TCB March 30, 2016 — A City Divided by Triad City Beat

Greensboro / Winston-Salem / High Point triad-city-beat.com Mar. 30 – Apr. 5, 2016

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WE WILL NOT STAND FOR HB 2

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At sea

by Brian Clarey

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

NEWS

15 It Just Might Work: Give us shelter 15 Fresh Eyes: Trans youth speak out

COVER

OPINION 14 It’s a scam 14 Citizen Green: Hurt and shame

27 Jonesin’ Crossword

SHOT IN THE TRIAD 28 Murality

16 Poor in the Triad

ALL SHE WROTE

CULTURE 20 Food: Africa represents 21 Barstool: Tipsy’z Tavern 22 Music: Tange Lomax 24 Art: Beka Butts

8 The final countdown 10 Skatepark rolls on 12 Cattle call in the 13th

GAMES

30 Potty mouth

FUN & GAMES 26 Carolina Aces

QUOTE OF THE WEEK “It was the cheapest hotel in Winston-Salem. I could do odd jobs; I could do hair-braiding, just so we could have some kind of private place. I worked really hard to give my children something.” — Marquita Wisley, 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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EDITORIAL INTERNS Joanna Rutter intern@triad-city-beat.com

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nest@triad-city-beat.com Carolyn de Berry Nicole Crews

Cover photography by Amanda Salter Marquita Wisley lives in Cleveland Avenue Homes.

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It’s not such a terrible thing to work on Easter Sunday when I’m typing away on the elevated poolside deck of the Carnival Fantasy ocean liner, a smoke burning in the ashtray beside me and a thousand or so revelers parading around in various stages of inebriation and undress. The sunburn’s been setting in since yesterday, when we swam in the impossibly blue waters of the Caribbean off the Bahamian coast, the worst of it on my shoulders, my knees, my bald spot, the tops of my feet. It’s a small price to pay for the sense of escape a cruise like this — short, sweet, marked by abundance and easiness — provides a family like mine. We’ve been on the grind so long I don’t think we realized how much we needed it. There’s no wifi out here on the open ocean. Well, there is, for a very reasonable fee, but we knew if we ponied up for it our children would shut themselves in our cabin with their screens. It took half of the first day for them to acknowledge that their phones would not work the way they wanted them to out here, and since then, for the most part, the devices have been stacked on a table in the cabin, fully charged and functionally useless. I haven’t been this far It’s embarrassing out of the loop in years: to be an emissary No New York Times, no Facebook, no text mesfrom the Old North sages. Not even Words State, even on a With Friends. I don’t know what my NCAA pleasure cruise. bracket looks like. At this point I barely care. On the day we left, the NC General Assembly passed its most disturbing law since the marriage amendment just a few years ago, this one further reaching than any in the short time since the GOP took Raleigh in 2010. And while I can imagine the outrage among my fellow freedom-loving North Carolinians, from this distance it barely seems real. There’s no hate on the cruise ship, no fear of the unknown when together we’re charting open waters and relishing the great wonder that it is to be alive. Like the humans who designed and built it, the ocean liner is built to move forward, only going in reverse through great, effortful manipulations from the bridge and the smaller tender boats that push it around. And even then, pulling into port, I can hear great groans of resistance from the machinery that makes the thing run. It’s embarrassing to be an emissary from the Old North State these days, even on a pleasure cruise where none of the passengers seems to know what has transpired there. When we return to our port of disembarkation and everyone learns what we have done, I hope none of my new friends thinks less of me for my association, however tenuous, with such a backwards state.

triad-city-beat.com

EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK

CONTENTS

Mar. 30 — Apr. 5, 2016

Adjust your expectations This review reminds me of my initial rage after finishing 10 Cloverfield Lane [“Review: Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice,” by Joe Scott; March 25, 2016]. Obviously nothing I write here will change your mind, but for me, I went into this movie with my original ideas of Superman and Batman filed away in my drawer for nostalgia and invited the writer/director to bring me into their interpretation of Superman and Batman. With that perspective I think these movies invite you to view the characters as more human than previously described. Superman has a temper; Batman is heartless at times. That is okay with me, but I’m also not the invested comic book audience. I am more detached from these characters since DC crushed my dreams with that garbage Green Lantern movie. I left the 10 Cloverfield Lane movie raging about how it didn’t answer a single question about the first movie. After a few days I changed my perspective by wishing the movie staff could have set my expectations by saying, “Hey, this doesn’t have anything to do with the first movie; Cloverfield is our name for random spooky stories.” With that said, I grew up with these characters and I absolutely love the current direction. I’ll continue to pay for more of these. Currently I am enjoying them more than the formulaic Marvel movies. Jon McClay, via triad-city-beat.com More magic in the NBA than you realize Watch a few Hornets games and you may find the NBA has more of that magic than you realize [“Unsolicited Endorsement: The greatest sport’s highest expression”; by Eric Ginsburg; March 23, 2016]. Not just individual players, but a lot of great team ball is being played in the NBA right now. Jared, via triad-city-beat.com Middle age dating woes I went back into the dating pool at 46, [and] between the age and being a chunky, redhead, intelligent, degreed and with a good job, I had a terrible time finding men to date [“Dating duds: Does the Triad lack eligible bachelors?”; by Eric Ginsburg; March 17, 2016]. It seemed that the men were all interested in blond, cheerleader types or flavor of the month rather than someone to share their lives with. Many were simply interested in hooking up rather than a long time thing. It was insane and ridiculous, when I made the first move, I was told, “I don’t think we’re compatible.” Bearsmom, via triad-city-beat.com

Three pro-HB 2 Triad politicians up for reelection

by Joanna Rutter

1. Rep. Debra Conrad Forsyth County Republican Debra Conrad voted in favor of the misleadingly titled Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act (HB 2) last week. The law obstructs the basic human rights of transgender people by requiring local boards of education and public agencies to ensure that single-sex public bathrooms be designated for and only used by people of that biological sex. Marilynn Baker is Conrad’s Democratic challenger in November for this Forsyth County district.

3. Rep. Jon Hardister District 59 Rep. Jon Hardister posted on his Facebook page during the special session, “This is the right thing to do because it relates to public safety. I believe in local control, but there are some laws that need to be uniform across the state.” Democrat landscaping business owner Scott Jones, who challenged Hardister in 2014 and lost with 36 percent of the vote compared to Hardister’s 60 percent, is challenging him again this year.

2. Sen. Trudy Wade It’s no surprise that Guilford County’s District 27 senator voted in support of the bill. A former Greensboro City Council member, Wade may be most known for leading the state charge for redistricting Greensboro’s council in 2015. Wade faces Democratic challenger Michael Garrett in November, a 30-year-old small business owner who posted Robert F. Kennedy’s quote, “Ultimately, America’s answer to the intolerant man is diversity,” on his Facebook page last week, apparently in response to the legislation.

4. Gov. Pat McCrory And then of course there’s Republican Gov. Pat McCrory, who grew up in Jamestown, and who is serving his first term in the statewide office. Triad residents unsatisfied with his hasty signing of this damaging law can vote him out in November, too; the state’s attorney general and Democrat Roy Cooper is running against McCrory this fall.

424 W 4th St, Winston-Salem 336.721.1336 www.hutchandharris.com

triad-city-beat.com

Coolest holiday this month?

70 60 50 40

36% 21% 14%

Other

New question: Will HB 2 affect who you vote for in November?

Easter

Readers: Y’all a bunch of hippies, I guess. Our readers who voted put Spring Equinox first with 36 percent, though about a fifth (21 percent) agreed with Joanna. That left 14 percent to align with Eric (same as for St. Patrick’s Day) while just 7 percent voted for Easter. The remaining 7 percent picked Other, maybe for the same reason Anthony did.

Purim

Associate Editor Eric Ginsburg: I’m unabashedly going to choose Purim, the holiday of my people. It can rival St. Patrick’s Day in its drunken revelry, though it won’t exactly cause a traffic jam around here, and it’s a time to celebrate a badass woman (Ester) who helped prevent Jewish people from being massacred, as the story goes. I love spring, but in North Carolina the season comes in fits and celebrating Spring Equinox feels premature. I don’t love how Color Run’s have grabbed Holi’s colorful component and stripped the

Intern Joanna Rutter: Clearly, the absolute coolest holiday this spring in Holi. I’m not even sure how this is a fair contest. It combines the great themes of fertility and divinity found and celebrated in these other holidays, except with one little extra tradition: you get to throw colorful powder at each other! Dyeing people is way more fun than dyeing eggs.

Holi

Senior Editor Jordan Green: The thaw of spring after long weeks of dreary, overcast skies and cold days is what I like most about March, so I’m going to go with the pagan holiday of the spring equinox, but I don’t mind mentioning that Easter, with its emphasis on resurrection, fits right into the seasonal cycle.

holiday of any deeper meaning, but I will say I love me some bunnies and chocolate (hey, Easter).

Spring Equinox

March is so loaded with holidays that when we released this week’s poll, our sports writer Anthony Harrison was quickly able to point out one we missed: International Women’s Day. Here’s how three of our staff and a handful of our readers voted between Spring Equinox, Purim, Holi, Easter, and St. Patrick’s Day.

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‘Her Story’

by Joanna Rutter All the recent films or shows about trans folks I can think of have largely starred (and been directed, and produced by) cisgendered men. Think Jared Leto in Dallas Buyers Club, Jeffrey Tambor in Transparent, or Eddie Redmayne in The Danish Girl. And in recent political news, the North Carolina General Assembly passed a law to discriminate against trans North Carolinians who just need to pee (see Citizen Green on page 14 for the backstory). It’s in this noisy space that writers Laura Zak and Jen Richards decided to tell a different version of a trans story: one by, for, and about trans and queer people themselves. Their web series, “Her Story,” which released its first season on herstoryshow.com earlier this year, centers on two transgender women and the lesbian journalist writing a cover story about them. The script hones in on the inherent clumsiness of the binary surrounding language, gender and sexual orientation, and doesn’t let viewers get comfortable, which

works well. It’s painful to squirm as a character introduces herself to Violet, a trans woman, and blurts out, “Are you transgender?” only to see Violet’s face fall, responding, “I wish it wasn’t so obvious.” Each eloquent moment punctuates larger story arcs of several women as they navigate their careers, their love lives and their identities. In the insecurity of Allie and Vi’s developing relationship, Allie fears she’s somehow “less” gay for dating a trans woman, and Vi fears she’s somehow “less” of a woman for dating a lesbian. The story is carried by seamless editing, consistent sound design and lighting, a beautiful soundtrack with music from trans artists like Rie Daisies, and powerful dialogue that’s of-the-moment without sounding forced or kitschy. Perhaps the most riveting narrative thread is following Paige, a civil rights attorney played to perfection by Angelica Ross of TransTech Social Enterprises, as she

hesitantly dates a man who doesn’t yet know she’s transgender. Watching that story unfold is still thrilling on my sixth or seventh watch-through. “Her Story”’s writers and production team are just as incredible as its characters. Jen Richards, who plays Violet, is an internet force to be reckoned with. Richards tweeted this week about the March 23 law requiring local boards of education and public agencies designate single-sex bathrooms only for people of that biological sex, saying, “Trans people now have to spend as much time fighting the fiction of violence imagined [of] us as we do the actual violence against us.” Hopefully, in the social and political justice marathon ahead for trans communities and their allies in North Carolina and beyond, Richards and co-writer Laura Zak’s work in “Her Story” will serve as an example of how to use art to replace that fiction with the truth.

Mar. 30 — Apr. 5, 2016 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Fun & Games Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

Three pro-HB 2 Triad politicians up for reelection

by Joanna Rutter

424 W 4th St, Winston-Salem 336.721.1336 www.hutchandharris.com

triad-city-beat.com

Coolest holiday this month?

Spring Equinox

60 50

20 10

Fun & Games

‘Her Story’

All She Wrote

Shot in the Triad

Games

Culture

36% 21% 14%

Other

Easter

New question: Will HB 2 affect who you vote for in November?

Purim

Holi

Cover Story

Opinion

News

holiday of any deeper meaning, but I will say I love me some bunnies and chocolate (hey, Easter).

Up Front

Mar. 30 — Apr. 5, 2016 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Fun & Games Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

NEWS

Larson seeks recount in South Ward city council race by Jordan Green

John Larson is requesting a recount in the South Ward city council race, where the official canvass shows Carolyn Highsmith prevailing by six votes. Elections staff acknowledges that 18 people were prevented from voting in the race because they received the wrong ballots. Carolyn Highsmith is now the certified winner of the Democratic primary for the South Ward seat on Winston-Salem City Council, prevailing over opponent John Larson in a margin that evolved from four on election night, to one after absentee ballots were counted and finally to six after provisionals were added and the official canvass was completed. Highsmith, a longtime community leader from the Konnoak Hills neighborhood, was sitting in the second row when Forsyth County Elections Director Tim Tsujii announced the results around 3:45 p.m. on March 24: 2,023 votes to Larson, and 2,029 votes to Highsmith. Larson, a vice president at Old Salem Museum & Gardens, indicated in a statement posted on Facebook after the canvass that he would seek a recount. “Carolyn and I both agree that a recount is in order since this has been such a tightly contested race,” he said. “Although I would not anticipate a significant shift I appreciate her acknowledgement that this final chapter must be written to bring full closure to what has got to be one of the closest races in the county’s history.” The open seat is being vacated by Councilwoman Molly Leight, who had endorsed Larson. The three-member board of elections approved 225 complete provisional ballots and 144 partial ballots, while rejecting 580 out of a total of less than a thousand across the county. The partial ballots included 94 in which voters received the wrong party ballot or a ballot for the wrong precinct. Voters who received the wrong party ballot only had their votes counted in the state bond referendum — the only nonpartisan item on the ballot. Of the 580 rejected provisional

ballots, the vast majority were tossed out because the voters were either not registered, or because their registrations or provisional ballots lacked signatures. The board also disapproved 39 voters who lacked photo ID, under a new requirement that took effect with the March 15 primary. Those voters were given the opportunity to appear at the board of elections by March 21 at noon to present their ID, but none did so. Meanwhile, the board approved nine provisional ballots issued to voters who filed a “reasonable impediment” declaration with a satisfactory reason for not having photo ID — an exception added to the new election law through an amendment last summer. However, the Republican majority on the local board voted to reject a provisional ballot completed by one person who filled out a “reasonable impediJORDAN GREEN Forsyth County Elections Director Tim Tsujii, standing, oversees the tabulation of provisional ballots last week. ment” declaration to vote without photo ID during early voting at Polo Park opportunity to vote in the South Ward Tsujii said after the certification that Recreation Center because the form race because poll workers mistakenly the board couldn’t give the voters the lacked the voter’s signature. Tsujii said it gave them ballots for the Southwest opportunity to vote a second ballot that was the poll worker’s fault for failing to Ward, where there was no primary. included the South Ward contest beinform the voter that their signature was George Bryan, one of Larson’s camcause their original ballots, which were needed. Staff attempted without success paign co-managers, said he spoke to a cast on election day, cannot be retrieved, to reach the voter by phone to obtain couple who went to the polling place considering the need to maintain the the signature after the fact, Tsujii said. specifically so they could vote for Larson sanctity and privacy of the Board Secretary Stuart Russell and were surprised to find that he was voting process. argued that the signature was essential not on their ballots. “There’s a process where a candidate because it would have shown the voter Tsujii confirmed that the board of can protest the election and can contest was aware of the legal consequences of elections identified 18 voters in Prethe results,” Tsujii said. “If it’s deterbeing untruthful. cinct 607 who received mined that additional steps need to be “I think it’s very unforthe Southwest Ward ballot taken that needs to go to the state Board tunate,” said Democratic The 18 voters in error. Larson carried of Elections. In order to contest an elecboard member Fleming the precinct by a margin tion, you would have to show there were prevented El-Amin, who cast the of 59.1 percent to 40.9 significant irregularities across lone dissenting vote. “This from voting percent. With Highsmith’s the county.” reflects poor training of the margin of victory coming Tsujii said the error can come up could have poll workers.” down to six votes, the 18 in precincts that are split between two Tsujii agreed. easily changed voters prevented from voting districts, and that to prevent it “It is unfortunate that the outcome. voting could have easily from recurring staff needs to implement this happened,” he said. changed the outcome. additional pre-election checks to ensure “But I will, in my power, “We have all the addressthat poll workers are aware of the differwork to improve this and es for the voters,” Bryan said. “It’s very ent ballot styles at each precinct. make sure it doesn’t happen again.” easy to get in contact with them and Tsujii reported to the local board Larson and his supporters left the give them the opportunity to rectify it. that 12 provisional ballots were fed into canvass meeting concerned about voters To be true to the spirit of democracy a tabulation machine and counted in at Precinct 607, located at Shepherd’s you want to give everybody the error on the March 15 primary. As with Center near the main campus of opportunity to vote.” the voters who were prevented from votForsyth Tech, who were denied the

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ing in the South Ward race in Precinct 607, the 12 provisional ballots cannot be retrieved. In two cases, Tsujii said the voters took their provisionals and fed them into a tabulator while poll workers were not paying attention. Tsujii said that in future training sessions he’ll remind poll workers to be diligent and aware, and might consider stationing a poll worker at the tabulator to prevent voters from taking measures into their own hands. Unlike Guilford County, which utilizes electronic voting, voters in Forsyth County fill out paper ballots that are counted by machine. The local board unanimously rejected 20 provisional ballots because of missing signatures. Tsujii said that 10 voters showed up at the wrong precinct, and were redirected to their proper precincts. They should have voted on regular ballots, but instead the poll workers gave them provisional ballots and failed to obtain the voters’ signatures on the transfer forms. Another 10 signed the transfer forms, but failed to sign the “authorization to vote” form. El-Amin said he voted to reject the provisional ballots after consulting with the general counsel for the state Board of Elections in Raleigh, but expressed concern that the voters were unfairly penalized. “Given the level of provisional ballots we had this year and the short-term training of our poll workers, most of these errors fall in the lap of the poll workers, not the voters,” El-Amin said. “We need to have a way of not just talking to people who come in to get trained but some way to evaluate them before you send them out.”

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Mar. 30 — Apr. 5, 2016 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Fun & Games Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

Public agrees on plan for Greensboro skatepark by Eric Ginsburg

Residents agreed on rough designs for an outdoor skatepark and a smaller skate spot in Greensboro at the final public forum last week, helping the city move ahead on the long-awaited park. If anyone showed up at the city of Greensboro’s public forum nervous that some developer would come in and muck up plans for the city’s skatepark, they would’ve breathed a sigh of relief upon seeing Brad Siedlecki at the front of the room. Wearing a pair of Vans, a white T-shirt and a snap-back hat, and sporting a full tattoo sleeve and some facial stubble, Siedlecki looked the part of a classic thirty- or fortysomething skater. The 50 or so people who traipsed into Glenwood Recreation Center to hear him speak on March 23, several of them with skateboards in hand, welcomed Siedlecki in a way that’s somewhat rare at government meetings. Siedlecki, who works with Arizona-based Pillar Design Studios, ran through various plans for the large skatepark and smaller neighborhood-oriented skate spot with only cosmetic pushback from the audience representing diverse skating interests and a wide age range. Considering that voters approved a $575,000 bond for a skatepark in Greensboro a decade ago, and especially given the lightning speed at which neighboring Winston-Salem has pursued a permanent skatepark within its borders in the last year, it would be reasonable to expect such a public forum to be contentious. Such forums can lean that way regardless of the subject, but with competing desires and possibly some pent-up frustration in town, Siedlecki and the city successfully moved forward with a cohesive plan for the park that considers public input. That’s thanks in large part to the fact that the city assembled a skatepark advisory team early last year, consisting of residents with varied ties to skating who could help provide input and spread the word. The team helped pull in a wide array of attendees, including several young skateboarders who eagerly shared their input at their meeting, exemplifying the sort of community outreach other government meetings aspire towards.

The old heads were there too, including team member Fabio Camara. The professional photographer, who skated competitively as a kid in Brazil and who’s still active on a board in his forties, helped unify two competing factions at the meeting to agree on a path forward last week. Siedlecki arrived with two drawings for the skatepark, which will be erected in a long, narrow strip between a gravel drive and a greenway at Latham Park off of Hill Street, just northwest of downtown and Green Hill Cemetery. One drawing placed more emphasis on an impressive bowl while the other shifted the focus to street-style components. When city staff polled the room, attendees split perfectly in half and the two designs tied. ERIC GINSBURG About 50 people participated in a second public forum on Greensboro’s Given the available budget, as planned skate park at the Glenwood Recreation Center. well as the limited space of the wood Rec Center, and while there’s no first session, residents offered additional site which is also sandwiched bemoney currently available, the city and feedback and ideas for the two sites that tween the cemetery and Buffalo Creek, its skatepark advisory team identified Siedlecki incorporated into the drawSiedlecki’s firm wouldn’t be able to erect possible locations for more small skate ings he brought last week, and city staff half of each design. But after some spots in each district of the city for expect an updated version by early next debate, Camara proposed a fusion apfuture expansion. week. proach that would scale down the bowl The Glenwood location in south City staff hopes to move quickly on and maintain most of the street-style Greensboro will utilize an existing slab the two locations, especially the simpler aspects, and attendees readily accepted of concrete behind the building, and Glenwood site, though there isn’t a his idea. meeting attendees debated which of specific timeline yet. Though it’s been Much of the community discussion Siedlecki’s three designs for the site to a decade, skaters at last week’s meeting remained in the weeds — offering pursue given the varying price tags on seemed energized by how close the park thoughts on specific components of the each. Initially, several people said they’d is to finally being a reality. design that Siedlecki said could easily be like to short the Glenwood spot in favor Meanwhile, Winston-Salem holds the switched out for others — so much so of souping up the skatepark, but others grand opening for its new permanent that city staff struggled to keep up with objected, saying neighborhood kids and skatepark at the Fairgrounds Annex this the terminology at several points. folks with less confidence on a board Saturday at 11 a.m. Not to worry, Siedlecki reassured would really benefit from the site. When them, he was catching everything Siedlecki circled back to the skate spot Greensboro’s skaters were throwing at as the meeting wound down, attendees them. seemed to agree on a modified version The skatepark will replace a small of the mid-range plan as a compromise basketball court that is in a mild state of while switching out specific elements for disrepair, but Parks Department Direcsome features they preferred and that tor Wade Walcutt said in an interview could help keep costs down. that the city will try and relocate a hoop Many of the people who turned out on the site or nearby if possible, noting for last week’s meeting said they also that the court isn’t as well used as others attended the city’s previous public-input such as the nearby Lake Daniel hoops. session when organizers asked, but this The city will also build a smaller, time, staff had to retrieve extra chairs more modest skate spot behind Glento accommodate the turnout. Since the

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Mar. 30 — Apr. 5, 2016 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Fun & Games Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

Special election for Congress draws dozens of candidates by Jordan Green

The creation of the new 13th Congressional District stretching from Greensboro to Iredell County has set off a scramble of political hopefuls who will be mobilizing supporters in a special election — likely to draw few voters — that is scheduled for June 7. A total of 22 people have paid the $1,740 filing fee to put their names on the ballot for the new 13th Congressional District, which splits Greensboro while taking in High Point and stretching into Davidson, Davie, Iredell and Rowan counties. The contest, whose Democratic and Republican primaries will be decided in a June 7 special election, has attracted people who were previously candidates in other congressional races before the federal courts threw out the old maps, some state lawmakers who had a hand in drawing the new maps, people who lost their races in the regular March 15 primary for other seats and other random political enthusiasts. Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans in the district, 41.4 percent to 31.6 percent, but the 13th still generally tilts towards the GOP: Had the district been drawn in 2008, it would have narrowly split, with Democrat Kay Hagan prevailing in the US Senate race and Republicans John McCain and Pat McCrory carrying the vote in the presidential and gubernatorial races. Four out of the five Democrats seeking their party’s nomination for the 13th District live in urban Guilford County, while the 17 Republicans are spread out across the largely rural district. Among the Democrats, Bruce Davis of High Point has been campaigning the longest. He ran unsuccessfully for the 6th District in 2014 and then reentered the race in the current cycle. Previously, the Congressional district lines ran through his yard, but the redrawn maps put him squarely in the new 13th District. Davis represented High Point on the Guilford County Commission from 2002 to 2014. “I’ve always considered myself a champion of High Point,” said Davis, who cites education and economic development as his priorities. “I have to look out for High Point; it’s my home. For every election I’ve run, High Point

has been divided. This is the first time Griffin lives outside of the district in I’ve had the opportunity where everyDurham, which is allowed under an one in High Point who’s wanted to antiquated state law. support me can do so.” The contest will be a scramble, Bob Isner, a Greensboro developer, with extremely low turnout and little said he made the decision to run on the opportunity for candidates to differenmorning of March 25, the final day tiate themselves in the large pack. The of filing. He’ll benefit from a certain outcome of the two party primaries is amount of name recognition — his son likely to come down to which candidates is the professional tennis player John are most successful at motivating their Isner — but the candidate cites his work supporters to get to the polls. transforming downtown Greensboro as Andrew C. Brock, a state senator his primary qualification. He’s responsifrom Mocksville, is only one of a string ble for three signature projects: the new of Republican state lawmakers who urbanism-inspired Southside developare gunning for the new district. The ment, CityView Apartments and Deep crowded field also includes state reps. Roots Market. John Blust of Greensboro, Julia Howard “Being an engineer — engineers are of Mocksville and Harry Warren of problem solvers — I’m not going to be Salisbury. All four voted in lockstep with governed by party lines and that sort of their party during the recent special sesstuff,” Isner said. “Based on what I’ve sion in Raleigh to overturn Charlotte’s done, I identify a problem and try to ordinance allowing transgender people solve it.” to use the bathroom of The campaign webtheir preference — a move The outcome of site for Adam Coker that has prompted outrage the two party of Greensboro pledges in the North Carolina’s that the candidate will urban areas and led to primaries is fight for “bringing an threatened boycotts from likely to come end to mass incarcerout of state. ation and addressing George Rouco, a former down to which institutional racism and CIA officer who practices candidates are classicism,” along with law in Mooresville, initially more standard positions most successful filed to run as a challengreferencing jobs and at motivating their er to Republican thRobert economic development, Pittenger in the 9 District, supporters to get and improving services but decided to continue to veterans. Coker has his bid when the lines were to the polls. worked in furniture, redrawn to place him the trucking, construction new 13th. He said he was and the nonprofit sector. motivated to run by anger at Pittenger Mazie Ferguson, a former presifor voting for the omnibus budget bill dent of the Greensboro Pulpit Forum last December, which he said violated who helped organize the struggle to the lawmaker’s pledge to not raise the raise wages and working conditions debt limit. for K-Mart workers in Greensboro in Kay Daly, a former communications the 1990s, filed for the congressional director for the North Carolina Rerace after losing her bid for state labor publican Party and frequent guest on commissioner to Charles Meeker in the Fox News, initially challenged incumMarch 15 Democratic primary. bent Renee Ellmers in the 2nd District, Kevin D. Griffin, a CEO of a staffing calling her former opponent a “gutless agency who has been involved with the politician” and a “craven weasel.” On Durham Living Wage Project, similarly her campaign website, Daly advertises retrofitted his unsuccessful US Senate her opposition to Republican House campaign after losing the Democratic Speaker Paul Ryan and his predecessor primary to Deborah Ross on March 15 John Boehner while boasting that she’s to take a crack at the new 13th District. “less PC than Trump.” The candidate

has pocketed endorsements from James Dobson of Focus on the Family, former Reagan advisor Gary Bauer and other conservative luminaries. Hank Henning, a member of the Guilford County Commission who lives in High Point, overcame opposition from the tea party-inspired Conservatives for Guilford County to win his current seat, but his campaign literature reads like an overheated Ted Cruz screed “Our federal government is broken, populated by far too many arrogant politicians interested solely in political preservation,” Henning wrote in an email announcing his campaign. “Our borders aren’t secure, our national security is a mess, our economy is leaving too many Americans behind, our veterans are shortchanged, and our values are under attack.” Other Republican candidates include Jim Snyder, a lawyer from Lexington who made an unsuccessful US Senate bid in 2014; David W. Thompson, an unsuccessful candidate for state House who lives in Mooresville; Dan Barrett, an Advance resident who maintains a labor and employment law firm in Clemmons; and Farren K. Shoaf, a conservative Christian broadcaster in Mocksville. No information was available about Chad A. Gant, Jason A. Walser, Kathy Feather, Matthew J. McCall and Ted Budd as of press time. Finally, the new district has drawn out Vernon Robinson, who infamously erected a Ten Commandments monument in front of City Hall when he served as a member of the Winston-Salem City Council in 2004, and who recently served as campaign director of the National Draft Ben Carson for President Committee. Summing up Robinson’s brand of resentment-based, conservative identity politics, the Winston-Salem Journal once wrote, “Jesse Helms is back! And this time he’s black.” Robinson, who lost his city council seat to Molly Leight in 2005, lives outside the 13th District. Robinson’s campaign website is full of ad hominem invective and crude humor. Identifying the House and Senate

lounges in most American colleges and universities),” and — wait for it — “cultural Marxists like the mayor of Charlotte (who recently passed the ‘bathroom bill’) who are attacking our educational, cultural, religious and other institutions.”

triad-city-beat.com

Republican leadership as one of “major threats to the republic,” Robinson faults them for supposedly capitulating to President Obama, including by funding what he terms “planned butcherhood.” His threat list also includes “Russia and remnants of communism (China, North Korea, Cuba and the faculty

Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Fun & Games Games All She Wrote

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Shot in the Triad

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Mar. 30 — Apr. 5, 2016 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Fun & Games Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

OPINION

Telling it like it isn’t It was never about the bathrooms — though that’s

in the long title of the bill. It was pitched to House Republicans as a correction on municipal overreach, as if cities like Charlotte need to run any new city laws through the General Assembly — and while this may be technically accurate, it’s also ironic as hell, because this bill is the most overreaching of any floated by of our state officials. For example, North Carolina cities cannot determine their own minimum wage, though a Charlotte dollar is certainly not equal to a High Point dollar. They should have called it A Bill to Motivate a Party Base Using Fear and Ignorance. Because this is about delivering votes in November, when many of the people who voted for it come up for re-election, and also in our special Congressional election in June, when our entire delegation in Washington comes up for re-election. And in fact, it is not going according to plan. The state GOP did not anticipate the backlash that followed the passage of this bill — which was so important that the General Assembly called a special session for the first time in 8 years; it was, by all appearances, treated as an emergency. “We didn’t see this coming,” Republican House member John Hardister told Triad City Beat. How’s that for life inside the bubble? The bill shows a remarkable misunderstanding of modern gender roles, claiming that a person’s sex is unwaveringly determined by a birth certificate without any consideration for those who want the freedom to be whomever they decide — a most American value. Republicans can understand votes but, like a child throwing a tantrum in the grocery store, they don’t seem to realize that this is not the way to get them. They’re supposed to understand money, too, but this law is already costing us money, Hardister tells us: the furniture market authority reporting that hundreds if not thousands of customers won’t be coming; mayors from New York, San Francisco and Seattle forbidding employees from coming here on official business; Rob Reiner saying he won’t shoot any movies in North Carolina. The NBA All-Star Game, scheduled for Charlotte in February 2017, could be pulled. Now the state GOP is in damage-control mode. But in the meantime, we should make them pay. Our state GOP and its policies have been marginalizing the majority of city-dwelling North Carolinians from they day they took over in 2010. They do not fear us. Nor should they — we have had no effect on their nefarious plans ranging from the marriage amendment — which passed a statewide vote before it was declared illegal by the Supreme Court — to the move to redraw Greensboro City Council districts to their liking, also battling its way through the courts. As far as they are concerned, we are impotent. Let’s show them different in June. And then again in November. There are more of us than there are of them. It’s time to remind them of that.

CITIZEN GREEN Perverse GOP law threatensInsafety and privacy The new law passed in a addition to their misplaced concern about public

by Jordan Green

special session by the Republican-controlled General Assembly and signed into law by Gov. Pat McCrory preventing city governments and schools from protecting the rights of transgender people and others in the LGBTQ community is

utterly wicked. To knowingly place transgender people in a dangerous situation by forcing them to use bathrooms not consistent with their gender identities is beyond comprehension. But that’s exactly what the new law does by mandating that public agencies and public schools “require every multiple occupancy bathroom or changing facility to be designated for and only used by persons based on their biological sex,” with biological sex defined as “the physical condition of being male or female, which is stated on a person’s birth certificate.” If you are yourself not trans or don’t have a close friend or family member who is, you may not understand. Imagine that you are a trans woman whose appearance, voice and gait indicate being female but your birth certificate identifies you as male. Now, imagine that you are forced to use a public bathroom where you encounter men who will be wondering what a woman is doing there, and you become fearful of physical assault should they suspect or discover that you are a trans person. Or imagine that in every way your appearance is male although your birth certificate identifies you as female, and you try to use the women’s restroom. How would you expect to be received? McCrory and the lawmakers who pushed through this oppressive legislation have diabolically accused the victims of this bad law of the very thing that they are themselves enabling. Expressing concerns to the two Republican council members before the Charlotte City Council passed its ordinance to protect the right of transgender people to use the bathroom of their preference, McCrory wrote, “This shift in policy could also create major public safety issues by putting citizens in possible danger from deviant actions by individuals taking improper advantage of a bad policy.” There are absolutely no credible reports of trans people — or, for that matter, devious men posing as females — attacking women and children in public bathrooms. To the contrary, trans people are far more likely to be the victims of violence, with the US Justice Department reporting that one in two transgender people are sexually abused or assaulted at some point in their lives. North Carolina’s new Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act is bullying and endangering an already vulnerable population by cynically exploiting public fear for political gain.

safety, McCrory, House Speaker Tim Moore and others have expressed concerns about privacy. And again, just as their ill-conceived law is jeopardizing the public safety of trans people, the law is also violating their privacy. The fact is that when a trans woman goes into a bathroom stall, in all likelihood no one is going to see what’s between her legs. And it’s no one else’s business. Trans people use the bathrooms of their gender preference every day and pass unnoticed. This disgusting law forces trans people to choose between using a bathroom where they’re likely to face harassment or one where they’re liable to have the police called on them or be ordered off the premises. It essentially criminalizes and stigmatizes the very being of trans people. It’s wrong, and the elected officials who did this know better. They know they’re hurting trans people. They know they’re exploiting unfounded fears for political gain. For anyone born after 1975, government that fails to respond to needs or does so with half measures is almost an expectation. But for the past six years, state government in Raleigh has been acting mainly to harm us, from overturning Greensboro’s proactive rental housing inspection program RUCO to stoking xenophobia through a law that was supposed to prevent police from accepting community IDs from undocumented immigrants. Like Charlotte’s anti-discrimination ordinance, these are examples of the state intervening to prevent cities from taking action to improve people’s lives. To top it off, the so-called Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act includes a rider prohibiting cities from requiring that contractors pay employees more than minimum wage. This comes at a time when Winston-Salem, High Point and Greensboro are all wrestling with how to alleviate poverty. Our state representatives have elected to take away a tool that might make a real difference. We don’t have representative government. Those of us who live in North Carolina’s cities and hold progressive values have been squeezed into Democratic-leaning state districts that don’t have a voice in Raleigh. If the Republican lawmakers who jam this trash down our throats are bold enough to stand behind their actions, they should allow a nonpartisan redistricting committee — or better yet, a computer — to redraw the electoral maps, and then face us at the polls. Luckily for us, at least one of the perpetrators of this travesty can’t hide in a partisan gerrymandered voting district. Gov. McCrory, who has to run statewide, will be hearing from us in November.

More bus shelters

by YouthSAFE

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

We are your children, North Carolina. We created by House Bill 2 would be any different? are lesbian, bisexual, gay, transgender, genderWe are your children, North Carolina, and your hate nonconforming, pansexual, and queer, rich and poor, is killing us. black, brown, and white, educated and struggling; we We are your children, North Carolina, and we know are the promise of your future, and House Bill 2 you want to protect us. We know House Bill 2 was a harms us. misguided attempt to keep predators from us. But We are your children, North Carolina. House Bill here is the thing, North Carolina, we already have laws 2 prevents the most vulnerable of us from being to protect us from criminals. There are statutes saying able to safely use the bathrooms and locker rooms people cannot rape, sexually assault, molest or sexually of our choice. It strips our transgender and genderharass in North Carolina without consequences. What nonconforming siblings of their humanity by making we need is not House Bill 2, what we need is for you to a little box or word on their birth certificate more take those laws seriously. important than the vast kindness, intelligence and We are your children, North Carolina. You do not character they each possess. publish your rape-kit backlog information, North We are your children, North Carolina. House Bill Carolina, but, young as we are, we know there is 2 tells us we are not valuable by mandating that one. How many of those kits could have been tested public schools and public agencies police single-sex, with the $42,000 you spent on House Bill 2? How multiple-occupancy bathrooms according to assigned many actual rapists could you have gotten out of our biological sex, allowing them to refuse us service bathrooms and schools? because of who we are and who we love. House Bill 2 We are your children, North Carolina. Many of us says we are not good enough for you and never will are starving. There are food deserts in almost every be. It says you think, maybe, you can beat our love out county in our state. WRAL found that the average of us with pernicious hate, ignorance family of four on food stamps in North and fear. Carolina receives about $264 every How many of us We are your children, North month. The $42,000 you spent on could you have Carolina. House Bill 2 tells us that House Bill 2 could have fed 159 families some of us, coming from families who this month. That’s 636 people, many you gotten safely struggle from the chains of economic of them children, who could have had out of abusive injustice going back to cotton and food. Some of those people are us. homes or funded tobacco fields, are worth less. House Why would you pass hate, instead of Bill 2 tells us that hard work is not food, around better in foster always rewarded. House Bill 2 tells our state? programs if you us we, your children, are expendable We are your children, North commodities. Carolina. Funding for your protective had applied an We are your children, North extra $42,000 that services is limited. How many of us Carolina. We are young and our voices could you have you gotten safely out way instead of on are not yet as loud and refined as they of abusive homes or funded better in need to be but we are raising them up foster programs if you had applied an House Bill 2? anyway. Listen to us; wisdom does not extra $42,000 that way instead of on always require age. House Bill 2? We are your children, North We are your children, North Carolina, and we are hurting. In 2013, North Carolina Carolina. We deserve better. We demand better. Show Public Health found that lesbian, gay, bisexual, us that our lives matter. Stop killing us. Repeal House transgender, gender-nonconforming and queer youth Bill 2. seriously considered and/or made a plan for suicide at four times the rate of their peers. The same report YouthSAFE is a Greensboro-based organization that found that LGBTQ+ youth attempted suicide at three provides an environment for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, times the rate of their peers. queer, intersex youth and their allies to build community, We are your children, North Carolina. The share resources, and build skills for responding creatively American Academy of Pediatrics, the American to the world around them. The group meets every FriCounseling Association and most medical groups call day from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at Higher Ground (210 East for the banning of any form of violent punishment or Bessemer St.). New youth are always welcome. conversion attempts for LGBTQ people because they harm and kill us. Why would you think the violence

Up Front

It’s ridiculous, really, that our public transit system is so underfunded that many bus stops lack the most basic shelters. Plenty don’t even have a bench to call their own. by Eric Ginsburg The Triad is home to numerous transit needs; I’m one of many who bemoans the lack of a speedy rail line that connects Greensboro and Winston-Salem, we’ve criticized the lack of sidewalks in particular areas of the Gate City and we’ve written about the ways in which highways cut off large swaths of poor, predominantly black Winston-Salem from the budding prosperity of downtown. But the bus shelters really piss me off because it just seems so simple, so elementary and basic, that it’s hard to understand why a greater percentage of stops lack any amenities save for metal signs on a pole indicating where to stand and wait. Waiting in the blistering heat. Waiting in the rain. Waiting on your feet — after a long shift where you also stood — and shifting your weight uncomfortably. I recently spent a weekend in Athens, Ga., and my girlfriend and I took turns pointing out cool bus shelters we passed to each other. My favorite looked as if it had been crafted from the front of a yellow school bus, modified to wrap around a bench to provide shade and shelter. Others provided colorful interior displays. It would be cool to see more things like that back at home, we thought, and my mind went to Greensboro’s lone, funky and artistic bus shelter in front of the downtown YMCA — go look at it closely if you never have. But then I started thinking, “You know what’d be even better than some visually compelling bus shelters? Bus shelters in the first place.” Underfunding of public transportation is a real problem here, one that several Greensboro City Council members have run on without a whole lot to show for it. But even without diving into the much larger mess of routes, fare structures and the idea of actually expanding public transit to a wider audience or multiple formats, it just seems so darn simple to chip away at the lack of shelters, adding a handful each year. Ads on the shelters could possibly generate additional funds to offset part of the following year’s costs. As far as I know, UNCG professor Spoma Jovanovic has been the only mainstay advocating for more bus shelters in the area (though she is focused on Greensboro). She’s worked with high school students and her college classes, and had a hand in that lone attractive shelter I previously mentioned. Are there a couple more champions willing to take up this unsexy cause?

We are your children, and HB 2 harms us

triad-city-beat.com

IT JUST MIGHT WORK

FRESH EYES

Mar. 30 — Apr. 5, 2016 Cover Story

by Jordan Green // photography by Amanda Salter

For the residents of Cleveland Avenue Homes who live just across US Highway 52 or the people who live in the Boston-Thurmond neighborhood a couple blocks north of downtown Winston-Salem, the glittering urban revival at Wake Forest Innovation Quarter might as well be a different world. With BioTech Place as its centerpiece, the innovation quarter is rising from the bones of the old RJ Reynolds tobacco works, a visual manifestation of the new biotech and knowledge economy with a co-working space, luxury condos and new park with a stunning view of the skyline. Anchored by Wake Forest School of Medicine and the tech company Inmar, the highly educated, well compensated new-economy workers already have access to a burgeoning fine-dining scene just to the west on Fourth Street, and the completion of the Bailey Power Plant retail, restaurant and entertainment complex will soon augment the creative-class buzz around Krankies Coffee and its brace of kindred hipster enterprises. “We say we’re the City of the Arts, and we have this biotechnology industry that’s fastly growing,” said Nakida McDaniel, a community organizer who works with the residents of Cleveland Avenue Homes and Boston-Thurmond through the nonprofit Neighbors for Better Neighborhoods. “I don’t think we’re really looking to see where people’s interests lie in terms of creating jobs. People don’t see opportunities. There’s all this growth going on, but the people I work with don’t have access to it.” And if downtown and the innovation quarter looks distant and unattainable from East Winston, then from the other end the poor areas of the city may as well be invisible. “They have no idea what’s going on, on the other side of 52,” McDaniel said. “It’s like a separate world. The poverty is concentrated. I work in areas where the children haven’t even been outside of East Winston.” Downtown has experienced a stunning revival since 2001, when Mayor Allen Joines took office; BB&T ballpark, the burgeoning entertainment district on North Trade Street

and the transformation of the Reynolds Building into a luxury hotel are but a few of the landmark projects that are either complete or quickly coming to fruition. But there’s a darker side of the story of Winston-Salem’s transformation from manufacturing center to vanguard of the knowledge economy — the explosion of concentrated poverty and deterioration of living-wage jobs for people without advanced degrees. As Joines has acknowledged, Winston-Salem has the highest poverty rate of any of the five largest cities in the state, up to 24.0 percent in 2014 from 15.2 percent in 2000. While all three Triad cities share a history of transition from manufacturing, Greensboro and High Point have weathered the structural adjustment of deindustrialization and the shock of the Great Recession with somewhat less pain; Greensboro’s poverty rate leapt from 12.3 to 19.8 percent from 2000 to 2014, while poverty in High Point rose from 13.2 to 21.2 percent over the same period. A July 2014 Brookings Institution study ranked Winston-Salem No. 2 in the nation for growth in suburban poverty. Beyond the headline-grabbing No. 2 ranking, the more important revelation in the study was that four North Carolina metro areas, including Winston-Salem, ranked in the top 15 for growth in poverty. Among the four, which also include Raleigh, Charlotte and Greensboro-High Point, Winston-Salem has the most concentrated poverty, with 16.2 percent of poor people living in Census tracts with poverty levels of 40 percent or higher. “The challenges of poor neighborhoods — including worse health outcomes, high crime rates, failing schools, and fewer job opportunities — make it that much harder for individuals and families to escape poverty and often perpetuate and entrench poverty across generations,” the Brookings Institution report indicates. “These factors affect not only the residents and communities touched by concentrated disadvantage, but also the regions they inhabit and the ability of those metro areas to grow in inclusive and sustainable ways.”

Marquita Wisley, mother of four, was homeless for more than a year.

Mayor Joines announced an initiative to tackle poverty — a “thought force” — soon after winning reelection to his fourth term in 2013. “Do you have an alternative to the suffering of the working poor?” he asked during remarks from the dais at City Hall in December 2013. “Do you have a solution to offer the single mom who works two jobs to make ends meet? Or do you have a solution for the couple that has been working every day but some catastrophic event has placed them in an economic situation that is beyond their control? To those who doubt this initiative, if you don’t have a solution, are you suggesting that we just continue on the present course and let these individuals continue to suffer? I’d say that is not an acceptable answer.” Notwithstanding the soaring rhetoric of the mayor’s speech during the organizational meeting for the new term, the effort didn’t really get off the ground until almost two years later in late 2015. Chaired by Wake Forest University Provost Rogan Kersh, the Poverty Thought Force held two community meetings organized in a “world café” style format in February and March to gather input on four areas related to poverty: education and life

skills, housing and homelessness, health and wellness, and jobs and workforce development. Joines said the thought force will analyze the ideas generated through the meetings and come up with a set of objectives that are “feasible and impactful” for reducing poverty to present for city council’s consideration this summer. Joines, who is up for re-election again in November, said it’s too early to say what approaches to tackling poverty might hold the most promise. “Because it is a complex issue, it’s going to take a comprehensive approach,” he said in an interview. “I’m encouraged that we had great turnout and good participation at the world cafés. We have good, critical thinkers involved with a strong commitment to move forward with recommendations for our council.” Winston-Salem is Exhibit 1 for the story of how de-industrialization has coincided with an explosion in mass incarceration, functioning as a way to warehouse and control the surplus labor force, over the past 25 years in the United States. Carolyn Highsmith emerged as a community leader in the Konnoak Hills neighborhood on the south side of Winston-Salem through a series of fights against commercial rezoning on Peters Creek Parkway and efforts to reduce crime. Highsmith’s interest in protecting the stability of her middle-class neighborhood eventually drew her into a coalition of other community leaders who pushed back against low appraisals in the 2013 tax revaluation that diminished residents’ financial assets and to advocate for investment in urban schools as the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County School Board considers a bond referendum this year. Reflecting the increasing economic fragility of neighborhoods like hers and rising poverty in Winston-Salem, Highsmith pointed to the loss of solid, middle-class jobs. “I don’t think we have a diverse mixture of employment opportunities in this city,” she said. “I base that on the fact that my parents experienced — Western Electric came here in the ’50s. You could walk in and get a job. We have a long history of RJ Reynolds, Hanes knitting and Wachovia banking. Starting in the late ’80s with the RJR buyout and the dissolution of AT&T, we lost Western Electric manufacturing. We lost Hanes textiles; they got bought out. We lost Wachovia bank. You’re talking about huge swaths of middle-class jobs that were lost since the late ’80s, and we really got hit in 2008. I guess you can blame NAFTA for part of that: Textiles went offshore to Mexico and China.” One of Highsmith’s grandfathers worked for

triad-city-beat.com

A more damning No. 2 ranking for Winston-Salem came out of a April 2015 income mobility study by Harvard University researchers Raj Chetty and Nathaniel Hendren that found that only one county in the United States ranks worst than Forsyth in helping poor children climb the income ladder. The study estimated that poor boys will lose $7,960 in annual earnings when they become adults just by virtue of growing up in Forsyth County, compared to a loss of $4,010 in neighboring Guilford. It’s not as though Greensboro and High Point are a beacon of opportunity and economic progress compared to Winston-Salem. Look at any measure where Winston-Salem is among the worst and it’s a sure bet that the two other Triad cities aren’t far behind. But in one measure related to poverty, Greensboro and High Point do worse than Winston-Salem. Last year, the Food Research and Action Center ranked the Greensboro-High Point metro area the worst in the nation for food hardship. More than one in four people reported they didn’t have enough money to buy food for their families sometime during the past 12 months in Greensboro and High Point. Winston-Salem ranked No. 22 in the survey, with one in five people reporting they couldn’t afford to put food on the table at least once during the past 12 months.

Mar. 30 — Apr. 5, 2016 Cover Story

RJ Reynolds, and another worked for Vogler’s jewelers, a business that survived the Great Depression by catering to the wealthy. An uncle worked for Piedmont Airlines, and both of Highsmith’s parents were employed by Western Electric. “There’s been a huge effort to bring in high-tech jobs and biotech jobs, but there’s only a small segment of the population that can benefit from those jobs,” said Highsmith, who is running for city council in the South Ward [see story on page 8]. “Then we’re bringing in these telemarketing jobs that either pay minimum wage or just a little above. They’re mainly marginal, low-paying jobs. If we don’t have enough people qualified to work in biotech we’ll be recruiting people to fill those positions. Do we really want our local people to be the janitors and housekeepers? You’re creating society of the have and the have-nots.”

“It’s always the bad side of East Winston that’s showcased. I wish people would take a look at the good things that are going on and the good people that are over here.” — Marquita Wisley

Marquita Wisley, who grew up in rural Yadkin County, inherited the post-industrial economy when she moved to Winston-Salem at the age of 19 in 2002. Winston-Salem held the promise of better job opportunities and more housing choices and, not least important, Wisley thought the city would be a less judgmental place to raise her newborn daughter, who is biracial. Wisley moved away from Winston-Salem in 2004, and in 2005 she caught a drug-trafficking charge and wound up serving a threeyear prison sentence. Coming out of prison in 2008, Wisley was determined to raise her children, whatever the challenges. Even though she had paid her debt to society, she has continued to struggle to access employment and housing, with one cruel rejection seeming to follow another. Education and training are supposed to be paths out of poverty, but Wisley found that the certifications she received in prison for culinary arts and horticulture, along with a partial certification for cosmetology, were all but worthless when she entered the job market.

POVERTY IN THE TRIAD CITIES

She has been offered several jobs, only to have them rescinded when the background checks come back showing her criminal record. “I went to get a job at Walmart as a sales associate,” Wisley recalled. “They gave me the interview. They offered me the job as the manager of the makeup section. I said, ‘Of course, I’ll take it.’ I got the blue shirt and khaki pants. Then they rescinded it. It was crazy because during the interview I told them I was a convicted felon, but then they rescinded the offer after the background check came back.” Wisley encountered the same barriers in housing, with prospective landlords using her criminal record as a reason to discriminate against her. One time she called a Salvation Army shelter, but they had a waiting list. Another shelter would only accept her if she was a domestic violence victim, which did not apply to her. Wisley became homeless, with three daughters to take care of and pregnant with a fourth child, for more than a year. The family stayed with one and then another sister until the close quarters wore everybody down. Wisley and her girls stayed at the Royal Inn on Broad Street for about two months before it was shut down, thanks in part to complaints about drug activity from residents in the West Salem neighborhood. “It was the cheapest hotel in Winston-Salem,” Wisley recalled. “I could do odd jobs; I could do hair-braiding, just so we could have some kind of private place. I worked really hard to give my children something.” Wisley tried to maintain as much normalcy for her daughters as possible. “Their friends didn’t know there was anything wrong,” she recalled. “We would lie and tell their friends that we moved across town, but we still wanted them to go to the same school.”

2000 INCOME DISTRIBUTION

The family remained homeless over the summer. One daughter participated in a cheerleading program, and another got the opportunity to participate in a summer drama program at Reynolds High School. “My daughter’s really into acting, and they only invited 100 children,” Wisley said. “She was extended an invitation. I wasn’t going to turn her down. We might have to take a cab to get there. I made sure she got there at 9 a.m. Some days it was a struggle: We didn’t even know if we were going to have a roof over our heads when she got out at the end of the day. “I tried to make sure that everything they were doing stayed as normal as possible,” she continued. “My life was a complete mess, but theirs didn’t have to be.” Wisley and her family eventually secured permanent housing at Cleveland Avenue Homes, a public-housing community in East Winston, but only through the advocacy of a family member who lived at Sunrise Towers, which is also managed by the Housing Authority of Winston-Salem. Wisley’s uncle told a member of the office staff about her situation, and the woman ended up advocating for her. “If you have a drug conviction that took place in public housing, you can’t access public housing,” Wisley said. “My uncle explained to her that [the offense] was nowhere near public housing.” The Brookings Institution defines “high-poverty” neighborhoods as those where more than 20 percent of residents are poor, and “distressed” neighborhoods as those where more than 40 percent of residents are poor. More than 60 percent of the residents of the Census tract that includes Cleveland Avenue Homes are poor, so maybe the neighborhood deserves the designation of “severely distressed.” Poverty correlates closely with race, and the four severely distressed neighborhoods in Winston-Salem — all just to the east of Highway 52, with two each north of the Business 40 interchange and to the south — also bear the hallmarks of heavy racial segregation. The two northerly neighborhoods are 84.6 percent and 98.8 percent African-American respectively, while the two neighborhoods to the south of Business 40 and Winston-Salem State University stretching down to Waughtown Street are a mix of black and Latino. Anywhere from 58 to 75 percent of residents lack education beyond high school, and

2014 INCOME DISTRIBUTION

U.S. CENSUS

East Winston and the replacement of Ashley Elementary in Wisley’s neighborhood. So far, there’s little evidence that they’ve persuaded members of the Winston-Salem/ Forsyth County School Board to add the projects to the proposed bond list. One aspect of severely distressed neighborhoods remains invisible in the official stats: The Census doesn’t track the number of people who have cycled through the criminal justice system and re-entered society after serving time in prison. When she moved into Cleveland Avenue Homes, Wisley discovered that many of the people she met in the neighborhood were in the same situation as she was. She estimated that anywhere from 50

Chetty and Hendren, the Harvard researchers, noted “a strong negative correlation between standard measures of racial and income segregation and upward mobility” in their April 2015 study. “Moreover,” they wrote, “we also find that upward mobility is higher in cities with less sprawl, as measured by commute times to work. These findings lead us to identify segregation as the first of five major factors that are strongly correlated with mobility.” The irony of the tech boom on the other side of Highway 52 is that the new knowledge-based jobs require advanced degrees and are largely off limits to a population in which more than half the people lack even a basic college education, while many of the jobs for which people are qualified are on the fringe of the city. “There’s jobs in Rural Hall that Inmar has for scanners,” said Nakida McDaniel, the community organizer with Neighbors for Better Neighborhoods. “One of the young ladies told me: ‘I don’t have transportation out there.’” Low educational attainment in poor neighborhoods is compounded by a likelihood that children will attend failing schools, perpetuating intergenerational poverty. While there’s a strong argument that the letter grades the state Department of Public Marquita Wisley, with her niece, lives at Cleveland Avenue Homes now. Instruction assigns to schools stigmatize schools with large populations of poor students, the to 75 people in the neighborhood have either served time statistics don’t lie: Failing schools are likely to have a high in prison or have a family member that has served time. population of students who qualify for free and reduced The unemployment rate in some distressed and severely lunch, and Census tracts with high levels of poverty are distressed neighborhoods in Winston-Salem lands in likely to be served by failing schools. the double digits, sometimes approaching 20 percent, “Proxies for the quality of the K-12 school system are and median household incomes ranging from $8,775 to also correlated with mobility,” Chetty and Hendren write. $14,041. But those figures can be deceptive, said Wisley, “Areas with higher test scores (controlling for income who earns money by doing hair and public speaking enlevels), lower dropout rates and smaller class sizes have gagements performed under contract through Neighbors higher rates of upward mobility. In addition, areas with for Better Neighborhoods. higher local tax rates, which are predominantly used to finance public schools, have higher rates of mobility.” “We’re one of the poorest sides of Winston-Salem, but Forsyth County has the second lowest tax rate of we have one of the biggest spending powers,” Wisley said. North Carolina’s five largest urban counties, after Wake. “People work hard. They might not be the best jobs or the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools holds a mixed most legal jobs. People make money and spend money. record among the five largest school districts in the state. They don’t think we do because it’s not on paper. We It carries the highest short-term suspension and dropout might be the poorest on paper, but we make money. And rates of the five largest school systems, but falls somepoor people spend money. I don’t know where we get it, where in the middle, alongside Guilford County Schools, but we spend a lot of it.” for the number of failing schools. Winston-Salem/Forsyth Wisley and the other residents at Cleveland Avenue County Schools ranks second behind the Wake County Homes have been discussing the idea of trying to orgaPublic School System for the percentage of students nize a cooperative grocery store in East Winston. They accepted at UNC System institutions, but lands in the would welcome an Aldi, with affordable prices and quality middle of the pack when it comes to the retention rate for food. There is a Sav-A-Lot and a Food Lion at the interthird-year college students. section of Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and New WalkerAdvocates for urban reinvestment, including Carolyn town Road, but Wisley said the stores are too far of a walk Highsmith, have been pushing for a new middle school in from Cleveland Avenue Homes or the Piedmont Circle

Apartments public-housing community near the airport. The Winston-Salem Transit Authority’s restriction of two grocery bags per rider results in many residents relying on corner stores that charge inflated prices. A quality clothing store and healthy sit-down restaurant would also do well in East Winston, Wisley said. “If you live on the west side of town, you can work, live and entertain yourself in the same part of town,” she said. “That doesn’t happen in the east side. That should be a right of everyone has — to live, work and play in the same area.” Tracking the rise of poverty neighborhood by neighborhood over the past 15 years in Winston-Salem shows a consistent pattern of weakening economic vitality. Among North Carolina’s five largest cities, Winston-Salem entered the new millennium with the smallest middle class and has held that status to date, even as all five cities saw their middle quintile diminish. From 2000 to 2014, 13 Census tracts — mostly hugging Highway 52 — went from low poverty to high poverty, while seven went from high poverty to distressed. One tract deteriorated from distressed to severely distressed, and two tracts — flanking Business 40 just east of the Highway 52 interchange — leapfrogged from high poverty to severely distressed. Similarly, the Old Town neighborhood off Reynolda Road transitioned from low-poverty to distressed. And the deterioration is not limited to neighborhoods where poverty is concentrated: With the exception of a handful of tracts, virtually all parts of Winston-Salem have experienced a rise in the number of poor people over the past decade and a half. Only two areas of the city — Bethabara and a fringe area near Rural Hall — saw the pattern reversed, with a transition from high poverty to low poverty. Median household incomes in many neighborhoods across the city, including some low-poverty tracts, have fallen, even without factoring inflation, while housing values have shown modest to robust growth. The divergent patterns raise the question of whether millennials and genXers will be able to afford to invest in homeownership, even as baby boomers age out and start to move into assisted-living communities. With downtown transforming before our eyes, it’s easy to forget that fewer than 2,000 people live there. Beyond the castle moat, the neighborhoods where the vast majority of Winston-Salem’s residents live are crying out for investment. “People have a big misconception about the people who live in East Winston,” Marquita Wisley said. “We have the same values; we have the same goals, the same dreams. It’s always the bad side of East Winston that’s showcased. I wish people would take a look at the good things that are going on and the good people that are over here.”

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typical of poor neighborhoods, rental housing makes up 75 percent or more of the residential market.

Mar. 30 — Apr. 5, 2016 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Fun & Games Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

CULTURE Senegalese cuisine lives on West Market Street by Eric Ginsburg

hen longtime Village Voice food critic restaurant service. Robert Sietsema wrote his enthralling book, The same is true of New York in a Dozen Dishes, he chose somethe cheb at Marie’s thing called “thiebou djenn” as No. 4. — browned fish, The meal featuring fish, rice and vegetables bones still intact but is usually just called “cheb” for short, he wrote, and is served without the known as the national dish of Senegal. And though the head or tail, prefirst version of the flavor-packed, prep-intensive meal pared with a massive he found in New York the ’80s was stripped down, pile of reddish Jollof Sietsema still welcomed it and, later, dubbed it among rice and topped with this culinary capital’s most important. a few cooked and It wasn’t until 1993, he writes, that “a few full-blown starchy root vegetaSenegalese restaurants” started opening, particularly bles. And, just like in Harlem and Fort Greene. Sietsema lists the four best Sietsema described, places to find cheb in New York — the top two both on the cheb here comes West 116th Street in Manhattan — and I figured I’d need with what looks to wait for a trip north to try this celebrated meal. like a bit of canned That’s because African restaurants seem to strugtomato for taste, gle in Greensboro. Despite the apparent success of though the dish Taste of Ethiopia and downtown Egyptian restaurant does better with a Koshary (which, by the way now has a lunch buffet squeeze of the lime that’s worth checking out), most African restaurants wedge provided. here don’t fare as well. You may remember African Jollof rice is popContinental Cuisine; I only made it in to eat once ular West African before the restaurant that looked to be a one-man food generally made operation closed. with palm oil and There don’t appear to be any African restaurants tomato paste, along ERIC GINSBURG The thiebou djenn, or cheb (foreground), is in neighboring Winston-Salem or High Point, though with several spices, considered the national dish of Senegal. both seem to have African markets, and in nearby and is thought to Durham, there’s tasty cuisine at the Palace Internabe a descendent of well balanced and satisfying. tional hailing from far-flung nations including Kenya paella, possibly from Portugal in particular. (Senegal But if you’re up for trying something new, go ask for and Zimbabwe. and Portugal are relatively close, if you look at a world the cheb. There are other choices— from fried turkey But none of these restaurants with strong and map, given how far north the western coastal nation tail to steak sautéed with peas and served with French moderate East African emphases respectively brought is.) Some believe Jollof rice is a progenitor of jambabread, and even a ground beef sandwich with habaneme any closer to cheb. Guilford County’s demographics laya, which after eating it, I have to say makes sense. ro peppers and mayo that sounds more like Mexican didn’t make it look much more hopeful; the county’s The rest of the menu at Marie’s is meat heavy, unless food— but likely none that are as quintessentially largest African immigrant and refugee communities you don’t count fish; otherwise it’s a rice couscous and Senegalese. hail from Nigeria and Sudan, according to the Center collard greens plate called “dambou,” which appears Did I mention how good it tastes, or that it’s easy for New North Carolinians at UNCG, while just 500 to be from Niger. Our server recommended the beef to remove the fish’s bones in one skilled swoop? You’ll residents hail from all West Afrikabobs, which come with like it, and almost as importantly, you’ll make it that can nations including Senegal. sweet plantains, and I’m much more likely that we won’t have to go to New Visit Marie’s African Cuisine So when I drove down Greensglad Kacie took her up York just to grab some cheb in the future. boro’s West Market Street — on on it. Though two hot at 4631 W. Market St. (GSO) Pick of the Week my way to grab dinner with sauces that came with it or check out friends at Da Sa Rang Korean were overpowering, the Hoptical illusion restaurant by Super G (try it and seasoned beef paired with mariesafricancuisine.com. Dogfish Head Beer Dinner @ World of Beer (GSO), thank me later) — and saw the onion and pepper was Wednesday, 7 p.m. newly opened Marie’s African tasty and also familiar. Trying two new Dogfish Head beers is definitely a Cuisine, I didn’t even have cheb on my mind. Do not leave Marie’s without trying the house lemtantalizing enough reason to make it out to this But the other night when I walked in with my girlonade, which deserves a more unique name considerdinner experience, but what’s really compelling is friend Kacie, there it was, thiebou djenn, on the back of ing it contains ginger, pineapple and mint as well as a the menu. Chefs from World of Beer have prepared a four-course menu with Dogfish beer pairings... the dinner menu. little vanilla and sugar. In fact, if you somehow made it and the offerings sound mouthwatering, especially Sietsema describes a cheb where veggies are stuffed this far into the article but are the kind of person who’s the grilled corn hush puppies with Sriracha-lime inside the fried fish, and a plate loaded with a wide still probably going to go eat a hamburger for lunch aioli and bacon jam, or the Vietnamese bahn mi array of vegetables when he first tried the dish in tomorrow, just go ask the folks at Marie’s for a gallon sandwich with pickled veggies. Pick up tickets via Senegal, but noted that, at least initially, Senegalese of this stuff to go and sub it out for your sweet tea. It’s the store’s Facebook page or pay at the door. immigrants scaled it back for New York not as overwhelmingly sugary and tastes incredibly

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Tipsy’z Tavern

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Tipsy’z Tavern is a domestic beer kind of place, but the High Point bar and restaurant still offers specials like a grapefruit mimosa garnished with strawberry (foreground).

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In that way, Tipsy’z doesn’t just cater to groups there to watch a game — three televisions projected sports matches before the NCAA men’s tourney came on but very few patrons paid them any mind — or knock back a six-pack. You’re just as likely to find a family there with two small children, or as the case was on Sunday, a little bit of everything. Tipsy’z is not the kind of bar you haven’t seen before. This is still High Point, North Carolina. But it’s cleaner, more welcoming sort of salad-sandwich-burger bar than most, not just in the Third City, but the Triad. Plus, they’re Carolina fans.

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You may know Tipsy’z from its food truck, specializing in stuffed burgers. Or maybe you’ve seen it on the corner there by DeBeen Espresso and a Sheetz gas station. But it’s bigger than it looks and nicer than it sounds, the kind of place where you could order the Hangover Special for brunch with a grapefruit mimosa with a strawberry garnish or where you might hear “Good Vibrations” by Marky Mark. This is a domestic beer kind of bar, the kind that attracts patrons that those Budweiser Super Bowl ads are aimed at but where Red Oak, Foothills and Dale’s are still on draft. The space is split, with Visit Tipsy’z Tavern at some seating 805 Westchester Drive (HP) separate or find it on Facebook. in a more food-oriented space but most of the building occupied by the bar and TV centric orientation. But the bar is laid out to accommodate dining — think of Cooper’s Ale House in Greensboro, the sort of place that is most definitely a bar but one that emphasizes seated interactions over large open space. High and low tables abound, including a rare find that will seat nine, great for allowing larger parties to stick together without forcing half the people to stand or float.

ERIC GINSBURG

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If you’re looking for a place to watch the Carolina game this Saturday in High Point, I know just the spot. On Easter Sunday, hours before UNC would knock off fellow ACC holdout Notre Dame in the NCAA tournaby Eric Ginsburg ment’s Elite Eight competition, Tipsy’z Tavern proudly proclaimed its Carolina loyalties on a printed sheet consisting of the day’s specials. It may be safe to say that many Triad taverns will become de facto Carolina strongholds on Saturday. After all, the Heels are up against the Syracuse Orange in the Final Four, and I’m betting more people around here will cheer for ’Cuse because they’re Duke or State fans than out of some allegiance to the New York institution of higher learning. Yes, the bandwagon grows as Marcus Paige, Brice Johnson and the rest of the team draw closer to the NCAA Championship (against Villanova or Oklahoma, in case you slept all weekend). Maybe a few venues in High Point will swap out those purple flags for the Third City’s university that are so prevalent and replace them with Heels paraphernalia (though not, I’m guessing, at Liberty Brewery & Steakhouse, where brewman Todd Isbell will be rooting for the Orange). But wouldn’t you want to drink somewhere that the support felt genuine? If you’re going to Tipsy’z for the 8:50 game, be sure to arrive with plenty of time to spare — the place filled up around 5 p.m. on Sunday, and the other Final Four matchup this upcoming Saturday at 6:09 will likely bring in its own crowd. The bar admittedly possesses a stupid name. There’s no way around it. But as with most things in High Point, or maybe even the Triad, you’ve gotta take what you can get. Luckily nothing else is stupid about Tipsy’z, save for the placement of the dart board, which would require a minimum of seven seats to be abandoned in order to safely throw. Tipsy’z is a step above a dive, and certainly more than a hole in the wall. There’s a full kitchen, for starters, cooking up the kind of burger-forward bar food that you’d look to find on game day, including newly added buffalo chicken nachos and fried pepperjack — yep, it’s battered and fried cheese with some sauce. Here you’ll find a group of regular stiffs chugging beers and egged on by their bartender, but also a few middle-aged couples sharing an early dinner, a group of their friends in their thirties getting together and a young guy trying to hit on one of two college juniors that he’s just met. And all of this while the sun is still high.

Mar. 30 — Apr. 5, 2016 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Fun & Games Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

CULTURE High Point rapper Tange Lomax puts in her work by Jordan Green

uring the Black 2 Hip Hop Showcase at Greensboro’s Blind Tiger, a rapper from High Point named Tange Lomax turned in a brief set at the midpoint of the evening that was like an electric charge reorganizing the chaotic atoms of diffuse energy. Her precise elocution, focused energy, relentless pacing and unpredictability — exploding at the moment least expected — suggested a talented welterweight boxer landing punches, putting in the work instead of glorying in the title. Lomax started recording at home in High Point with a Mac and a mic in 2011, assembling two albums and an EP, while improving her rap skills and songcraft. There’s an undeniable talent here, but Lomax — like most of her peers in the fertile but overlooked North Carolina hip-hop scene — is more focused on putting in her paces than looking for laurels. The work is starting to pay off: The Source magazine featured Lomax’s video for “Black Models” from her five-track EP No Hard Feelings in early January. The gauzy production by the Greensboro-based Grovesideworks sets a foundation for Lomax’s wry but resilient reflections on urban adversity to take shape, with the video by Nomad Staff showing the artist dancing in front of Brian Davis’ butterfly mural on Washington Street. Lomax was inspired to start rapping around the age COURTESY PHOTO Tange Lomax of High Point is quietly improving her craft as a performer and recording artist from her hometown of High Point, but making a name for herself in Greensboro. of 8, after hearing Eve from Ruff Riders. “I feel like it’s my purpose — it’s my gift,” Lomax know how to touch people. If you’re a doctor, you have so it has some inspiration.” told Triad City Beat. “A lot of people wish they could to know how to move things around. I know how to In the meantime, to tide fans over while they’re do it, but they never had the confidence. I feel like it’s put together a song. At first I was waiting for the next album, she plans to put out an EP. God’s purpose for me to spread rapping over other people’s beats. I She’s especially excited about a track called “Anthems positivity, joy and love through finally wanted to put my own songs Only” that features her engineer, Kenny Wizard, as a music.” Tange Lomax performs with together. guest rapper. The Greensboro rappers C. Seers, Josh Jones and Loveyy “I want to be the best with hooks “I want to make an anthem,” Lomax said, “where Pitt and Ramel Shakur gave tha Don, with live art by — to get the hooks stuck in peoples’ people can listen to it when they’re going to work and Lomax an early opportunity to heads,” she continued. “That’s what when they get off — whatever they’re going through, perform. Mary the Heathen at Urban I start with — I don’t want to give that’s something that they can have with them.” “Those two definitely Grinders in downtown away too much — to give people a believed in me,” Lomax said. Greensboro on Friday. The vibe that you can’t put your finger “That’s where it all started.” Pick of the Week show is hosted and curated on. I usually sing my hooks, and rap Advancing from guesting on The young man and the sea my verses, but lately I’ve started to other rappers’ material to a fullby TerriShalane Jones. The Change album release @ Delurk Gallery (W-S), switch it up.” fledged artist, Lomax gradually Friday, 10:30 p.m. She credits Grovesideworks with developed her energetic perforIf you’ve still got some artistic stamina left over supporting her vision and helping mance style. after Winston’s First Friday, stick around downher define her sound. “If you love what you do and you mean what you town afterwards for a listening party worth your “They produce the majority of my music,” Lomax say, you have to say it with some kind of energy and while. Jacob Leonard recorded his latest album on said. “They’ve been the most consistent with sending confidence,” she said. “If you believe in your message, a boat with an iPad and acoustic guitar crossing me beats and different sounds. They definitely are you need to have that energy to back it up.” the Atlantic Ocean to Europe and back to North some of the people who shape my sounds. They don’t While her set at Black 2 Hip Hop showcased the diCarolina, you know, as one does. At Delurk, he’ll put me in a box.” share his music, accompanied by video of the vast rect side of Lomax’s artistry, she works across an array Lomax is working on her next full-length album. ocean to enhance the experience. He hosts an open of styles, including a neo-soul sound reminiscent of “The album will be more of a serious kind of spiritual mic discussion afterwards and promises to share a Erykah Badu and Lauryn Hill. bottle of Scottish scotch from his trip. journey,” she said. “I have a lot of songs that I did last “I didn’t sing as much in the early stages,” Lomax year where I felt like I was going through some things, said. “I’m definitely continuing to grow each day. I

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Mar. 30 — Apr. 5, 2016 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Fun & Games Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

CULTURE Beka Butts dreams big for High Point arts by Joanna Rutter

hile most people might walk down the Washington Street district in High Point and see only dilapidated Victorian houses and a few longstanding small businesses, artist Beka Butts sees beyond those buildings into Washington Street’s future as a cultural district breathing life into the often-overlooked third city in the Triad. As can be imagined, her wish list for making that happen is rather long. But she has a new wall to start with. On a warm March afternoon outside of 512 E. Washington Drive, home to her artists’ group 512 Collective, Butts sipped coffee while surveying a large but otherwise unremarkable brown wall facing west, immediately visible after turning onto Washington Street from Centennial Street Butts was given free rein over the wall by its owner, and she’s collaborating with Korinna Sargent, a Greensboro artist (also a sales representative for Triad City Beat) to create something eye-catching. Their current idea for the wall involves combining the motifs of a fox and octopus to represent North Carolina’s mountains and sea. It all jives with Butts’ passion for making art part of everyday life for High Point residents. “If there’s a really awesome mural that you see on that walk or that drive to work, it becomes part of your visual language,” she said. Butts’ lifestyle can only be described as ceaseless. Earlier that day, Butts eagerly talked about the 512 Collective in a Greensboro Mural Project meeting at the People’s Perk and volunteered to assist with community murals. A few minutes afterward outside, she discussed logistics with Sargent before heading out to pick up supplies for their mural. Butts pours a large amount of her energy into the 512 Collective here on Washington Street, a teaching gallery and studio she runs with fellow artists Tammy McDowell and Jessie Rae Perkins. Over a year ago, the group was settling into its permanent home, a reclaimed crack house bought and renovated by the Hayden-Harman Foundation for the collective. The foundation’s partnership, mainly provided via “proud papa” Patrick Harman, has been essential in allowing the group to pursue their vision unhindered. “He trusts us as artists, which is the biggest gift one can be given,” Butts said. Since 2014, the 512 Collective has continued to lay that groundwork by offering classes, hosting events and providing gallery space. More classes are slated for April, and Fourth Fridays will start up in June. The monthly event features vendors and live music, much like First Fridays in Greensboro and Winston-Salem. The duplex’s many rooms and the things within them touch on Hogwarts levels of bizarrity, including a welded horse sculpture, a book on erotic art, a wall-sized painting of a punk-inspired fairy, two closet shrines, and a delightfully terrifying installation in a

Beka Butts runs the 512 Collective, a teaching gallery and studio on Washington Street, with Tammy McDowell and Jessie Rae Perkins.

bathroom featuring a life-size mannequin wearing a wedding dress and a Dia de los Muertos-style mask in the tub. Visitors are welcome, and the space is open for any artists, not just members, to bring projects to work on in the studio. Butts said there’s no shortage of local talent joining the collective’s vision. “Artists are coming out of the woodwork,” Butts said. “We meet them constantly, but they’re not doing work here. Nobody’s been fostering it for them. They just never felt like they had a community before.” From the back porch of 512, Butts pointed out the humongous furniture showrooms of downtown High Point such as the International Home Furnishings Center looming over the cars whizzing past on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. The showrooms remain empty for most of the year like a “movie set” of a city. Butts dreams of someday repurposing warehouses around the fringes of the central business district as maker spaces or galleries. “It’s the prettiest little ghost town you ever saw,” Butts said. According to Butts and many others, the reason that dream may take a while to be realized is High Point’s inability to think beyond the annual furniture market. “Back in the ‘60s, it was “Mad Men,” schmoozing and boozing … I think the Market is much more fragile

JOANNA RUTTER

[now] than anyone wants to admit.” That perceived fragility isn’t so much cause for alarm for Butts as it is an opportunity to build something more lasting: a vibrant arts scene. “I fear for when the market falls, [but] we’ll have the groundwork for when it does,” she said. Though she’s certainly invested in the welfare of High Point, Butts can’t help but have a larger focus since she works and lives in Greensboro. To have a conversation with her about the local arts scene is to easily win a game of Triad Cultural Bingo. “If it’s just one person screaming at the sky about needing more art in Greensboro, High Point or Winston, nothing’s ever going to happen,” Butts said. “That would be our biggest advantage, if we could treat the Triad as a metropolis,” she added. Zooming back into the small stretch of Washington

Pick of the Week O captain! My captain! Dunnalia @ Westerwood Neighborhood (GSO), Friday, 4 p.m. Andrew Dunnill, who passed away in January, was a sculptor and UNCG art professor. The site of the exhibit, which runs through April, is at the corner of Prescott Street and Guilford Avenue, a community orchard and garden that Dunnill had used as a space to showcase student art.

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December 19th 10am – 12pm

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All are welcome to join us for our annual pancake breakfast, with a fun new theme. We will have carnival games, crafts, food, and TONS OF FUN! Triad City Beat’s Art Director Jorge Maturino will be face painting with his wife Karyh Maturino

Mar. 30 — Apr. 5, 2016 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Fun & Games Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

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hree Triad women fly up to Blaine, Minn. this week to battle for the USA Hockey Women’s National Championship. The Carolina Aces, a B Division club based in Raleigh, took the southeast district tiby Anthony Harrison tle with a 21-11-1 record. They’ll face the Nutcrackers, Madison Meteorites and Anaheim Lady Ducks in the tournament before receiving a seed in the semifinals. “The season went really good once we found the consistency in our core group,” defender Sydney Borden said. That consistency arrived thanks to Borden, fellow defender Nikole Calvillo and right wing Leah Adams. All three women live in Greensboro. “One of our strongest assets of the team is our defense,” head coach Tracy Neumann said. “Two of those three players — Sydney and Niki — are defensemen, so they’re half of our defense.” Neumann likened the diminutive Adams — “the heart and soul of the team” — to notoriously competitive NHL right wing Pat Verbeek, nicknamed the “Little Ball of Hate.” “She gets under the other teams’ skins,” Neumann laughed. “She’s always runnin’ around, and she’s not afraid to do the dirty work.” Neumann, a Texas native, began his tenure with the Aces in 2012, then a C Division team known as the TriCity Selects. “We were dominating teams at the C level, and it wasn’t competitive,” Neumann said. “It wasn’t any fun to beat someone by six or seven goals.” In C Division hockey, rules limit clubs’ rosters to contain at most four players with collegiate experience; in B Division, teams may enlist as many former college players as they wish. After the Aces entered B Division play for the 201415 season, they competed in the nationals, advancing to the quarterfinals. “[The transition] was so much smoother than we

Aces high were intending it to be or ever thought it could be,” Borden said. “We had absolutely no idea that, in our first two years as a B team, we would kick it to the national tournament, but it was nice to be surprised.” While any outsider would laud this achievement, Neumann believes the club lacked the roster depth to compete for the title. In the off-season, the Aces added three ringers to the roster, and they began their ascent to contender status. “When we have our full roster, we are above and beyond a B team,” Borden boasted. The Aces logged quality victories over club teams representing Liberty University and the University of Delaware; the latter won a national championship in 2015. This season was not without its tough moments, though. At a tournament in Cleveland against Michigan-based club Honeybaked, a 2-0 loss threw the Aces into a dogfight. “There was an all-out ice brawl at the end of the game,” Borden recalled. “Two of our players got injured; four people got ejected. We wound up foregoing playing in the championship game of that tournament because we refused to play [Honeybaked] again.” Both Borden and Neumann believed the team’s turning point came in December, when they traveled to Philly for a round-robin tournament against their northeastern rivals, the Rochester Edge and Philadelphia Freeze. “We had a moment where we all realized what we were going forward for, what we needed to do to get better consistently,” Borden said. “It went from zero-to-60 real quick.” When the Aces competed in their next tourney at Raleigh’s Gamer Ice House, they lit up the Freeze. “The scores were so astronomical,” Borden said. “Every single player was there, playing the way they wanted to — the way they knew they could — but fully beyond everyone’s potential. We saw the competition in front of us and destroyed it.” More spoils from that weekend: The Aces also stunned a local men’s team in a close match decided by shootout.

“[That game] forced us to move the puck a lot quicker,” Neumann said. “It forced us to really pick up our game and rely on each of the other players on the ice as opposed to having one or two people try to control the game.” Even though they’re soaring with healthy momentum, cultivation of the chemistry and consistency Borden relishes proves difficult for the Aces. The women’s educations and careers make practices exceedingly rare — the team might meet twice a year — and on game days and tournament weekends, the bench fluctuates with player availability. “We struggle a lot when we only go to tournaments with, like, 10 girls instead of 16,” Borden said. Topping it all, between travel expenses and fees for ice time, the women spend roughly $2,000 each to play a season — a significant sacrifice considering players’ limited income and lack of team sponsorships. But most try their best to get on the ice whenever possible — for love of the game; for camaraderie. “It just feels like a little family,” Borden said. “I get really excited to play hockey with these girls. It doesn’t feel like something I’m paying money to do; I get to go and hang out with some of the greatest friends I’ve ever had and help make a difference in a very positive, warming environment.” Neumann concurred. “The bond between these women is much better than any team I’ve coached,” Neumann said. “They love each other, respect each other, and they’re not afraid to go to war for each other.” Follow the Carolina Aces on Facebook.

Pick of the Week Ram on Fayetteville State Broncos @ WSSU Rams (W-S), Thursday, 4 p.m. The Rams women’s tennis team (5-6) stumbled early in the season, but a win streak may be in the mix. They beat opponents at home 9-0, and if they take home-court advantage for all it’s worth, they’ll have three straight wins and an even record down the stretch. For more info, visit wssurams.com.

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“Love handles” material One might pick you up at an airport Multicolored agate Where many brews are on draft “Respect for Acting” writer Hagen Stephen King novel about a dog Hot trend “Cold Mountain” hero W. P. ___ Leaves Atty.’s organization Office fixture? Make marginal markings Walter’s wife on “Breaking Bad” Leave astonished Delta follower, in the NATO alphabet Blades cut by blades Parade columnist Marilyn ___ Savant

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Progressive spokesperson Stanley of “Julie & Julia” Grows light “Hamilton” creator/star ___-Manuel Miranda 15 Take ___ for the worse 16 Novel on an iPad, e.g. 17 Actress Poehler 18 Sleepover of sorts 20 Louis or Lewis, e.g. 22 Former Boston Symphony director Seiji 23 Actor Penn of the “Harold & Kumar” films 24 Gear sprocket 26 Deprive of strength 28 Newsroom honchos 32 “Talk ___” (Pedro Almodovar film) 33 Fashion designer and daughter of a noted painter 37 ___Pen (injector for allergic reactions) 38 1978 Peace Nobelist Anwar 39 Ted ___ and the Pharmacists 42 Study involving charged particles and fluids 47 “Check,” in poker 49 Stick at a table 50 Like much of the analysis on “Marketplace” 54 Nestle’s ___-Caps 55 Letters on Windy City trains

28 Dr. Zaius, e.g. 29 It’s no deep slumber 30 Props for driving instructors 31 “V.1.A.G.R.a 4 FR33!”, perhaps 34 Film noir actress Lupino 35 “Li’l Abner” creator Al 36 Companion of Aramis and Porthos 40 Coin portraying Louis XIV 41 Suffix for sugars, in chemistry 43 Deighton who wrote the “Hook, Line and Sinker” trilogy 44 Cartoon hero with antennae 45 Place to get lost, per Neil Simon 46 Gin-flavoring fruit 47 One of a making-out couple 48 Number at the pump 51 Unruly hairdo 52 “See ya!” 53 Peach, burgundy, or chocolate, e.g. 57 Assistant 59 Thailand, once 60 Tuneful Fitzgerald 61 Website for restaurant reviews 63 Bartender to Homer 64 Infirmary bed

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56 Hawaiian actor Jason who’s set to play Aquaman 58 “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” author Ken 62 Radiohead title followed by the lyric “Arrest this man” 65 ___-de-France 66 ___ a high note (finish well) 67 Eugene of travel guide fame 68 100% 69 Stopwatch button 70 Banjo ridges 71 Item hidden in the four theme entries

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Mar. 30 — Apr. 5, 2016 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Fun & Games Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

ALL SHE WROTE Potty politics

M ence?

other: I need to use the john. Me: I think you mean the jane. Mother: What’s the differ-

Sir John Harrington — Queen Elizabeth I’s godson and provocative by Nicole Crews writer — is credited with devising Britain’s first flushing toilet in the 16th Century. He called it the “ajax” after jake, the colloquial term for the pot, but “john” is the moniker that stuck. One of his best-known works — outside of the john (though where he actually wrote it remains a mystery) — was a satire entitled “A New Discourse upon a Stale Subject: The Metamorphosis of Ajax.” A discreet flushing of the excrement that was poisoning the state at the time, the allegory was based on his invention. It tanked with the Earl of Leicester and the powers that be and got him banished from court for a time, but won him the ongoing reference. So every time you use the john, think about Harrington. Here are a few more tales from the toilet to distract you from the fact that North Carolina’s recent Bathroom Bill— which really is anything but — has set us back at least to the 1960s, if not the 16th Century. Dunny: Derived from British dialect word dunnekin — meaning dung house. Most often referenced in the Australian bush but also applicable to North Carolina’s General Assembly. Crapper : United States soldiers stationed in England during World War I took to calling toilets predominately made by Thomas Crapper & Co. “the crapper.” Also works in the sentence, “North Carolina’s economy is headed for the crapper to the tune of at least $4.5 billion at risk for federal funding and innumerable industry boycotts.” Pot: A chamber pot was a bowl-shaped container kept in the bedroom to be used as a toilet at night before the introduction of intricate indoor plumbing. Also works in the sentence, “North Carolina’s reputation is going to pot.”

Thunder Box: A slang word for toilet associated with flatulation, which is what most men’s rooms will become if mothers aren’t allowed to accompany their little fart and poop monsters into the loo in public places.

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Bog: A term meaning open cesspit that also applies to the current state of the North Carolina General Assembly. The Bathroom Bill article states, “No person may bring any civil action based upon the public policy expressed herein” — meaning that no one will be able to sue for termination and hiring decisions based on race, sex, national origin, religion, disability or age. Loo: One theory is that loo is the old-fashioned term for lee and stems from early ships not having toilets and so urinating over the side of the vessel was common. Using the looward or leeward side was important so the urine would not be blown back on board. Another theory is that this was the first version of the unisex john, seeing as how the name “loo” works for both genders. (Also see metaphors regarding how our state government is affecting our state economically and sociologically.)

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Lavatory: From the Latin, to wash — as in to wash away years of reputation-building and initiative for North Carolina as a member of the progressive South. Jacks: A privy in Tudor England. A “jacks ass” refers to North Carolina’s current governor. House of Office: Common name for a toilet in 17th Century England and 21st Century North Carolina. Privy: A Scottish and Northern England term meaning private place. Also references an access to information, clearly not available in Raleigh, North Carolina

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Illustration by Jorge Maturino