TCB — March 9, 2016: Story of Glory

Greensboro / Winston-Salem / High Point triad-city-beat.com March 9 – 15, 2016

STORY OF GLORY

Two women who revolutionized women’s basketball PAGE 16

Bern rate PAGE 7

Bubba’s back PAGE 14

Dance migration PAGE 26

FREE

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March 9 — 15, 2016

Like a night at Bert’s

by Brian Clarey

26 UP FRONT 3 Editor’s Notebook 4 City Life 6 Commentariat 6 The List 7 Barometer 7 Unsolicited Endorsement

NEWS 8 Rs and Ds scramble for AG 10 District court judicial forum 12 GOP newcomers fight for shot at school board

OPINION 14 Editorial: A semi-stacked deck

14 Citizen Green: Ghosts of Clintons past 15 It Just Might Work: The pillow bib 15 Fresh Eyes: Trump’s people

COVER 16 Story of glory: Two women who revolutionized women’s basketball

CULTURE

GAMES 28 Jonesin’ Crossword

SHOT IN THE TRIAD 29 North Elm Street, Greensboro

ALL SHE WROTE 30 Sweet charity

22 Food: Eating old clothes 23 Barstool: Same old College Hill, but with twist 24 Music: Ampersand 26 S&S: One dancer’s migration

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

I couldn’t have cared less about that. I’d tell you, ‘If it isn’t a run, jump, throw or hurdle, I don’t do it.’

— DeLores “Dee” Todd, in the Cover, page 16

1451 S. Elm-Eugene St. Box 24, Greensboro, NC 27406 • Office: 336-256-9320 BUSINESS PUBLISHER Allen Broach

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CONTRIBUTORS

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ASSOCIATE EDITOR Eric Ginsburg

SALES EXECUTIVE Cheryl Green

NEST EDITOR Alex Klein

SALES EXECUTIVE Korinna Sergent

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EDITORIAL INTERNS Joanna Rutter intern@triad-city-beat.com

dick@triad-city-beat.com

lamar@triad-city-beat.com

cheryl@triad-city-beat.com

nest@triad-city-beat.com Carolyn de Berry Nicole Crews Anthony Harrison Matt Jones Amanda Salter Caleb Smallwood

Cover photography by Amanda Salter DeLores “Dee” Todd and Doreen Bryant, ACC women’s basketball pioneers

korinna@triad-city-beat.com

TCB IN A FLASH DAILY @ triad-city-beat.com First copy is free, all additional copies are $1.00. ©2015 Beat Media Inc.

Among the local literary luminaries gathered at Scuppernong on Wednesday night were former state poet laureate Fred Chappell, longtime Triad scribe Nicole Crews and author Quinn Dalton. Dalton on this night would read from her newest work Midnight Bowling, a novel of family intrigue and coming of age set in Sandusky, Ohio, where midnight bowling is a thing. Chappell, her literary mentor, came to support his former student. And Crews goes wherever the action is.

Besides their connection with words, the three also have influenced my own life and work. Another thing they have in common: They all used to drink at my bar when I worked at the former Mosaic/Bert’s Seafood Grille on West Market Street.

So even more than their work, like the bartender I was for so long I remember them by their drinks. It was a long time ago — more than 10 years since I hung up my hand towel and bottle opener — but a bartender remembers. At least he thinks he does.

Fred Chappell was a Fred Chappell was a Champagne guy, the Champagne guy, the good good stuff, Perrier stuff, Perrier Jouet if I remember right — at least Jouet if I remember when he drank with me, right. usually right around cocktail hour, very civilized. He’d drain a couple flutes, sometimes with his nose in a book, sometimes as the focus of a group conversation. I remember one night in particular, when I confessed to him my own writerly tendencies. He seemed to take a sort of pity on me that didn’t fully register then but that I now understand all too well.

Quinn Dalton was a wine-by-the-glass girl, pinot noir, pinot gris, maybe — maybe — a cabernet. I seem to remember her dining at the bar once or twice — on busy nights when the dining room was full, we killed it by convincing people to eat at the bar. The waitstaff, who ran our food and whose eventual tables we were plundering, was less than enthusiastic about our enterprise.

Crews didn’t so much drink at the bar as carouse throughout the whole building, hopping tables, making friends by the ashtrays on the patio, ordering drinks from random servers passing by.

By the end of my time at Bert’s, I was working for Crews at a statewide boating and travel magazine, a job that eventually enabled me to peel off of the restaurant business, which had served me well for decades.

I think about my years behind the bar all the time — every day, probably. That’s why, every time I see Fred Chappell, I have the urge to pour him a glass of bubbly.

triad-city-beat.com

EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK

CONTENTS

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March 9 — 15, 2016

ALL WEEKEND

Guilford Courthouse Battle reenactment @ 2332 New Garden Road (GSO) General Cornwallis reportedly said of this battle: “I never saw such fighting since God made me. The Americans fought like demons.” Damn straight we did. Hundreds of re-enactors in Revolutionary-era garb will recreate the battle that gave our county its claim to fame. The battle will carry on from Saturday morning to Sunday afternoon, so if you hear sounds like cannons this weekend, yes, those are actual cannons, aka ’Murca. Check out nps.gov/guco for more info.

THURSDAY Public sculpture lunch and learn @ Theatre Art Galleries (HP), 11:45 a.m.

Mural nerds and arts lovers, this one’s for you: Sculptor and author Maryrose Carroll discusses public art in North Carolina in this free talk. Her towering tree-like structures in Charlotte, Fayetteville and Hickory are credential enough. Lunch catered by Pepper Moon. Visit tagart.org/events to find out the price.

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CITY LIFE March 9 – 15

by Joanna Rutter

Ansel Adams: Eloquent Light @ Reynolda House (W-S) This much-awaited exhibit of celebrated photographer Adams’ prolific work comes to the Triad this spring. His photographs, taken through the figurative lens of his environmentalism, are a gorgeous look at the American West in the 1940s. It’s amazing that this world-class exhibit is coming exclusively to Winston, but then again, Winston’s arts scene never stops astounding us. The gallery opens at 9:30 a.m. on Friday. Get your ticket early at reynoldahouse. org for a specially designed “field guide” for the exhibit.

FRIDAY

Youth Arts Opportunity Fair @ Milton Rhodes Arts Center (W-S), 5 p.m.

Are you a parent? Are you already stressed out months in advance about having your kids home all summer with nothing to do? Well, you should be, but don’t panic yet. Winston’s got you covered. Quality outfits like Twin City Stage and Sawtooth share info about all their summer programming so you can start strategically blocking off weeks on the calendar now, and yes, that pro tip is free of charge. Visit Arts Council’s Facebook for further guidance.

Lost Highway film screening @ Geeksboro (GSO), 10 p.m.

Bill Pullman, Patricia Arquette and Balthazar Getty star in this puzzle-box thriller written

by David Lynch and Wild at Heart author Barry Gifford. The movie is notable for both its soundtrack with Nine Inch Nails, David Bowie, the Smashing Pumpkins and Marilyn Manson, as well as the fact that it features Richard Pryor, Jack Nance and Robert Blake’s last performances on film. Tickets at geeksboro.com/lynch.

Paddy’s Polar Plunge

triad-city-beat.com

SATURDAY

SUNDAY I, Anomaly EP release show @ the Garage (W-S), 8 p.m.

Winston outfit I, Anomaly, comprised of Cory Wood of Akissforjersey, Joshua Ling and Mark Wingerter, release their second EP Lost in the Waves. First listens of a preview single reveal soaring, distorted hooks over chugging rhythmic foundations. The Collection and Victoria Victoria join them. Definitely go for Ling’s stage presence, truly a delightful sight to behold: Think Chris Thile, but with a formidable beard. Visit the Garage’s Facebook page for details and tickets.

Hosted by

Greensboro Elks Lodge 602 Saturday, March 12th 12:00-1:30pm Please join us as we plunge to put the freeze on hunger Benefitting Greensboro Urban Ministry.

It’s the coolest thing you’ll do all year.

Start raising your funds now!

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REINVENTED

MONDAY

Tough Talks @ the YWCA (GSO), 6 p.m.

The sex talk is a heralded awkward moment (or glaring omission) in any parent’s relationship with their child. So how the heck can you make that uncomfortable chat go well?

That question is the first of many to be discussed in the Tough Talks series, a roundtable forum for parents on how to best broach difficult topics with their kids. It’s free, but space is limited; find the link to a signup form on the Facebook event.

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March 9 — 15, 2016 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Fun & Games Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

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A landlord’s nightmare I came across your article [“Condemned: Greensboro struggles with housing code enforcement”; by Eric Ginsburg; Feb. 18, 2015] and had to write about my nightmare with the city.

Last year I did the final eviction of a woman who works at the post office. After I had possession of the house she called the city inspectors, who weren’t at all concerned about who had possession, how far behind she was on her rent or how far behind I am on my mortgages.

While it was being painted they did a second inspection and the inspector listed that the switch and outlet plates were off (for the painter standing right there) the kitchen cabinet knobs were off (same reason) and the laundry room was dirty even though there wasn’t a clean floor in the house because of the stuff the tenant left behind and the painter’s mess. He listed the hood fan over the stove as missing even after I showed him the new one sitting on the floor.

He also wanted the gutters cleaned out and street numbers installed on the front of the house — the big ones on the mailbox don’t count.

And those are the tip of the iceberg. This house is no shack; it’s a three-bedroom brick — larger, newer and in better condition than my own house. It boggles my mind that our taxes subsidize this kind of thing. The tenant? I have to pay a detective to find out where she lives so I can take her to court for the rent and all the damage she did.

Steve Watterson, via email No schools for East Winston, no bond This information is quite disturbing [“Urban leaders dismayed that school bond neglects East Winston”; by Jordan Green; March 2, 2016]. When are we going to wake the hell up and fight for our children and our neighborhoods? Hell no, not one more new school in any other part of Winston-Salem.

They need to tear down Hanes [Middle School] and rebuild it again. Stop unfair bonds. Black lives do matter!

Cynthia Schley, via triad-city-beat.com Small media and gay gathering spots Thanks for your support of Q and your

dedication to Greensboro providing an alternative to big media [“Barstool: A gay bar reimagined”; by Eric Ginsburg; March 2, 2016]. Please add Q and Chemistry to your distribution list so we can offer your paper to our customers!

Drew, via triad-city-beat.com Highsmith for South Ward As the New South Community Coalition’s president, I have had the privilege to work with Carolyn Highsmith in her role as vice president and as one of its founders and in pursuing our mission of protecting the integrity of our neighborhoods. Through the coalition, Highsmith has been instrumental in ensuring the re-landscaping and beautification of West Clemmonsville Road after its major road expansion project while also working diligently with the police to try and keep every person healthy and safe when shopping at the South Park Shopping Center and throughout the neighborhoods of South Winston-Salem, especially the Konnoak Hills Community.

However, I most admire Highsmith for her selfless volunteerism and community work and her increasing experience in dealing with all level of issues at both the city and county levels.

In serving with her in our community, I have had the opportunity to observe Highsmith’s honest, pragmatic and hopeful insight into our community’s problems and needs, and her willingness to examine the issues and listen closely to the community’s questions and concerns — all of which sets her apart from her opponent’s expected and uninspired discourse.

So, I am writing today to express my support for her campaign and my intention to spread the word to others of the value of her policies and abilities, along with my respect and admiration for her generosity, intelligence and dedication. With proud enthusiasm, the New South Community Coalition and I endorse Carolyn Highsmith as the next South Ward City Council representative.

Rev. Robert E. Leak III, Winston-Salem

5 Phuzz Phest preview tracks

by Joanna Rutter

1. “Got to Go” by Boulevards

I’ve been on an almost-exclusive experimental hip-hop kick lately (Clipping, anyone?) and want to get out of that groove early in preparation for next month’s Phuzz Phest.

Raleigh R&B artist Boulevards is my transitional act of choice. He seems to be borrowing the same glitzy funk hooks Daft Punk and Bruno Mars have been inspired by in “Got to Go,” and the plucky bass line in “Sanity” is solid earworm material. Warning: the scandalous lyrics in “To Death” might make you spit out your coffee if you listen to it too early in the morning.

I’m told by one of my editors that Boulevards crushed at Phuzz last go ’round.

2. “Slumlord” by Neon Indian Phuzz Phest’s headliner first arrived on the cusp of the chillwave surge in 2009, with a kind of auditory chaos that, listening alone with headphones, makes you feel like you’re having a bizarre dream about being lost in an H&M store, which is why I’m pretty sure his big hits like “Polish Girl” and “Deadbeat Summer” are more suited to large, dancing crowds. Deeper cuts off of his newest album, such as the funky dance-hall “Slumlord,” are a more nuanced taste of Neon Indian’s electronic stylings.

3. “I Want to Be with You in the Darkness” by Skylar Gudasz Though Skylar Gudasz touts some boppy songs on her debut album, Oleander, I find myself gravitating

toward the curl-up-and-cry songs like “Car Song.” Gudasz’s voice has just the right grit and warmth to make ballads like “Darkness” swell perfectly over with piano-chord progressions that break your heart, but somehow do so gently. I hope she plays this song at Phuzz in between her more upbeat stuff. I’ll locate the nearest puppy to hold as a single tear streams down my cheek.

4. “Cups” by T0W3RS The track starts out deceptively simply, but a surprisingly layered wall of sound hits at the minute-and-a-half mark that perfectly encapsulates this Raleigh-based artist’s ability to play with expectations showcased on his latest album, TL;DR (that’s internet for “too long; didn’t read”). “Instillation,” also from that album, sounds like the guy from alt-J traded notes with the Runaways… and it works, which is maybe part of the reason this Phuzz Records artist is so locally beloved.

5. “Howlin’” by the Tills Speaking of the Runaways and the Phuzz label, let’s talk about the Tills.

Their work is a deliciously noisy mix of rock ‘n’ roll executed with raw energy and technical finesse. “Mary the Six Shooter” could be the soundtrack of a cowboy shoot-em-up movie, were it not for some toying around with chords that required multiple listens to fully appreciate. “Howlin’,” the titular track off of their new EP, is gonna sound awesome from a big stage with eardrum-killing speakers.

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Your Democratic primary pick?

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Eric Ginsburg: Bernie Sanders. Be it mass incarceration, fracking, the war in Iraq, gay rights or a host of other issues, I’ve yet to find an issue where I line up more closely with Hillary Clinton. It would look naïve of me to say a politician strikes me as trustworthy, but I will say that I really struggle to put any faith in statements Clinton utters. Do I think Sanders could accomplish tuition-free college as president? Of course not. But I’ll take his earnestness over Clinton’s pandering and deceptiveness on issues such as the Trans Pacific Partnership all day every day.

40 30 20

74%

Bernie Sanders

22%

Hillary Clinton

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4%

Cover Story

Readers: The Triad is feeling the Bern, apparently. A whopping 74 percent of readers who participated in our poll chose Bernie Sanders, while just 22 percent picked Hillary Clinton.

That’s almost as big of a blowout as Vermont. And to be fair, we did try and push this poll out to Clinton’s camp locally. The remaining 4 percent wound up with Rocky De La Fuente, who we’re going to ignore just like mainstream media does with Bernie.

New question: Who will win the men’s ACC Tournament?

Vote at triad-city-beat.com!

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Opinion

Jordan Green: If I were voting in the Democratic primary, I’d probably go with Bernie, but I can’t say for sure. In this election more than any other I can remember I feel that strategy has to play a larger role than who is the most qualified or most appealing candidate. I previously vowed to vote in the Republican primary for Marco Rubio, but he appears to be dead in the water. So now I’m planning to vote for Ted Cruz. Let me make this perfectly clear: I agree with exactly nothing this guy stands for, but my first priority is to limit Donald Trump’s delegate count and increase the odds of a contested GOP convention. The

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News

Brian Clarey: I have a friend who lives in Manhattan — a former Republican, in fact, who migrated over to the Ds during the Obama year of 2008. He’s become equally disgusted (almost) with the left, and with Hillary Clinton in particular after 2008. But he’s voting for her, because everything in his little world is going quite well. And New York City has nothing to fear from a Hillary presidency. But here in the United States of America, we could use a little shaking up. There are many reasons why I support Bernie Sanders for president, but this is as good a place to start as any.

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aim is to make sure Trump goes into the convention as weak as possible and that the convention is as chaotic as possible. If Cruz miraculously wins the nomination, all the better: I think his appeal is much narrower than Trump’s and he will be easier to beat by the Democratic nominee.

Up Front

Last week we asked about the Republicans (Rubio won, in case you’re wondering), and now we’re asking about the Democratic candidates ahead of the primary Tuesday. PS, early voting is already underway!

triad-city-beat.com

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Rocky De La Fuente

Culture All She Wrote

parents’ and grandparents’ propaganda-inspired nightmares; no matter how badly Vladimir Putin tries to prove otherwise, the Cold War is over. And, honestly, now that the wool of the Cold War has been lowered from our eyes, my generation recognizes that socialism succeeds in other nations with less wealth than ours. We know the policies advocated by Sanders are already implemented in most of the developed world, from Canada to Taiwan, whether you call them socialism or not.

Of course, the right wing still parades behind fear of socialism while disenfranchising its base to put more money in neo-robber barons’ overseas accounts.

But Americans should accept the fact: Our country basically practice democratic socialism already. We have since FDR’s New Deal.

We need a new New Deal — a Next Deal.

And Sanders’ policies could mend the strains our country has endured since the ’80s.

Call Sanders idealistic all you like. He’d fire back, “Why not?”

That’s why I endorse Bernie Sanders.

Shot in the Triad

treating downtrodden groups with benign neglect.

In the ’60s, Sanders fought in Chicago with the Civil Rights Movement while former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was campaigning for Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, who opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act on the basis of “states’ rights.” Sanders’ current platform addresses continued persecution of African Americans and other minorities by promoting, for example, demilitarizing police departments, whose violence against people of color reflects the racist power imbalance in society.

Sanders recognizes that black lives matter and that all lives matter. Along with his history of racial justice, he champions living wages, equal pay, universal healthcare, women’s reproductive rights, free college tuition, LGBTQ rights, Veterans’ Affairs expansion, rural development, restoring infrastructure, mental health reform and more.

That “single issue” sure covers plenty.

Pundits blast Sanders for his radical values, grounded in process and democratic socialism.

For one thing, my generation largely doesn’t fear the S word. Socialism is no longer the boogeyman of our

Games

by Anthony Harrison I support Bernie Sanders for president.

It may surprise no one that I support his left-wing populism. I’m young, white, male, leftist, recently matriculated from college with a humanities degree and struggling in the wake of the recession. I personify a cornerstone of his base.

But Sanders serves the interests of all, not just those like me.

The senator’s detractors claim he’s an unelectable, single-issue candidate whose call for economic revolution cannot fly in the current political environment.

In actuality, Sanders represents a perfect candidate for these tempestuous times.

It’s true Sanders focuses largely on economic inequality.

However, saying economic inequality represents a single plank platform is like saying sandwiches are just two slices of bread.

Fighting for true economic equality would ease tensions across all cultural lines — lines which disrupt the pursuit of happiness across the nation, lines drawn only deeper as time progresses.

Sanders sympathizes with the oppressed instead of

Fun & Games

Bernie Sanders

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Republican and Democratic hopefuls scramble to fill open AG seat

by Jordan Green

All She Wrote

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Up Front

March 9 — 15, 2016

NEWS

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Josh Stein

Marcus Williams

Jim O’Neill

Buck Newton

Two Republican candidates for attorney general emphasize willingness to challenge the federal government, while the two Democrats in the race talk about their records of using the courts to advocate for the downtrodden.

“Who’s going to stand up to Obama and keep us safe?” as images of Islamic militants flash across the screen. The narrator continues, “Jim O’Neill, tough prosecutor. Proven record of putting criminals behind bars. Jim O’Neill will fight the Washington politicians who are weakening America.”

O’Neill explained the intent behind the ad during a phone interview from a loud school bus en route to Atkins High School in Winston-Salem, where he was traveling as coach of boys’ lacrosse at Reynolds High School on a recent Friday afternoon.

“I’m a supporter of the voter ID law,” he said. “I believe that is something that we’re required to show a photo for almost everything else we want to do. I just don’t understand why that would be something the [US] Justice Department would oppose us on.”

The current Democratic attorney general has defended the law in court although he has said that he personally opposes it.

O’Neill’s quarrel with President Obama sheds some light on his view of race relations and law enforcement.

“I believe when you look at an incident like we had in Ferguson, Missouri, I feel like the White House abandoned

law enforcement,” O’Neill said. “They had a knee-jerk reaction. It brought all law enforcement into disrepute. As we all know, the law enforcement officer [who killed Mike Brown] was vindicated.”

As for the images of jihadists in the ad, O’Neill said they underscore his singular experience as a prosecutor.

“You look at it and say North Carolina at this point has been fortunate not to deal with a terrorist attack, but we’re seeing it going on across the country,” O’Neill said. “In my opinion, you want a tough prosecutor who is equipped to handle these cases. We have prosecuted gang members. Look at what ISIS is doing. ISIS is far more organized and far more wealthy. They also can be seen like a gang of terrorists.”

Buck Newton, O’Neill’s opponent in the Republican primary, pledges on his campaign website to “fight to ensure that the lawful decisions made by the citizens of North Carolina are not overturned by an out-of-control federal government that ignores the 10th Amendment of the Constitution.”

Expanding on his point, O’Neill said in an interview that he would have liked to see Cooper challenge a number of White House policies that are unpopu-

lar with conservatives.

“What we have is an imbalance between the role of the federal government and the states,” he said. “We’re seeing this in evidence more frequently with decisions to overturn the marriage amendment and unconstitutional executive orders dealing with immigration, Obamacare, rules from the EPA dealing with regulation of water quality and requirements for clean power plants that are designed to do nothing but raise our electrical bills. It’s been tremendously negative. The current attorney general is nowhere to be found.”

Newton indicated that not only would he be willing to use the power of the office of attorney general to challenge the federal government, but he’s also ready to impose the will of the state on North Carolina cities.

The candidate joined Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger in a press conference last week denouncing an ordinance recently enacted by the Charlotte City Council allowing people to use the bathroom that is consistent with their gender expression. The ordinance passed by a 7-4 vote after the city council heard from people about the potential for violence if they’re outed as transgender while trying to use the

North Carolina will have a new attorney general in 2017 no matter who wins this year’s election. Roy Cooper, the Democrat who has held the job for the past 16 years, is vacating the office to run for governor.

Two candidates are vying for each of their respective parties’ nominations.

On the Republican side, Forsyth County District Attorney Jim O’Neill is going up against Buck Newton, a state senator from Wilson and chair of the Senate Judiciary I Committee. The Democratic primary features Josh Stein, a state senator who previously served under Cooper as senior deputy attorney general, and Marcus Williams, a Lumberton lawyer who has made previous unsuccessful bids for US Senate.

Both Republican candidates are running against the Obama administration, with O’Neill emphasizing public safety while Newton takes a broader states’ rights stance.

The O’Neill campaign is running a television ad featuring a narrator saying,

vested property right. There are cases that are questionable. The other one is the fact that the Highway Patrol has to sue to get paid on the scale they were promised when the enlisted. That is one I would have to deliberate on.”

When asked if he would defend the state voter ID law that is under chal-

lenge by the US Justice Department, the North Carolina NAACP and other groups, Williams replied, “Someone in my office would have; it wouldn’t be me.”

Read this story online at triad-city-beat.com to learn more about the attorney general race.

Up Front News Opinion Cover Story

As an example of how he would exercise judgment in such cases, Stein said he would have defended North Carolina’s constitutional amendment restricting marriage to one man and one woman up to the point that the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Virginia’s prohibition on same-sex marriage violated the US Constitution.

Marcus Williams, Stein’s opponent in the Democratic primary, said he believes the attorney general has some latitude in determining which laws to defend in court.

“I believe there is a zone of discretion,” Williams said. “You have to look diligently at the resources that you have at your disposal. Then, if there’s clear law to the contrary of federal or established law, it’s a discretion of the attorney general.” He added that if Republican lawmakers disagree, they are free to hire their own counsel — an option that the current legislature has exercised.

Williams cited two cases as being potentially indefensible.

“One’s to eliminate the tenure of teachers,” he said. “That, I believe, is a

triad-city-beat.com

bathroom.

“This nonsense of who can go in the bathroom — why that is on Charlotte City Council’s mind is just very surprising that that is the first thing they would do,” Newton said. “This ordinance is unworkable. The city of Charlotte simply lacks the authority to pass an ordinance like this. These are decisions that should be made on a statewide basis. They knew that and acknowledged it. Would I intervene? Absolutely. The General Assembly should not have to come back into session if the attorney general would just do his job.”

With the Republicans almost guaranteed to retain control of the General Assembly next year, any Democrat elected to the office of attorney general will likely be called upon to defend laws he does not personally support. Josh Stein said he would apply a strict test.

“My oath is to swear to the uphold the Constitution of the United States, the North Carolina Constitution and the laws of North Carolina as long as they are consistent therewith,” Stein said. “I will defend state laws unless those laws are unconstitutional.”

Culture

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by Joanna Rutter

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March 9 — 15, 2016

Forum showcases district court judge candidates

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In a March 3 forum hosted by the Greensboro Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, 11 of the 12 candidates for five open 18th Judicial District court judge seats presented their reasons for seeking the position and answered questions from moderators Jeri Rowe and Brian Dunphy.

Assembled in a semicircle, the candidates for five Guilford County court judge seats up for grabs almost looked as if they were holding court at the Greensboro Shrine Club. During Thursday night’s forum, though, they were the ones on trial.

In a rapid-fire panel hosted by the Greensboro Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, incumbents and their challengers sat shoulder-to-shoulder, answering questions from moderators Jeri Rowe and Brian Dunphy about their eligibility for this demanding role in upholding local justice.

Four of the five district-court judge seats for the 18th Judicial District in this year’s election are currently held by Judges Jon Kreider, David Sherrill, Angela Foster and Randle Jones. Judge Jan Samet is vacating the remaining seat, leaving no incumbent.

All Guilford County residents live in District 18, and as the races are nonpartisan, only races with more than two candidates generate a primary.

The March 15 election will eliminate one contender from the race for seats currently held by Kreider and Sherrill, while other contests will only appear on the ballot during the general election this fall.

Sherrill, a soft-spoken former ICU nurse, cited his empathy as the reason

he wants to continue in his role. His challengers are Laura Cubbage and Ron Butler, the assistant attorney general for the state and a private practitioner of 30 years, respectively.

“It’s now or never! I’m not getting any younger!” Butler said as to why he chose to run. Cubbage provided a rationale of a different personal nature.

“I know what it’s like to want your marriage but it’s gone to hell, if I can say that… I am that story that needs to be told. I can look at people and know when they need a second chance,” she said.

Kreider faces Miranda Reynolds Reavis and Bill Davis in the primary, and one will be eliminated in the primary.

Davis and Reavis both have experience as public defenders — Reavis since 2011 and Davis for almost two decades — juxtaposed against Kreider’s longer career in private practice. Kreider was appointed by Gov. McCrory in October and touted conservative endorsements from Sheriff BJ Barnes and Congressman Mark Walker in his introduction.

Jones was appointed to his seat in March 2014 after a career in law enforcement — “I did CSI when it wasn’t popular or on TV” — and 18 years as the mayor of Stokesdale. Tonia Cutchin is running against him, and rattled off a list of roles demonstrating her dedica-

tion, such as working at a local law firm, public defense work and as a Boy Scout leader.

“I’m in court every single day,” she said. “I’ve practiced in every single room in Greensboro and High Point.

And account expenses? I could do that in my sleep.”

Judge Foster is running again for her seat, which she’s held since 2008. John P. Stone, her opponent, could not attend the forum due to a family emergency.

“It’s not an easy job,” she said. “It’s a difficult courtroom. I am tough. I don’t think everyone is happy with me. I have to follow the law regardless of whether they like me.”

Marc Tyrey is vying for the vacant position left by Samet alongside opponent Mark Cummings; both their careers have mainly been in private practice.

Tyrey said he would like to affect change by reducing docket numbers.

Cummings was concerned about racial and social inequity being reinforced by the justice system.

“We need to be honest with ourselves that justice is not blind ... I would know, I’ve been handcuffed because of the car I drove while an attorney. The disparity in our system is a civil rights issue.”

Reavis concurred later in the forum.

“The numbers don’t lie,” Reavis said.

“We do have a race problem.”

JOANNA RUTTER

Moderators asked two of the four female candidates questions related to their personal lives affecting their ability to perform the job; no male candidates were asked any questions related to their family or personal history, outside of their careers.

Cubbage had mentioned her experience as a victim and a plaintiff in her introduction, and Rowe later asked her if that history would affect her objectivity.

“In a lot of situations, if you haven’t experienced [the situation], you just don’t understand,” Cubbage said. “I disagree that a judge has to be dispassionate.”

After asking about her relatively limited experience, Rowe asked Reavis about her twins and how her role as a new mother would impact her duties if elected. There was an audible response from some audience members at the question. Rowe later clarified in an email to Triad City Beat that he wasn’t questioning whether parenthood would get in the way of Reavis doing her job, but rather how it might shape her worldview as a judge.

“This is what I assume you’d ask any candidate,” Reavis said after a brief pause, mentioning that Cummings had recently had twins as well. “I do my job.”

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March 9 — 15, 2016 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Fun & Games Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

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Republican newcomers fight for shot at school board

by Eric Ginsburg

Republicans Brian Pearce and Pat Tillman both hope to represent Guilford County School Board District 3, but only one of them will make it beyond the March 15 primary and face Democrat Angelo Kidd in the general election.

Luckily for voters, the two Republicans facing each other in the primary for Guilford County School Board’s District 3 present clearly distinguishable priorities and perspectives.

Residents who live in northwest Guilford County — picture a pie wedge starting in west-central Greensboro and radiating towards the county’s northwest corner — who select a Republican ballot in this month’s primary contest will have the chance to choose between two men with kids at the same school with varying experience and positions.

The winner will move on to the general election this fall.

Here are the two candidates, in alphabetical order.

Brian Pearce With a 5-year-old and a 3-yearold, Brian Pearce will have kids in the Guilford County Schools system for the foreseeable future. So when he felt like school administrators weren’t willing to listen to his concerns as a parent, Pearce said it motivated him to be the change he wanted to see.

Pearce, a product of public schools in three states including this one, moved to Greensboro after graduating from law school at Wake Forest University in 2003. He now works as a real estate litigator and commercial real estate transactions lawyer at Nexsen Pruet.

Pearce said his professional experience would benefit the school board on various issues including school construction, an area in which he said the board has struggled. The school board should consider leasing schools and including a maintenance provision rather than building structures, which regularly leads to cost overruns, Pearce said.

While he would be conflicted out, he added that he knows several developers who would be interested in the proposition, and claimed it could save money for Guilford County Schools.

Pearce cited other experience as

Brian Pearce

Pat Tillman

relevant too, including his past service as chair of the Greensboro Board of Adjustment, on the steering committee for the Greensboro Future Fund and the board of the Greensboro Jaycees. But before any of that, in person and on his website Pearce raises his experience as a father of a child on the autism spectrum as well as a typically developing kid.

His 5-year-old at Sternberger Elementary — where Tillman is also a parent — is on the autism spectrum, and the experience defines his understanding of the school system in a few ways. School administrators sometimes “put up a brick wall” to parents who are trying to be engaged, he said, when the school system should be doing everything it can to encourage more parental involvement.

“Let’s encourage a teamwork mentality,” Pearce said.

Pearce, like his opponent and Republicans running in other district races, is concerned about administrative bloat, pointing to the salaries of regional superintendents as an area that may be ripe for cuts. That money could be redirected to teachers, possibly paying them to spend more time after school meeting with parents, he said.

Though his kid is high functioning, it’s still been a struggle and has given him “a whole new level of empathy” for other parents, Pearce said. He rejects the notion that poor or overworked parents care less about their kids, and he’s seen the stereotype disproved.

“All parents care,” he said. It’s up to the school board to find better ways to engage more parents.

He’s lobbied at the state General Assembly for insurance reforms to cover

advanced behavioral analysis for kids who might be on the spectrum, earning him Autism Speaks’ National Parent Advocate of the Year award, Pearce said.

Given the success of Say Yes to Education, he wonders if there are more opportunities to raise money from or partner with private entities. He suggests building on existing programs to address the high child hunger rate in the county.

On school resource officers and charter schools, Pearce counseled pragmatism, saying both are here to stay and that the school board should focus on improving training for officers or finding ways to avoid introducing students to the legal system when possible and look for ways for charters and typical schools to learn from each other respectively.

Pat Tillman Growing up with parents who are both educators will do something to your understanding of school systems, just like being a parent to three kids in public schools will add to your knowledge. And if one of those kids used to struggle with behavioral issues, it only deepens your perception.

That’s how Pat Tillman begins his introduction of who he is and why he is running for Guilford County School Board. Tillman, the former chair of the Guilford County GOP and a Marine, ran unsuccessfully for an at-large seat on the board last time around. The principles behind his run are the same, and similar issues persist, but now he said it’s easier to run a grassroots, door-to-door sort of campaign.

Tillman’s top priority is literacy, and

he argues that while district officials tout a rising graduation rate, there is a disconnect because far fewer students are reading at grade level.

“We’re losing a lot of kids, and that’s frustrating,” he said, adding that the school system leaves students behind, even if those student are being promoted in grade level, Tillman said. And all too often, students wind up in remedial college classes, wasting time, money and possibly burning out on things that should’ve been tackled sooner, he said.

Like his primary opponent, Tillman said he is concerned that there’s money being wasted on regional superintendents and that officials are not doing enough to champion parents’ concerns.

Both said that the focus has shifted from the classroom and that the school board and administrators need to be better at listening to teachers and equipping them. Both candidates also criticized the current board for laying too much blame in Raleigh and not being proactive and realistic.

“I think the board’s become stagnant,” Tillman said.

The school board could do more to encourage parent involvement, he said, including nurturing initiatives like a dads’ group at Lindley Elementary that’s forming. Over the weekend, he went with a group of volunteers to prep bathrooms at Kiser Middle School to be painted, and the board could draw in more community support for such efforts, Tillman said.

Like his opponent, Tillman supports more public-private partnerships, suggesting opportunities for programs such as reading boot camps to improve literacy rates.

Increasing literacy rates could involve hiring more staff, specifically specialists, and teachers assistants are also a significant need, he said. Say Yes to Education found millions in school funds that could be better spent, he said, though organization spokesperson Donnie Turlington could not confirm an exact figure before press time as he is out of town.

Tillman is also concerned about the maintenance of schools, particularly the older ones, saying that a safe, functional environment is crucial to learning.

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There is plenty of service on his record to point to, most notably his time in the Marine Corps. He is on the board at the Servant Center, following his passion to help disabled veterans, as well as the board of Friends Homes where he said he derives pleasure from being a good steward.

“We should be giving back all the time to the extent that we can,” he said, adding that he will take the same passion he’s had throughout his life to “help the weakest among us” to the board if elected.

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He’d like to elevate the importance of vocational training and said the school system can do more to train school resource officers and build connections between the officers and parents, adding that the officers are “an asset” to the county school system.

Two years ago, Tillman said, he was charged with driving under the influence, an incident that he deeply regrets and said does not define him. He said that just like “one act of kindness does not make you a saint,” this mistake that he isn’t proud of doesn’t overshadow “a lifetime of service.”

Culture Fun & Games Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

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March 9 — 15, 2016 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Fun & Games Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

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OPINION EDITORIAL

A semi-stacked deck The RFP issued by the city last Tuesday afternoon had become the talk of downtown Greensboro before DGI President Zack Matheny had finished his breakfast at Smith Street Diner on Wednesday morning.

“It’s a big day,” he told a newspaper delivery driver, mid-biscuit.

The request for proposals concerns a pot of money — collected via a special tax for business and property owners in the Downtown Business Improvement District — that had heretofore been earmarked for Matheny’s organization but now, after passage last year of a law initiated by state Sen. Trudy Wade, has been untethered.

It basically means that any entity in the city can make a pitch to undertake the tasks currently performed by DGI, and in the process capture just about all of its revenue stream, which is roughly $600,000 a year.

The RFP went out via email to 25 recipients, among them downtown developer Eric Robert, who has been anticipating the release of these funds almost since he left the DGI board in January 2015.

Also on the list: the Greensboro Convention & Visitors Bureau, the Greensboro Merchants Association, the Nussbaum Center for Entrepreneurship, the Greensboro Partnership, Action Greensboro, Elsewhere artist collective, a handful of PR and advertising agencies and downtown consultancy groups — as well as to DGI itself. But anyone with a tax ID number can apply.

The RFP is broken down into five categories: economic development services, planning and development, marketing/communications, public-space management and events management.

The language of the RFP is hazy — it seems that proposals ideally should address every category, including any outsourcing plans, but it seems that consideration might be given to entities cherrypicking certain categories — say, marketing. But the language of the RFP and a reply to a direct question indicates that the city would prefer a single purveyor for this contract.

And as it stands, among those invited to participate, just a few have the experience and economic muscle to meet all these demands.

The GMA could do it. So could the CVB, though they are not located downtown. The Greensboro Partnership could handle the duties, and they could probably use the money. And Action Greensboro, though it technically operates under the auspices of the partnership, could also make a legitimate play for the contract.

And, of course, DGI has some experience delivering this array of services for the stated price.

So in some ways, it appears, the fix is in. Unless the city opts to break the contract into separate tranches, which the fine print of the RFP says it has the right to do, or unless Robert assembles a dream team of downtown development superstars in the next two weeks, the contract will go to one of the usual suspects.

So the question becomes the actual intent of Sen. Wade’s law — whether it was a principled stance against taxation without representation, or a pointed disruption of the seamless flow of BID money from city coffers into DGI’s bank account. Or perhaps it was just to cause a general chaos in the city where she once sat on council. It wouldn’t be the first time.

CITIZEN GREEN

Ghosts of Bill Clinton’s past, Hillary’s future Bill Clinton’s stop at Elon Law School in downtown Greensboro on Monday carried a melancholy tinge in what should have been an invigorating rally for the undisputed Demoby Jordan Green cratic frontrunner.

Although Hillary has a clear path to the nomination, time is not on the Clintons’ side. This isn’t the first time Bill has campaigned in North Carolina as a surrogate for Hillary: Eight years ago he cautioned against the unrealistic promises of an insurgent candidate named Barack Obama. Today, as the former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton has inherited the mantle of Obama, the cautious president maneuvering within the limitations of Washington politics.

Bill talked about the gap between Obama’s positive economic report in his last State of the Union address and personal challenges of many Americans, counseling patience with an argument that recoveries from serious financial crashes historically take about 10 years.

“Why is everybody so torn up in this election?”

Clinton asked. “Why do they have a food fight every time they have a Republican debate? Because too many people look at that beautiful picture that the president painted, and they cannot find themselves and their families in that picture to save their lives. That is the space in which this election is taking place.

“We got the jobs back early, but not the pay,” he continued. “So people are full of anxiety and anger, fear, all kinds of stuff.”

People begin to despair when they stop believing that they have any realistic expectation of improving their condition, he said.

“You think you cannot give your children a better future than you had,” Clinton said. “So what we have to do is put everybody in the picture the president painted. That’s why Hillary’s running for president — so we can all rise together.”

The problem with their message — to hang on a little bit longer — is a sense among many Americans that maybe this isn’t the slow curve of the recovery, but rather its plateau. Most understand that the hollowing of the American economy has been underway for decades, whether it was the overleveraged personal debt that sustained the housing bubble of the 2000s or the ramp-up of mass incarceration that artificially reduced the

unemployment rate in the 1990s.

Arguing for incremental progress against Bernie Sanders’ “political revolution,” Clinton ran through policy prescriptions against barriers to shared prosperity. He said the government needs to make it affordable for community banks to make small-business loans, without explaining exactly how to make that happen. The Affordable Care Act needs to be expanded, he said, rather than replaced with single-payer. And he said that Hillary’s plan for relieving debt from student loans “works better” than Bernie’s promise to make college education free. None of it exactly lit the crowd on fire.

Riffing on policy like the college professor he once was, he argued a limited government position that sounded remarkably like Clinton of the 1990s.

“The people who can pay a little should pay a little and upper-income parents should pay for their own kids’ tuition,” he said. “No point in recycling it through the government. Why do I say that? Because we need to ask the people who have made money since the crash — the highest income people — to pay more. If you’re gonna raise taxes on me, for example — and we always paid the maximum rate — what I want to do is for you to take the money and put the American people back to work.”

One of his loudest applause lines came for one of the issues to which he gave the most scant attention — prison reform.

“We have too many young people in prison for too long for nonviolent offenses,” Clinton said.

“But it’s important before they get turned out that we give them the education and training they need to get a job when they get out.”

That piece of wisdom would have helped 22 years ago when President Clinton signed the 1994 crime bill, eliminating Pell grants for lower-income prisoners to pursue post-secondary education during incarceration. And it would have helped in 1998, when Clinton signed the Higher Education Act, with a provision to deny federal student aid to individuals convicted of drug-related offenses. (For the record, Sen. Sanders voted for both bills.)

There are dangerous winds of white nationalism blowing on the right, and a revived socialism troubling the waters on the left. Holding the middle course, the Democratic Party’s elder statesman offered reassurance.

“If you get rid of the barriers and you build the ladders,” he said, “we’ll be fine.”

The question is whether the American voters will believe it this time.

Trump’s people

IT JUST MIGHT WORK

The pillow bib

by Jordan Green

Opinion Cover Story Culture Fun & Games Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

Daniel Bayer is a musician and writer who lives in Greensboro.

News

Velveteen. It wouldn’t hurt if the pillow were fashioned into twin mounds roughly proportioned over my chest.

Get the picture?

I can hardly imagine wearing something so ridiculous outside the house, so I say the louder and more obnoxious the design the better. A patchwork quilt pattern would be a start. Star Wars — why not? Or how about Barney, America’s favorite purple dinosaur?

I’m feeling generous, so if anyone is interested in patenting this brilliant idea, go for it. But if you start manufacturing pillow bibs, would you mind sending me one?

that undermined both the upwardly mobile “American way of life” and the various government policies and programs that helped maintain it, conservatives promised to protect white Christians from minorities, the LGBT community, atheists, empowered women and pretty much anyone who didn’t fit their rather limited definition of what a “real American” should be. Trump upended this bait-and-switch by adding rage over job outsourcing and stagnant wages to the usual Republican rhetoric about terrorist threats and “welfare queens.” But what finally caused the decades-old “racial-religious security over financial security” trade-off to break down?

The short, Weimar Republic answer would be humiliation over failed military adventures abroad and economic stagnation at home. In this scenario Trump is merely Hitler 2.0, with a bad combover replacing a silly moustache, and the Republican Party is merely the victim of the proverbial one straw too many on the camel’s back. But the long explanation is that it’s rooted in more uniquely American misunderstandings of hard work, wealth and success, the kind that leads people to decry “socialism” while collecting their Social Security disability checks, or to vilify “freeloaders” while accepting food stamps.

Brought up to believe that success is the result of their own hard work, they fail to see the collectivism that sustains them in their everyday lives, or they transfer their resentment of their own dependency onto convenient scapegoats pointed out by helpful demagogues like Trump.

Even if Trump fails to get the nomination or win the general election, the forces behind his success aren’t going away. Will the Republican Party potentates tell themselves: “Whew, that was a close one. In the future, let’s drop the scapegoating and race-baiting?” Or will they simply revert to the more genteel, pre-Trump style of white resentment politics? If I was a betting man, I’d place money on the latter. Until our politics and culture reflect a more realistic view of how capitalist economics actually work, we’ll continue to look on with dread and fascination, awaiting the rise of another Trump.

Up Front

Every parent of a small child knows that kids can be at their most ungovernable when they’re fighting sleep.

Learning some tricks to ease the transition — singing, cuddling, bouncing, whatever — is essential to maintaining parental sanity.

I’m at a fundamental disadvantage.

Let’s just say that when one parent comes in the lovable form of a soft, fluffy cloud, it’s sets an impossibly high bar. I, on the other hand, am built like a bony scarecrow.

It’s both comical and cruel when my two-and-a-half-year old tries to nestle her head into my shoulder to find a snuggly place to rest, shifting this way and then that only to bump into a sharp clavicle.

I exaggerate the challenges a little bit, but it is absolutely true that a couple days ago I resorted to carefully lying down on the couch with her head positioned on my chest so I could get her to sleep.

Now, I have observed these ingenious devices called bibs.

The ones we have are plastic instead of cloth and come equipped with an open pouch to catch falling food. They’re easy to clean. But I digress.

The point is they snap easily around the child’s neck.

It struck me that I need something similar that I can fasten around my neck, most likely with Velcro. Instead of a pouch for catching dribbles of liquid and stray food, it would support basically a pillow designed to create a comfortable place for a child to nestle her head. It should probably be filled with some kind of light, fluffy material like down feather and covered in

Like most sane Americans, I’ve been watching Donald Trump’s increasing electoral success in recent

by Daniel Bayer weeks with a mix of apocalyptic dread and morbid fascination. We tend to take the stability of our large institutions, such as our national government and political parties, for granted; revolutions and upheaval are things that happen somewhere else, not here. But as Trump’s campaign progressed from xenophobic Hispanic-bashing to a surreal debate exchange about the size of his reproductive organ, with each step matched by an exponential increase in his support among Republican voters, it becomes hard to deny that something very different is going on here, that a shared national sense of how things are done in this country is unraveling at a speed few of us could have predicted just a year ago — well, unpredictable if you lived in the bubble that apparently surrounds our political leadership.

As I read the stories about Trump’s supporters, I feel an uneasy sense of familiarity. The kind of people who would flock to his quasi-authoritarian “movement” are not strangers to me. I’ve worked alongside them in restaurants and factories, lived among them in the small town where I came of age, sat across the table from them at family gatherings and encounter them on my social media feed.

I’ve listened to them rant about Obama’s “socialism,” complain about how the working man just can’t make it these days and generally express a growing sense of anger at their own dwindling standards of living and declining cultural dominance. I’ve even memorialized them at times in my songwriting, articles and blog posts; the best advice for a writer is to write about what you know, after all. They are, almost without exception, white.

At the very least, Trump’s populism exposes a longstanding con played upon working- and middle-class whites by conservatives in general and the Republican Party in particular. In return for their acquiescence on a “free trade” philosophy

triad-city-beat.com

FRESH EYES

15

March 9 — 15, 2016

STORY OF GLORY Two women who revolutionized women’s basketball

Cover Story

by Anthony Harrison

16

Syracuse University forward Briana Day’s layup beat the buzzer, but it only softened the loss.

As cannons spewed a rainbow of confetti and balloons of every color wafted from the rafters of the Greensboro Coliseum, the Notre Dame University band blasted the greatest fight song in sports — the Fighting Irish’s “Victory March.”

Notre Dame secured their third-straight conference title by handing the Lady Orange a decisive defeat, 68-57, in the 2016 ACC Women’s Basketball Tournament championship game on Sunday.

The ACC named senior guard Madison Cable tourney MVP. She’d sunk six threes but bashfully shook her head as verdant fans thundered with cheers and applause.

Techies rushed the podium and awards table to midcourt as soon as celebrating players left the floor. The young women on the Notre Dame squad received hunter-green championship shirts, blackbrimmed caps emblazoned with the championship logo and statuettes — miniature replicas of the elegant ACC championship trophy.

The opulence and prestige of today’s tournament was just a dream 30 years ago.

It evolved dramatically in that time, thanks to visionaries like former ACC Assistant Commissioner Dee Todd and behind-thescenes champions of the game like officials

observer Doreen Bryant.

Todd and Bryant sat across from each other at Elizabeth’s Pizza on Lawndale Drive in Greensboro. After catching up a bit with some small talk, as old friends are wont to do, one of them glanced up at the TV showing ESPN’s “SportsCenter.”

They started talking shop.

“I just saw something where Louisville got sanctioned in that sex scandal?” Todd asked.

“Mmhmm,” Bryant replied with a somber nod. “They can’t play in the postseason this year. Not the ACC, not the NCAA.” Todd could only shake her head.

“We don’t help these young people make good decisions because we keep bailin’ ’em out,” Todd said. “Dealing with young people now — they just know everything,” Todd added.

“They think,” Bryant quipped.

“I’ve always said that high-school boys should watch college women’s basketball,” Todd continued, “because it’s so fundamentally sound. You find very few high-school boys who are playing above the rim, you know? So the great fundamentals that you’re getting from the women’s game…”

She trailed off, again shaking her head.

“But they would never see it that way,” Todd concluded.

Dee Todd (left) and Doreen Bryant stand before a legacy of greatness they fostered. Todd serve from 1988 to 2001; Bryant observed and evaluated officials and referees in the ACC, Southern C

DeLores “Dee” Todd broke barriers from the beginning.

Todd studied pre-med at Winston-Salem State University in the late ’60s, then moved to Chicago. There, she earned a master’s in human relations at Governors State University, worked towards a doctorate in behavioral psychology at Northwestern University and coached high school track.

She was beautiful, too. Several people suggested she become a model.

“I couldn’t have cared less about that,” Todd remembered. “I’d tell you, ‘If it isn’t a

run, jump, throw or hurdle, I don’t do it.’”

Eventually, she relented and modeled for occasional print work by the agency handling Kellogg’s account.

In 1980, the agency asked if she’d do a photo shoot for Corn Flakes.

“I was fussin’,” Todd said. “I was saying, ‘I don’t look like that.’”

In the photo, Todd’s enormous bouffant hairdo makes her look as though she was about to step onstage with the Supremes.

“They might’ve drawn that in, because I don’t remember wearing my hair like that,” Todd laughed, looking at the shot on her

ed as assistant commissioner of the Atlantic Coast Conference Conference and Big South Conference for 15 years.

phone at the pizzeria. “People didn’t know how to photograph dark hair back then.”

The campaign proved to be a cultural landmark: She was the first African American to appear on the box for one of the world’s most popular cereals.

“I had no idea how big that was,” she admitted. “I was just in the right place at the right time.”

After the buzz from the Corn Flakes campaign died down, she began coaching track at Northwestern in 1983. There, her fated trajectory began, but, again, not without protest.

AMANDA SALTER

Todd approached her supervisor to ask for time off to focus on an internship for her PhD. Her supervisor discouraged her from continuing, saying a doctorate might hold her back; employers would assume she’d request higher pay.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Todd recalled. “I just thought, I earned it, so why not?”

Again, Todd relented.

“In a way, I’m glad I did,” Todd admits.

“As I reflect back on my career, I don’t see one place where it would’ve helped me.”

From Northwestern, Todd then became a track and field coach at Georgia Tech.

The ACC distinguishes itself as the first conference to hold a women’s basketball tournament in 1978, four years before the NCAA conducted one. While the conference prides itself for a progressive attitude, its brainchild survived a rocky infancy.

Initially, the tournament venue changed annually, passing between schools’ host cities: Charlottesville, Va. Raleigh. College Park, Md. Clemson, SC. Raleigh again.

For the 1983 tournament, the ACC landed in Fayetteville at the Cumberland County Arena. There, it not only settled, but stagnated.

Todd found the arrangement unsatisfactory.

“I went for a site visit,” Todd recalled, “and I said, ‘Are you kidding me? This place is a dump.’ Women, they felt like, had been coming here long enough. And it was really third class.”

The sub-par amenities didn’t stop with the venue.

“I went to a men’s tournament, and the difference was night and day,” Todd said.

“Men got elaborate gifts; women got a T-shirt.”

Additionally, the ACC didn’t provide the women’s tournament with services taken for granted in the men’s game.

“We didn’t have a tournament doctor or a team doctor,” Todd said. “They volunteered, just so that the women would have extra things. I say ‘extra,’ because that’s how they looked at it.”

After two years, Todd decided the bare minimum wouldn’t do. Instead of acquiescing and compromising, she took action.

First step: establishing the tourney in a different town.

Todd took bids from several East Coast towns and eventually granted the privilege to Rock Hill, SC, home of Winthrop University.

“One of the things [the conference] stipulated was they didn’t want to go to the campus of another [ACC] school,” Todd said. “Winthrop University‘s coliseum sort of sits off campus. You didn’t necessarily need to say, ‘We’re at Winthrop;’ you could just say, ‘We’re in Rock Hill.’”

With a finer venue in place, Todd took another bold step toward legitimacy: She pushed to broadcast the games on live television.

“At the time, I’d sat in meetings where I actually heard people say, ‘Nobody wants to watch a bunch of women throwing up

Dee Todd’s historic shoot for Kellogg’s.

triad-city-beat.com

Soon enough, she again found herself at the right place at the right time.

In 1988, after receiving a substantial grant, the ACC began improving different programs including drug education, compliance and — importantly — women’s basketball. The conference was looking for a new assistant commissioner who would prioritize the women’s game.

Then-ACC Assistant Commissioner John McCrone wanted to hire a woman who’d been a Division-I coach.

“He believed coaches understand the needs of coaches, because you’d been in their seat,” Todd said.

McCrone personally endorsed Todd. She interviewed for the position in Greensboro and was hired, again making history — she became the first female assistant commissioner of the ACC. Todd compromised in the past, but now she held authority to impose change. She took her charge seriously.

COURTESYIMAGE

the ball — running ’round the court looking like men,’” Todd said. “The only thing they wanted to do was a tape delay, because they didn’t want to put the money into live TV. So we went with that for a couple of years, fighting to get on.”

The tournament needed the right game at the right time.

The 2016 tournament witnessed early-round stunners that would’ve convinced any early-’90s network executive to broad-

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Cover Story

March 9 — 15, 2016

another ZIP code at the 8-minute mark.

Thomas found her voice in the fourth quarter and got loud. She blew the lid off the game in the final 10 minutes, scoring 11 points off a trio of threes and a slashing layup.

Her season-high, 21-point performance stunned the vicious Seminoles.

Miami humiliated their biggest, baddest rival with the final score 74-56.

The Hurricanes had made tidal waves. It was the very essence of March Madness.

You should’ve seen it.

University of Miami guard Jessica Thomas shoots in double coverage. The Florida State Seminoles tried their best to shut her down, but Thomas proved fatal from beyond the arc.

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cast women’s basketball.

On Wednesday, in the first game, UNC-Chapel Hill forced overtime with the University of Pittsburgh after Tar Heel guard Jamie Cherry sank a Steph Curry-esque three-pointer as time expired; Carolina lost to the resurgent Panthers. The next day, Wake Forest University Demon Deacons waged war against the fresh, well-rounded Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, nearly beating the odds until a last-minute layup took a bad roll off the rim.

No Cinderella teams survived after the second round, but chances for upsets remained.

No. 5-seed University of Miami easily trounced Pitt on Thursday. But their cross-state rivals waited for them the next day.

Though the Hurricanes possessed strong weapons, the Florida State University Seminoles’ roster was loaded for bear.

The fourth-seeded Lady ’Noles ranked highly on national polls entering the tournament — 14th in the AP Top

ORIN A. DAY DWHOOPS.COM

25 and 10th in the USA Today/Coaches Poll.

They’d also twice beaten the ’Canes.

Bad blood and a chipped shoulder meant Miami had something to prove. That attitude led to the most exciting game of the tourney.

The first half played out like an episode of cops and robbers — sharpshooting and enough steals to convince you these women could make fortunes picking pockets.

Both teams shot exactly 38.9 percent from the floor in the first quarter, but Seminoles guard Emiah Bingley snuck in an extra point with a three just before the five-minute mark. Florida State led 17-16 at the start of the second quarter.

Miami would’ve led at the half if it hadn’t been for another Bingley buzzer-beating three tying the game.

Out of the locker room, stifling defense from both teams initially halted the shootout. The question lingered: Who would land the first offensive blow?

Point guard Jessica Thomas answered with a three from

Back in the early ’90s, Dee Todd needed a game like this year’s Miami-FSU matchup to convince broadcasters that women’s basketball was a marketable venture for live TV. On March 8, 1993, she lucked out.

“Home Team Sports out of Maryland — I think they’re part of Comcast now — they said, ‘Okay, we’ll do one live game for the women; it’ll be the final game,’” Todd recalled.

In that championship, the University of Virginia Cavaliers faced the University of Maryland Terrapins — the latter, winners of 10 ACC titles, now part of the Big East.

Virginia and Maryland had been ranked 1 and 2 in the nation respectively that entire season, and the two teams fostered back-and-forth animosity.

“During that time, we had a big game in [Maryland’s] Cole Field House — which ended up being a televised game — and it was packed,” Todd said. “People were literally hanging off the ceiling.”

The results of the 1993 championship game exceeded her wildest expectations.

“That thing went into three overtimes,” Todd said. “Every time I’m looking up at the clock, I’ve got the awards table ready to go, the buzzer goes off and I’m ready to take the table, but ‘Bing!’ And a shot goes in, and I’ve gotta bring the table back.”

UVA eventually prevailed as ACC champs, 106 to 103, but both teams changed the course of the women’s tournament for the better.

Following the projected end time of the women’s championship, Home Team Sports was scheduled to go live with the final game of the Colonial Athletic Association’s men’s tournament. However, due to the multiple overtimes, Home Team had to delay showing the CAA game, so most viewers saw the thrilling conclusion to this epic match.

That championship game changed how broadcasters viewed women’s basketball: It had potential.

Todd didn’t rest on her laurels. She accommodated the growing popularity by relocating the games to Charlotte’s Independence Arena in 1997. Though Todd played no part in the next move, the tourney then settled in the Greensboro Coliseum three years later.

“By that time, they were able to get the same dollar-amount gift as the men,” Todd said. “Whatever the local organizing committee decided to give to the men, the conference would kick that amount to the women.

Before all that — mere months after the ’93 championship — UNC-Chapel Hill recruited a dynamic new basketball player who unintentionally transformed the women’s game: future Olympian Marion Jones.

“I’m down in Chapel Hill, and I’m sitting right almost on the floor, and Marion’s so fast that she inbounds the ball, and she just about beats the ball to the person she’s passing to,” Todd said. “Two officials — they could not keep up. It was like a track meet.”

At that time, women’s basketball operated with two-person officiating crews: one lead referee at the baseline under the basket and another official, the trail, in the backcourt or the wings of the three-point line. The configuration proved taxing both physically and mentally.

Something had to give.

“Pat Wall, who was my counterpart in the SEC, we got together and said, ‘We need to go to three-person officiating,’” Todd said.

Thus, Todd initiated the officiating program already commonplace in men’s basketball.

The proposition seemed essential enough. But hurdles materialized.

For one, the conference balked at paying an “extra” official.

“One thing we tried to do was not bring the officials in from far away, so we wouldn’t have to pay for too much,” Todd said. “If an official lived in Virginia, we would bring them down to Carolina, where it wasn’t that far.”

Secondly, Todd’s peers resisted change.

“The lady who was my counterpart in the old Western Athletic Conference, she was not havin’ it,” Todd recalled.

“We would meet at the Final Four, and she’d get up and say, ‘We are not going to a three-person officiating crew.

We’re goin’ over my dead body.’

“So we kept pushin’ and pushin’ for a year, and the next year, we went to [a three-person crew],” Todd continued. “We came back to meet, and [the WAC assistant commissioner] gets up and says, ‘You are now listening to a dead person.’”

With the introduction of a third crewmember, officiating improved drastically.

There were some fumbles.

“I had a lady that was stationed at Fort Bragg in the military,” Todd said. “I assigned her to a Wake Forest game.

We didn’t have any cell phones, so somehow she contacts me, and she said, ‘Miss Todd, I’m here at Wake Forest, and I can’t find the university.’ I said, ‘Wake Forest what?’

She said, ‘Wake Forest, NC.’ I didn’t even know there was a Wake Forest, NC. And I said, ‘That might be because it’s in Winston-Salem.’”

There were also great successes.

“Dee Kantner — who’s still considered one of the top

women’s officials in the country — she started working in the ACC,” Todd said. “When Dee was just getting started, I had her do the ACC Tournament, and everybody thought I was crazy, sayin’, ‘Why would you do that?’

“Well, for one thing, she fast,” Todd laughed. “She used to run track.”

In 1997, Kantner and fellow official Violet Palmer became the first two women hired by the NBA as officials.

“She’s been around so long now that, if she’s on a game, you know that’s a high-cotton game,” Todd said.

Sure enough, Kantner called games in the 2016 Women’s ACC Tournament, including the championship.

“I remember every year, just fightin’,” Todd said, “just saying, ‘Pay a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more.’ Now, they can make their living off of this.

Before, it was like, ‘Okay, who can get where?’”

Todd left her post with the ACC in 2005 to become NC A&T University’s athletic director; she’d retire in 2011.

“There are now 13 people in the ACC that cover what I did in my job,” Todd said, nodding slowly.

AMANDA SALTER While retired, Dee Todd coaches track at Heritage High Before she moved on from the School in Wake Forest: “I can do that fine; it’s fundamental.” conference, though, she contributed another innovation that Bryant played tennis in high school — a sport requiring would change women’s basketball for the best. lightning-quick reflexes— but when she enrolled at A&T in Following the streamlining of officiating, Todd accepted the early ’70s to study sports and physical education, the another challenge in 1997: The ACC desired an offischool didn’t have a tennis program. cials-observation program.

Bryant needed an outlet for her competitive streak, so Also known as neutral observers, they were not officials, she tried out for basketball. but would track referees’ performance. Extensive knowlShe first played ball as a pre-teen in Raleigh. edge of the sport’s rules and regulations was required.

“The boys in the neighborhood had their little game Observers would receive a small stipend for their troubles, they played,” Bryant remembered. “One day, one of the but it would be an unglamorous job. boys knocked on my door and says, ‘Hey, can you come Todd knew just the woman. outside and play?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I can come out!’ He said, ‘We need one more for our basketball game. All you gotta do is jump up there and get the ball, and pass it back to Doreen Bryant would be the first to tell you: She’s the people on your team. Don’t shoot — just pass it back.’ always liked fast things.

“Well, you can imagine how long that lasted,” she She has long admired sports cars. Her first was a Pontiadded. ac Grand Prix back in the ’80s; she fondly remembers the After a few games, Bryant wasn’t just rebounding. She Corvette she bought in 1996 and kept for 14 years. Now, handled the ball and shot — and made baskets. she drives a sleek, black BMW 650i convertible.

“Before long, hey! First-round draft pick,” Bryant joked.

triad-city-beat.com

At the time I left, you could spend up to $300; I think it’s more than that now. So we would get [the winning team] TVs and all kinds of things. “[Former ACC Assistant Commissioner] Fred Barakat and I used to sit and figure out what we wanted, and that’s what we suggested,” Todd chuckled.

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March 9 — 15, 2016 Cover Story

20

She also supervised six recreation centers and 60odd playgrounds throughout town, which she also had to staff.

Around this time, Bryant met Dee Todd.

Todd, who had become the chair of parks and recreation, was invited

by Bryant to speak at an orientation for playground employees.

“She walks in, and she had an elephant on her lapel,” Bryant recalled. “We introduced ourselves, and I said, ‘Does that elephant mean anything?’ She said, ‘It sure does.’

The elephant was a symbol for Delta Sigma Theta, a black sorority to which both women belonged.

“Man, we’ve been runnin’ ever since,” Bryant said, smiling.

She and Todd became fast friends. Bryant often volunteered on projects when Todd needed assistance.

When Todd began the officials-observation program, she once again asked Bryant for help.

“I knew Doreen had played basketball,” Todd said. “She’s also a very AMANDA SALTER Doreen Bryant plays golf in her spare time. She no longer plays meticulous person — orgatennis because she “ain’t got the wheels for that anymore.” nized beyond belief. You She still had the touch — Bryant played basketball for might go into her house A&T from 1971 to ’74. and find all her cans faced alphabetically the same way.”

“I love the whole game,” she said. “You can’t be one-diTodd phoned Bryant. mensional to play. For a person my size [5-foot-6], you “I said, ‘Eh, I don’t know,’” Bryant said. “She says, ‘I need gotta be able to kinda do a little bit of this, a little bit of you.’ that.”

“She was the chairman of our parks and rec committee,” During her junior year, Bryant took a job as a gym Bryant continued. “How do you tell her, ‘Look, no’ — forsupervisor with the Greensboro Parks and Recreation get about the fact that we’re sorority sisters. I said, ‘Sure, Department. This led to becoming the assistant director I’ll help.’” of the Trotter Recreation Center and, after three years, full-time director. Her duties included managing the facility as well as establishing sports leagues and recreational “The one fundamental piece of officiating is consistenopportunities for everyone from preschoolers to seniors. cy,” Bryant said. “The same bump, touch or grab is a foul “Running a recreation center’s a full gamut,” Bryant said. on this end and foul on that end. The same dragged pivot In 1994, Bryant became the administrative research and foot is a walk on this end and a walk on that end.” program director for Greensboro Parks and Rec. Bryant soon established a routine.

“I organized all the citywide sports for women,” Bryant “I’d get to the gym early,” Bryant said. “I’d sit in on the said, “and I did aquatics, youth football, co-ed softball, pregame meeting with the officials, just to listen in on cheerleading and basketball.” what they’re covering and making sure they’re re-empha-

sizing rules and regulations. From there, it was kinda like, ‘Guys, gals, have a great game.’”

A neutral observer had the option of sitting either at the officials’ table or among spectators. Bryant preferred sitting in the stands because it gave her a better view of the entire game.

“When you’re on the floor, there are just certain things you can’t see,” Bryant said.

Of course, that’s just when her work started.

“Once the game was over, I’d hightail it out and go home to review my notes,” Bryant said. Then she would write reports to game officials and the ACC. “[Observers] aren’t so much a police, you might say,” Bryant clarified. “Do they help weed out poor performers?

Yes, they do. But they’re there to ensure the game is as fair as possible.”

However, she rarely filed negative reports; there was hardly the need.

“Let’s face it — you’re not going to get to the ACC being mediocre,” Bryant said.

Byrant began observing officials at Wake Forest, but that changed as quickly as her role in the neighborhood basketball games.

“The next thing I know: ‘Can you go to Elon?’ Yeah.

‘Do you mind going to UNCG?’ Oh, okay, yeah, I’ll do that. ‘What about High Point University?’ Okay, I’ll do that. ‘Would you mind going to Davidson?’ …Not on the regular,” Bryant laughed.

When her first season ended, Bryant believed her work was finished.

“I asked Dee, ‘Hey, you got anybody for this?’” Bryant recalled. “And she said, ‘I sure do: You.’” Bryant helped pioneer neutral observation in women’s basketball. With experience in the ACC, Southern Conference and Big South Conference, Bryant became well respected among her peers.

She said her proudest moment was when she served on the Officials Advisory Committee in the first two rounds of the 2004 NCAA Women’s Division I Tournament in Greensboro.

“That was pretty big for me,” Bryant said, smiling.

Her work may sound straightforward enough, but there was a catch: Bryant still worked full time with the Greensboro Parks and Recreation Department.

“Observing was nighttime stuff — moonlighting,” Bryant said.

She maintained her professional double life until retiring from both in 2012, but she claims it was worth it all for love of the game.

“I always think of the women’s game as the best — the best in every aspect,” Bryant stated. “You get to see basketball broken down when you watch the women’s game.”

Attitudes toward women’s athletics have evolved in recent decades.

“Women have more opportunities in sports — not just in women’s sports,” Bryant said. “You see women hired to be coaches and trainers for male teams.”

Todd agreed.

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“Women’s sports in general has really grown in equity to its counterparts,” Todd said. “I even see how the women travel now — they used to have to get on buses and drive. Now, they charter planes.

“That’s been good to see, but it was not always like that,” she added. “It was a fight.”

Both women refuse to look back in anger at a separate-but-equal past. They only anticipate further advances in equality between men’s and women’s athletics.

“We can’t go back and change history,” Bryant said. “We can only look at what has occurred, understand our history and decide if we want to make changes and make it better for everyone. What we need to do is listen and respect the differences of people before we say, ‘No.’” Todd echoed the sentiment.

“If you don’t know how things got to where they are, then you don’t know how to take it from there,” Todd said. “I’ve always said, ‘It’s hard to lead someone to where you’ve never been.’ It’s hard to have the glory when you don’t know the story.”

Both women should know: With their work, they enacted historic change.

The defending ACC champs reign supreme. The Notre Dame squad poses before their spoils.

AMANDA SALTER

Gate City Vineyard is a modern, Christian church that exists to serve the community around us. Our desire is to help people of all ages and backgrounds grow in their understanding of God. At the Vineyard you can come as you are and be yourself.

Whatever your thoughts about church, whatever your beliefs about God … you are welcome here.

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336.323.1288 204 S. Westgate Dr., Greensboro

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March 9 — 15, 2016 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Fun & Games Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

22

CULTURE Falling in love with old clothes (it’s not what you think)

by Eric Ginsburg

I

implore you to try ropa vieja. Allow me to explain.

Ropa vieja, literally “old clothes” in Spanish, is stewed beef with veggies named for the colorful and, yes, soggy look. But as unappealing as that may sound, this slow-cooked dish — usually with pepper, onion, a dash of cumin and garlic and a tomato-sauce base — is marvelously flavorful. Follow a basic recipe and spoon it on top of some white rice, and you’ll have a straightforward family classic.

A few nights ago, curious about the offerings at the relocated and recently reopened Miami restaurant near downtown Winston-Salem, my girlfriend and I slipped into the Cuban-centric Caribbean venue. We quickly agreed that the ropa vieja, listed first on the menu, should be one of the things we tried.

The Cuban dish may not be much to look at — at least not compared to the colorful bowl of rice, beans, avocado slices, tomato and tostones drizzled with fresh cilantro lime and avocado aioli recommended by our server — but this classic is among the most fundamental and delicious the world can offer. And Miami’s version delivers.

Served with a mound of white rice and accompanied by a small bowl of beans, the ropa vieja is an unassuming star. Looking at the stringy beef we splayed inartistically across the rice, it would be easy to underestimate it as basic.

ERIC GINSBURG The Cuban bowl (above) may be beautiful and tasty, but if you’re only going to order How wrong you would be. one thing at Miami restaurant, go for the ropa vieja.

The meal, which is cheaper during lunchtime, comes with a side, and we chose wisely again adding sweet Miami is not without its drawbacks. Given that it’s the cuisine, as far as we could tell, more than holds up plantains, a counterpoint to the savory, heartwarming called Miami Restaurant & Bar, it’s a little hard to its end of the bargain. Throw an Iron Beer — a non-alnature of the Cuban cuisine. With browned skin and understand why there aren’t any adult drinks — at coholic soda on the menu that tasted like a cross blackened tips, the sweet plantains tasted every bit least not yet, but they’re coming, our server assured between root beer and cream soda — and solid service as good as their counterparts I’ve tried throughout us.

The restaurant’s new, current location at the corner into the mix, and there’s more than enough reason to Central America. of Brookstown and Broad seems a strange choice, overlook any shortcomings.

I don’t mean to imply that we didn’t enjoy the rest occupying a sort of obscure location.

Miami offers other Caribbean fare available at places of our meal; we shared the ropa vieja and the recomPulling off the conversion of the residential structure such as local Dominican restaurant Mangu Bar & Grill, mended Cuban bowl, adding masitas de Puerco — fried into a restaurant requires some buy-in from patrons, including bistec encebollado and mofongo. And it pork chunks that arrived with onion — and liked all of who are separated into three rooms out of sight of serves the intriguing lechon asado — slow roasted pork it. The relatively dry tostones, or fried plantain patties, each other.

The place is a maze, our server admitted, ‘with our special mojito sauce’ and sautéed onions — and toughened pork added some appreciated texture offering to lead us to the bathroom when asked about as well. Tempting as any of these may be, I encourage and balance to the bowl. Bites with avocado, tostone its whereabouts because it required four turns and you to start at the beginning and treat yourself to the and the rice-and-bean mixture were particularly enjoyascending a few stairs. satisfying Cuban hallmark that is ropa vieja. able.

It’s the kind of quirk that I found amusing, although At the table next to us, a couple conversed in a little distracting on the first trip, but that my vivaSpanish, breaking to answer our cious grandmother with socialite Pick of the Week waiter’s inquiry about the tripleta tendencies might not tolerate. The sandwich: “Awesome,” the woman Visit Miami Restaurant Kegs with legs for dancing only part that really lost me was the replied. Next time, I thought, I’d try One-year anniversary party @ Gate City Growlers & Bar at 712 Brookstown flag in the men’s restroom, which I the steak, roasted pork and ham (GSO), March 13, 1 p.m. mentally likened to Lebanon before Ave. (W-S) or find it on sandwich on French bread, likely The freshman beer distributor in town celebrates going home and researching it and Facebook. similar to one I’d recommend from its first birthday with some surprise kegs they’ve discovering the red flag with a white Empanadas Borinquen, a Puerto Ribeen waiting to release for just such an occasion. square and green tree is associated can food truck based in Greensboro.

Bandito brings the burritos; Darklove brings the with the New England Revolution men’s soccer team.

Either that or the Cubano, obviously, though both beats. Dogs are welcome. Visit Gate City Growlers But as random as the flag and building may feel, strike me as more appropriate speedy lunch cuisine. on Facebook for further info.

triad-city-beat.com

Same old College Hill, but with a twist

News Opinion

College Hill Sundries started filling up early, including local beer-scene staples such as Andy Sharpe (seated, foreground), who used to work at Hops but is now in Asheville with Wicked Weed.

Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

OMG, have you srsly never been to College Hill Sundries? Well, it’s at 900 Spring Garden St. (GSO) or on Facebook.

Games

homecoming, and seeing familiar faces in a different setting reminded me that College Hill’s scope is much bigger now than I give it credit for.

The bar isn’t transitioning into a new phase as much as it’s growing up a little, personality intact. Jason Paul, who’s grown a beard that looks more outdoorsman than hip, stood up from sitting with Charles and me at a booth to snatch what looked like a narrow knitting needle out of a young punk’s hand. She’d been using it to scratch something into the wall, as many had before her. Without a word Paul took the tool, walked back to our table and resumed talking.

A few moments passed, and as we finished our conversation he rose again, strode back to the corner booth and handed back the sharpened piece of metal with a shrug.

It isn’t that the riff raff don’t belong here anymore. It’s more that we can have our dive, and care for it, too.

Fun & Games

er seven-ounce pours and stocked 18 big Wicked Weed bottles, but we stuck to the drafts including a personal favorite Tropic Most Gose, a maple syrup-flavored French Toast Stout and the sour Bourbon Barrel Oblivion.)

But I knew the first person I made eye contact with, the tattooed bartender also named Carrie, because she works at Mellow Mushroom. And, not too surprisingly, the city’s beer nerds showed up in force, including Kate who now runs Bestway’s beer wall, Matt from RH Barringer, Charles over at Melt’s bar and Walt from the homebrew club.

Above them all stood Andy Sharpe, an old classmate of mine from Guilford College who some of you would recognize from his days at Hops. These days Sharpe works for Wicked Weed — he moved back to Asheville, but his sales territory covers the Triad, among other parts of the state, and he set the event up with Paul months ago.

I didn’t used to drink with any of these folks here back in my College Hill years, and I don’t think Carrie ever served me here either. But though I’m not about to come back regularly, visiting the bar did elicit the notion of a

Culture

where only those who are too drunk to care enter. Paul upgraded them to standard dive status. Bigger than that, College Hill stepped up its craft beer offerings.

The decision proved to be a wise move; Paul said last year was his best yet. But College Hill is still more itself than some newfangled, hipsterized version of what it used to be. This is still the type of bar where Nirvana plays on the juke box, followed soon after by OutKast before switching to Rage Against the Machine, where twentysomethings with Motorhead back patches and old heads with gruff voices sit side by side on the same old barstools.

Last week, College Hill held its first tap takeover event, and considering the strong turnout, it could be seen as a harbinger of what’s to come.

It’s been years since I really hung out at College Hill, but though I feel like I aged out, I still fit right in at the Wicked Weed tap takeover.

I expected I might not know anyone, and brought my friend Carrie to come and try the $3.50 12-ounce drafts served in plastic cups. (The bar also sold cheap-

ERIC GINSBURG

Cover Story

Jordan felt uneasy.

It’d been a while since he’d moved away to Oakland, but he stopped in to catch a mutual friend’s book reading downtown on his way to visit family in the Triangle, and after the reading, he wanted to go back to College Hill.

That’s often how I end up at the appropriately named dive in the Greensboro neighborhood by the same name — a friend would suggest it, and I would somewhat reluctantly agree to join them. To say that I don’t like College Hill Sundries wouldn’t be fair, unless we’re talking about the atrocious bathrooms back then; my ambivalence or distaste for the venue emanated from overuse.

It’s practically the only place — save for nearby Westerwood, a very similar bar with an overlap in ownership — that I drank for several years after graduating college. Do that anywhere, and you’ll grow weary.

That night Jordan wanted the comfort of home I guess, and I went along.

But as we set up a second game of pool, he commented how weird and sort of sad it felt to be there.

I said something like, “Yeah dude, I don’t come here anymore. Nobody does.”

That’s not true, of course, it’s just that I’d aged out.

College Hill is one of the few bars that practically everyone who’s lived here long enough has a story about, but it’s predominated by 21- to 25-year olds and a small legion of lifers. At first, the ability to show up and find friends made College Hill appealing. After a few years of dollar beer nights, it grew tiresome.

But owner Jason Paul — who is a partial owner of Westerwood and Hops Burger Bar — implemented some dramatic changes since Jordan’s visit.

Most notably, and to everyone’s delight, the bathrooms aren’t the sort of place

Up Front

by Eric Ginsburg

As he stood by the pool table, stick in hand and partway to an easy victory over me at the back of our old haunt, I could tell

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March 9 — 15, 2016 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Fun & Games Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

24

CULTURE Clay Howard’s ‘Ampersand’ show promotes cultural exchange

by Jordan Green

C

lay Howard and his band the Silver Alerts had just finished the first song of their set at the Crown in Greensboro — also the lead track off the singer’s solo album Who the Hell Is Clay Howard?

— a cheeky rocker called “LOL” that resolved with Howard and bassist Tim Beeman gleefully singing, “Yeah, yeah — wooo!”

“I was talking to my friend earlier and we were saying, ‘It’s kind of like being at somebody’s practice,’” Howard said. “So that means we have to play a little louder and talk onstage, right?”

It was a pretty good description of the concert, officially dubbed the “Ampersand Show,” thanks the billing of three acts that featured front men with solid backing bands. The audience for Howard’s set, along with those of supporting acts Doug Davis & the Solid Citizens and Matty Sheets & the Cold Rollers, sat quietly and attentively as the musicians relaxed and cut loose.

As promoter and sound tech Spencer Conover noted, the March 4 concert was the second that Howard had booked at the Crown. The idea is to promote an “exchange” or an “import-export” relationship between the two largest cities of the Triad, Conover said. Howard, who is also the vice president of the Nussbaum Center for Entrepreneurship (where Triad City Beat’s office is housed) is a Kernersville resident, and the members of his band live in Winston-Salem or other parts of Forsyth County. Davis, a producer, recording artist and performer, is a mainstay of the Winston-Salem scene. Sheets and his group, as the only non-Winston-Salem group, received Howard’s invitation to join the bill to give Greensboro some representation.

Without undermining the dignity of his substantial songbook — a canon that covers stubborn defiance (“This Time”), hard times (“Biscuits Ain’t Rising”) and marital devotion (“As Long As I Have You”) — Howard made sure fun was the order of the night. Howard delivered 1987-vintage power-pop vocals over his band’s hard-rock vamp, with Beeman committing with Gene Simmons-inspired intensity, guitarist Aaron Burkey shredding relentlessly and drummer Corky McClellan punishing his kit. Davis also stepped out of the spotlight to support Howard on rhythm guitar and keys.

Howard reinforced the familial setting by not only introducing his band, but also calling out most of the

Correction

A story in the March 2 issue of Triad City Beat, “Caleb Caudle gets sober, comes home and makes his finest album yet,” misspelled the name of the pedal steel player who appears on his new album.

His name is Brett Resnick. The story also misidentified the name of the band to which three other supporting players belong. The name of the band is Roseland.

Clay Howard (center), with Doug Davis (left) and Tim Beeman, put together and headlined a bill comprised of bands with ampersands in their names.

people in the audience by name, while giving a birthday shout-out to a newly minted 21-year-old.

The mutual respect of the two Winston-Salem bands was palpable, and although Davis cultivates a more traditional rock-and-roll sound steeped in Exile-era Stones and Tom Petty, he also doesn’t take himself too seriously. After the band did a brief soundcheck, Davis jokingly announced, “We’re gonna step off the stage and make a dramatic entrance. Get the fog machine ready.”

During his set with the Solid Citizens, Davis bantered from the stage with Beeman — now in the audience and acting the part of the heckler. But during “Missed My Connection” from Davis’ 2008 album Penny Brown Penny, Beeman went into an ecstatic-reverent trance, mouthing the words as Davis gave a gut-churning soulful vocal performance accompanied by Lee Terry’s perfectly sculpted guitar solo.

Davis has assembled a fine body of songs, from Penny Brown Penny to three thematically linked EPs, and his band displayed a devotion to bringing out the best in them. The Solid Citizens were fun to watch onstage, both for their distinctive musical personalities and individual stage presences. Lee Terry was the laconic sideman, literally standing behind Davis in a battered cowboy hat while backing him in the purest sense of the word by accenting him in all the right places. As bassist, Ken Mohan was absolutely indispensible, playing right on time with power and fluidity. Susan Terry, whose black dress and dyed red hair gives her the look of a cool, new-wave librarian, leant a feeling of pathos to the performance with her sublime viola playing; her voice melded gracefully with Davis’ and her viola occasionally played counterpoint to his acoustic guitar

JORDAN GREEN

playing, creating overtones that almost sounded like an Indian raga. But Dan DesNoyers might be the most essential member of the group as a drummer with a big-band percussionist’s masterful touch, projecting subtlety or bombast as the songs required.

As the only Greensboro act on the bill, Matty Sheets and his band were the least likely to have been exposed to the Winston-Salem-based audience. If anything, it made them play with more of a sense of freedom.

They were clearly enjoying the opportunity to play with a proper sound technician, after only two other performances, one at New York Pizza and another at a house show. The Cold Rollers came about as a result of Sheets recording a new album at On Pop of the World Studios. Sheets said after his set that he’s making a proper rock-and-roll album — a departure from the large folk ensemble style of his previous band the Blockheads. He wrote a couple songs in the studio, and assembled a band on the spot so he could indulge his desire to perform them live.

Pick of the Week Two of these things are not like the other Ms. Fitz, N’ayons Pas Peur, Ebon Shrike @ Luna Lounge & Tiki Bar (W-S), Friday, 8 p.m.

You may have heard of the headliner, Greensboro’s rock outfit Ebon Shrike, but the real reasons to make sure you don’t miss this show are Ms. Fitz and N’ayons Pas Peur, side solo projects of Amy Fitzgerald and Laura Gardea, respectively. The event’s Facebook page, where you can find more details, instructs you to “Come with your mind open and your ears pricked.”

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Up Front

plicity and surprise twists. That’s not to say that his style is derivative; his vocals often change over to falsetto to give the songs an interesting dynamic. And he sometimes rushes the beat in a frenetic, almost martial style that undergirds impassioned vocals, almost reminiscent of some of Billy Bragg’s work.

“Thanks for listening,” Sheets said, all smiles. “Or maybe you’re just waiting for Clay.”

They were listening.

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One of those, “Out of the Blue” — a down-tempo number in the neonlights-playing-over-rain-spattered streets sensibility of Tom Waits — prompted one of Howards’ friends, sitting in the dark, to murmur, “That’s my new favorite song.”

A veteran of the Greensboro scene, Sheets is performing with a greater sense of assurance. His sandpaper voice sometimes resembles Lou Reed while he employs chord changes on guitar that occasionally suggest late-period Velvet Underground in their deceptive sim-

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March 9 — 15, 2016 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Fun & Games Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

26

CULTURE One dancer’s migration and homecoming

by Joanna Rutter

I

t wasn’t apparent from Helen Simoneau’s polished smile and graceful bow at the final Winston-Salem performance of Land Bridge on March 5 that, just the day before, she had been tucked away in a corner outside the de Mille Theatre at UNC School of the Arts in between final rehearsals for a student performance of one of her repertory pieces, counting down the minutes to her next call time and trying to catch her breath in between.

It’s a familiar game of catch-up she’s been playing since her first day at UNCSA — and it’s one she’s finally winning.

Right before accepting a bouquet and beaming at the enthusiastic audience, company members from her troupe, Helen Simoneau Danse, had performed her first full-length work, leaping and crawling in a symbolic journey, inspired by the wild caribou of her native Canada, speaking to her own story of immigration, identity and belonging.

The journey leading to the premiere of Land Bridge this past weekend began more than 20 years ago, when Simoneau came from rural Quebec to North Carolina to study dance at UNCSA in the late ’90s. Upon arriving, she almost immediately realized how far behind she was in comparison to her classmates, most of whom had been dancing since they were four or five years old.

“I was definitely an underdog,” Simoneau said in an interview outside of the de Mille Theatre. “They accepted me on potential, not skill. It wasn’t until I was a senior that I felt I had caught up.”

In an environment as brutally demanding as UNCSA, Simoneau was able to thrive from the competition and nurturing artistic space instead of getting crushed by it.

“I was less experienced, but really hungry,” she said.

A composition class, required every year for dance students, was where she first felt she was on equal footing. “It’s where my love of making dance came from.” By her senior year, she was landing leads in productions.

Though now an established choreographer, Simoneau’s recent ties to her alma mater remain strong, having brought her company for residencies and taught as guest faculty. This spring, she’s visiting as a guest artist with the Pluck Project, in which dance students independently fundraise to take contemporary works to the Ailey Theatre in New York City so they can be scouted by directors and choreographers.

It’s a high-stakes performance, which is perhaps why the students seemed so relieved to have the tension broken by Simoneau’s teasing on March 4 as she supervised a final rehearsal of “Moonlight Parade” from her repertoire.

Even at a distance from the back of the theater, she knew each of the students’ names, shouting notes to dancers from the lighting booth high up in the darkness with humor in her voice. “No extra drama, Alvarez, you are enough!” “Big, heavy steps, be heavy!”

At one point, when running a soloist’s portion without

In her spare time between touring with her company and working on new pieces, WinstonSalem choreographer Helen Simoneau visits her alma mater, UNCSA, to teach aspiring dancers.

music, Simoneau made pretend sound-effect noises, making the dancer laugh.

That she made time for the project in the middle of her company’s sixth annual residency at the Hanesbrands Theatre speaks to her affinity for teaching.

“Anytime I get a chance to work with students, I do,” Simoneau said, mentioning a special fondness for this graduating class. “It’s their last statement before they leave.”

Leaving is a theme UNCSA students know well; for most graduates, May signifies the inevitable departure from North Carolina for bigger cities and, hopefully, bigger breaks. On March 4, students were packing up cars and dragging wheeled suitcases, headed for spring break, but not to relax — one drama senior said he was about to go audition in Los Angeles.

With previous performances in Montreal, Tokyo and Athens on her résumé, and her network of fellow alums settled in New York City, Winston-Salem isn’t the most obvious place for an up-and-coming choreographer like Simoneau to build a company. A life settled in Winston-Salem certainly wasn’t on her mind while she was at school.

“While I was a student, I was not aware of what Winston had to offer,” she said. “With my theater and music friends, everything centered around each other’s

ANNA LEE CAMPBELL

performances.”

After graduating, she went back to her family in Canada, but returned to the Camel City “for a man,” she admitted, mentioning her now-husband, then quickly added, “But now for a lot of reasons! The downtown scene is flourishing, the arts scene is getting better. There’s plenty of room for everyone here.”

Looking back on almost a dozen years of working in Winston-Salem, Simoneau said the lack of a crowded local dance scene is both advantageous and an obstacle, and that without a few key staff and board members committed to the company, the company

Pick of the Week Art wiedersehen Akasha Buzov art opening @ DeBeen Espresso (HP), Friday, 7 p.m.

A graduating UNCG student originally from Germany houses a show at DeBeen — her colorful paintings will probably look right at home on its colorful walls. College students, funky art, and High Point? These are a few of TCB’s favorite things. Go give this young artist some love for us, and RSVP on Facebook for details.

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Bridge — in one memorable section, two male dancers rush at each other, colliding into the other’s shoulder and precariously balancing their weight while slowly rotating — and other sections transcend metaphor, playing with the energies of momentum and falling to communicate ideas as perhaps only dance can.

The piece perfectly encapsulated the duality of identity that Simoneau has experienced since she was a child, growing up with a Francophone father and an Anglophone mother, being the only bilingual kid in her rural school, then being a Canadian at UNCSA. “I am all of these; Canadian, American, Quebecoise, Southerner,” she said.

“As an artist, I’d prefer to be uncomfortable and grow than be stagnant.

My work has to stay engaging. There’s always something new to discover.”

Opinion

would’ve folded.

“It took me a while to figure out how to be an artist here,” she said.

“Modern dance is an art form not a lot of people understand. Deciding to come see [it] is a big leap. But once you’re there, you feel the power of body and space.”

Though the form can sometimes be opaque, Simoneau’s choreographic sensibilities manage to surprise, delight and bewilder while still remaining accessible. Common threads in both Land Bridge and “Moonlight Parade” included playing with viewers’ expectations by abruptly shifting a dancer’s movements to the exact opposite direction their body had been heading, or injecting a fluid series of motions with sharp punctuation of rigid arm movements.

The metaphor of migration and identity is very clear in certain parts of Land

COURTSEY IMAGE

News

In Land Bridge, themes of identity, separation, immigration and belonging are explored through intimate, unexpected movements.

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Culture

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March 9 — 15, 2016

GAMES

‘Freestyle by the Numbers’ well, mainly one number.

by Matt Jones Across

paninis salads small plates craft beer & wine patio daily specials Golden Gate Shopping Center

2270 Golden Gate Dr. Greensboro, NC meltkitchenandbar.com

1 What did Yours Truly do on March 10th, 2016?

10 Drive away 15 Unhurriedly 16 Gymnastically gifted 17 Chemistry kit vessels 18 1999 Kevin Smith comedy 19 Old Peruvian currency 20 Like some early 20th-century abstract art 22 “Never have I ever been ___ 10 in my whole life” (Rihanna lyric) 24 Alamogordo’s county 25 “The Evil Dead” protagonist 26 Dressed to the ___ 27 Legendary lawman Earp 28 Suffix with meteor 29 French city famous for its lace 31 Outback leaper 32 Cookie jar piece 33 “Spectre” director Mendes 34 “Letters from ___ Jima” (2006 film) 36 Broadcaster based in Toronto 39 Fido’s foot 41 Ford line of trucks 45 The Land of ___ (setting of Finn and Jake’s Cartoon Network show)

46 Diciembre follower 48 NRA piece?

49 Elvis’s record label 50 Type of restaurant featured in Hulu’s “11.22.63” 51 Historic river of Paris 52 “Things done,” in legal terms 54 “The Killing Fields” Oscar winner Haing S. ___ 55 Prefix before modern or marathon 56 “___ Time” (Finn and Jake’s Cartoon Network show) 59 Braid of hair 60 They display information in wedges 61 Cultivated land 62 Those who signed up

Down

1 “From Russia With Love” Bond girl Romanova 2 Knife, e.g.

3 Author of the “Goosebumps” books 4 Social media users, e.g.

5 In good physical shape 6 Home of the Beavers, for short 7 Massage table activity 8 Peace talks objective 9 Long-running CBS sitcom of the 2000s

10 Structures that help transmission 11 Psyche parts 12 Braid on one side 13 Peruvian volcano 14 Removed by percolating 21 Belgian beer brand Stella ___ 23 Get out of a perilous situation 30 Muscat natives 35 Avenue next to Reading Railroad, in Monopoly 36 Crooked 37 Blind singer Andrea 38 Shorefront 40 Lost one’s mind with excitement 41 A long time to wait, it seems 42 “Yeah, that seems about right” 43 1983 movie about Guatemalan immigrants 44 Cassandra, for instance 47 Enter, as data 53 Sandpaper coarseness measure 57 Author Umberto who died in 2016 58 Lady Byng Memorial Trophy org.

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Answers from previous publication.

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March 9 — 15, 2016 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture

Sweet charity

“

The minute you walked in the joint…” — you could tell it was an event of distinction.

The aforementioned joint was downtown Greensboro’s Empire Room at the Elm Street Center and the event

by Nicole Crews was the bottle-popping annual fete that has raised some $800,000 for children living with serious, progressive medical issues and kids experiencing the death of loved ones. Kids Path is part of Hospice and Palliative Care of Greensboro — you know, those angels from heaven who guide us all gently into that good night.

Throw in the kid factor and it’s a tear-jerker for sure, but come each March, 600-plus saintly volunteers and members of the Triad community come out in full regalia to toast the night away, bid on an extravagant and generously donated buffet of silent-auction items, dine and wine. The presenting sponsor of the event is Green Valley Financial and the lead event sponsor is Zeto Wine and Cheese Shop, the brainchild — and brain food — of Su Peterson and Penny Demetriades who have coordinated the wine and cheese for the past nine years and donate 100 percent of the profits to Kids Path.

“They have been there with us from the get-go,” says Paul Russ, vice president of marketing and development at Hospice and Palliative Care of Greensboro, “and this year our mother-daughter chairs Luck Davidson and Charlotte Davidson Quinn really upped the game by recruiting community leaders with an extensive knowledge of wine to serve as “wine mavens” at each tasting station.”

Indeed, it was a ballroom packed with interesting

whites, unusual reds and much fancy cheese.

Me: Have you tried the Mahón? It reminds me of that creepy guy over there who keeps following me around.

David: Semi-hard?

Me: Crumbly and dense.

David: And pale yellow.

Me: More like the Lou Bergier Pichin-Piedmonte — semi-soft and aged 60 days atop pine boards.

David: Stick with the Melkbus — it’s firm.

Me: Whatever you do steer clear of the Toggenburger Chueli. It’s matured six months in a cellar environment.

I’m picturing a Swiss dairy miss lowering lotion in bucket. It says it has smooth, pea-sized eyes.

David: Cheese eyes.

Amidst chatter about cheese there was also much talk of gratitude for Hospice and all that they do. Last year Kids Path cared for 64 sick children, conducted more than 2,000 grief-counseling sessions and held group sessions, camps and workshops with 300-plus children participating. The puppet show dealing with grief and loss, “Aarvy Aardvark Finds Hope,” celebrated its 25th year was presented to close to 3,000 Guilford County third graders in 42 schools.

Me: It says here that Aarvy is sad and his animal friends — a monkey, a giraffe, a vulture and a rabbit — gather around to help. I wonder what the vulture does.

David: Cleans up?

Me: Sort of a children’s book Harvey Keitel in Pulp Fiction. Well I guess it takes all creatures — great and small.

It certainly takes a community, and as someone who has recently experienced the grace under dire pressure that hospice organizations provide, I raise my glass to Corks for Kids Path. Here’s to hitting that million-dollar marker by next year.

Front, Stephanie Frazier. Back from left: Hal Ivey, Greg Shakelford and Paul Russ.

David Worth, Nicole Crews and Trisha Costello.

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COURTESY PHOTOS

30

From left: Paige Casey, Melissa Greer, Lynn Wooten, Ruth Heyd, Greg Shackelford, Stephanie Frazier and Hal Ivey.

Event chairs Charlotte Davidson Quinn and Luck Davidson flank Hospice marketing guru Paul Russ.

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Illustration by Jorge Maturino