OF ARKANSAS

ERASING THE ELEVEN’

REVOLUTION MED SPA IS HERE TO PUMP YOU UP.

BY RHETT BRINKLEY PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRIAN CHILSON

Iremember the specific moment in time when I realized that getting botox wasn’t necessarily a clandestine procedure exclusively for rich people and celebrities in magazines. I was at an after-hours Christmas party rager at a restaurant where I worked in my 20s. At some point during the chaos, a few people, including the owners, escaped to the bathroom — for botox injections.

Of course, most medical professionals probably wouldn’t recommend botulinum toxin injection parties in closet-size restaurant bathrooms. When I told this story to Arkansas Times editor Austin Gelder, who recently partook in a neuromodulator injection courtesy of a gift card she’d received, she said, “I need my injector to have more of a range of motion. I don’t want them getting it wrong.”

Amber Moody, the advanced practice registered nurse who won Best Nurse Injector in the 2024 Arkansas Times Best of Arkansas readers’ poll, has plenty of space (and a really comfortable chair) at her office at Revolution Med Spa in Cabot. Moody’s been a nurse for about 20 years and has been a nurse practitioner for five. She partnered with medical doctor Jim Reeves to open the clinic in 2022. They offer a wide range of cosmetic procedures, including dermal fillers, chemical peels, microneedling treatments, laser treatments, tattoo removal, hydrafacials, acne treatments and a hair restoration program for men and women who experience shedding

and hair loss.

The most common concerns that bring people into the clinic for consultations, Moody said, are skin aging issues: wrinkles, texture and volume loss.

Neuromodulators like Botox, Jeuveau, Xeomin and Dysport are botulinum toxins injected into the skin to relax the muscles that cause pesky facial wrinkles, including smile lines, frown lines, crow’s feet and those lines between your eyebrows that look like the number 11. The botulinum toxin was approved for cosmetic procedures by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2002, and the botox business is booming. According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, there were over 8 million neuromodulator injection procedures in 2022, up 73% from 2019.

Moody said the stigma over getting botox has been dissolving over the last decade, in part due to an awareness that it can be used to treat medical conditions, including migraines and jaw pain. More people are talking about it openly with friends and posting about it on social media, she said, and she’s also seeing more male patients.

“Most of my friend group does it,” a colleague I spoke to for this story told me. She said she never thought she would get botox but was really bothered by strong lines that began to develop on her forehead when she was in her 30s. She’s in her early 40s now and said, “I used

to have really bad 11s.” Now, when she tries to make them for me, they don’t even appear.

Moody didn’t have to think about it when I asked if she had a favorite patient success story, describing a single mother who came in for a consultation at the behest of her sister after sending her kids off to college and “putting herself on the back burner for a really long time.”

It’s not all vanity, Moody said. “For some it can be a huge transformation in the way they view themselves and change the way that they interact with everyone around them.”

Turning back the clock isn’t cheap. The average price for botox treatment is $528, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. Moody said 20 units of neuromodulators at Revolution range from $240-$280. Most of her clients receive neurotox treatments every three to four months, which is about how long the medication lasts, Moody said.

Moody has experience in the chair as well. She’s had ’tox treatments, fillers and “just about every laser treatment in this building at some point.” But in her field, she said, it can be easy for people to overdo it.

“I like for my face to look as natural as possible because I want people to see real natural results and not feel intimidated,” she said. To that point, Moody doesn’t charge for consultations. “I want patients to come in and feel comfortable that they can talk about things and that they don’t ever feel pushed into doing a treatment

that they don’t want.”

Botox is considered safe when administered by a licensed health care provider. Side effects can include pain, swelling and bruising at the injection site. Moody said she has several clients that are brides-to-be, and that people seeking neuromodulator treatments for a big life event like a wedding (or, say, the Arkansas Times 50th anniversary reunion party in September), should get their ’tox treatment four weeks before the big day. “I love it whenever bridal consultation happens at least six months in advance,” she said, “because then we can make an absolute curated plan for their timeline for what needs to be done and when.”

Part of the upward trend in neuromodulator injections is younger people seeking preventative (known colloquially on social media as “baby botox”) measures to treat wrinkles before they arrive. According to a report from CNN, people ages 40-54 accounted for the largest percentage of neuromodulator injections in 2022 at 57%, but data from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons shows that people 19 and younger receiving neuromodulator injections increased 75% between 2019 and 2022 and adults ages 20-29 rose 71%.

Moody said she doesn’t recommend neuromodulator injections to people under the age of 25.

“For younger people who are interested in their skin now, their focus needs to be prevention,” she said. “It needs to be wearing sunscreen daily, and doing the things to nurture their skin to prevent aging.”

Sun exposure does most of the damage, she said, and “the more that you prevent now, the less you have to treat later on.”

HOT SHOT: Most of Moody’s patients receive neuromodulator treatments every three to four months.

UAMS Proudly Celebrates the Best of Arkansas

Congratulations to the outstanding UAMS health care team recognized as the WINNER in these Best of Arkansas categories!

 Best Company To Work For - UAMS

 Best Audiology - UAMS Health Audiology Clinic

 Best Mental Health Facility - UAMS Psychiatric Research Institute

 Best Pain Specialist - UAMS Health Pain Clinic

 Best Foot & Ankle Surgeon - Dr. Chelsea Mathews

 Best Eyewear - UAMS Health Harvey & Bernice Jones Eye Institute Optical Shop

At UAMS Health, we’re here to ensure you have access to the best care, right here close to home. With a staff of the best and brightest, personalized medicine and convenient access to clinics, you can feel confident knowing the state of your health is in exceptional hands.

To find a doctor, visit UAMS.Health/BestOfArk or call 501-686-8000.

YOGA STUDIO

WIZARD OF WOODWORKING:

Dave Fry shows off a few of his custom creations.

SIX STRINGS ATTACHED

FRY GUITARS MAKES THE KIND OF CUSTOM AXES PLAYERS PINE FOR.

BY MILO STRAIN PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRIAN CHILSON

The next time you find yourself in the market for a high-end, boutique electric guitar — as we all sometimes do, right? — resist the urge to run to Reverb.com or gallop to Guitar Center. You might find what you’re looking for here in Central Arkansas.

Dave Fry, a Hot Springs native, has been handbuilding guitars in Arkansas under the Fry Guitars moniker since 2010 and created axes for a number of notable players, including Brian Venable of Lucero; Will Johnson of Jason Isbell’s band, the 400 Unit; and Chris Turpin of the duo Ida Mae.

“My guitars are just different,” Fry said. “You can work directly with me when you’re designing a guitar, which is fun. You pick all your col-

ors, your parts.”

Upon entering his home workshop in Alexander, it’s immediately clear that Fry doesn’t mess around when it comes to guitar building — or to dreaming up new designs. The shop is clean and comfortable, and feels more like an artist’s studio than a wood shop. Woodworking machines, shelves of various tonewoods and batches of guitar parts line the walls, sharing space with a large couch where Fry can play his creations. A framed Stereolab poster hangs above a vintage skateboard leaned against the wall, which Fry rolls around on in his shop when he needs to think.

“I love the craft of it,” Fry said. “I love the design aspect of it, the rock and roll of it. But then,

I also love the mathematics of it. You can’t really move certain things, so there’s a baseplate you kind of build from.”

Fry’s bread and butter is funky, retro-style electric guitars that hark back to the budget instruments you might find in the pages of an old Sears catalog, but tricked out with modern hardware and constructed with an attention to detail that comes from decades of experience as a luthier.

“Vintage guitars inspire me. Old Danelectros. Old Silvertone guitars. Department store guitars, I guess,” Fry said.

“I’m a little more accountable to my customers because I know them,” Fry said. “When you know someone and you talk with them, your in-

FRET NOT: Fry oils a fingerboard in his home workshop.

struments have to be perfect.”

After he graduated from the Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery in Phoenix in 2000, Fry apprenticed for a few years under Terry McInturff — a North Carolina luthier whose instruments have found homes with Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck. Fry went on to work for Modulus Graphite, a company known for building guitars and basses for Bob Weir and Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead, and the short-lived RKS Guitars, co-founded by Dave Mason of Traffic, in Southern California.

“At a factory or at another person’s guitar company you learn so much, but it’s on their instruments,” Fry said. “Their instruments are fantastic. I own one of probably every guitar company I’ve worked at. I love the instruments but I still wanted to do my own thing.”

Fry moved back home to Hot Springs after his time as a company man and opened the first Fry Guitars shop there.

“I love Arkansas. It’s a great secret little spot,” Fry said.

Fry ran the Hot Springs store for a few years before relocating to Little Rock, where he had a guitar showroom and hosted concerts.

“We had a lot of people come through the store and play a little tiny desk concert thing,” Fry said. “It was awesome and we did it for years. I’m currently looking for a place to have that again.”

Now, Fry works out of his home workshop and ships guitars directly to clients and stores, like Cottonwood Music Emporium in Costa Mesa, California.

“A lot of my customers are musicians around the country. We work by phone and I ship guitars to wherever,” Fry said. “Some of my customers are local. A bunch in Arkansas, a bunch in North Arkansas.”

Fry said sustainability is important to him as a guitar builder and he often employs alternative building materials like Formica, a high-pressure laminate material most often used for countertops, which some luthiers and guitar companies have taken a liking to.

He steers clear of tonewood species like Brazilian rosewood that are endangered due to overharvesting. “I don’t use Brazilian rosewood unless it’s vintage vintage — off an old piano or something,” Fry said.

“I use a lot of domestic woods. I use alder. I use maple,” Fry said. “Everything I use is absolutely [eco-]conscious.”

In 2021, Fry built a guitar out of reclaimed Douglas fir wood from a building teardown in the Argenta District in North Little Rock.

“That was a good guitar, really resonant,” Fry said. “The wood’s fantastic.”

Fry uses standard woodworking tools to construct his guitars and said a typical order could take him about six months to complete.

“If you can make a cabinet with it, I’ve got it,” Fry said. “The main tool I use is called a pin router and it’s the same tools Gibson and Fender made guitars with in the ’50s.”

“I make all my bulk parts on that and everything from that point … is finessed by hand,” Fry said.

Treating Treating Body & Mind Body & Mind

Comprehensive Care

Experience comprehensive healthcare tailored to your needs at The Centers. Our medical clinic offers quick and easy scheduling and accepts most insurance plans. Our team of skilled therapists provides specialized counseling services for children, adolescents and adults. Plus, our on-site pharmacy makes filling prescriptions simple and convenient. Discover the difference in care at The Centers today!

BEST OF ARKANSAS

ARKANSAS DINER: Landis Wayne Shook opened a restaurant in Taiwan as an ode to The Natural State.

TAIWAN ON AT ARKANSAS DINER

LANDIS WAYNE SHOOK’S BISCUITS ARE ‘ARKANSAS GRANDMOTHER APPROVED,’ BUT YOU’LL HAVE TO FLY TO KAOHSIUNG CITY TO TRY THEM.

BY RHETT BRINKLEY

Hanging out in East Asia but craving biscuits and gravy? Well, if you happen to be in southern Taiwan’s Kaohsiung City — the third largest city in the country with a population of more than 2 million — you’re in luck. Just head to Xiuming Street and look for the Arkansas flags, then pop in for a breakfast prepared by Northeast Arkansas native Landis Wayne Shook.

The Arkansas Diner, in the city’s Zuoying District, is a tribute to The Natural State, decked out with Arkansas memorabilia, Razorback swag and the sounds of Clinton-based country music station KHPQ-FM, Hot Country 92.1.

“Once you go upstairs at Arkansas Diner, you have left Taiwan,” Shook told the Arkansas Times.

Shook opened the restaurant with his wife, Jelica Lee, a Taiwan native, in 2015 after retiring from a career in international sales that took him to South America and 11 countries in Africa. He grew up in Oak Grove Heights (just

up the road from Paragould in Greene County), and left Northeast Arkansas for Las Vegas at age 20 because his sister was living there and “I didn’t want to turn 21 in a town with one bar [where] everybody knew my dad.”

He went to China to study martial arts in the early ’90s and moved to Taiwan in 1996 after his original master referred him to a master in Taiwan’s capital city, Taipei. A motorcycle accident ended his training, but he enjoyed living there so much that his original two-to-three-year plan turned into 28 years.

Shook considers himself a “salesman at heart.” He became interested in the restaurant business after seeing friends who own restaurants working the floor of their dining rooms and talking with customers, and thought, “Boy, that’s what I want to do,” he said. So he did and he’s “never worked so hard in my life.”

Shook’s first job was bussing tables at a steakhouse in Paragould. He waited tables during high school and later in Las Vegas while

attending college at the University of Nevada.

It didn’t take long for him to learn how physically taxing it is to be on your feet in a kitchen all day.

“In my previous life I’d go to the gym three times a week. I thought I was in decent shape, but there’s nothing like kitchen work,” he said. Arkansas Diner started out as a breakfast sandwich shop, and after Shook sharpened his skills in the kitchen over time, the menu has grown to include a comprehensive diner-style breakfast and dinner menu featuring housemade buttermilk biscuits and country gravy, pancakes, waffles, country fried steak and a variety of burgers that might give your cardiologist pause. You can get a bowl of chili (with beans, this isn’t Texas Diner, after all). And if you need a slice of Southern pie, the diner has you covered with homemade apple, possum and pecan. Shook’s wife makes a variety of milkshakes for the diner. The couple opened a milkshake shop called Auntie J’s in the same

building in June of this year.

Shook said there’s no shortage of American restaurants in Taiwan, but he’s found that many of them alter the menu to better suit the Taiwan taste by lowering the sugar content and essentially making the food lighter. He’s refused to do that in the nine years he’s been open, though Arkansas Diner does offer salads, plus vegetarian and vegan options.

“I take great pride that the Taiwanese come because they want to experience real American food,” he said.

Shook said he’s proud to tell his customers that his biscuits and gravy are “four-time

kansas travel guides that he loved passing out for customers to read in his restaurant.

Shook told the story of a girl from Arkansas who was living in China and decided to stop by the diner when she was visiting Taiwan. (China and Taiwan have, for centuries, been in opposition over Taiwan’s independence from the Republic of China, and tensions have escalated in recent months.)

“She came to my diner and just teared up,” he said. “She said, ‘I’m so homesick. This just feels like home.’ That gives me a lot of power to keep going,” he said.

About a year after he opened Arkansas Diner, Shook’s wife made a comment while eating at a restaurant in Arkansas: “This tastes like yours.”

“She didn’t realize what a compliment that was. I don’t have to be better than anybody in Arkansas. I just want to be the same as everybody in Arkansas.”

BEST OF ARKANSAS

XXXX: PXXXX DESTABILIZED: Once an Iraqi refugee, Little Rock artist Zina Al-Shukri’s work and identity are informed by “divergent cultures that you’re constantly straddling and learning how to navigate.”

IT’S ALL FREQUENCIES’

ZINA AL-SHUKRI ON SISTERHOOD, WAR AND HER WORK AT THE PULASKI COUNTY JAIL. BY

TARA ESCOLIN

Zina Al-Shukri’s gestural portraits brandish undaunted hues and unabashed gazes, displaying an amorous relationship with the materiality of paint and an intimacy with the spectrum of life’s blows and balms. The artist was born in Baghdad, studied at California College of the Arts, and is based in Little Rock. Her work was recently exhibited by Electra Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and she is preparing for an upcoming exhibition at Patricia Sweetow Gallery in Los Angeles.

What are you working on these days?

I’ve been developing three separate bodies of work since 2007. I’ve always had figurative work, and specifically portraiture, happening. Then I have smaller works on paper from my imagination that sort of dip into the figurative work. Also, I’ve been harvesting clay from differ-

ent sites [the Ouachita Trail in Arkansas, Diablo Canyon in New Mexico] and coming back to making these terracotta panels, which feels like it connects to my ancestors because terracotta was not only an artistic component of Mesopotamian culture, it was also utilitarian. I’ve always leaned towards clay, especially terracotta, because it runs in my bloodline and connects to representations of ancient Sumerian goddesses.

Why do you choose to work in the genre of portraiture, and can you tell me about your process?

Portraiture to me is just a way to learn how to relate to others. That’s always been sort of a key component in my evolution. The older I get and [with] the experience of having children, the more service-oriented I become. The portraits shift with that … It’s a way for me to show love — for the craft, for humanity, for the art, for the materials, for the connection. It’s just a way for me to show love. The more present I am with the sitter and the deeper the connection I create with them, the more easily they unfold – conversationally and formally within the painting itself.

What inspires you right now?

I think this developing sisterhood that’s starting to happen in the collective, where for thousands of years women were pitted against each other. We’re finally starting to realize the extent

of the damage and that we can’t continue being in constant conflict — inner and exterior — it’s just a very painful place to be. Being able to connect with each other is so much more sustainable, softer and a healthier place to be.

Agreed. I think a lot about the internalized patriarchy and how it fosters rivalry when what we deeply crave are systems of support. Connecting to this theme of support, I wanted to ask you how your work in healing modalities such as art therapy and leading sound baths connects to your artistic practice.

As artists, a lot of us who are working intuitively really just channel the frequency of the subject being painted. Or if you’re working from your imagination, you’re channeling a higher message that’s much bigger than the artists themselves, right? Everything, including sound, is vibratory. It’s really all physics; it’s all frequencies. The harmonic frequencies of color in my paintings emulate the harmonic frequencies of sounds.

As an art therapist, I’ve worked for this amazing program called CSI at the Pulaski County Jail, spearheaded by Sheriff Eric Higgins. Actually, this past April, Netflix came out with a series on the [jail] … Being in a room full of people who really are just hungry for a creative outlet and some sort of platform where they can let loose without feeling judged and then getting

‘A WAY FOR ME TO SHOW LOVE’: Undaunted hues and unabashed gazes show up in many of Zina AlShukri’s paintings.

“THE

HARMONIC FREQUENCIES

OF COLOR IN MY PAINTINGS EMULATE THE HARMONIC FREQUENCIES OF SOUNDS.”

‘UNTITLED 26’: Much of Zina Al-Shukri’s work consists of gestural portraits that display an amorous relationship with the materiality of paint and an intimacy with the spectrum of life’s blows and balms.

into our bodies, using our hands, and sharing everything with them I’ve learned has been some of the most fulfilling work I’ve ever done.

As someone who was born in Iraq and who came to the U.S. as a child, how does the ex perience of living within two cultures inform your work?

I was born in Baghdad, Iraq; I’m indigenous Mesopotamian and more specifically Babylo nian. Being born into war and fleeing war is a very effective destabilizer. As refugees, our fam ily would move every few years because my par ents would have to go where the work was, and so every time I’d create a friendship, I’d have to move away. Part of what drew me to portraiture was that it was a way for me to be able to have some form of longevity with others.

I remember going to the Smithsonian when I was 8 years old, to the National Portrait Gallery, and when I walked in there I fell in love with be ing able to see paintings of all of these people, and they weren’t going anywhere. They were safe in that institution. So it felt solid to me to be able to see a person in a frame like that. But when I really decided that art was my chosen path was in college as I found myself shifting all of my focus from biology to ceramics. Art be came an incredible outlet for growth and evolu tion, and I wasn’t going to let go of that.

Considering the current conflict in the Mid dle East, what is it like to carry the weight of your two cultures right now?

I love being Arab more than I’ve ever loved it in my entire life because at this point — as I’ve been stripped bare of my humanity as an Arab woman through the dehumanization of Arabs, Muslims and Brown and Black people by West ern ideology and imperialism — you can either withdraw and disappear, or you can really be empowered by that position and just put it in people’s faces. Being a refugee child of the di aspora is challenging because you have these divergent cultures that you’re constantly strad dling and learning how to navigate while hav ing to create another kind of identity that’s nev er actually embedded in one culture or place. However, the ability to sort of weave in and out of these different demographics and cultures is a very powerful position to be in because you can really be an advocate for everyone.

mpg1.kw.com

501.352.1016

karenamalott@kw.com

12814 Cantrell Rd. • 72223

At the same time, I’ve never experienced so much hate in all my life except during 9/11, when people would find out I was Arab and throw all sorts of vitriol at me. The other side of that coin is that I have never experienced so much connectedness and love of community. So it’s like the pendulum is swinging really hard on both ends right now. I see the outpour of love and empathy coming from heart-centered people, and that fortifies and empowers me. That makes me want to serve my community and love even harder.

We are honored and humbled by your support as we serve Arkansas with our mission of HOMES FOR ALL !

MALOTT PROPERTY GROUP

MALOTT KARENA

BEST OF ARKANSAS

LONG HAUL: Eric Young, the owner of Blackbird Home Inspections, doesn’t think of his services as a one-time transaction.

’

CALL ME A MILLION TIMES’

BLACKBIRD HOME INSPECTIONS IS IN A LONG-TERM RELATIONSHIP WITH ARKANSAS HOMEBUYERS.

BY DANIEL GREAR PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRIAN CHILSON

Since we added the home inspection category to our annual Best of Arkansas poll in 2021, Little Rock’s Blackbird Home Inspections has come out on top every year. What sets them apart from the rest of the competition? There are a lot of reasons, but I’d guess the biggest one is the fact that owner and McCrory native Eric Young doesn’t think of his services as a one-time transaction.

“The more communication that we can have between us and the buyer of the home, the better,” he said. “I tell them that I want them to call me a million times after they receive the report. But even more than that, as they continue to live in that house, [I tell them] to continue to call me if they have questions. I’ve got a guy that I’m stopping by to see this afternoon who bought a house two and a half years ago.”

Young, 44, doesn’t charge extra for that sustained attention either. In fact, affordability is the main reason he got into this line of work in

the first place. Young started Blackbird in 2017 and has nearly 6,000 inspections under his belt, but he’s been in the business of buying, renovating and selling houses for more than 20 years (he estimates that he’s flipped about 120 houses in total), a venture that intimately acquainted him with just how expensive it can be to get a home inspection.

“I thought that what was being charged of people was really too much,” Young said. “[Inspectors] were making in a few hours what it would take some people a week to make. … Buying a house is expensive in and of itself. So a lot of people were either passing up on a home inspection or it was financially difficult for them to pay for the home inspection plus everything else that goes along with buying a house.”

Young’s renovation work makes him a strong judge of character when it comes to houses that aren’t exactly what they purport to be. “It’s got

to have a solid foundation, it’s got to have solid electrical, it’s got to have solid HVAC, it’s got to have solid plumbing. And then you add the cosmetic stuff,” he said. “So many flippers come in and throw that cosmetic stuff on and skip all the rest of it.”

He sees a lot of houses that look good on the surface but have serious underlying issues. “It’s probably on a weekly basis where I’ll go into a house and it’s been painted and new carpets have been done, but there’s standing water underneath the house and the floor joists have become rotted out,” he said. “The pillars are in poor shape and the foundation is giving way because there’s just no support.” Depending on the severity of the situation, a discovery of that kind could eventually cost a buyer anywhere from a few thousand dollars to $100,000, Young said.

Still, it’s important to Young to give homebuyers agency regarding whether or not they

“SO

ultimately choose to purchase a property. It’s a tricky line to toe, given how emotionally fraught the process can be. “I don’t want people to make a decision because they’re scared. But I do want people to make a decision because they’ve been well-informed,” he said. “I never recommend somebody buy a house or don’t buy a house — and I try not to know what they’re paying for a house, either.”

If home inspection sounds to you like the cushy job of someone who saunters around bestowing judgment without getting their hands dirty, think again. More than one time, Young has had a snake slither underneath him while shimmying on his stomach in a tight crawl space.

“[This work] really is taxing on the body,” Young said. “During the summertime … attics will exceed 180 degrees, so it doesn’t take long for you to be dehydrated. In fact, if you take your iPad up in one … it won’t stay on for more than 15 or 20 seconds before it shuts off due to the heat.”

He’s also seen his fair share of accidents, including multiple ladder mishaps. Once, a ladder fell while he was entering an attic and “the scuttle hole collapsed” on his fingers, breaking three of them and flaying “the top of them off.”

No matter how dangerous and uncomfortable the work can be, Young finds that the satisfaction of being able to help people outweighs the drawbacks. “It’s just the way I was raised.”

Reflecting on a recent inspection, he said a client shared his report with a friend who’s a home inspector in another state. “He came back and said it was the most detailed report he has ever seen in his life come from a home inspector. It’s things like that — to hear that you did a really good job for him — that’s the reward.”

corinajordan@kw.com

https://corinajordan.kw.com

BEST OF ARKANSAS

SOME CHEFS USE RECIPES; BIG CHEF TAYLOR TALKS TO GOD.

BY STEPHANIE SMITTLE PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRIAN CHILSON

‘SPIRIT-LED’: Pastor Craig “Big Chef” Taylor blends sweet, savory and scripture.

Inthe tiny kitchen at It’s Time to Eat — a soul food restaurant adjoining the Church of Reconciliation in North Little Rock — Craig “Big Chef” Taylor forgoes the cookbook in favor of The Good Book. “I can honestly tell you that when I cook, it’s spirit-led,” he said. “God gives me the recipe. If God gives me a vision of the finished product in my head, or I see a picture in a book, I can recreate it.”

Whatever your religious persuasion, it’s hard to argue with his vision after you’ve had the oxtail Sunday special. Sitting at home with a collection of takeaway containers unboxed on my kitchen table, an “Oh my God” left my lips after I’d nibbled a hunk of the main dish. Even after completing a robust Saturday prep list, Taylor gets up at 5:30 a.m. to prepare oxtails on Sundays when they’re on the menu, and his meticulousness shows up on the plate.

Oxtail — not actually ox but beef — might raise the eyebrows of the squeamish. Prepared well, the tail segments are ethereally tender, thanks in part to being much more fatty and gelatinous than the high-rent parts of the cow tend to be. But for eaters who aren’t averse to those textures (looking at you, ribeye fans), necks and tails are where it’s at. Unlike the intense 3-minute sear on a perfect New York strip, braising oxtails can be an hours-long affair, and the animal’s cartilage and tendons act as a cushion that allows the meat to absorb flavor over the course of a long cook time without getting tough or stringy. At It’s Time to Eat, the oxtail prep involves 90 minutes in a hot oven to render some of the fat, then blanketing the meat in a paste made from a vegetable puree (which, the way Taylor pronounces it, rhymes with “hooray”) for a 2-hour-plus slow simmer. The result is something like roast beef, but richer and more caramelized.

The first “OMG” invocation left my mouth about half an hour earlier, when I got into the parking lot and noticed the weight of the paper sack with my to-go order. Its heft assured me that I’d not only have enough for lunch, but likely dinner, too. Maybe even lunch the next day. Luke 6:21 claims that “ye that hunger now shall be filled,” and the family running things at It’s Time to Eat clearly takes that promise seriously.

It’s Time to Eat is a bit of a retirement project for Taylor, a Philander Smith College graduate who recently retired after 29 years as a program manager for Arkansas’s Division of Children and Family Services. Though he’s had to hand over most Sunday morning sermon duties to other ministers since the restaurant opened, he’s been the pastor at the nondenominational Church of Reconciliation since its establishment in 2011. He inherited the property — then a residence — from his late father, Nathaniel Taylor, and trans-

formed it into a church. The seventh of 13 children, Taylor is a self-taught cook — and though it takes more than two hands to get the food out at It’s Time to Eat, Taylor is currently the only cook in its kitchen.

The social media feed for the restaurant is a window into its playful, familial style — and the fervor of its fanbase. Menus announcing the weekend’s specials offer up a burger with “Put That Ish on Everything” sauce, an “OMG Arnold Palmer” and “KkBaby Neck Bones,” named for Taylor’s daughter, Caitlin Taylor. “After getting your spirits filled at church come get your stomach full,” an early June post urges. “We’re having food literally out of this World.” And, though the eatery thrives on delivering The Good News, Taylor frequently has some bad news to deliver to Facebook followers, too: “SOLD OUT! Thank y’all.”

The whole thing started in August of 2022, Taylor said, when his daughter filmed the pastor dousing a skillet of sweet potato cornbread with warm caramel, turning the savory side dish into a starchy dessert. She put it up on TikTok, where it began racking up thousands of views within minutes (it’s currently at 184K) and garnering comments like: “Damn Unc,” “If Sunday was a sound,” “Can you adopt me?” and “GLORY!” The post’s metrics would be dwarfed only two weeks later, when a video went up showing Taylor slicing and plating portions from a hefty pan of his seafood lasagna. The Taylors kept their followers satiated — visually, at least — over the year that followed, posting jaw-dropping reels of French toast, salmon burgers, northern beans slow-simmered with smoked turkey legs, blackened catfish and lemon bundt cake.

People across the world hit “follow.” Themes emerged. Taylor’s silver cross pendant is ever-present. Almost always, he stands above a tableau of finished dishes, introducing them to viewers by thanking God for the day — “a day we’ve never seen before” — and for “giving me pleasure to just recreate something and then put it before my wife and my family.”

Presentation and inspiration reign supreme: Rarely does a dish get plated without a crown of fresh chiffonade-cut herbs, or without a mention of who in the family (often Craig’s wife, Julunda) gave Taylor the dinner idea. Most of us would be thrilled to skip the drive-thru and present our families with a balanced plate of midweek meatloaf, with a vegetable on the side. Taylor overachieves magnificently here, with a loaf that surprises with a boiled egg baked into the center of every slice. He serves them on a mashed potato pillow, which in turn sits atop a criss-cross pattern of bright green asparagus. Chalk that aesthetic up, in part, to Taylor’s years as a painter; before he took the state job, he painted

“WE’RE PROUD OF WHO WE ARE.”

‘WELCOME TO FLAVORVILLE’: The Marry Me Salmon (at top left) and the Turkey Flats (at bottom) at It’s Time to Eat boast deeply developed flavor, delicate garnishes and “not too much sodium.”

still lifes in oil and other scenes in charcoal and pastels. “God gave me the gift of creativity,” he said. “God gives me a vision,” he said, “and from the vision I work backwards.”

Maybe most importantly, there’s a sense of mindfulness and enthusiasm about the spread on the kitchen countertop. Even before it’s time to pray over the meal, Taylor’s awash in a sort of gratitude ritual, relishing the way the meal was dreamed up earlier in the day because someone in the family “had a taste for something different and unique.”

In October 2023, a little over a year after that first TikTok video took off, the restaurant held its grand opening, complete with signage featuring a caricature of Taylor, sharpening a knife and sporting an embroidered cross on the lapel of his chef’s coat. Above the door, a sign reads “Welcome to Flavorville.” Inside, on the Sunday I visited, patrons came and went, many of them greeted by first name and assured their order was on the way. A few weeks ago, Taylor said, one of his old junior high school teachers came in; she’d heard about the food from a fellow parishioner at her church. “She was a major impact on my life,” he said. “Word of mouth is traveling everywhere.”

Beyond a quartet of four-top tables, a TV screen displayed a plate of apple-glazed pork chops, and prints on the wall depicted portraits of Black thinkers with their foremost quotes alongside them — James Baldwin’s wisdom on the nature of change, Maya Angelou’s words on the human spirit. A track by Christian singer V. Rose called “He Knows My Name” played on the speakers overhead. Knowing that Taylor did most of the woodwork in the dining room, I asked him about the decor. “I wanted people to know that when you come to It’s Time to Eat, you’re coming to a place where we’re proud of who we are. The struggle is real. To be a Blackowned business and survive!”

Surviving, it’s possible, could mean outgrowing the tiny kitchen at 415 Wayne St. The Taylors have more visions floating through their heads: expanded video offerings, a cookbook, maybe even a TV show. “When you know God has something for you,” Taylor said, “just flow with it.”

However the expansion happens, Taylor said, he’s intent on preserving the mission: keeping everything well-seasoned, with “not too much sodium, but layers of flavor. … We try to cook for everybody; if you don’t like chicken, we’re gonna be cooking some turkey. If you don’t eat meat, we’re gonna try to develop a dish for people who don’t eat meat. Everybody can come to our restaurant to get food. It doesn’t matter what age you are, what color you are, what sexuality you are. We love everybody.”

BEST OF ARKANSAS

I’M GONNA TATTOO TILL I DIE’

ROBERT BERRY’S 7TH STREET TATTOO AND PIERCING IS A LITTLE ROCK INSTITUTION.

BY DANIEL GREAR PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRIAN CHILSON

Aquick, noncomprehensive survey of the Arkansas Times staff indicates that at least nine of our current employees have passed through the doors of 7th Street Tattoo and Piercing and emerged a short while later with permanent ink on their bodies. Evidently, it’s just as popular with our readers; the shop has spent the last five years at the top of the tattoos category in our annual Best of Arkansas poll.

One of the longest-running parlors in Little Rock, 7th Street Tattoo was opened in 1998 by Robert Berry, who began his tattoo career later in life. “When I first started tattooing … tattoo shops didn’t take credit cards and they were seedy. It was almost like peep shows and then tattoo shops — that’s how it felt,” Berry, 67, said. “Because I came from the advertising world and the prepress world and I didn’t start tattooing until I was 40, I brought in the credit card machine and customer service.”

Originally a one-man operation at 1009 W. Seventh St., the shop quickly outgrew itself — multiple times. Two expansions into neighboring rooms in the same building eventually provided enough space for six artists, but Berry still wanted a bigger floorplan. In 2011, the business moved to 814 W. Seventh St., only a couple of blocks away. The neon sign that beckons like a lighthouse above the parlor is easily visible from its original digs. Now, 7th Street Tattoo, which shares walls with 7th Street Salon, boasts 13 artists and employs all four of Berry’s children in various capacities.

“I’m gonna tattoo till I die,” Berry said. “Everybody hopes they die in their sleep or having sex, right? My fantasy is that I do a tattoo, tell a joke, they laugh, I wipe the tattoo off and I drop dead.”

JUST GETTING STARTED: Little Rock native Robert Berry, 67, opened 7th Street Tattoo and Piercing in 1998. He has no plans to slow down.

STONE-FACED: The tough-as-nails Hank Penfield receives a tattoo from Andrew Berry, one of owner Robert Berry’s sons.

“WHEN I FIRST STARTED TATTOOING ... TATTOO SHOPS DIDN’T TAKE CREDIT CARDS AND THEY WERE SEEDY.”

UP AND UP: Originally a one-man operation, 7th Street Tattoo and Piercing now boasts 13 artists.

PROUD SPONSOR OF THE 2024

DATAMAX CONGRATULATES ALL THE WINNERS AND FINALISTS!

We are proud to be the sponsor of the 2024 BEST OF ARKANSAS competition in the Arkansas Times.

Your customers have rated you above your competitors as one of the best in the state. DATAMAX is proud to be associated with you. Whether you are a coffee shop owner, plumber or investment advisor, achieving “best” status hinges on the perception of those you serve. While opinions vary from customer to customer, there are a few universal principles that Datamax lives by every day, to not only create longevity for our organization, but to aim toward being our absolute best.

A RELEVANT APPROACH. What’s relevant to our customers trumps any assumptions we might make regarding those needs. Dig in. Do the research to find out exactly what your customers value the most.

RAPID RESPONSE/RESOLUTION. It’s simple, really… your customers don’t like waiting. Providing a rapid response to needs, and resourceful resolution to issues applies to a chiropractor as much as it does HVAC repair.

REAL ENTHUSIASM – INSIDE AND OUT. Culture trumps everything. Exerting energy and passion, both to your clients and promoting it internally within your organization, rubs off on everyone around you. At Datamax, we recognize that enthusiasm must be authentic.

Proud sponsor of the Arkansas Times Best Of Arkansas 2022 Proud sponsor of the Arkansas Times Best of Arkansas 2024

CONGRATS TO THE 2024 WINNERS!

RECREATION

BIKE TRAIL

Winner: Arkansas River Trail

Finalists: Pinnacle Mountain State Park Monument Trails (Roland), Razorback Greenway (Northwest Arkansas), Northwoods Trail (Hot Springs), Coler Mountain Bike Preserve (Bentonville)

CHEAP DATE

Winner: Pinnacle Mountain State Park

Finalists: The Old Mill (North Little Rock), Big Dam Bridge, Riverfront Park, Rock Town River Outfitters

FAMILY ATTRACTION

Winner: Little Rock Zoo

Finalists: Museum of Discovery, Magic Springs Theme and Water Park (Hot Springs), Topgolf, Main Event Little Rock

GOLF COURSE

Winner: Burns Park Golf Course (North Little Rock)

Finalists: Rebsamen Golf Course, Chenal Country Club, Pleasant Valley Country Club, Red Apple Inn & Country Club (Heber Springs)

GYM/PLACE TO WORK OUT

Winner: Little Rock Athletic Club

Finalists: Blue Yoga Nyla, Jolly Bodies, Omnis CrossFit, Rock City Complete Fitness

HIKING TRAIL

Winner: Pinnacle Mountain State Park (Roland)

Finalists: Emerald Park (North Little Rock), Rattlesnake Ridge Natural Area (Roland), Ozark Highlands Trail, Lake Atalanta (Rogers)

MARINA

Winner: Mountain Harbor Marina on Lake Ouachita (Mount Ida)

Finalists: Eden Isle Marina on Greers Ferry Lake (Heber Springs), Brady Mountain Resort & Marina on Lake Ouachita (Royal), Fairfield Bay Marina (Shirley), Rock City Yacht Club

Winner: Buffalo National River

Finalists: Garvan Woodland Gardens (Hot Springs), Petit Jean State Park (Morrilton), Pinnacle Mountain State Park (Roland), Big Dam Bridge

PARK

Winner: Petit Jean State Park (Morrilton)

Finalists: Two Rivers Park, Pinnacle Mountain State Park (Roland), Murray Park, Wilson Park (Fayetteville)

PLACE TO CANOE/KAYAK/TUBE

Winner: Buffalo National River

Finalists: Ouachita River, Caddo River, Mulberry River, Saline River

PLACE TO MOUNTAIN BIKE

Winner: Pinnacle Mountain State Park

Monument Trails

Finalists: Mt. Nebo State Park Monument Trails, OZ Trails (Northwest Arkansas), River Mountain Trails, Northwoods Trails (Hot Springs)

PLACE TO SWIM

Winner: Greers Ferry Lake

Finalists: Lake Ouachita, Lake Hamilton, Charlton Recreation Area, Remmel Dam

RESORT

Winner: Mountain Harbor Resort and Spa (Mount Ida)

Finalists: Oaklawn Racing Casino Resort (Hot Springs), Gaston’s White River Resort (Lakeview), Shangri-La Resort (Mount Ida), The Cabins at Lobo Landing (Heber Springs)

WEEKEND GETAWAY

Winner: Eureka Springs

Finalists: Oaklawn Racing Casino Resort (Hot Springs), Red Apple Inn & Country Club (Heber Springs), Gaston’s White River Resort (Lakeview), Cherokee Casino & Hotel (Roland, Oklahoma)

LOCAL ENTERTAINMENT

ARTIST

Winner: Ashlee Nobel

Finalists: Judd Mann, Guy Bell, Zina AlShukri, Jeff Horton

Winner: Kat Robinson

Finalists: Ayana Gray, Kevin Brockmeier, Trenton Lee Stewart, David Hill

COMEDIAN

Winner: Gene Berry

Finalists: Brett Ihler, Nick Moore, May Gayden, David Bair

COUNTRY BAND/ARTIST

Winner: Ashley McBryde

Finalists: Bonnie Montgomery, Cliff & Susan (Susan Erwin and Cliff Prowse), Tyler Kinch, Willi Carlisle

DANCE CLUB

Winner: Discovery

Finalists: Club Sway, Brewski’s Pub & Grub, Electric Cowboy, Club 27

DJ

Winner: Mike Poe

Finalists: g-force, JJ Wilson, Ryan Mullins, DJ Drewster

FILMMAKER

Winner: Corbin Pitts

Finalists: Graham Gordy, Cassie Keet, Amman Abbasi, Jack Lofton

GAY BAR

Winner: Discovery

Finalists: Sway, 610 Center, Triniti Nightclub, Chaps

HIP-HOP ARTIST

Winner: Big Piph

Finalists: Stoney Jackson, 607, chordandjocks, MvK Lxui$

JAZZ BAND/GROUP

Winner: Big Dam Horns

Finalists: The Rodney Block Collective, Funkanites, Ted Ludwig Trio, Clyde Pound Trio

LATE NIGHT SPOT

Winner: White Water Tavern

Finalists: Four Quarter Bar (North Little Rock), Brewski’s Pub & Grub, Midtown Billiards, Pizza D’Action

Winner: King Biscuit Blues Festival (Hel

Finalists: Bangin’ In The Rock, Hillberry Music Festival (Eureka Springs), Valley of the Vapors Independent Music Festival (Hot Springs), FreshGrass (Bentonville)

LIVE MUSIC VENUE

Winner: The Hall

Finalists: White Water Tavern, Simmons Bank Arena, Rev Room, Four Quarter Bar (North Little Rock)

LOCAL ACTOR/ACTRESS

Winner: Ashlie Atkinson

Finalists: Anthony James Gerard, Judy Trice, Sascha Bass, Dariane LyJoi Mull

LOCAL THEATER

Winner: Arkansas Repertory Theatre

Finalists: Argenta Contemporary Theatre (North Little Rock), The Joint Comedy Theater (North Little Rock), The Studio Theater, Actors Theatre of Little Rock

LOCAL TOURIST ATTRACTION

Winner: Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (Bentonville)

Finalists: Pinnacle Mountain State Park, Bathhouse Row (Hot Springs), Clinton Presidential Center, Argenta Contempo-

MOVIE THEATER

Winner: Riverdale 10 VIP Cinema

Finalists: Cinemark Colonel Glenn and XD, CALS Ron Robinson Theater, Movie Tavern, AMC Chenal 9

Winner: Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts

Finalists: Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (Bentonville), Museum of Discovery, Mid-America Science Museum (Hot Springs), Mosaic Templars Cultural Center

NEIGHBORHOOD FESTIVAL

Winner: Hillcrest Harvestfest

Finalists: Dogtown Throwdown (North Little Rock), Toad Suck Daze (Conway), SoMardi Gras, Arkansas Cornbread Festival

PERFORMING ARTS GROUP

Winner: Arkansas Symphony Orchestra

Finalists: Ballet Arkansas, O’Donovan School of Irish Dance, Little Rock Winds, Voices Ensemble-University of Arkansas at Fayetteville

SALSA

AND

BACHATA

Tuesdays 7:45pm-10:30pm Fridays 9pm-2am Starts with a one-hour dance lesson. No partner or experience required.

PLACE FOR KARAOKE

Winner: White Water Tavern

Finalists: Town Pump, Brewski’s Pub & Grub, Willy D’s, Dust Bowl Lanes and Lounge

PLACE FOR TRIVIA

Winner: Flyway Brewing

Finalists: Fassler Hall, Brewski’s Pub & Grub, Midtown Billiards, Puritan Coffee & Beer (Fayetteville)

PLACE TO GAMBLE

Winner: Oaklawn Racing Casino Resort (Hot Springs)

Finalists: Saracen Casino Resort (Pine Bluff), Cherokee Casino and Hotel (Roland, Oklahoma), Southland Casino Hotel (West Memphis), Choctaw Casino (Pocola, Oklahoma)

POET

Winner: Leron McAdoo

Finalists: Carter Kirby, Kai Coggin, R.J. Looney, Ed Madden

ROCK BAND

Winner: Mayday by Midnight

Finalists: Bad Habit, Pallbearer, Colour Design, PETT

SPORTS BETTING APP

Winner: Oaklawn Sports

Finalists: Bet Saracen, Betly Sportsbook

SPORTS BAR

Winner: Brewski’s Pub & Grub

Finalists: The Hillcrest Fountain, WalkOn’s Sports Bistreaux, Prospect Sports Bar, Legends Sports Bar at Saracen Casino (Pine Bluff)

LOCAL MEDIA

BLOG

Winner: The Mighty Rib

Finalists: Blue Hog Report, Arkansas Blog, Tie Dye Travels, Best of Arkansas Sports

COLUMNIST/REPORTER

Winner: Dwain Hebda (Ya!Mule Wordsmiths)

Finalists: Austin Gelder, Kat Robinson, Stephanie Smittle, John Allen French

MARKETING FIRM

Winner: CJRW

Finalists: Cranford Co., Eric Rob & Isaac, Taneja Marketing Group, Thoma Thoma

Helaine Williams, Austin Gelder

PODCAST

Winner: Arkansas Times-Week in Review

Finalists: United States of Murder, Put Your Books Down, Bear Grease, Blackbelt Voices

RADIO PERSONALITY

Winner: Heather Brown (Alice 107.7)

Finalists: Roger Scott (103.7 The Buzz), Tom Wood (Arkansas Rocks), Shayne Gray (KABF 88.3), David Bazzell (103.7 The Buzz)

RADIO STATION

Winner: Alice 107.7

Finalists: KABZ 103.7 The Buzz, KUAR-FM 89.1, KLRE-FM 90.5, KABF-FM 88.3

SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE

Winner: The Mighty Rib

Finalists: Arkansas Times, Blue Hog Report, Ryan Taneja, Dads After Dark Radio

TV METEOROLOGIST

Winner: Todd Yakoubian (formerly of KATV, now of KARK)

Finalists: Tom Brannon (THV11), Melinda Mayo (KATV), Barry Brandt (KATV), Skot Covert (THV11)

TV PERSONALITY

Winner: Craig O’Neill (THV11)

Finalists: DJ Williams (KARK), Donna Terrell (FOX16), Laura Monteverdi (KARK), Elicia Dover (KATV)

TV SPORTSCASTER

Winner: Steve Sullivan (KATV)

Finalists: DJ Williams (KARK), Hayden Balgavy (THV11), Wess Moore (FOX16), Tyler Cass (THV11)

TV STATION

Winner: KTHV (THV11)

Finalists: KARK (Channel 4), KATV (Channel 7), Arkansas PBS, KLRT (FOX16)

WEBSITE

Winner: arktimes.com

Finalists: arkansasonline.com, encyclopediaofarkansas.net, bluehogreport.com, hawgbeat.com

PEOPLE AND POLITICS

ARKANSAN

Winner: Chris Jones

Finalists: Joyce Elliott, Aaron Reddin, Tippi McCullough, Ryan Taneja

Proud sponsor of the Arkansas Times Best of Arkansas 2024

Proud sponsor of the Arkansas Times Best Of Arkansas 2022

ATHLETE

Winner: Darren McFadden

Finalists: Bobby Portis, John Daly, Cam Little, Taliyah Brooks

CELEBRITY

Winner: Mary Steenburgen

Finalists: Craig O’Neill, Wes Bentley, Ashlie Atkinson, Ryan Taneja

CEO

Winner: Marcy Doderer (Arkansas Children’s Hospital)

Finalists: Ryan Taneja (Taneja Marketing Group), Barbara Sugg (Southwest Power Pool), Bret Carrol (Conway Corp), John Selig (AFMC)

CHARITY EVENT

Winner: Soup Sunday (Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families)

Finalists: Paws on the Runway (CARE for Animals), Chocolate Fantasy Ball (Ronald McDonald House Charities), Taste of Little Rock (UA Little Rock Alumni Association Scholarship Fund), Monster Bash (Home for Healing)

CONSERVATIVE

Winner: Asa Hutchinson

Finalists: Rex Nelson, Nate Bell, Jim Wooten, Jimmy Gazaway

LIBERAL

Winner: Chris Jones

Finalists: Joyce Elliott, Clarke Tucker, Max Brantley, Tippi McCullough

LITTLE ROCK CITY DIRECTOR

Winner: Capi Peck

Finalists: Kathy Webb, Virgil Miller, Antwan Phillips, Andrea Lewis

LITTLE ROCKER

Winner: Kathy Webb

Finalists: Matt Campbell, “Broadway” Joe Booker, Mini Taneja, Kaitlyn Edwards

MISUSE OF TAXPAYER FUND/PROPOSALS

Winner: Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders

Finalists: Arkansas LEARNS, Lecterngate, Medicaid Purge, Park Hill Jump Start

NONPROFIT

Winner: The Van (The One, Inc.)

Finalists: Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, Heifer International, Actors Theatre of Little Rock, Arkansas CAPES

PHILANTHROPIST

Winner: Natalie and Win Rockefeller

Finalists: Aaron Reddin, Mini Taneja, Derek Lewis, Karla and Will Feland

POLITICIAN

Winner: Chris Jones

Finalists: Clarke Tucker, Terry Hartwick, Greg Leding, Nicole Clowney

WORST ARKANSAN

Winner: Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders

Finalists: Sen. Tom Cotton, Josh Duggar, Sen. Jason Rapert, Lt. Gov. Leslie Rutledge

FOOD AND DRINK

ARKANSAS-BREWED BEER

Winner: Lost Forty Brewing

Finalists: Flyway Brewing (North Little Rock), Moody Brews, Superior Bathhouse Brewery (Hot Springs), New Province Brewing (Rogers)

BAKED GOODS

Winner: Community Bakery

Finalists: Boulevard Bread Company, The Bagel Shop, Blackberry Market Argenta (North Little Rock), Wild Sweet Williams (Searcy)

BIRTHDAY OR SPECIAL OCCASION CAKE

Winner: Community Bakery

Finalists: Blue Cake Co., Mickey’s Cakes & Sweets, The Humble Crumb (Sherwood), Cheesecake on Point

BREAD

Winner: Boulevard Bread Company

Finalists: Community Bakery, Old Mill Bread, Dempsey Bakery, BMB Creations Bakery (Conway)

COCKTAIL

Winner: Brood & Barley

Finalists: Raduno Brick Oven & Barroom, Petit & Keet, BCW (Bread Cheese Wine), Sauced Bar & Oven

COMFORT FOOD

Winner: K. Hall & Sons Produce

Finalists: Rosie’s Pot & Kettle, Four Quarter Bar (North Little Rock), Homer’s Kitchen & Table, Bobby’s Cafe (North Little Rock)

OUTDOOR DINING

Winner: Hill Station

Finalists: Cypress Social (North Little Rock), Brave New Restaurant, Sterling Market, Brood & Barley

FOOD FESTIVAL

Winner: Main Street Food Truck Festival

Finalists: International Greek Food Festival, Arkansas Cornbread Festival, UA Little Rock’s Taste of Little Rock, CareLink’s Cupcakes for Goodness Sake

Thank

FARMERS MARKET

Winner: Me and McGee Market (North Little Rock)

Finalists: Bernice Garden Farmers Market, Hillcrest Farmers Market, St. Joseph Farm Stand (North Little Rock), The Bramble Market

FLOORING STORE

Winner: Akels Carpet One Floor & Home

Finalists: Cantrell Furniture Design Center, C&F Flooring, LL Flooring, McElroy Tops & Floors (Benton)

FLORIST

Winner: Frances Flower Shop

Finalists: Cabbage Rose Florist, The Empty Vase, Curly Willow Designs (Cabot), Tanarah Luxe Floral

FURNITURE

Winner: Midtown Vintage Market

Finalists: HOWSE, Cantrell Furniture Design Center, Arkansas Furniture (Hot Springs), Lux Haus (Fort Smith)

GARDEN STORE

Winner: The Good Earth Garden Center

Finalists: Plantopia, Cantrell Gardens Nursery, Hocott’s Garden Center, Botanica Gardens

GIFT SHOP

Winner: Bang-Up Betty (North Little Rock)

Finalists: Box Turtle, Moxy Modern Mercantile, Domestic Domestic, Bella Vita Jewelry

GROCERY STORE

Winner: Trader Joe’s

Finalists: Edward’s Food Giant, Whole Foods Market, The Fresh Market, Natural Grocers

HARDWARE/HOME IMPROVEMENT

Winner: Fuller & Son Hardware

Finalists: Ace Hardware, Kraftco Hardware, McCoy’s Lumber & Hardware (Searcy), Walrod’s Hardware (Fort Smith)

HIP CLOTHING

Winner: Crying Weasel Vintage

Finalists: Box Turtle, AR-T’s, E. Leigh’s Contemporary Boutique, Fringe Clothing

HOBBY SHOP

Winner: Argenta Bead Company

Finalists: ART Outfitters, HobbyTown (North Little Rock), The Geeky Oasis (Sherwood), The Coin & Stamp Shop

JEWELER

Winner: Bang-Up Betty

Finalists: Sissy’s Log Cabin, Bella Vita Jewelry & Gifts, Cecil’s Jewelry, Roberson’s Jewelry

LINGERIE STORE

Winner: Cupid’s

Finalists: Angie Davis (Conway), Seductions, Aphrodite’s Love Boutique (Rogers)

MEN’S CLOTHING

Winner: Baumans Fine Men’s Clothing

Finalists: Father & Sons Clothier (Pine Bluff), J Duke and Co., Mr. Wicks, The Woodsman Company

MOBILE PHONE PROVIDER

Winner: AT&T

Finalists: Straight Talk Wireless, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless

MOTORCYCLE DEALER

Winner: Rock City Harley-Davidson

Finalists: Richards Honda-Yamaha, Sunrise Yamaha Motorsports (Searcy), Rodney’s Cycle Shop, Mike Johnson’s Powersports (Russellville)

OUTDOOR STORE

Winner: Ozark Outdoor Supply

Finalists: Bass Pro Shop, Domestic Domestic, Fort Thompson, The Woodsman Company (Fort Smith)

PAWN SHOP

Winner: Braswell & Son Pawn Brokers

Finalists: Big Daddy’s Pawn Shop, National Pawn Shop, Pawnderosa Pawn, Randy’s Pawn Shop Inc.

RV/CAMPER DEALER

Winner: 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

Local Winner: Rock City Kicks

Winner: Dillard’s

Finalists: Domestic Domestic, Fleet Feet, Warren’s Shoes

SPORTING GOODS

Local Winner: Gene Lockwood’s

Winner: Academy Sports + Outdoor Finalists: Dick’s Sporting Goods (North Little Rock), Ozark Outdoor Supply, Rock City Running

TOY STORE

Winner: The Toggery

Finalists: Domestic Domestic, Box Turtle, Knowledge Tree, The Geeky Oasis (Sherwood)

VAPE SHOP

Winner: Toddy Tobacco & Vape Shop

Finalists: Rogue Vapers, Abby Road, Emerald’s Triangle (Jonesboro)

WOMEN’S CLOTHING

Winner: Anthropologie

Finalists: Crying Weasel, BEIGE, J. McLaughlin, Thriftpologie

GOODS AND SERVICES

ACCOUNTING FIRM

Winner: Frost PLLC

Winner: Arvest

Finalists: Simmons Bank, Bank of Little Rock, Centennial Bank, Encore Bank

COMMERCIAL INSURANCE AGENCY

Winner: State Farm

Finalists: USAA, Shelter Insurance, Hines, NRG

COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE AGENCY

Winner: KW Commercial

Finalists: Moses Tucker, Crye Leike Brock

Real Estate, Kelley Commercial Partners, The Janet Jones Company

Finalists: BKD Wealth Advisors LLC, Ferguson Cobb (FCA), J.R. Barney Accounting PLLC, Landmark

APARTMENT COMPLEX

Winner: The Pointe Brodie Creek

Finalists: Argenta Flats Apartments (North Little Rock), Bowman Pointe, Fitzroy Chenal, Fountaine Bleau (Conway)

ARCHITECT

Winner: Cromwell Architects Engineers

Finalists: Benchmark Group, Herron Horton Architects, Polk Stanley Wilcox Architects, Taggart Architects

ARKANSAS-BASED COMPANY

Winner: Tacos 4 Life

Finalists: Gearhead Outfitters, Leashes and Lashes, Rock Solid Shredding, Taneja Marketing Group

ARTISAN

Winner: Bang-Up Betty (Stacey Bowers)

Finalists: Bella Vita Jewelry (Brandy McNair), Crystal C. Mercer, Broken Vessels Pottery Studio (Gina Rose Gallina)

AUTO DEALERSHIP

Winner: Steve Landers Auto Group

Finalists: Everett Buick GMC, McLarty Toyota, Russell Chevrolet, Russell Honda

AUTO SERVICE

Winner: Discount Tire & Brake

Finalists: Jett’s Gas & Service, Austin Brothers Tire Service, Kittle’s Garage, Cantrell Service Center

AUTOGLASS REPAIR

Winner: Safelite

Finalists: Capitol Glass, Arkansas Chip Repair & Mobile Glass, Mobile Glass Pros, Smart Bubble Auto Repair Shop

COMPANY TO WORK FOR

Winner: UAMS

Finalists: Leashes & Lashes, CJRW, Centennial Bank, Cherokee Casino & Hotel (Roland, Oklahoma), Superior Senior Care

CONTRACTOR

Winner: Hines Homes

Finalists: Justin Elbert CJE Construction, Noah Treat Construction, Rush & Co. Inc., Millco Enterprises

DRY CLEANERS

Winner: Oak Forest Cleaners & Laundry

Finalists: Schickel’s Cleaners, Tide Cleaners, SoMa Cleaners, Shinn Cleaners

EVENT VENUE

Winner: The Hall

Finalists: Wildwood Park for the Arts, The Baker House, Cherokee Hotel & Casino, Grandview Acres & Lodge and Bunkhouse

FUNERAL HOME

Winner: Smith Family Funeral Homes

Finalists: Roller Funeral Home, Griffin Leggett Healey & Roth Funeral Home, North Little Rock Funeral Home, Ruebel Funeral Home

HANDYMAN

Winner: House Doctors

Finalists: Luck Be A Lady Rentals and Repair, Bennett’s Handyman Services, Redditt’s Remodeling, James Home Maintenance

HOME BUILDER

Winner: Hines Homes

Finalists: Noah Treat Construction, Mike Orndorff Construction, Graham Smith Construction, Menco Construction (Sherwood)

HOME INSPECTION

Winner: Blackbird Inspections (Eric Young)

Finalists: Pillar to Post Home Inspectors (The Paulson Team), GQ Inspection Services (Dennis Evans), Joe Cummins, Reliable Choice Home Inspections

HOME, LIFE, CAR INSURANCE

Winner: State Farm

Finalists: USAA, Arkansas Farm Bureau, The Jenkins Agency, Citizens Fidelity Insurance Company

HOTEL

Winner: Capital Hotel

Finalists: Oaklawn Racing Casino Resort (Hot Springs), AC Hotel by Marriott Little Rock, Hotel Hot Springs, Cherokee Hotel & Casino (Roland, Oklahoma)

HVAC REPAIR

Winner: Bob & Ed’s Heating & Air Conditioning

Finalists: Kirby’s Heating and Air Conditioning, Ski Brothers Heat & Air, Yates Maintenance Heating & Air, Dewees HVAC

INTERIOR DESIGNER/DECORATOR

Winner: Kelley Kolettis Designs

Finalists: Kendall Jones Design, Johnna Novak (Novak Design), Brittany Nixon Creative, Debi Davis Interior Design

INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDER

Winner: AT&T U-verse

Finalists: Xfinity, Hyperleap, Comcast, Cox

LANDSCAPER/LANDSCAPE DESIGN

Winner: The Good Earth Garden Center

Finalists: Plantopia (North Little Rock), Botanica Gardens, Elliott Lawn & Landscaping, Moon Custom Landscapes

LAW FIRM

Winner: Lion Legal

Finalists: Rainwater Holt & Sexton; Taylor King Law; Wright Lindsey Jennings; Lassiter & Cassinelli

LAWYER

Winner: Victoria Leigh (Lion Legal)

Finalists: Rebecca Ferguson (Lion Legal), Taylor King (Taylor King Law), Tara Pool (Lion Legal), Austin King (Taylor King Law)

MOVER

Winner: Two Men and a Truck (North Little Rock)

Finalists: Elite Movers, Brandon Moving & Storage (North Little Rock), Errand Runners of Arkansas, Mustard Seed Moving of Arkansas

Rock), Palmer Music Company (Conway), Shuffield Music Company (Arkadelphia), Fry Guitars

PEST CONTROL AND TERMITE SERVICE

Winner: Adams Pest Control

Finalists: Legacy Termite and Pest Control, Curry’s Termite & Pest Control, Arkansas Pest Control (North Little Rock), Clark Exterminating

PET GROOMERS

Winner: Hounds Lounge Pet Resort and Spa

Finalists: Leashes and Lashes, Amber’s Goochie Poochie, Wags and Whiskers, Dog Tired Inn (Sherwood)

PLUMBER

Winner: Ray Lusk Plumbing

Finalists: Razorback Plumbing Co., Aaron Houff, Matlock Rooter Services, Platinum Plumbing

REALTOR

Winner: Karena Malott (Keller Williams Realty)

Finalists: Donna Dailey (The Janet Jones Company), Corina Jordan (Keller Williams Realty), Allison Pickell (Coldwell Banker RPM Group), Larissa Binns (Coldwell Banker)

RESIDENTIAL REAL ESTATE AGENCY

Winner: Keller Williams Realty

Finalists: The Janet Jones Company, The Charlotte John Company, The Property Group, PorchLight Realty

SIDING, WINDOWS AND ROOFING

Winner: Pella Windows & Doors

Finalists: Garcia & Sons Roofing, Riley Hayes, Rock Solid Roofing, Accountable Roofing

SOLAR COMPANY

Winner: Seal Solar (North Little Rock)

Finalists: Delta Solar, Peak Power Solar, Enlighten Solar, Chreyton Electric

TATTOOS

Winner: 7th Street Tattoos

Finalists: Lucky Bella Tattoos (North Little Rock), Black Cobra Tattoos (Sherwood), Love Spell Tattoo, Nancy Miller Tattoo

TRAVEL AGENCY

Winner: Poe Travel

Finalists: Sue Smith Vacations (North Lit tle Rock), Small World Big Fun, West Rock Travel, Friends Tours & Travel

WEALTH MANAGEMENT

Winner: Edward Jones (Ben Moore)

Finalists: Merrill Lynch, Hatcher Capital Investments, Harkins Rafferty Wealth Management, Conger Wealth Management

WEB DESIGN

Winner: Rock City Digital

Finalists: Taneja Marketing Group, Rock Two Associates, Winning Local (Conway), Webmonster (Hot Springs)

WINDOW TINTING

Winner: D&D Sun Control, Inc. (North Little Rock)

Finalists: Arkansas RockStar Window Tinting, Jay’s Window Tinting (Sherwood), SunStop Window Tinting (North Little Rock), 007 Window Tinting (Benton)

MEDICAL AND PERSONAL CARE

ASSISTED LIVING FACILITY

Winner: Fox Ridge Luxury Senior Living

Finalists: Woodland Heights, Chenal Pines Retirement Resort, The Blake at Chenal Valley, The Manor Senior Living Community

AUDIOLOGY

Winner: UAMS Audiology Clinic

Finalists: Pinnacle Hearing, Chenal Hearing, Medical Hearing Associates of Arkansas, Hearing Center of Little Rock

BARBERSHOP

Winner: Dogtown Barber Lounge (North Little Rock)

Finalists: Jerry’s Barbershop, Park Hill Barbershop (North Little Rock), Handle Barbershop, Blade and Barrel (Jacksonville)

CARDIOLOGY CLINIC

Winner: Arkansas Heart Hospital

Finalists: Arkansas Cardiology (Baptist Health), CHI St. Vincent Heart Care, UAMS, ACH Cardiology Clinic (Arkansas Children’s Hospital)

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!”

We appreciate our loyal patients who support better health through chiropractic medicine.

Proud sponsor of the Arkansas Times Best of Arkansas 2024

Winner: Beverly Foster (Chiropractic

Finalists: Brady DeClerk (Omnis Re hab-Joint and Performance Center), Brad Chambers (Chenal Urgent Chiropractic), Dylan Machycek (Elite Spine & Joint), Lee Hodge (Abundant Health Chiropractic and Therapeutic Massage)

COSMETIC DENTIST

Proud sponsor of the Arkansas Times Best Of Arkansas 2022

Winner: 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. Ethan Erwin (SmileHot Springs), Dr. Sam Strong (Dentalways)

COSMETIC SURGEON

Winner: Dr. Suzanne Yee (Cosmetic & Laser Surgery Center)

Finalists: Dr. Rhys Branman (Cosmetic Surgery Center), Dr. Eric Wright (Wright Plastic Surgery), Dr. Gene Sloan (Aesthetic Plastic Surgery), Dr. Kris Shewmake (Shewmake Plastic Surgery)

COUNSELING SERVICES

Winner: Argenta Counseling

Finalists: Stacy Kinzler Therapy, Little Rock Counseling and Wellness, Arkansas Psychiatric Clinic, The Centers

DERMATOLOGIST

Winner: Arkansas Dermatology

Finalists: Pinnacle Dermatology, Franks Dermatology, Dr. Ray Parker (Dermatology Group of Arkansas), Dr. Andrea Mabry

DIET/WEIGHT LOSS CENTER

Winner: Baptist Health Weight & Nutrition Center

Finalists: Arkansas Heart BMI Institute, Natural State Health Center, Encore Medical Center, Arkansas Health & Nutrition

ESTHETICIAN

Winner: Sweet Aesthetics

Finalists: Megan Whitehead, Yousra Moussa Esthetics, Esthetic Excellence Academy, FaceLine Esthetics

EYEWEAR

Winner: UAMS Health Harvey & Bernice Jones Eye Institute Optical Shop

Finalists: Kavanaugh Eye Care, Burrow’s and Mr. Frank’s Optical, James Eyecare & Optics Gallery, Gulley Vision Clinic

FAMILY DENTIST

Winner: Jolly Family Dental

Finalists: Skinner Family Dental (Sherwood), Dean Dental Solutions (North Little Rock), Harris, Reynolds & Cason Family Dental, Ake Family Dentistry

FAMILY PHYSICIAN

Winner: Dr. Alison Richardson (Arkansas Family Medicine)

Finalists: Dr. Jeff Mayfield (Baptist Health), Dr. Kevin Heigel (Little Rock Family Practice), Dr. Kent Covert (Little Rock Family Practice), Dr. Kevin Roberts (Little Rock Family Practice)

FOOT & ANKLE SURGEON

Winners: Chelsea Matthews, Troy Ardoin (tie)

Finalists: Jesse Burks, Robert Martin, Lauren Price

GASTROENTEROLOGIST

Winner: Dr. Dean Kumpuris

Finalists: Dr. Dhaval Patel, Dr. Angelo Coppola, Dr. Whitfield Knapple, Dr. Scott Wofford

GROUP FITNESS INSTRUCTOR

Winner: Eddie Dunn (Esporta Fitness)

Finalists: Rachel Bryant Hunt (Embody Wellness), Kelley Sluder (Omnis Crossfit), Peter Vahjen (CliqueCycle), Stervin Smith (All Phases Core Fitness)

HAIR SALON

Winner: Bloom Salon

Finalists: La Belle Vie Boutique Salon, Carter | Miller Hillcrest, Salon Underground, JL Organics Beauty & Lash Studio (Conway)

HEALTH COACH

Winner: Rachel Bryant Hunt

Finalists: Rock City Complete Fitness, Kelley Sluder, Elizabeth Finch Wellness, Stephanie Newcomb (Unleashed Health & Fitness)

HOSPICE CARE

Winner: Arkansas Hospice

Finalists: UAMS Palliative Care Clinic, Baptist Health Hospice, Hospice Home Care, Circle of Life Hospice

HOSPITAL

Winner: Arkansas Children’s Hospital

Finalists: UAMS, Baptist Health, Arkansas Heart Hospital, CHI St. Vincent

IN-HOME CARE

Winner: CareLink (North Little Rock)

Finalists: Home Instead, Right at Home, Conway Regional Home Care Services, Superior Senior Care (Conway)

Little Rock), Massage Arkansas, Robert Dykes (Performance LMT)

MED SPA

Winner: Rejuvenation Clinic and Day Spa

Finalists: Ava Bella Day Spa, Radiant Wellness by S&S, Skin Fix Med Spa, Doctors MedSpa

MEMORY CARE FACILITY

Winner: Memory Care of Little Rock (Good Shepherd Community)

Finalists: Parkway Village, Superior Senior Care, Brookdale Chenal Heights, Avenir Memory Care

MENTAL HEALTH FACILITY

Winner: UAMS Psychiatric Research Institute

Finalists: The BridgeWay (North Little Rock), Methodist Family Health, Rivendell Behavioral Health Services of Arkansas, Catalyst Counseling (Conway)

NAIL SALON

Winner: Ethereal Nail Spa

JULY

NURSING HOME

Winner: Briarwood Nursing and Rehabili tation Center

Finalists: Chenal Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center, Nursing and Rehabili tation Center at Good Shepherd, Andover Place, Encore West Little Rock

OBSTETRICIAN/GYNECOLOGIST

Winner: The Woman’s Clinic

Finalists: Cornerstone Clinic for Women, UAMS Health Women’s Center, North Little Rock Women’s Clinic, Conway Women’s Health Center

ONCOLOGIST

Winner: Dr. Diane Wilder (CARTI Cancer Center)

Finalists: Dr. Lawrence Mendelsohn (Central Arkansas Radiation), Dr. Omar Atiq (UAMS), Dr. Thomas Sneed (CARTI Cancer Center), Dr. Balagopalan Nair (Baptist Health)

OPHTHALMOLOGIST

Winner: Dr. Tracy Baltz (Little Rock Eye Clinic)

Finalists: Best Nails, City Nails (North Little Rock), Fashion Nails, Cherish Nails

NEUROLOGIST

Winner: Dr. Ali Krisht (CHI St. Vincent)

Finalists: Dr. Lee Archer (UAMS), Dr. Anthony Davis (Davis Neurology), Dr. Rohit Dhall (UAMS), Dr. Sukanthi Kovvuru

NEUROSURGEON

Winner: Dr. Ali Krisht (CHI St. Vincent)

Finalists: Dr. Brad Thomas (Arkansas Surgical Hospital), Dr. Erica Petersen (UAMS), Dr. Gautam Kanu Gandhi (Baptist Health), Dr. Robert Ingraham (Arkansas Surgical Hospital)

NURSE INJECTOR

Winner: Amber Moody

Finalists: Lindsey Gillum, Paige Kelly, Joy Minton, Brande Daniels

Finalists: Dr. Edward Penick (Central Arkansas Ophthalmology), Dr. Paul Phillips (UAMS Health), Dr. Brittany Boyette (Sherwood), Dr. Joseph Chacko (UAMS)

OPTOMETRIST

Winner: Dr. Kathryn Brown (UAMS)

Finalists: Dr. Sophear Seng, Dr. Julie Dolven (James Eye Care), Dr. Brian Guice (Kavanaugh Eye Care), Dr. Derek Scott Long (Maumelle), Megan Shirey (UAMS)

ORTHODONTIST

Winners: Phelan Orthodontics, Wardlaw Orthodontics (tied)

Finalists: Daniel Orthodontics, Hodge Orthodontics, Vondran Orthodontics

ORTHOPEDIC SURGEON

Winner: Dr. William Hefley Jr. (Bowen Hefley Orthopedics, Arkansas Surgical Hospital)

Finalists: Dr. C. Lowry Barnes (UAMS), Dr. Gordon Newbern (Baptist Health), Dr. P. Allan Smith (OrthoArkansas), Dr. Jonathan D. Wyatt (OrthoArkansas), Dr. Jordan Walters (UAMS)

PAIN SPECIALIST

Winner: UAMS Division of Interventional Pain Medicine

Finalists: Arkansas Pain Management, Dr. Ahmed Ghaleb (Baptist Health), Little Rock Pain Management, Natural State Pain & Wellness

PEDIATRICIAN

Winner: Dr. Dawn Martin (All for Kids Pediatric Clinic)

Finalists: Dr. Leah Youngblood (Little Rock Children’s Clinic), Dr. Aaron Strong (Little Rock Pediatric Clinic), Dr. Josh O’Neill (Little Rock Pediatric Clinic), Dr. Liza Murray (UAMS)

PERMANENT COSMETICS

Winner: Chenal Skin Care Center

Finalists: Cara Colclasure, Nirvana Med Spa, EK Professionals Permanent Cosmetics & Tattoo Institute, Kristi’s Artistry of Semi-Permanent Cosmetics

PERSONAL TRAINER

Winner: Lee Ann Jolly (Jolly Bodies)

Finalists: Anna Bolte (Bolte Fitness), Brooke Walker (365 Fitness), Tina Glass (Results Studio LR), TJ Brown (Westside MMA)

PHARMACY

Winner: Cornerstone Pharmacy

Finalists: Park West Pharmacy, Kavanaugh Pharmacy, The Pharmacy at Wellington, Rhea Drug Store

PHYSICAL THERAPIST

Winner: OrthoArkansas

Finalists: Advanced Physical Therapy, Harris & Renshaw Physical Therapy (Sherwood), Peak Physical Therapy (Chris Robinson), Omnis Rehab: Joint and Performance Center

PROSTHETICS

Winner: Snell Prosthetics & Orthotics

Finalists: UAMS, Horton’s Orthotics & Prosthetics, New Hope Prosthetics & Orthotics (North Little Rock), Arkansas Prosthetics and Pedorthics (Benton)

REHABILITATION HOSPITAL

Winner: Baptist Health Rehabilitation Institute

Finalists: CHI St. Vincent Rehabilitation and Physical Therapy, Conway Regional Rehabilitation Hospital, Woodland Hills Healthcare and Rehabilitation, Mercy Rehabilitation Hospital

Winner: Fox Ridge Luxury Senior Living

Finalists: Good Shepherd Community, Chenal Pines Retirement Resort, Holiday Andover Place, Superior Senior Care

SPA

Winner: Ava Bella Day Spa

mal Hospital

YOGA STUDIO

Finalists: Arlington Resort Hotel & Spa (Hot Springs), Quapaw Baths and Spa, Rejuvenation Clinic & Day Spa, Doctors Med Spa

SPORTS MEDICINE CLINIC

Winner: OrthoArkansas

Finalists: UAMS Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine, Bowen Hefley Orthopedics, Arkansas Children’s Hospital Sports Medicine Clinic, Ozark Orthopaedics

THERAPIST

Winner: Maureen Skinner

Finalists: Liz Buchman, Glenn McCracken, Gipsye Robinson, Ralph Hyman

Winner: Blue Yoga Nyla (North Little Rock)

Finalists: Barefoot Studio, Arkansas Yoga Collective, Eden Salt Studio, Big Rock Yoga

Best Group Fitness Instructor

EDDIE DUNN

‘A SENSE OF PROTECTION’

IMMERSE ARKANSAS IS BUILDING A FIRST-OFITS-KIND YOUTH SHELTER IN LITTLE ROCK.

BY MILO STRAIN

Local nonprofit Immerse Arkansas’s forthcoming youth shelter, The Station, will be a dedicated place for 18-to-24 year olds who are homeless or have aged out of the foster care system and lack resources to transition to a stable adulthood. The shelter is under construction with a ribbon-cutting ceremony set for 10 a.m. Thursday, August 8, and Eric Gilmore, executive director of Immerse Arkansas, said he hopes to accept people into The Station by late August or early September.

“We’d love to have as many people as possible come out and help us celebrate the kind of milestone that this is for the community,” Gilmore said. “Everybody’s welcome.”

Located on Mary Street off of Asher Avenue in Little Rock, The Station cost $3.5 million to construct and includes 15 suites with private bathrooms, a shared kitchen and dining space, an outdoor recreation area, and office and therapy spaces.

The Station won’t be the first shelter for former foster youth, but Gilmore says it will be unique in that it provides every resident with their own room.

“If you don’t feel safe, you can’t heal, you can’t grow. So that was our number one priority, is something that felt safe, feels secure, feels like it’s got a sense of protection,” Gilmore said. “With that in mind, we set it up so that every young person has their own bedroom and bathroom.”

A common area, which Gilmore referred to as the “living hallway,” connects the 15 suites. Combining the use of natural light and artful lighting fixtures to create a space that feels both modern and welcoming, the living hallway will serve as a place for people to interact and work together.

“It feels like it invites the opportunity to dream beyond a young person’s current situation,” Gilmore said of the space.

A recent anonymous donation of $900,000 has fully financed the remaining construction, allowing Immerse to finish The Station debt-free. “We really didn’t want to go into a situation where we had to take out a loan. That’s just a tough thing for a nonprofit to do, and just creates a lot of weight,” Gilmore said. “We were thrilled when we found out that this donor wanted to make up that funding gap.”

Once The Station is open, young people can stay for about 60-90 days. In that time, residents will work with life coaches and therapists to start the healing process, find stable long-term housing and make a plan for the future, which looks different for every person depending on their situation and experiences.

SCM ARCHITECTS

CREATING COMMUNITY: Janet Schweiger (left) stands next to Eric Gilmore (right) in The Station construction site.

BRIAN

CHILSON

PRIMARY CARE: HERE FOR YOUR CHILD, EVERY DAY

Whether it’s treating a fever or giving an immunization, our primary care clinics across the state provide diagnosis, treatment and follow-up care for illnesses or injuries. We are committed to preventative care, including sports/physical examinations, newborn screens, behavioral/ mental health and child health maintenance.

Consistent care statewide

Personalized treatment

Telehealth services

Mental health experts We provide unmatched care close to home:

• Arkansas Children’s Hospital Little Rock Including After-Hours Clinic

• ACH Southwest Little Rock Clinic

• ACH Pine Bluff Clinic Weekdays: 5 p.m. - 9 p.m. | Weekends: 9 a.m. - 8p.m. or

and

“The goal is to do 24/7 admissions,” Gilmore said. “These are crisis situations, so [we] want to be able to meet that need.”

The vision for The Station, he said, started to form around 2012. “We had just been going a couple of years and we were like, ‘Oh man, we need a place where young people can immediately get off the streets when they need help,’” Gilmore said.

At the time, Gilmore and his wife, Kara, used houses and apartments to provide group housing for young people. “It’s really hard to take somebody who’s in a crisis and put them into some kind of group home,” Gilmore said. “It just wasn’t working.”

Gilmore said young people often end up at shelters “that do good work, but they’re typically designed for people in their 30s to their 50s.

“We just saw time and time again where people are getting sucked into things that were not good for them. They’re becoming further victims of abuse or exploitation, getting sucked into drugs, or getting into the mindset of being chronically homeless. Finally, with the help of a lot of people, we’re at the point where we can do something about it.”

The Station’s name is a reference to the story of a young woman the Gilmores cared for when they were working with teens in foster care in a group home. She inspired them to start Immerse Arkansas, they say.

“There’s this girl, Megan, who we cared a ton about. She came into foster care when she was 12,” Gilmore said. “Between the ages of 12 and 18 [she] just bounced around the system to 50 different placements.

“The day after her 18th birthday, her caseworker dropped her off at what used to be the Greyhound bus station in North Little Rock. She had one bag of clothes, one night’s worth of her bipolar medications, a one-way bus pass back to some family members she hadn’t seen since she was 12. And that was her launch into adulthood.

“We watched it happen and we just couldn’t look away. We knew we needed to do something.”

Immerse Arkansas has been working with young adults and children since 2010. In addition to Overcomer Central (The OC), Immerse opened a Conway location last year where “youth in crisis,” as Immerse calls them, can take a shower, do laundry, have a meal and learn life skills from mentors and coaches.

Mental health is a major component of the healing process at Immerse.

“When we were starting out, we defined the problem we were up against simply as beds. Like, there weren’t enough places for these young people to sleep in the state.” Gilmore said. “[We] quickly saw that wasn’t the right

lens to look at this through. This is a problem of trauma, abuse and neglect.

“So, our whole orientation for our program is around healing. The mental health piece of that is so critical in that process.”

Immerse provides therapists to “create space for young people to start to process and understand what they’ve experienced and, at that same time, start to build a vision of their future and what they want for their life,” Gilmore said.

Janet Schweiger, a student at the Clinton School of Public Service, said she wouldn’t have been able to finish her undergraduate degree at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock without Immerse’s support. “Growing up, it was pretty rocky with my parents. It was kind of unstable and it wasn’t really a good environment,” Schweiger said. “I got kicked out of the house for deciding to go to college, which makes no sense.

“I was couch-surfing for a while during that. Then I lost my scholarship at school. I had to stay with friends and their parents and they heard about Immerse.”

Schweiger said the feeling of community and the staff at Immerse had a major impact on her life. “[My coach] was really, really good. She was really supportive and helped me figure out different things like health insurance,” Schweiger said. “And then I had a mentor, Haley. We’re still really close and I sort of consider her like my sister.”

Schweiger said she thinks The Station will make young people more receptive to the idea of receiving support from a shelter. “I feel like it’ll make people who were hesitant be more open to getting help,” Schweiger said. “Especially it being this type of community where you have your own space. You have your own bathroom and you have therapy and all this support around you.”

That’s not to say residents won’t experience obstacles, Schweiger said.

“It might suck for a little bit. You won’t get along with everyone,” Schweiger said. “But if you just do what you need to do and just have an open mind and try to see the positive in everything, you can accomplish whatever you want to. … I don’t think I would be stable without Immerse.” She has a full-time job at U.S. Pizza Co., and she’s going to school in pursuit of a career as a public servant.

“Right now I’m leaning towards some kind of advocacy work for foster care youth, homeless youth,” Schweiger said. Learn more about The

and Immerse Arkansas, and find volunteering opportunities, at immersearkansas.org.

Rhea Drug Store

DON’T MISS THESE EVENTS!

Discover Trust Tree 2024

July 13

The Museum of Discovery

Arkansas Times Bloodies, Bubbles and Brunch 2024

July 20

Sunset Lodge at Rusty Tractor Vineyards

Cannabis & Wellness ExpoConsumer Day

August 17

Simmons Bank Arena

IV and the Strange Band w/ Holy Locust

Aug 23

Four Quarter Bar

DON’T MISS THIS!

BLOODIES, BUBBLES AND BRUNCH

CALLING ALL BRUNCH BEASTS AND BEAUTIES.

BY BECCA BONA

Can we all agree that brunch without bubbles and bloodies is just sad breakfast? If you and your crew answered with a resounding yes, then rise and dine; it’s time for your favorite shindig: Bloodies, Bubbles and Brunch. Join us at 11 a.m. Saturday, July 20, for a delightful morning at the Arkansas Times’ annual event sponsored by Land Rover Volkswagen of Little Rock. Indulge in delicious dishes from the best of the best in Central Arkansas’s brunch-sphere— including the Arlington Resort Hotel & Spa, Press Waffle Co. and The Rail Yard LR — all while sipping on refreshingly spiked beverages from Rock Town Distillery and O’Looney’s Wine & Liquor. Hosted indoors at the picturesque Rusty Tractor Vineyard’s Sunset Lodge, take in stunning views of 5,000 muscadine vines along McHenry Creek while listening to music from the Matt Treadway Trio. Don’t miss this opportunity to get your brunch on. Get tickets now at centralarkansastickets.com.

EDUCATE

WEEKDAYS AT 2PM

with Nichole Niemann THE SHOW

FROM BLUE TO GREEN

HOW A RURAL COUNTY SHERIFF BECAME A CANNABIS INDUSTRY EXEC.

BY GRIFFIN COOP

As a former Marine and state trooper, Lance Huey’s career path to being a marijuana dispensary executive bears a closer resemblance to “Walker, Texas Ranger” than it does to a Cheech and Chong movie.

Huey served in the Marines, patrolled eastern Arkansas as a state trooper, was elected to the Grant County Quorum Court and later became Grant County sheriff before heading up security for the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery, then a new state agency.

When the state medical marijuana industry was getting off the ground, Huey worked with White Hall marijuana cultivator Natural State Medicinals as a security consultant, advising the business on things like security cameras and fencing. Later, he joined the cultivator full time as its director of security.

In 2019, Huey joined the NEA Full Spectrum dispensary in Brookland (Craighead County) as the store’s general manager and, last year, was named the store’s chief operating officer.

Huey’s name might be familiar to Arkansas newswatchers. Before entering the marijuana world, Huey landed in the news in 2009 when left his job as sheriff to become the director of security at the lottery. The state agency was just getting off the ground and its high salaries were already under the microscope when Huey was hired as one its first 10 employees. Huey’s lottery salary of $115,000 a year was about $70,000 higher than his pay as sheriff, but Huey defended the figure in interviews at the time.

In 2022, Huey appeared in television ads supporting a constitutional amendment that would have legalized recreational marijuana in Arkansas. Huey, who grew up in Wynne and describes himself as “an old Northeast Arkansas boy,” appeared in the ad dressed in camo, driving a truck and carrying a gun in the woods. The ad gave the cannabis amendment a down-home, rural vibe, while also imbuing it with Huey’s law enforcement bona fides. Huey said on camera he was supporting the proposal to “safely legalize cannabis for adults” and championed

LAW ENFORCEMENT BONA FIDES: There are “a lot bigger problems” than Arkansans who possess a small amount of marijuana, Lance Huey said.

the millions of dollars the plan would have generated for law enforcement officers.

“I knew, as a rural county sheriff, that was much needed,” he told us in June.

His support came with a price; Huey said there were some “pretty stout opinions” from those in the law enforcement community, particularly those who didn’t know him. The officers who knew him personally may have disagreed with him on the issue, he said, but they didn’t treat him any differently.

Huey was also a petitioner on the campaign’s appeal to the Arkansas Supreme Court after a state governing body had refused to allow the amendment on the ballot. The Supreme Court later ruled in the campaign’s favor and allowed the measure onto the ballot.

Huey said some of the concern about his participation in the marijuana campaign has died down since the recreational marijuana amendment “went down smoking” in 2022. The measure failed by a vote of 56% to 44%.

Aside from the state medical marijuana industry, Huey has a firsthand perspective on how marijuana cases are handled by law enforcement. Many officers look at marijuana as something that’s illegal, but he said it’s not that simple. “My attitude was: It’s against the law, but so is speeding,” Huey said. There’s a big difference between trafficking drugs and carrying a small amount for personal use, he said, and it’s often not worth the effort to arrest someone for possessing a small amount of marijuana. Such an arrest would require the officer to process the suspect, take the

suspected marijuana, store it in an evidence locker, have it tested by a certified lab and send the test results with the case file to the prosecutor. If the suspect is ultimately fined for the offense, someone in the court system would have to track them.

“You tie up a number of people and a number of resources for that ounce or ounce and a half of marijuana,” he said. As an officer, Huey said he upheld the law, but also noted that officers in the field have discretion on how to handle the cases. There are “a lot bigger problems” than someone who possesses a small, usable amount of marijuana, he said. Huey was in law enforcement at a time when there weren’t as many cameras watching officers, and said it was easier then to “give a person a break” by dumping out a baggy of marijuana on the side of the road and letting the person go.

On a personal level, Huey said, he was impacted in the early 1990s when he saw his uncle’s struggles with pancreatic cancer become more manageable with marijuana. “I knew then that there was something to it,” he said.

Huey said he is not a medical marijuana cardholder and said he doesn’t have any of the qualifying conditions for obtaining a card in Arkansas. He’s not a marijuana user, but said he doesn’t have a problem with anyone who is. Huey also said he thinks a recent change to state law to allow medical marijuana cardholders to purchase firearms will have a big impact on people who are considering obtaining a medical marijuana card. “I was glad to see that the law did change to make it fair,” he said.

BRIAN CHILSON

Prolific Author Dr. Lou Turner

The Observer’s late father-in-law was a big old country dude who enjoyed eating at Golden Corral. He called it “The Trough.” The great American premise of the restaurant is that you can load up your plate and keep loading, without limit.

The Observer is a mere city slicker. But we came by our soft, layered cosmopolitan-dad physique honestly. It wasn’t until well into adulthood that we realized that what we thought of as “full” was what other people called “sick.” Golden Corral exists for this type of hunger. Its slogan is the “Endless Buffet,” which hints that finality and boundaries have no place in the ambitious eater’s righteous terrain. Sometimes, if you want freedom, you have to let yourself get corralled.

On a warm, cloudy day this May, the Woodfork family was on their way back to Mississippi from a weekend getaway to Hot Springs. They were hungry. “We were thinking of what we were going to eat,” Tameka Woodfork later recounted to KTHV, Channel 11. As one does.

“We decided,” she said, “to go to Golden Corral.”

They stopped at the Corral on Warden Road in North Little Rock. Lips moist and bellies growling, they no doubt had already begun to conjure the flavors on offer at the Steakburger Bar. They could not know what awaited them.

The Woodforks found a table and began to move their way around the buffet. Bourbon Street Chicken? Awesome Pot Roast? Why

GOLDEN BOY

not both? As they were filling their plates, meanwhile, Tayvia Woodfork, Tameka’s daughter, had gone to the bathroom. She never returned.

As they sat down to eat, they began to wonder what was going on, and after a time, they called to make sure she was OK. She was not OK: She was having what she thought were excruciating cramps, and said to call 911. They called for an ambulance and went to go check on her. Little is known about just what happened after that, but I can only assume there was knocking and there was screaming.

Tayvia Woodfork was having a baby. She was 37 weeks pregnant but had no idea. “We didn’t know,” Tameka told THV11. “I was like, this girl just had a baby.”

There are multiple names for this phenomenon, the Observer has learned from WebMD, and all of them hint at the visceral amazement we feel when we hear this sort of story: “cryptic pregnancy,” “stealth pregnancy,” “denied pregnancy.” According to WebMD, about one in 2,500 women do not realize they’re going to have a baby until delivery. As the daddy of two, the Observer admits to bafflement, but life is strange. We should be content to take our blessings however they come.

First responders arrived just in time and helped Tayvia welcome a boy to the miracle of existence in the Golden Corral bathroom. The child was named Tamaar Kylon Corral Woodfork. Here I must turn it over to the

THV11 reporters, because you can be in this game a long time and never get a quote this good:

“I knew we had to do something, but we didn’t want to put Golden, so we decided to use Corral,” Tameka explained. (The verb “explained” is often misused as a journalistic crutch, but this is perfection. Thank you, THV11.)

With all the commotion, the Woodforks didn’t have a chance to eat, alas. But the accidental midwives at Golden Corral made sure to offer them gift cards and a meal. “While it was surely a shocking turn of events,” THV11 reported, “the family is doing great and they already have their eyes on their next Golden Corral visit.”

God bless the Woodforks and God bless the Golden Corral. We do not give a number to the very first birthday, but we will always remember Tamaar Kylon Corral Woodfork’s day of birth as a special day. Our most ancient imperatives — to feed ourselves, to multiply — were intertwined in North Little Rock on May 6. There were many aromas, and many hopes. May the containers be refilled and may the heat lamp ever burn. May Tamaar prosper and one day have children of his own, and then grandchildren — and then yet more grandchildren, and then generation after generation after generation. Our inheritance and our bequest: Beautiful baby after beautiful baby, like an Endless Buffet, ever replenished, stretching out beyond our reckoning to the unknowable future.