Triad City Beat — July 1, 2015 by Triad City Beat

Greensboro / Winston-Salem / High Point triad-city-beat.com July 1 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 7, 2015

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The virgin diaries Cold drinks with no booze but plenty of spirit

Inhuman relations PAGE 12

Messing with Texas PAGE 18

PAGE 20

Steal your face PAGE 37

July 1 — 7, 2015

DOWNTOWN JAZZ \ FRIDAYS / 6-9 PM AT CORPENING PLAZA NEXT EVENT JULY 10 FOUR80 EAST, OPENING ACT - VINCENT CRENSHAW SUMMER ON TRADE \ SATURDAYS / 7-10 PM AT SIXTH & TRADE NEXT EVENT JULY 4 BO STEVENS (HONKY TONK)

You’ve depended on Libby Hill for delicious seafood for 60 years. Now, with more Healthy options on the menu, it’s time to Re-discover this Greensboro treasure. We’re also offering locally prepared items in select locations, such as desserts from The Sweet Shop & Pound Cakes by Margaret Elaine. Also, get a cup of locally roasted organic coffee from Carolina Coffee Roasting Company!

15 craft beers on tap*

$3 drafts every Wednesday

Greensboro’s oldest independent restaurant. 2

3920 Cotswold Ave • 3011 Randleman Rd • 3930 High Point Rd Mayberry Mall, Mt. Airy • 1629 Freeway Dr., Reidsville *Beers are only at the Coltswold location

CONTENTS

Office: 336-256-9320

Business

Publisher Allen Broach allen@triad-city-beat.com

Art

Art Director Jorge Maturino jorge@triad-city-beat.com

Sales

Sales Executive Dick Gray dick@triad-city-beat.com Sales Executive Cheryl Green cheryl@triad-city-beat.com

Contributors Carolyn de Berry Nicole Crews Anthony Harrison Matt Jones

28 UP FRONT

ART

3 Editor’s Notebook 4 City Life 7 Commentariat 7 The List 8 Barometer 8 Unsolicited Endorsement 9 Triad power Ranking 10 Heard

30 Collaboration, not competition

NEWS

GAMES

11 Housing and leadership in GSO 12 Approaches against racism 15 HPJ: Inhuman relations

35 Jonesin’ Crossword

OPINION

36 Green Valley Road, Greensboro

16 16 18 18

Editorial: A city’s lines of defense Citizen Green: Supreme relief It Just Might Work: Letting Texas go Fresh Eyes: Domestic terrorism

COVER 20 The virgin diaries

FOOD Cover photography by Eric Ginsburg

Bartender Tim Nolan pours a drink at Hoots Roller Bar.

The good kind of gastrointestinal upset by Brian Clarey

Editorial

Editor in Chief Brian Clarey brian@triad-city-beat.com Senior Editor Jordan Green jordan@triad-city-beat.com Associate Editor Eric Ginsburg eric@triad-city-beat.com Editorial Interns Sayaka Matsuoka intern@triad-city-beat.com Investigative Reporting Intern Nicole Zelniker Photography Interns Amanda Salter Caleb Smallwood

triad-city-beat.com

1451 S. Elm-Eugene St. Greensboro, NC 27406

EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK

26 Greensboro Vegan Dining Guide 27 Barstool: Hair of the dog

MUSIC 28 Dance on high

STAGE & SCREEN 32 Treasure Island

GOOD SPORT 34 Between sport and expression

SHOT IN THE TRIAD ALL HE WROTE 37 The grateful and the dead

Chef Dion Sprenkle is a maelstrom: volatile and messy, bouncing through his kitchen and moving his arms like twin tornadoes. Before taking the stage after the final plates had been served, he had to change into a fresh chef’s coat because the one he had been working in looked like someone had used it to wipe up all the cutting boards on the line. This semifinal round of Competition Dining, held this year in Winston-Salem’s Benton Convention Center, pitted Sprenkle — the madman from New York whose eponymous Lexington restaurant operates without the benefit of liquor, wine and beer sales — and Undercurrent’s Chef Michael Harkenreader, a former Comp Dining champion whose calm demeanor hides a quiet storm of culinary creativity. Sprenkle came to my attention back in 2013 when he was even more unknown than he is now. I met him at his Lexington restaurant where he explained why he chose this little town, where he still has spaghetti and meatballs on the menu alongside the four-course tasting menu and escargot and where he can’t sell alcohol, rather than one of the thriving downtown districts in the Triad. Short version: Screw those guys. Picture Joe Pesci saying it and you get the idea. Harkenreader is a different sort of beast. I’m in his dining room at Undercurrent every week to drop off papers amid muted conversations and the gentle clink of silver on china. His dishes, too, have a similar elegance: His chestnut-flour torteloni filled with seasoned skirt-steak and topped with arugula pesto may have been one of the finest things I’ve ever tasted at a Comp Dining event. But Sprenkle, scrappy as they come, had already scored big with his veal dish, with tenderloin and smoked cheek, a chestnut flour-potato croquette and a powerful trio of mushrooms. His quail, atop a chestnut-flour pancake, also scored well with judges. The chestnut flour, one of two surprise ingredients that had to be incorporated into every dish, was challenging both in texture and flavor profile. Harkenreader finished with a dessert that I’d pay $12 for: a chocolate tart with a crust of chestnut flour; a crisp with the flour, sea salt and cloister honey; and a scoop of crazy-good ice cream with chestnut flour, white chocolate and molasses. But the veal won the best scores of the night, pulling Sprenkle into a spotlight — and the finals of Competition Dining on July 7 — that’s been a long time coming. I approached him after his victory, and though I hadn’t seen him in years he recognized me immediately. “This guy!” he exclaimed, extending his hand and patting me on the back. “The veal! Amirite?”

July 1 — 7, 2015

CITY LIFE WEEKEND

July 1 – 7

Heavy Rebel Weekender @ the Millennium Center (W-S) Straddling the “before” and “after” in the city of Winston-Salem is the Heavy Rebel Weekender, four days of debauchery in tribute to the biggest badasses in the history of rock. Punk, psychobilly, alt country and everyone else who wears black will be represented throughout, along with beer-chugging, sexy wiggling, amazing merch, custom cars, a sideshow and everything else your mama warned you about. New this year: a custom Big Wheel race. See heavyrebel.net for details.

Fun Fourth Festival @ downtown Greensboro (GSO) It starts with the kickoff block party on Friday evening with a set from the Part-Time Party Time Band in all their beachy goodness. A Saturday-morning parade is followed by a free street festival with five stages of local music. Then there’s fireworks at the White Oak Amphitheater with classy music from the Greensboro Symphony. See funfourthfestival.org for details.

Independence Day @ Old Salem (W-S) Old Salem’s Fourth of July extravaganza runs Saturday and Sunday, kicking off with a naturalization ceremony at 10 a.m. Patriotic music, demos, crafts and other holiday-themed activities round out the usual offerings at the historic park.

WEDNESDAY 4

Live poetry @ Scuppernong Books (GSO) Four poets from three presses read for at least two hours, and each attendee gets one coupon for a free item from the café. Everything starts at 7 p.m. See scuppernongbooks.com for more.

Fare Thee Well @ Wahoo’s (GSO) The Grateful Dead and some special guests bring a final round of reunion shows to Chicago this weekend, with simulcasts screening at the Blind Tiger and Ziggy’s on Friday and Saturday night. Will Henry’s Wahoo, at the very corner of Walker and Elam, hosts the pre-party with the Grand Ole Uproar and Space Canoe. Action starts at 7:30 p.m.

triad-city-beat.com

THURSDAY

FRIDAY

First Friday @ downtown (GSO/W-S) The Fourth of July First Friday is where the people who are still in town gather to bitch about the people who aren’t. Kidding! Seriously, though, if you’re still in town, check out Elsewhere in Greensboro, where the entire three-story building will have been turned into a musical instrument. Winston-Salem will have hot-weather action on Sixth and Trade streets, but nothing big planned because of the holiday.

SATURDAY (Fourth of July) Trash to Treasure @ the Forge (GSO) Ever wanted to smash a car with a customized hammer that looks like it came from Asgard? Well today is your lucky day. The Forge in Greensboro is selling sledgehammer swings beginning at noon on Lewis Street. No word yet on what kind of car it is. See forgegreensboro.org for details.

Summer on Trade @ Sixth & Trade streets (W-S) The bo-stevens have their twangy moment at 7 p.m. as part of the Downtown Winston-Salem Partnership’s free summer concert series.

July 1 — 7, 2015

HEARD “I’m driven by the idea that a small group of people that’s honest with each other, different from each other, that care about each other, that maybe doesn’t always agree with each other, can make a difference.”

Opinion

News

Up Front

— Fleming El-Amin, on a budding interracial dialogue in Winston-Salem, page 12

Our 2-year-old daughter marked the historic Supreme Court decision by uttering the word “rainbow” for the first time on Sunday. — Jordan Green, in Citizen Green, page 16

“This guy! The veal! Amirite?”

— Chef Dion Sprenkle, in Editor’s Notebook, page 3

It all sort of blends together — was I there when Bob Weir’s rendition of “Looks Like Rain” caused what we perceived to be an actual thunderstorm inside the Hartford Civic Center? Does it even matter anymore? Hotel rooms and parking lots, strange bars and miles of road, ticket scalpers and candymen — they were all part of one larger experience.

Cover Story

— Brian Clarey, on his years as a Deadhead, page 38

“When we look in the mirror, we see every scar, if you’re like me. “You are your biggest critic. Communities are no different. But it is incumbent on us not to focus on every blemish.”

Games

Good Sport

Stage & Screen

Art

Music

Food

— Greensboro Partnership President Brent Christensen, in News, page 10

“We wanted to figure out quickly what was going on, so we asked her if she really felt in fear for her life and she said, ‘Yes,’” Demko said. “I said, ‘We’ll escort you to your car.’ In case it was true that she really felt that way I had a plainclothes [police] detective accompany her as an extra measure of safety.” — High Point City Manager Greg Demko, on Human Relations Director Al Heggins, page 15

It would be a shame to lose Austin, but on the plus side, they’d take the Dallas Cowboys with them. That’s a trade I can live with. — Brian Clarey, on the prospect of Texas secession, page 18

There are other appeals to Fisher’s Grille too, including a food menu that includes a California chicken sandwich with guacamole and a side of sweet-potato fries. My friend Anthony is an advocate of the bar’s martinis, though he may receive special treatment because his father was one of the famed regulars.

Shot in the Triad

— Eric Ginsburg, in Barstool, page 27

Is it ironic or merely coincidental that two main fixtures of the great American cookout are hamburgers and frankfurters? Maybe it’s just a show of our country’s ethnic diversity. Who knows; who cares?

All She Wrote

— Anthony Harrison, in Banquet, page 26

The double screens transformed the stage into a gauzy cocoon, and if it’s possible to imagine three chemists — Adam Graetz is the third member of the group — at work in a lab that doubled as a boudoir, that would be the effect. — Jordan Green, on Body Games, page 28

Art Stage & Screen Good Sport Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

5. Free tuition While the issue of free higher education is not a simple one, there are several steps the United States can take to make it a reality. Much like Germany, Sweden and many other European countries have done, the United States would inevitably have to increase taxes but could also benefit from decreasing military spending. Or we could all just study abroad.

Music

4. Universal healthcare While the controversial Affordable Care Act is a good start, the United States is nowhere near where most other developed countries are with regards to healthcare. According to a 2014 study by the Commonwealth Fund, the United States ranked last in a group of 11 countries in quality, efficiency and health outcomes. But it’s not because we don’t pay enough. In fact, about a third of health care costs are spent on bureaucratic overhead. Wasted funds coupled with expensive practices and uninsured or underinsured patients makes for a bad product.

Food

3. Stricter gun control laws Thanks to the Second Amendment, the United States is the gun capital of the world. No other country has more guns per capita, with the United States boasting almost 300 million civilian firearms in circulation. And it’s been proven time and again that more guns means more homicides. While the United States isn’t the only nation with a history with gun violence, most other developed countries reacted swiftly in the aftermath of tragedies like the Newtown, Conn. school shooting. Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom all implemented stricter laws in the wake of mass shootings and now require more regulated licenses while many ban semiautomatic and automatic weapons. And Japan, which arguably has the strictest gun control laws in the world, also has the lowest gun-homicide rate with only one in 10 million.

Cover Story

2. Paid maternal/parental leave The United States is the only developed country in the world without paid parental leave. While most countries give at least three months of paid leave, the United States gives three months of unpaid time off due to the Family Medical Leave Act of 1993. In the meantime, Finland’s new mothers are getting 167 weeks of paid leave.

Opinion

1. Extended LGBTQIA rights While the recent Supreme Court decision is a huge milestone for gay rights, it also serves as a reminder that the United States has a long way to go with regards to the spectrum of gender equality. Those who identify as queer, transgender, intersex and asexual still have yet to be recognized and have laws that protect them like many other countries do already. For example, Malta has a law that allows citizens to identify with any gender of their choosing and to be protected by law at all times. The law goes as far as saying that transgender individuals do not need to provide any proof of surgery, hormonal therapy, or other treatment to identify with a specific gender. The country also forbids doctors from deciding the sex of a child via surgery on intersex children until they can give consent. In Australia, intersex individuals can choose “X” instead of male or female on passports and transgender individuals can choose to mark male or female with a doctor’s note. Similarly, Germany has given the option to parents to leave the gender blank for intersex infants.

News

Fountain of youth I live in England now where we don’t have air conditioning but where proper punctuation is considered more essential than etiquette [“All She Wrote: Firepit of the vanities”; by Nicole Crews; June 24, 2015]. Leaving the serial comma aside for the nonce, when I need an infusion of Serial Comedy, I go online and check out “All She Wrote.” While satirical puns and an appreciation of televised punditry are held in low regard here, I admit to an occasional craving for both, along with a soupçon of ribaldry. Ms. Cruise invariably satisfies, like a rack of ribs with a side of hush puppies, and Maker’s no ice, waterback. Although sadly her momma JoAnn has now shrugged off her mortal coil and stands in Heels-That-Never-Hurt among the Heavenly Hostesses, I still sense her aura when I seek out the clairvoyant girl talk in the lead. I make up my own retorts when I read a bit of her banter with her bearded boy toy, the Viking. The Ravages of Time are cruel, and Nicole Crews has undoubtedly ruined many a manicure trying to claw her way back into the demo. If you consider using a magnifying mirror while plucking your eyebrows as a form of ruthless self appraisal, then this gal will talk to your heart. Yes, that’s mascara,

Vegan love Hi Eric, This is a great article! [“The Greensboro Vegan Dining Guide”; by Eric Ginsburg; June 30, 2015] I would also like to let folks know that the local Greensboro Vegan Meetup Group currently has over 500 members and it grows each week! As organizer of that, I host a monthly vegan potluck on our farm, which is also a vegan event center and B & B called Arcadia Lodge. It is located 10 miles south of Greensboro. We also offer various workshops here, and I will be offering a vegan cooking series coming up this fall. I also operate a small vegan food business at the lodge called Loving Spoonfuls. Look for my signature Nuchi Sauce at Deep Roots [Market]. It’s the cure for the common vegetable and is rich in B-12, a nutrient that vegans need to supplement their diets with. I am just in the process of launching several other products including a unique vegan ice cream substitute called SupremO! I am currently reworking my Loving Spoonfuls website, but we are on Facebook under both Arcadia Lodge NC and Loving Spoonfuls LLC. The next potluck (always lots of fun and live music) at Arcadia Lodge happens to be coming up this Saturday and will be a July 4th celebration! I plan to make a vegan rainbow-cake and we will have veggie burgers on the grill. At this potluck we will begin discussions regarding organizing a vegan festival that we hope to have slated for later this fall. If anyone is interested in joining us, please check out the meet up group site for details! Regular vegan brunches and dinner soirees will also resume in the fall. These are limited to 16 guests and are prix fixe. I can be reached at maria.lovingspoonfuls@gmail. com. Maria Taylor, via triad-city-beat.com

5by Sayaka foreign laws the US should adopt Matsuoka

Up Front

That puts a real spin on life here in the ‘boro…. Thanks so much for writing this, so I can look at things from a different angle. I had never thought of this before, the city needs to address this immediately! Kit Rodenbough, Greensboro

not ink stains, but of course she puts on more airs than an electric fan and one of them is that faux digerati bit. You ask me, I’d say her main OCD trigger is an itchy finger on the remote control — My TV Mama, the one with the big wide screen. TCB in a flash frame, sugar. Another Maker’s for the road? Will Lashley, via triad-city-beat.com

triad-city-beat.com

The sidewalks in the city Again we see how developer-driven economic development works in Greensboro [“Where the sidewalk ends”; by Brian Clarey; June 24, 2015]. No developers are currently developing the properties without sidewalks so therefore the city of Greensboro has no interest in building sidewalks, crosswalks or any of the other amenities that come with developer-driven economic development. Again, the cart is put before the horse and communities suffer and our complete lack of leadership is pointed out. Billy Jones, Greensboro

July 1 — 7, 2015

Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Food Music

Winston-Salem is working on a plan for a bike lane to run along Business 40 in downtown, and last week’s cover story focused on the lack of sidewalks along Yanceyville Street in northeast Greensboro. In light of the two articles, we asked readers what the most-needed investment in public transportation is. Brian Clarey: Everybody knows how I feel about sidewalks, and the city’s walkability policy backs me up, with “the goal of creating a more walkable Greensboro.” Walkable cities are livable cities, though in a city this size walkways need to connect with a more comprehensive public transportation system. But first things come first, and we need sidewalk infill more than anything right now. Jordan Green: Bike lanes/trails. This is low-hanging fruit. Many of our roadways in the Triad cities are overbuilt, meaning that at least half of our four-lane streets could accommodate bike lanes, which would have the added benefit of slowing motorized traffic and making them more friendly for pedestrians. Bike lanes, unlike sidewalks, are cheap; the only cost is paint. All three cities need to continue to invest in sidewalks, focusing on areas with the highest demand from pedestrians and the biggest deficiencies, but it’s unrealistic to think that we can afford to lay sidewalk along every public roadway in the region. Maintaining investments in buses is also important, mainly to provide access to employment and education

opportunities, but I agree with Winston-Salem City Councilman Dan Besse that in the long term light rail is the real game-changer. Whether we get our act together in the next 25 years will determine whether we become an urban region that nurtures compact, affordable development and attracts the talent we need to be a leader in the 21st Century. Eric Ginsburg: Sidewalks. The question is about what is needed most, and I find it hard to rank anything above sidewalks when pedestrians are being hit. The priority would be on areas with a high number of people walking and on busy streets that lack a walking lane. I agree with Jordan that bike lanes are easiest, and therefore should be a priority. Light rail is long-term, and it’s the one I want most for personal and cultural reasons, providing painless transit between the downtowns of Winston-Salem and Greensboro. Transit is one of the most important public investments we can make, and it always seems to get shorted, despite campaign rhetoric.

Readers: An improved bus system won by an 8-point spread, besting bike lanes/trails with 39 percent. Light rail tied with sidewalks for third, with 11 percent, with a few votes went to “other.” John Kernodle explains: “I chose other because what’s needed most is a combination of improved bus service and sidewalks. Greensboro has been an annexation machine for most of my life (and before) and it’s telling that there are neighborhoods out toward the Cardinal… that have all the trappings of being closer to the center of town, meanwhile neighborhoods equally far from the center in other directions (North East, South) continue to wither on the planning vine.” Guilford College professor Vance Ricks concurred with Kernodle via Twitter. New question: The Supremes!

39%

Improved bus system

31%

Bike lanes/trails

11%

Sidewalks

11% Light rail

Other

All She Wrote

Shot in the Triad

Games

Good Sport

Stage & Screen

Art

Most-needed form of public transit?

Homemade iced coffee by Sayaka Matsuoka I’m obsessed with ice coffee. Like can’t-live-breathe-function-without-it obsessed. That’s why I once frequented the Starbucks across the street from my job on the regular, dropped $12 a week on tall iced-coffees before my shift. I even downloaded the coffee giant’s app and stopped paying for the drinks like a normal human being and just had the employees scan my phone so I could acquire one free drink for every 20 I bought. It was bad. After a while, I realized that I had been wasting way too much money. I mean they were good, but not worth $2.65 a day. That’s when I decided to start making my own iced coffee. I know what it sounds like. It’s not that big of a deal, right? While iced coffee isn’t necessarily hard to make, good iced coffee is. And I’ve had the bad kind all over place. Watered down leftover pours with a few ice cubes thrown in that make it so watery you can’t even tell if you’re drinking coffee or dirt water after the first few sips. No, if I was going to do this, I had to do it right.

So I went to heaven on earth for girls — TJ Maxx — and found myself a French press, a small glass bottle, and a larger glass carafe. I made my first batch that night. I read online somewhere that you’re supposed to use a 4:1 ratio to get anything close to the good stuff, so I use one whole cup of dark coffee grounds (anything besides Folgers will do), to about four cups of water. I throw the grounds in first after taking out the lid and then pour filtered water up to the top, setting the lid loosely on the layer of floating grounds. Stick the press in the fridge, wait 12 hours and press the grounds the next day. After two or three times, I got a pitcher full and continue to make some every night. Now, I fill up a glass almost every morning. My boyfriend made simple syrup in a small bottle. Throw some of that magic in with a little half-and-half and you got yourself homemade, dark, aromatic, cold-brew coffee. Now, I save a few bucks every day and my coffee tastes even better than the store-bought alternative. Just in time for summer.

SAYAKA MATSUOKA For those wanting an alternative to pricey iced coffees that are just okay, making your own is pretty easy. A french press and a bottle and you’re done.

triad-city-beat.com

Getting the Gang of 2 back together

Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Food Music Art Stage & Screen

Former Greensboro Mayor Robbie Perkins (center) at Dianne Bellamy-Small’s District 1 campaign announcement Tuesday at a Libby Hill on Randleman Road. CHRIS NAFEKH

Good Sport

1. Winston-Salem

There are three large public fireworks displays in the Camel City this weekend. One is at BB&T Ballpark, coming on after the Dash play the Frederick Keys at 6:30 p.m. Old Salem has a display in the works, too, breaking the fourth wall of the period park. And Bethabara Park in the north has one was well, bringing the total to three. Roman candle fights in the backyard don’t count.

1. Greensboro

The annual city fireworks display, moved in recent years from Grimsley High School to the coliseum, is the grandest exploding tradition, with music from the symphony accompanying the big bang booms. After the Grasshoppers finish with the Hickory Crawdads, NewBridge Bank Park will engage in a newer rite of summer. Wet ‘n’ Wild waterpark has a show planned as well, making three for Greensboro, and a very rare tie in the ranking.

All She Wrote

I have been writing about the Uncle Sam Jam in High Point for at least a decade, though I’ve never been to it and have never seen an advertisement for the event. But they still do it every year, apparently, at Oak Hollow Festival Park, where the controlled explosions begin at sunset. It is the lone big-time fireworks display in High Point this weekend, though there should be plenty of rogues in the nighttime sky.

Shot in the Triad

3. High Point

Games

The Big Bang Edition

July 1 — 7, 2015 Up Front

News Opinion Cover Story Food Music Art Stage & Screen Good Sport Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

NEWS

Young professionals interview new Greensboro Partnership head by Eric Ginsburg

A month into the job, Greensboro Partnership CEO Brent Christensen outlines his insights at a dinner for young professionals, but doesn’t claim to have all the answers. The Proximity Hotel served as an unintentionally fitting backdrop for Brent Christensen as he sat in front of a room of about 40 young professionals and fielded a question about Greensboro’s greatest strengths. Christensen, the new head of the Greensboro Partnership, a somewhat irresolute economic-development group, began forming his first impression of the city when he visited to interview for the gig, arriving at the impressive Proximity Hotel first. It is assets like these, he said as attendees to the dinner nibbled their salads, which help Greensboro stand out. The city’s biggest strength is its potential, he said. That is built on three components, including educational infrastructure for a trained workforce; physical infrastructure covering everything from nice and affordable homes to roadways, a lack of traffic, and venues such as the Proximity; and leadership. Greensboro already scores strongly in all three categories, Christensen said, and has potential to expand on those fronts as well. The second part of the question — posed by an emcee from the SynerG young professionals group that is part of Action Greensboro, one of the organizations under the Greensboro Partnership’s banner — pertained to the city’s weaknesses. “When we look in the mirror, we see every scar, if you’re like me,” Christensen said. “You are your biggest critic. Communities are no different. But it is incumbent on us not to focus on every blemish.” He quickly picked up on the tendency as locals he met wished him a cautious “good luck” upon learning his job title. But one of Christensen’s prevailing messages of the event — a well-attended three-course meal on June 24 — was the importance of buy-in and support from everyday residents.

Brent Christensen (center) speaks at a SynerG young professionals dinner at the Proximity Hotel.

“You all are all economic developers,” he said, before recounting a story of how a casual conversation at a wedding by a Hattiesburg, Miss. resident led to a major economic development deal in his former home state. “This is a relationship business.” After a break for the main course, a well-prepared cut of chicken with string beans and potatoes, Christensen returned to the front of the room to answer audience questions. But he didn’t hesitate to throw questions back to the audience, including one about retaining young professionals that he said attendees would be more adept at answering than someone in their forties. “My ego is not big enough to think that I have all the answers for this community,” he said, adding that it will take time and a lot of input. In response to a question about whether a regional or adversarial approach should be taken with Winston-Salem, Christensen said large, outside companies don’t see a difference and cooperation is essential. “We have to sell the entire region,” he said. “We have to make ourselves

look bigger. And we are bigger [than Greensboro].” Christensen also cautioned against counting too heavily on mega-sites and large corporations, a lesson taught by the unraveling of the local textile industry. Mega-site projects are like a grand slam in baseball, he said — great when they happen, but rare and unlikely to replace the smaller wins that he likened to singles, doubles and triples. When Jeb Brooks, the young and affable CEO of the Brooks Group, asked about how to address a lack of talent for available jobs, Christensen sought Brooks’ input first. But he went on to suggest that the Greensboro Partnership should also think about recruiting employees when the workforce couldn’t be developed locally, suggesting recruitment of former Boeing employees in southern California as part of an upcoming aviation trip as a possible example. Jamal Fox, the youngest member of Greensboro City Council, and Reggie Delahanty, the city’s small-business coordinator, were among the room full of people. Nametags indicated that other attendees worked in real estate, finance

CAROLYN DE BERRY

and law, among other industries. David Ramsey, the new vice president of economic development at the Greensboro Partnership who followed Christensen from the Mississippi Development Authority, joined his boss for the event. He sat at the front, but let Christensen do the talking. Christensen acknowledged Ramsey at the outset, describing how the Danville, Va. native was happy to return to his family. The two were a package deal, Christensen said, and are close enough to finish each other’s sentences. “Some would almost say we’re like an old married couple,” Christensen laughed. What drew the two men to the jobs at the Greensboro Partnership is similar to what he hopes will attract companies to open locally, he said. That includes what Christensen said is a strong business climate in the state and the affordability, potential and ease of doing business in the city. “You would get everything that you could expect out of North Carolina, and more out of Greensboro,” he said.

triad-city-beat.com

City considers housing-enforcement changes by Eric Ginsburg

Greensboro City Council will consider changes to the city’s minimum housing-enforcement ordinance that will lessen penalties but that staff hopes will lead to greater compliance.

Up Front

News Opinion Cover Story

Greensboro City Attorney Tom Carruthers addresses city council at a work session last week.

Art Stage & Screen Good Sport Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

pointed to fill out the remainder of Zack Matheny’s term on city council and who chaired the minimum housing commission up until that point, applauded most of the proposed changes. Outling called the ideas Carruthers presented “excellent” because they would give the city necessary tools and would be seen as “more business friendly” because they would prevent a property owner from being indefinitely fined and possibly pushed into bankruptcy for noncompliance. He also cautioned about the importance of consistent enforcement if the code changes are passed to avoid any real or perceived unequal treatment. Councilwoman Sharon Hightower also expressed support for the suggested housing-code changes, saying they give the city increased ability to act and move forward on improving housing stock. A few other council members asked questions but none expressed concerns or a lack of support. Carruthers said he expects the full proposal will come before council for a vote in July or August.

Music

affordable housing stock, he said. Mayor five ownership groups are responsible Nancy Vaughan said at the work session for the majority of the unpaid fines. that such a change is sorely needed in The Agapion family — which owns 400 the city. properties in the county under individCarruthers also said city staff would ual names and Arco Realty — is the like to enable the city to order repair worst offender. Irene Agapion previby the owner if the cost is less than 50 ously told Triad City Beat they have no percent of the tax value of the properintention of paying, viewing the fines as ty. If an owner didn’t comply, the city unenforceable and possibly unconstituwould be able to sue in order to compel tional. The five ownership groups have the repairs or carry out the repairs itself collectively paid less than $500 of the and seek reimbursement hundreds of thousands through a priority lien, of dollars they owe the The proposed new Carruthers, said. city, Carruthers said. housing ordinance The proposed new By charging landlords could help landlords housing code could act for the cost of repair as “a power incentive and cutting the $75 dairealize the benefit of to landlords” because ly fine on noncompliant repairing properties they would realize the condemned properties, themselves. benefit of repairing the city would bring properties themselves, down the penalties to but either result would be a step towards a threshold that isn’t punitive, thereby more quality housing, he said. allowing Greensboro to keep any funds City leaders will have to think about instead of turning the money over to whether to prioritize the worst offendthe school system. ers, the easiest fixes or possibly propThe city of Greensboro has no auerties within a targeted redevelopment thority over Guilford County Schools — area, Carruthers told city council. the county government manages public Of the more than $800,000 owed to schools. the city in housing-code civil penalties, Justin Outling, who was recently ap-

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In a little more than a year, landlords out of compliance with the city’s minimum housing standards have racked up a bill exceeding $800,000. And of that, almost none of it has been collected. At a city council work session last week, City Attorney Tom Carruthers asked council to consider changes to the city ordinance aimed at improving the code compliance rate, which he said is the ultimate goal of minimum housing standards. “A limited civil penalty or fee has been very efficient at getting the attention of landlords,” he said, as opposed to a $75 a day fine that some noncompliant landlords are hit with. “With a limited fee and limited civil penalty, it acts as a carrot.” Carruthers suggests scrapping the $75 daily civil penalty, which kicks in after a unit is condemned. One reason, he outlined at the June 23 work session, is that the city realized that not only is it unlikely to win if it takes delinquent landlords to court, but Carruthers said state law actually requires that collected punitive fines go to fund public schools and couldn’t be directed back into housing enforcement. The $75-per-day fine mounts quickly, he said, and becomes counterproductive to the goal of having the property restored. The city of Durham faced a similar problem and revised its ordinances after reaching $1 million in housing fines, Carruthers said. Other proposed changes would allow the city to take multi-family housing where only some units are condemned before the minimum housing commission. Currently an entire multi-family apartment complex needs to be condemned before appearing before the commission, preventing the city from adequately addressing units in buildings where any apartments are still occupied, Carruthers said. Bringing all multi-family units under the authority of the minimum housing commission would greatly improve the city’s ability to compel repairs in the

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Church killings prompt Winston-Salem residents to tackle racism by Jordan Green

An intergenerational, interracial group of people in Winston-Salem is committing to meet together and take action to combat systemic racism. Molly Grace doesn’t hold a masters degree in social work. She’s hasn’t been trained in dismantling racism. And at least until about two weeks ago, she didn’t really consider herself an activist. But when the 29-year-old middle school teacher and mother in Winston-Salem learned about the nine black parishioners shot and killed during a Bible study in Charleston, SC, a new sense of determination crystalized within her. It was a feeling of enough is enough. She no longer wanted to be the person who merely posted her outrage about racism in Facebook status updates. She wanted to do something, even if she didn’t know exactly what. So she invited some friends to get together, even if only to acknowledge that they have a lot to learn about racism and white privilege. In between putting out the word and actually holding the event, Grace attended a similar meeting in Greensboro and heard a presentation on systemic racism by Bay Love, the chief operating officer and director of development at the International Civil Rights Center & Museum. Love’s presentation both reinforced Grace’s sense of inadequacy and steeled her resolve to educate herself further. The next night, Krankies Coffee was filled to capacity with dozens of people, mostly white but including a sizeable number of black people, both young and old, and all united by a desire for discussion and action. Fleming El-Amin, a retired teacher who serves on the Forsyth County Board of Elections, also experienced the Charleston massacre as a catalyst. He was among the dozens of people who thronged Krankies on June 22 for earnest dialogue and close listening. “Charleston represents to me what Fannie Lou Hamer said about being ‘sick and tired of being sick and tired,’” he said, reflecting during a conversation with Grace on Monday. “My mother and father are from Darlington County in South Carolina,” he said. “They come from a small town

Fleming El-Amin and Molly Grace both experienced the Charleston massacre as a catalyst to organize against systemic racism.

called Society Hill. My name, before I legally changed it, was Jackson. So when I heard that Susie Jackson was one of those killed, I called my aunt and asked her if we were related to her. She said, ‘I don’t know, but I’ll check.’ My mind went back to those four little girls in Birmingham who were killed in a church bombing in 1963. These people were killed during a Bible study. Someone comes in as a stranger and is welcomed. That was like the most heart-shattering event, him blowing away innocent people, that I’ve experienced in 63 years.” Although he’s become selective about what he gets involved in, El-Amin said his grandchildren motivate him to actively oppose racism, whether it’s organizing an interfaith unity vigil on July 11 or working with white allies like Grace.

“I want to make a personal commitment with people like Molly who want to change behavior,” El-Amin said. “When I think about my grandchildren, I ask myself: What kind of life are they going to have?” he added. “How can I knock down the trees so they won’t have to deal with them?” Sitting on the patio at Krankies on Monday with Grace, El-Amin reflected on his life, having been born in an all-black hospital in Winston-Salem during segregation. His father worked as a busboy in the Robert E. Lee Hotel, a namesake whose significance El-Amin only came to appreciate when he went away to college in Iowa. “If he had not encountered institutional racism, he could have been a CEO,” El-Amin said of his father. “He was very much a socialite, very good

JORDAN GREEN

with people, the kind of person who could bring out the best in everybody.” With the encouragement of his grandfather, a former bootlegger who opened a store in East Winston, ElAmin pursued an education and landed a job with Chase Bank in New York City in the 1970s. The bank wanted to transfer him to Nigeria — a move that El-Amin resisted because he had always intended to return to Winston-Salem. So his supervisor put him in touch with an executive at Wachovia Bank. Thinking he had a job lined up at Wachovia, El-Amin brought his family to Winston-Salem in 1979 only to be told that the executive had been transferred to Zurich and there was in fact no job for him. “I said, ‘Oh, okay,’ El-Amin recalled. “I thought, so this is what my father

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and eating was good,” he recalled. “But people said, ‘I’m tired of just talking.’” Grace said she wants the Winston-Salem Community Alliance for Racial Equality to quickly move to action after people get acquainted. “I like the idea of coming together and [getting] people on the same page,” she said. “It’s great to focus on these subcategories and identifying how they are inherently racist. Who among us has experience working in education? How many among us work in the legal system? If we have a group of educators talking about the inherent issue of racism, is it possible to make social studies teachers between fourth and seventh grades take the dismantling-racism training? Fleming, you got African-American studies incorporated into a high school curriculum. So I think change is possible.” El-Amin said he’s game for a frank community discussion. “I’m driven by the idea,” he said, “that a small group of people that’s honest with each other, different from each other, that care about each other, that maybe doesn’t always agree with each other, can make a difference.”

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went through. The experience of discrimination, it will wear on you psychologically.” The rebuff ended El-Amin’s banking career, but he patched together an income to support a family with five children by teaching at GTCC and doing various odd jobs. El-Amin had shared his story during the June 22 mass meeting at Krankies. Among the white listeners who grappled with it was Grace’s father. “You were born the same year as my father,” Grace told El-Amin. “My father is white and he grew up in Lewisville. He left for New York in 1979. He called me the next day after the meeting. He said, ‘I’m just walking around very sad today, feeling happy but mostly sad, confused and hurt about my white privilege.’ I said, ‘Well, that’s okay, Dad.’ He was born the same year as you and moved to New York the same year you moved back to Winston-Salem. My father was an actor, and he had to drive a bus and work as a concierge at D-list theaters — acting is a different line of work [than banking]. Whatever jobs he had to do, at no point in my father’s experience is that a psychological wear.” When Grace initially had the idea to call together her friends for a discussion in response to the Charleston massacre, she had no idea that the idea would turn into a group. But many of those who showed up for the June 22 gathering expressed interest in continuing to meet. The working name for the nascent group is the Winston-Salem Community Alliance for Racial Equality. “It’s a group of people of all different racial backgrounds, people in different networks, different skills, different talents, supporting each other as blacks and whites coming together to dismantle racism, recognizing that it is a huge responsibility for white people,” she said. “We need to step up. And we need to hear the laments of our black community members.” The next meeting will likely be a potluck dinner and meet-and-greet, Grace said, and that anyone who is interested in attending should look the group up on Facebook. Neither Grace nor El-Amin are pushing dialogue for its own sake. El-Amin recalled the Crossing 52 initiative in Winston-Salem in the 1990s. “The lectures were good; sitting down

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Human relations director on paid leave, concerned about safety by Jordan Green

The city of High Point’s human-relations director is on paid leave after complaining about racial tension and institutional racism.

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by Heggins about the behavior of High Point police officers during a program about white supremacy that was hosted by Guilford County Schools. “In the same county, in Greensboro you have police sit through a presentation about this material,” Alston said. “In High Point, with the authorization of the police chief, half the police department walks out. Why?” Chief Marty Sumner said several school resource officers with the High Point Police Department “left the class,” which he said ran for three hours, to take a break and call their supervisor. “My officers didn’t have a problem with the topic,” the chief said. “My officers had a problem with the delivery.” He added, “There was a complaint about how that training was put on. I took that up with [Superintendent] Mo Green the next day. There were a variety of things I took up with him. I really wouldn’t comment in the paper.” Sumner said that while Heggins was present for the program, the city’s human relations department had no direct role in bringing in the presenter. The city has hired an outside lawyer to investigate the allegation that police officers walked out on a human relations department presentation, along with other assertions in Heggins’ email. “Until I know the facts I don’t have a comment,” Demko said. Alston’s comments also suggested contention between Heggins and her supervisors in the city manager’s office over programs put on by the human

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Douglas wrote in a June 30, 2014 email to fellow council members. The complaint, filed in February 2014, prompted a string of fraught closeddoor meetings by city council. In April 2014, Boynton announced his retirement and finished out in June of that year. “I recall it being discussed that Al Heggins was fearful of the [city] manager after she had to go to the emergency room of an apparent panic attack that was alleged to be caused by the manager,” Douglas said in the email. “So city council met to decide how to move forward. I suggested that the city manager be put on administrative leave until the investigation was complete since he is the one presumed to be the aggressor, and the one the grievance is filed against. That was met with strong opposition by some on council, even though with Ms. Heggins letting the attorneys know, and the attorneys informing council in advance that she was basically afraid of this man. So much so that after the incident her assistant had to escort her every time she left her office in fear of running into the city manager.” Alston said the city attempted to shield itself by not allowing Heggins to file a police report following her altercation with Boynton. Heggins’ recent email to the Rev. Thomas indicates that racial tension and institutional racism have continued since the resolution of her initial complaint. Alston alluded to a complaint

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Two employees of the city of High Point, including the human relations director and a second employee in the department, have been placed on paid leave after expressing concerns about racial tension and stating that they fear for their lives. City Manager Greg Demko said after learning that Human Relations Director Al Heggins had indicated her fear in an email to the Rev. Frank Thomas he summoned her to discuss the matter on June 18. “We wanted to figure out quickly what was going on, so we asked her if she really felt in fear for her life and she said, ‘Yes,’” Demko said. “I said, ‘We’ll escort you to your car.’ In case it was true that she really felt that way I had a plainclothes [police] detective accompany her as an extra measure of safety.” Prompted by Heggins’ email, Demko said he also spoke with Tony Lowe, Heggins’ administrative assistant. “He expressed pretty much identical feelings as Ms. Heggins,” Demko said, “so we felt like the best action was to put him out of the place that made him feel unsafe.” Both Heggins and Lowe are black. Heggins declined to comment for this story. Reginald Alston, a lawyer based in Winston-Salem whom she has retained, confirmed that Heggins has filed a second complaint against the city with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Heggins filed an earlier complaint against the city in 2014 and later reached a settlement. Alston indicated that Heggins’ current troubles are related to a “backlash” resulting from the initial complaint. Heggins’ initial complaint against the city was prompted by a confrontation with then City Manager Strib Boynton over her use of a city-issued credit card to pay for travel by staff in the human-relations department to a conference, along with some members of the director’s family who attended as chaperones, former Councilman Foster

relations department. “Every function she put on she notified the city manager and the chief of police,” Alston said. “How do you turn around and say she’s not doing her job? Once he’s notified and the chief of police is notified then it’s on you. Either you looked at it and agreed with it or you shirked your duty and didn’t look at it. It’s either commission or omission — that’s the way I look at it.” Demko said he wasn’t aware of any criticism against Heggins for programs organized by her department, but said administrators stressed with Heggins that all city-sponsored programs should be advertised through the city’s public information officer, who is Jeron Hollis, so that all official notices disseminated by the city have “the same tone and context.” Alston characterized Demko’s decision to place Heggins and Lowe on paid leave as “retaliatory,” adding that the city is suffering because the two sole employees in the human relations department are unable to deliver services. “If you’re receiving money from the federal government and you’re not administering it, what is that?” Alston asked. “I would think that’s fraud. If you’re receiving money from the federal government for Medicaid and you’re not administering it, isn’t that fraud? Well, if people have fair housing complaints and you’re not there to investigate them, isn’t that fraud? She needs to be at work.” Demko countered that the city is covering its responsibilities by having the public information office handle complaint intake. Last week, he said, the city fielded three fair housing complaints in Heggins and Lowe’s absence. He added that the complaints are being forwarded to an unidentified state agency for investigation. Demko said he wants to have the investigation into Heggins’ allegations completed as quickly as possible, but doesn’t know when exactly that will be. “Our big concern is getting a quality, unbiased investigation,” he said.

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OPINION EDITORIAL

A city’s lines of defense The long and twisted saga of SB 36 began almost year ago with an assertion in a local propaganda sheet that change would be coming to Greensboro. It was almost like they were in on it…. Allies were recruited and deployed — a lone sitting councilmember, a controversial African-American political and business figure, a small cluster of loyalists who don’t actually live in the city and the remnants Bill Knight’s disastrous city council regime. One of them, Trudy Wade — now in the state Senate in a district drawn expressly for her — filed the bill on Feb. 4, and through her allies in the media and the General Assembly, a few useful idiots and a strong, indefatigable will has kept the thing alive through several iterations, none of which include a referendum from voters in the city of Greensboro. This is important because the bill radically alters the makeup of city council, the mathematics of the election and the representation of its citizens. It’s tempting here to start slinging mud at a particular political party — with the exception of Skip Alston, this caper has been exclusively the province of the GOP. But it was dyed-in-thewool Republican Rep. John Blust, whose tenure in Raleigh goes back almost 20 years, who, along with another Republican, Rep. Jon Hardister, stood tall for the city this week by mustering enough votes to scuttle the bill, currently tied to a similar but more popular piece of legislation affecting only the city of Trinity. Now Blust finds himself in a House committee charged with rewriting the bill, with opinion on its passage stacked 4-to-1 against him. Blust is the kind of guy you want in there, regardless of your party affiliation: a former Army captain and all-around hardass with the demeanor of an impatient gym teacher. But against these odds, just forcing a referendum could be seen as a victory. Blust needs a win: He’s up for re-election in 2016, and his district covers big chunks of the western side of Greensboro. He lives in the city, too. By bucking the will of his party, he risks getting primaried from the right. He may be more courageous than calculating. Wade, also up for re-election in 2016, has fewer outs. She’s all but guaranteed to face strong opposition from the left in a general election, and dissatisfaction among a considerable cohort of local Republicans indicates a probable primary challenger as well. It might even be worse for her if her bill passes, but either way it will certainly be a campaign issue for anyone looking to take her seat. And regardless, it will be an expensive election to win. She raised about $100,000 to win in 2012, in a district that was hers for the taking. It took $195,000 in 2014. Most of it came out of Greensboro. After this, would they be willing to pay for her to run again?

CITIZEN GREEN

The autumn after our progressive spring Almost four months ago, I wrote in this space that the US Supreme Court held “a monumental opportunity to wreak havoc on those of us who toil at our labor and scrape together meager by Jordan Green earnings for necessities like housing, food, fuel and healthcare.” After years of accumulated disappointments, my attitude towards government and the courts has evolved into a guarded posture of hoping for the best, while fearing the worst. On a mere technicality, I wrote, the Supreme Court could have essentially blown up the Affordable Care Act, ruling that citizens who purchased healthcare through exchanges run by the federal government were not entitled to a subsidy. That would have resulted in my health insurance premium jumping $160 per month. For our family, which struggles to cover the costs of housing, student-debt payments and utilities on modest earnings from my wife and me, $160 is a significant amount. At the time, we were also wrestling with the decision of whether to buy our first home, entailing an increase in housing costs from the $450 per month we paid in rent to about $600 to cover a mortgage, taxes and homeowners insurance. Rational economic actors might have waited for the Supreme Court decision before crossing that Rubicon. Instead, we took that most American venture of faith, and leveraged ourselves into greater debt in the face of significant uncertainty. We bought into the American Dream, perhaps against our better judgment. So the Supreme Court’s decision last week to turn down the challenge to a key provision of the Affordable Care Act came as a huge relief. Having come to the conclusion long ago that the government and the courts are elitist institutions whose chief decision-makers are oblivious to the needs of ordinary citizens, I’m still in shock. The Affordable Care Act ruling was followed by two other decisions that will have resounding and far-reaching impact on ordinary people. The decision to protect marriage equality regardless of the gender of the partners as a matter of equal protection under the law not only upholds the dignity of gay and lesbian citizens, it ensures them the same access to tax and retirement benefits, guarantees that parents retain custody of children in the event of the death of one partner, the ability of partners to make important

end-of-life decisions and to visit loved ones in the hospital and myriad other benefits that heterosexual couples take for granted. Our 2-year-old daughter marked the historic Supreme Court decision by uttering the word “rainbow” for the first time on Sunday. The third decision, much overlooked, is the court’s ruling striking down a key provision of the Armed Career Criminal Act, which imposes additional time on the sentences of defendants with whose crimes involve what are vaguely termed “violent felonies” or “serious” drug crimes. The ruling could potentially affect the sentences of about 7,000 people serving time under the Armed Career Criminal Act. While the decision might not be as impactful as rulings on marriage equality and the Affordable Care Act, it matters to defendants who are serving excessive sentences because they might have possessed a sawed-off shotgun. It means they will have the opportunity to come home sooner and take care of their families. As a nation, we appear to be finally drawing down our massive prison population slightly, and addressing the staggering economic drain on families and taxpayers that results from warehousing men and women during their prime earning years. That’s something to celebrate. Meanwhile, in the wake of the Charleston massacre, Southern states began to take down the Confederate flag and Walmart announced it would remove the symbol of white supremacy from store shelves. These are all significant progressive victories, but what they mean for the ongoing culture wars is less certain. For Southern politicians like South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who announced his presidential bid last week, calling for the removal of the Confederate flag allows viability on the national political stage, while sacrificing support from poor, racist whites who cling to the flag as their only remaining bond with white elites. The marriage-equality decision likewise allows Republican presidential hopefuls to spend less time reassuring conservative base voters about their traditional values because they can argue that while they oppose same-sex marriage, the matter is now settled law. Of course, the less time they have to spend pandering to the conservative base in the primary, the less baggage the eventual nominee carries into the general election. Yet while progressives might celebrate this week, they hardly get the last word. Tami Fitzgerald of the NC Values Coalition invoked the specter of the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion. “Today’s ruling by the Supreme Court will no more

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settle the issue of gay marriage than Roe v. Wade settled the issue of abortion,” she said. “Forty years later, the majority of Americans are more pro-life than ever, and I believe that history will prove the arrogance of this Supreme Court’s new illusory definition for marriage.” Welcome to the next phase of backlash politics.

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IT JUST MIGHT WORK

Letting Texas secede

Just days after the Supreme Court agreed that same-sex couples have the right to get married anywhere in the United States, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced that county clerks in all 254 counties could refuse by Brian Clarey to perform these unions if they feel their “religious freedoms” are violated by the action. Sound familiar? But unlike North Carolina, where magistrates are afforded that same policy — for now — Texas seems to be inching towards liberating itself wholly from the activist judges, pointy-headed liberals, corrupt Federal Reserve and uppity city folk commonly demonized by the far right. Earlier this month, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott created a Texas Gold Depository, a Fort Knox-like entity designed to hold all the gold in Texas. Abbott says he’ll “repatriate” $1 billion in gold bullion from a bank in New York that rightfully belongs to the Lone Star State. Last month, Abbott and Sen. Ted Cruz put the entire state — 30 million people — on high alert, convinced that President Obama was planning a military takeover of Texas utilizing a network of secret tunnels dug underneath closed Walmarts. This is not a joke. They even mobilized the Texas State Guard. Word on the street is that Texas is looking to once again become its own republic, something they’ve been talking about there since 1835, when it became the 28th state. And it’s starting to look like a pretty good idea to just go ahead and let them do it. It’s huge, with about the same population as Saudi Arabia, and a strong economy based on energy and cattle that generates about $1.65 trillion a year. So it could definitely survive out there on its own. There are great swaths of undeveloped land, enough gun owners to create a national defense, a sovereign culture based on belt buckles and trucks, and a population that’s even more homogenously obnoxious than people from New York. The removal of Texas’ voters from the US rolls will cause a huge drop — the loss 4.5 million registered Republicans would certainly have a toll on national elections. The country of Texas should attract even more GOP faithful, which might even tip the scales towards sanity in the rest of the nation, while we could witness the foibles of a true right-wing sovereign state from a relatively safe distance. And it would keep Rick Perry from running for president. It would be a shame to lose Austin, but on the plus side, they’d take the Dallas Cowboys with them. That’s a trade I can live with.

FRESH EYES

Republicans practice domestic terrorism America is under constant siege by terrorists both foreign and domestic. Partisan politics has devolved to the point that some observers feel that the Republican Party is even practicing domestic by William C. Crawford terrorism. Their rabid, irrational opposition to the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, and Medicaid expansion stand in stark hypocrisy to the true origins of Obamacare. This extremism seems to be sinking to the level of a prolonged, frightening attack on the working poor, job creation and the health of the hospital system in North Carolina. Gov. Pat McCrory and the leaders of the General Assembly took a sworn oath to uphold the Constitution and the laws of the United States. The ACA was duly passed by Congress to provide health insurance to lower-income citizens. The law is working as more than 10 million Americans have gained coverage. However, Republicans ignore the success of Obamacare and they continually violate their oaths of office requiring them to follow the law. Instead of working to improve the ACA, Republicans strain to sabotage healthcare coverage for thousands of lower income citizens. North Carolina has lost more than 25,000 jobs, which could have been created by Medicaid expansion. More than 400,000 of us still have no health insurance. We turn to the emergency room for costly, inefficient care. Hospitals are denied billions of dollars of available federal aid for indigent care because of Republican inaction. Large sums of our federal tax dollars are lost forever as they flow to more progressive states. Republican opposition to Obamacare is particularly petty and partisan because it flies in the face of the law’s history. The ACA is largely a Republican creation. The simple facts are these: The law is broadly modeled on the extensive health insurance expansion enacted a decade ago by then Gov. Mitt Romney in Massachusetts. His advisors later gave important counsel to both the Senate and the White House as the ACA was developed. Obamacare is largely dependent on private-sector insurance companies not a single-payer government entity. This approach clearly tracks proposals made by various Republican think tanks in response to the single-payer model suggested by Hillary Clinton in the early 1990s. Obamacare clearly embodies Republican free-market philosophy, and it was carefully crafted in close consultation with GOP members of the Senate Finance Committee and their allies — the hordes of insurance company lobbyists.

President Obama actually deserves little credit for the conceptual framework of the law. However, he courageously insisted that Congress draft healthcare reform, and then he threw the full weight of his presidency behind the initiative. The GOP quickly abandoned support of the legislation soon after it was drafted. They then pivoted diabolically to attack healthcare reform and almost everything else proposed by President Obama. Gov. McCrory and the General Assembly should implement Medicaid expansion now. Expansion should become part and parcel of McCrory’s so called Medicaid reform. Three years of legislative wrangling should end with both phased-in reforms and incremental Medicaid expansion for the working poor. The White House has consistently signaled to Republican-controlled states that they will offer administrative flexibility to implement expansion quickly. A doctor-managed system holds much more promise than anything proposed by insurance companies, especially those from out of state. The long lens of history may eventually recognize that Obamacare is mostly a Republican idea or at least an effective bipartisan initiative. We are a progressive, moderate state. It is time for the Republicans to honor and reflect that tradition. It is also time for them to remember that it is their sworn constitutional duty to uphold the law even when they don’t agree with it. Gov. McCrory and the General Assembly should shed their fearmongering mantle and protect the working poor, stimulate job growth and help our struggling hospital system. William C. Crawford has 30 years of experience working in the Medicaid system. He also taught family policy at UNC School of Social Work in Chapel Hill. He lives in Winston-Salem.

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Last of the spring radishes.

Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

Harvest.

Pea shoots & summer dew.

July 1 — 7, 2015

Cover Story

The virgin diaries Cold drinks with no booze but plenty of spirit I don’t drink anymore. That is to say, I don’t drink alcohol anymore, though my experience in that realm is considerable. I still spend time in bars, for both business and pleasure — mostly, I admit, pleasure, even though I no longer partake in the hard stuff. But I’ve noticed in the last year or so that Triad bars, restaurants and coffee shops have been stepping up their soft-drink game, bringing more to the table than what’s available in the soda gun. Unique coffees and sparkling drinks, fresh and custom ingredients, mocktails, ethnic delicacies and virgin brews proliferate in these parts, meaning, among other things, that I never have to quietly sip on a Diet Coke ever again. It’s a trend whose time has come — certainly for me, and for anyone else trying to cool off under this oppressive summer sun but isn’t quite ready to start the party. The list is by no means complete, but it’s a pretty solid survey of offerings in our cities. Feel free to let us know what we missed; we’re always looking for something to sip on. — BC

Corey McAdams presents a glass of Pineapple con Verdito, a sweet and refreshing drink with a powerful kick — one of three drinks on the Marshall Free House’s mocktail menu.

The Pineapple con Verdito is the adventurous cousin in the trio of refreshing summer drinks on the Marshall Free House’s mocktail menu. A green drink served in a chilled glass and topped with an aromatic mint leaf, the first impression of the Pineapple con Verdito is a heady commingling of pineapple, cilantro and basil, followed by a wave of heat from jalapeños. On a hot day, it’s almost enough to trigger perspiration and bug-eyed determination to soldier through the spicy onslaught. In that way, the jalapeño is a good substitute for liquor, and helps pace the drink for maximum appreciation. And though he’s talking about the British-inspired pub’s ginger ale — made with an extract from raw ginger root and simple syrup — owner Marty Kotis’ remark might just as easily apply to the Pineapple con Verdito. “If somebody is having a vodka and tonic, you’re pacing yourself with them, and you feel like you’re part of the party,” he says. The standard version of the Pineapple con Verdito with tequila won the 2014 Bartenders Ball in Greensboro. Like the other two drinks on the mocktail menu, it was developed by Myles Cunliffe, a consultant with the Mixology Group in the United Kingdom whom Kotis has kept on retainer for about three years. While the Pineapple con Verdito exults in heat, the Ginger Fizz, with lime juice, ginger syrup, mint, blackberries and club soda corners the market for fruitiness, and the Almond Smash brings a nutty flavor profile, with almond water and fig syrup intermixing with lemon juice and club soda. All the herbs used in the cocktails at Marshall Free House are grown on Haw River Farms, an operation managed by his wife Asheley at their place in Summerfield. That’s an important principle for Marty Kotis, who prides his staff on their ability to customize drinks to his patrons’ individual specifications. “When you’re making good drinks,” he says, “you’re using fresh juice, fresh herbs. It’s not just something you throw together.” — JG

Strawberry and mango lassi from Tandoor or Saffron (GSO)

While the mango lassi is standard in most Indian restaurants, including Golden India in Winston-Salem and India Palace in Greensboro, its strawberry counterpart created a place on the list for this Indian classic. The yogurt-based drinks come in both savory and sweet flavors and provide a refreshing break from the spiciness of the Indian meals. While the mango lassi seemed thicker and less sweet than the strawberry one, both could serve as desserts or quick snacks on the go. Tandoor India Restaurant and Saffron Indian Cuisine both serve the two varieties. — SM

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Mocktails @ the Marshall Free House (GSO)

ERIC GINSBURG The mango and strawberry lassi are both excellent refreshers after a spicy Indian meal or just as a snack on the go.

Rooibos citrus soda @ Hoots (W-S)

JORDAN GREEN

Hoots is most known for its beer and Tim Nolan for his cocktails, but together the two Winston-Salem institutions are responsible for some killer virgin drinks. Ever had a hops soda? Then you’ve probably been hanging around Nolan, who came up with the drink using Horizon hops as a way to teach people about beer. But there’s nothing alcoholic about this lemony beverage that could still scratch the itch for someone who is sober. Picture a gentle, light IPA taste steeped in lemon and more parts soda water than anything else. Hoots orders 40 pounds of ginger root a week, which they mostly use to make some badass ginger ale or ginger beer cocktails. But those fresh ingredients can be put towards all sorts of other drinks. Nolan — who developed the gin recipe for Sutler’s Spirit next door in the West End Mill Works and who has worked behind his share of other bars, including Tate’s — plans to work up a written cocktail menu as well as a list of the house-made syrups to go in all sorts of drinks. He makes a flor de jamaica soda that tastes somewhat like an unobtrusive black-cherry soda. The hibiscus drink comes with a wedge of lemon, but better yet is a rooibos citrus soda. Rooibos is a South African tea, and Nolan makes the orange-colored drink with a maraschino cherry garnish, at least when a camera is present. Watching my friend Ruth and me trying the creation, Hoots co-owner Eric Swaim reaches over for a sip, too. Not that he hasn’t had it before — Swaim is quite familiar with it, and lets out an “Mmmmmm” before saying, “I love rooibos.” — EG

The rooibos citrus soda (right) and the flor de jamaica soda make by Tim Nolan.

ERIC GINSBURG

July 1 — 7, 2015

It is too hot to sit on the patio at Pane e Vino, in the Reynolda Village shopping center near Wake Forest University, but luckily the restaurant lets in a lot of natural light. The sandwich board outside no longer advertises the venue’s strawberry and raspberry lemonades, but both are still available. The raspberry variety offers a fresh respite from the heat, with a subtle sweetness that feels more appropriate than an overly sugary alternative. The lemon component is easily detectable but hangs in the background, like the rhythm section keeping the beat, while the raspberry takes center stage. — EG

Banana split mocha frappuccino @ Beansboro (GSO) Cover Story

The Aisle of Soda @ Bestway (GSO)

Raspberry lemonade @ Pane e Vino (W-S)

ERIC GINSBURG Raspberry lemonade, light on the sweet.

One of the heavier drinks on the list, this caffeinated twist on America’s classic dessert is perfect for all ages. The sweet blended concoction that boasts a hint of bananas covered in chocolate with a dollop of whipped cream just screams red, white and blue. Just in time for the Fourth of July. — SM

Blended juices @ Manny’s Universal Café (GSO)

Bacon soda. Peanut-butter-and-jelly soda. Buffalo-wing soda. A flavor called “Martian Poop.” Everybody knows about the Wall of Beer along the refrigerated side of Bestway in Greensboro’s Lindley Park neighborhood. Lesser known is the soda aisle just a few yards away, with an entire side comprised of soft drinks, two-thirds of the territory devoted to sodas, half of that ceded to the slew of companies that have positioned themselves against the giants like Pepsi and Coke. There’s old-school Boylan, Dr. Brown’s and IBC flavors next to new-fangled concoctions like dandelion and burdock or rose lemonade from Fentiman’s, 10 kinds of ginger ale and ginger beer and a platoon of root beers, birch beers, butterscotch beers and sarsaparilla. Beermakers Saranac and Abita have root beers on the market. And a special Bavarian nutmeg edition of Virgil’s microbrewed root beer in a commemorative, resealable bottle runs about the same price as a pretty nice beer. I brought the Virgil’s home in a brown paper bag, chilled it in the freezer for a bit and then shared it with my 12-year-old. The taste is unbelievable, with notes of wintergreen, vanilla, clove, sweet birch, molasses and, at the finish, licorice and anise. After taking his first sip, the 12-year-old gave me a serious look. “Where did you even get this?” he said. — BC

Manny’s Universal Café in Greensboro produces freshly squeezed beet, celery, carrot or apple juice in any combination you’d like to taste. However, it’s not on the menu — you have to ask Margarita for a drink if you wish to enjoy your custom creation. — AH SAYAKA MATSUOKA Just in time for the Fourth of July, this festive banana split mocha is bound to delight both coffee drinkers and sweet tooths alike.

Less notorious than the Wall of Beer is the Aisle of Soda.

Kava @ Common Grounds (GSO)

ANTHONY HARRISON Ask Margarita for a juice at Manny’s.

Kava is said to have mild intoxicating properties.

ANTHONY HARRISON

BRIAN CLAREY

Commons Grounds coffee shop prides itself as being the only business in Greensboro to offer pre-made kava tea. Kava allegedly possesses non-narcotic, sedative chemicals in the same vein as benzodiazepines — it’s basically the opposite of coffee. Common Grounds mixes its strained kava with hazelnut and vanilla syrups, as well as some almond milk, to soften the slight bitterness of the root tea, but you can get it straight-up if you’re used to the taste. — AH

Watermelon agua fresca @ LaRue (GSO)

You can get anything and everything from the drink aisle in Super G Mart, including Brian Clarey’s favorite aloe drink to milky beverages to fruit juices. And from the rainbow of drinks, we picked some of the most uncommon. Shirakiku’s Ramune A go-to summer drink for Japanese kids, Ramune is a sweet yet slightly bitter soft drink prevalent during the summer season and is a hit during festivals. The beverage is as emblematic of summer in Japan as hot dogs are here and the taste is only half the fun. To open the glass bottle, you have to take a “plunger” that comes with the drink and push down a glass ball that drops from the bottle’s spout, clogging the soda so you have to drink it skillfully and slowly. Yeo’s Sugar Cane Drink Probably our least favorite of the bunch, my boyfriend claimed that it made him feel like he was “drinking syrup or something.” The Malaysian sugar-cane drink is very mild and tastes slightly of caramel. It’s basically sugary water. Chiao Kuo’s Lychee Drink It’s Taiwanese and it tastes like lychee. Enough said. Luzona’s Guyabano juice drink This one was a nice surprise. Based on the name and the picture, we didn’t know what to expect from this prickly fruit drink, but the Filipino guyabano juice is very light and fruity, making it an excellent summer drink. Some even say that it cures cancer. Sangaria’s Melon Soda This one, like the lychee drink, is exactly what it sounds like. Also Japanese, it’s just an alternative to mainstream sodas.

A tall drink of watermelon.

BRIAN CLAREY

All Eric Moss did was take an entire watermelon and drain it of its nectar, dilute it 2:1 with water and serve it over ice with Sprite and a garnish. The color of a pale ruby, ice suspended like diamonds, the glass sweating ever so slightly: Just looking at it is enough to quench your thirst. And even though I have a slight allergy to watermelon, I drank it down without a quibble. Through head bartender Moss, Greensboro’s downtown French bistro brings a craft-cocktail sensibility to its soft-drink selection, which changes at the discretion of the bartender and the ingredients on hand. A selection of shrub bases — sweetened, vinegar-based syrups and tinctures — provide the bedrock for the most sophisticated soft drinks in Greensboro, and as much care goes into their construction as for even the most exact Manhattan. Fruit, herbs, peppers — all are fair game for the shrub treatment, which goes with soda water and whatever else sounds good that day. Unlike the watermelon agua fresca, which can be sucked down in a single, giant, delicious slurp through a straw if one isn’t careful, the intricacy of the shrub drinks demand careful sipping so as to savor the layers of flavor. — BC

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Wall of drinks @ Super G Mart (GSO)

Jamaica @ Villa del Mar (GSO)

Hibiscus tea flaunts honeysuckle flavors against a light, rosy background. Jamaica is a variant of hibiscus tea popular in Mexico and Central America, though it clearly originated in Jamaica. You can find it and other agua frescas at Villa del Mar in Greensboro. — AH

Calpis’ Calpico “Oh I like it! I like this a lot,” was my boyfriend’s reaction after taking one sip of this Japanese classic. While it’s coloring may be off-putting to some, this milky “sports drink” tastes sort of like a non-carbonated milky Sprite. It is another summer favorite in Japan. — SM

Hibiscu-licious!

ANTHONY HARRISON

Limoncello tea @ Vida Pour Tea (GSO)

SAYAKA MATSUOKA From left to right: Ramune, melon soda, guyabano drink, sugar cane drink, lychee juice and calpico - all found at the Super GMart wall of drinks

SAYAKA MATSUOKA While the name is deceptive, the limoncello tea from Vida Pour Tea quenches thirst without the usual alcoholic kick

The name is deceiving — the drink doesn’t actually have any alcohol in it — but it’s damn good nonetheless. A fine summer drink that can be sweetened to the preference of the customer, this special blend of tea includes lemon peel, vanilla tea and lemongrass, giving it just enough citrus flavor to be perfect for the next couple of months. — SM

July 1 — 7, 2015

Cover Story

Legendary Sunshine @ various locations (W-S)

Legendary Sunshine is a beverage defined more by what it’s not than what it is. Built on a foundation of ginger flavor with notes of blackberry and light carbonation, boosted by Vitamin B-12 and electrolytes, the Winston-Salem-based energy drink is not quite as strong as the ginger ales produced by Seagrams, Canada Dry or the beloved Ale 8-1 of my native Kentucky. With less caffeine — 50 milligrams — than a small cup of coffee, it’s flirting with soft-drink status. That’s by design. Keith Vest and Joe Parrish, co-founders of the Variable advertising agency in Winston-Salem, created Legendary Sunshine after identifying an unserved market for people looking for something between an energy drink and a soda. “We had been doing some work for Coca-Cola Co.,” Vest told me. “As we looked around the beverage category space, we recognized that the beverage we wanted in the world didn’t exist. We all grew up on sodas, which taste delicious, but are loaded with sugar and calories. We wanted to see if we could create a beverage that tasted as good as soda, but didn’t have the same amount of calories or sugar. At the same time people were getting scared of the extreme energy drinks. No one really wants an overdose of caffeine.” The proprietors of Sunshine are taking a slow growth approach, and so far the drink is only available in Winston-Salem. The drink can be found at Mast General Store, the two Perk & Provision stores, 4 Brothers gas stations and Lowes Foods, which is one of the Variable’s clients. Vest also told me that a number of downtown restaurants and bars carry Sunshine, including Single Brothers, Noble’s Grille and the Porch, although my server at the Porch said it wasn’t in stock and appeared to not be familiar with the product. I found a can of Sunshine at Downtown Perk & Provision on West Fourth Street, and the drink occasioned a pleasant respite — neither as invigorating as an iced coffee nor as dulling as a cold beer — in the early evening as a gentle parade of people filled the street for Friday night. Designed more as a nudging pick-me-up than the supercharged fuel for extreme sports that characterizes mainstream competitors like Red Bull and Monster, Legendary Sunshine is positioned as something of a creative everyman. With a storyline built around a fictitious reformed bootlegger named Buck O’Hairen from the 19th Century, the energy drink slogan’s “It’ll clear the clouds!” provides more antithesis. (Underscoring the narrative, the can advertises “since 1875” despite the energy drink’s launch in 2013.) With the market for sodas in decline and energy drinks losing steam, a hybrid such as Sunshine might find the sweet spot between the two but also risks getting lost. Meanwhile, craft beer is enjoying rapid growth, and Vest said he sees some similarities between his product and craft beer in their attention to ingredients. The proprietors of Sunshine have also encouraged liquor pairings. Right out of the gate in late 2013, the proprietors recruited some of Winston-Salem’s top mixologists to see who could come up with the best cocktail using Sunshine during an informal competition at Single Brothers. Vest said the company is looking to bring Legendary Sunshine to Greensboro and other parts of the Triad soon. They’ve recently reached a distribution deal with RH Barringer, which holds the franchise rights to distribute Anheuser-Busch products in a 22-county area of North Carolina. “Distribution is key to getting a beverage brand to grow,” Vest said. “Folks want it, but it needs to be where people are shopping. This gives us a model to build on.” — JG

Thai iced sweet-tea @ Pho Hien Vuong (GSO)

Thai iced tea presents a great juxtaposition between creaminess and some of the strongest-steeped Southern tea imaginable. Thai iced tea is Ceylon tea topped off with whole milk and sugar. There’s a soft sweetness alongside the baking-spice strength. You can find it at Pho Hien Vuong. — AH

Sunshine is the anti-hooch.

JORDAN GREEN

Iced drinking chocolate @ Black Mountain Chocolate (W-S)

The use of chocolate as a panacea is well documented — a handful of M&Ms can often do what a handful of Xanax cannot — but as a general rule, chocolate does not do well in the summer heat. How many of us have had to lick the wrapper of a chocolate bar left to melt in a purse or car? But the salubrious properties of chocolate can also be harnessed in a drink from Black Mountain Chocolate that comes in three varieties: ginger nutmeg, cinnamon cayenne and straight-up dark. The dark is the thing for me: a velvety elixir that tastes sort of like a high-end Yoo-hoo, only significantly less sweet and exponentially more dense, with dark chocolate notes and a pleasant froth. The addition of cinnamon and pepper is a more traditional South American take on the fruit of the cocoa tree, and the heat of the drink can actually give some respite from the summer swelter — something to do with sweat, I think. As summer cools into fall, the ginger nutmeg, served hot, might do the trick on a balmy evening. And all of them are able to take some of the sting out of life’s little disappointments. — BC

Sweet tea, Thai style.

ANTHONY HARRISON

It’s chocolate, in drinking form. BRIAN CLAREY

Brazilian limeade is one of three drinks on Krankies Coffee’s spring specials menu — along with Jamaican hibiscus tea and lemonade — and as far as I’m concerned it’s welcome to hang around through the duration of this punishing summer. The barista helpfully offered to answer any questions as a couple of us from a mass meeting about racism and privilege milled around looking confused. Something about lime — its taste slightly more subtle and concise than its fairer cousin — is more appealing than lemon, and when the barista said that it had a hint of coconut I was sold. Fresh squeezed and poured over ice in a 16-ounce cup, this refreshing drink strikes all the right notes for a sweltering summer evening. Neither especially tangy nor overly sweet, the drink has a clean finish that beguiles someone like me who subsists on store-bought Arnold Palmers (half-lemonade, half sweet tea) and full-on lemonade in the summer. I can down two or three glasses of those mass-produced drinks and still find myself thirsty. In contrast, the handcrafted Brazilian limeade at Krankies rewards slow sipping and delivers a satisfying conclusion. The secret weapon of this drink is the coconut, which complements the acidity of the lime with a creamy texture, while topping the drink with a light froth. — JG

triad-city-beat.com

Brazilian limeade @ Krankies Coffee (W-S)

Coconut milk provides a creaminess to counterbalance the acidity of lime juice.

Durian bubble tea @ Banh Mi Saigon (GSO)

JORDAN GREEN

Sujeonggwa @ Seoul Garden (GSO)

If you’re looking to try bubble tea, a milkshake-like beverage made with tapioca pods, look no further than Greensboro’s Banh Mi Saigon Sandwiches and Bakery. They offer 15 flavors, from their best-selling papaya to normal selections such as strawberry and green apple. If you’re feeling adventurous, try the durian bubble tea — while the texture and strong taste of the controversial “king of fruits” may weird some out, complex flavors of custard and cinnamon will sate curious taste buds. — AH

At Seoul Garden, it usually comes at the end of your meal like a little bowl of dessert. Sujeonggwa is basically a cinnamon slushie, very sweet but refreshing after eating spicy or greasy food. Good for quenching thirst and for a sweet tooth, this traditional Korean fruit punch is made of persimmon, cinnamon, ginger and honey or brown sugar is usually served cold as a dessert. — SM

SAYAKA MATSUOKA

The sujeonggwa from Seoul Garden is a super sweet cinnamon treat that usually serves as a dessert but could be an excellent summer refreshment for those seeking a Korean slushie

Elderflower-mint spritzer @ Camino Bakery (W-S)

Bubble tea is on thw back ANTHONY HARRISON end of its meteoric rise, but it’s still pretty delicious.

Don’t get me wrong: I love coffee — hot, cold, foamy, dense, whatever. I drink it all day long. But there comes a point where a human being has had enough coffee for the day; I know I’m there when my sweat starts to smell like espresso. When that moment arrives, Camino’s elderflower spritzer is the perfect thing. It’s light, just a little bit sweet and with floral overtones from elderflower, itself a natural anti-inflammatory and antiseptic agent. The bits of muddled mint leaf suspended in the drink pick up on the lime juice in a way that’s completely wonderful. It’s refreshing and different, and doesn’t seem to make my legs jitter even a little bit. — BC

BRIAN CLAREY Floral, with hints of citrus and bite from the mint, Camino’s quencher is a slow sipper.

July 1 — 7, 2015 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story

Food Music Art Stage & Screen Good Sport Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

Banquet

FOOD

by Anthony Harrison

American gra-foodie Fincastles Downtown Grand Re-Opening @ Fincastles Downtown (GSO), Friday The only time I ever went to Fincastle’s was after prom my senior year of high school. I can’t remember what I ordered, but I do recall the fries were pretty awesome. I suppose I’ll have another chance to try their food this Friday. The retro diner prides itself in its burgers, milkshakes and the aforementioned, hand-cut French fries. After celebrating a decade of business in Greensboro, they’re hosting a grand re-opening starting at 5 p.m. Dogs on the Fourth Board Games Weenie Roast @ Geeksboro Coffeehouse Cinema (GSO), Saturday Is it ironic or merely coincidental that two main fixtures of the great American cookout are hamburgers and frankfurters? Maybe it’s just a show of our country’s ethnic diversity. Who knows; who cares? Anyway, Geeksboro’s hosting a weenie roast. They’ll be serving beef and veggie hot dogs, and plenty of board games to play. Attendees are also encouraged to bring their own board games. If you stick around long enough, you can really get into the American spirit by watching the baseball classic The Sandlot. The weenie roast starts at 11 a.m. Royal street food NoshUp with King-Queen Haitian Food Truck @ Gibb’s Hundred Brewing Co. (GSO), July 7 Week after week as we went out for lunch on Mondays and Tuesdays, Associate Editor Eric Ginsburg and I hoped that King-Queen Haitian Food Truck would be parked and ready for business on Lee Street in Greensboro, but we hoped in vain. I still haven’t tried the food, but Ginsburg insists I must. I’ll finally get my chance as Ethnosh hosts their next NoshUp with the elusive food truck planted firmly in front of Gibb’s Hundred. The sampling starts at 6 p.m.

The V10 — fake chicken or tofu with vermicelli — comes with bean sprouts, lettuce, broccoli, potato, onion, potato and bamboo shoots at Binh Minh Vietnamese restaurant in Greensboro.

ERIC GINSBURG

The Greensboro Vegan Dining Guide by Eric Ginsburg

spread among Greensboro’s Word vegans that the Charlotte-based Zizi’s Vegan Restaurant would expand to the Gate City well before the storefront opened near Sedgefield. But it didn’t take long for the takeout business to fail, and it closed about as quickly as Jaribu, a more recent Jamaican restaurant originally from Winston-Salem that served a tasty vegan breakfast. Greensboro’s vegans, for the most part, are forced to become adept cooks, unless they’re the type that considers a sleeve of Oreos to be lunch. But there are still particular menu items scattered throughout the city that local vegans have come to appreciate beyond Boba House, Greensboro’s lone vegetarian restaurant.

1. Binh Minh It used to be more common to see a crew of a dozen vegan, straight-edge punks crowded around a round table at this Vietnamese institution on West Market Street. The fake chicken with vermicelli, more commonly called “V10” here, is the way to go. Arriving in two bowls — one with the noodles, bean sprouts and lettuce and the other with the fake chicken (or tofu) in a delicious, orange sauce along with potato, onion, broccoli and bamboo shoots — it’s more than enough for one person. 2. Tandoor Tandoor India Restaurant, just up the street from Binh Minh, only serves the buffet during lunch. But show up for dinner and order the bhindi masala — “fresh-cut okra sautéed with onions, tomatoes, fresh herbs and a touch of

fresh lemon juice.” 3. Taste of Ethiopia It’s incredibly rare to see the word “vegan” on a menu in these parts; most venues use the catchall “vegetarian.” But Taste of Ethiopia lists five vegetarian/vegan options — choose the seven-item combo plate with spicy split lentils, yellow peas, greens, cabbage, shiro, salad and chickpeas in a spicy sauce. 4. Crafted: Art of the Taco Few places actually understand what “vegan” means, paying enough attention to remove egg and meat while leaving cheese or another similar screw up. That’s not the case at the South Elm Street taco joint, where the Messenger tacos can be made vegan and eaten with seitan, a fake meat made from wheat gluten. There are also “chofu”

vegetarian menu section — the stir-fried tofu basil with garlic and onions as well as the vegetarian pho noodle soup (which, of course, utilizes vegetable broth).

6. Pho Hien Vuong The city’s most popular Vietnamese restaurant is also known for two vegan choices in particular out of its extensive

Opinion

by Eric Ginsburg

9. Wallfour Bakery The weekly Corner Market in the parking lot of Sticks & Stones on Saturday mornings is as close as Wallflour — a vegan and gluten-free local bakery — comes to a storefront. But the desserts can be found at places like Deep Roots Market and Vida Pour Tea consistently.

News

7. Sticks & Stones That vegan pizza tho. Sure, other places, even the chains, can remove the cheese from a pizza and throw on a bunch of vegetables, but Sticks & Stones is the best choice for vegan ’za around. The Lindley Park restaurant also has a relatively solid veggie burger — unlike nearby Hops, the bun here is vegan as well.

10. Coming soon… Get ready. With options like vegan steak, vegan tofu and vegan ribs, Noma Food & Co. makes a strong first impression based on its menu alone. The forthcoming Thai and Vietnamese fast-food restaurant will open on Battleground Avenue with things like a banh mi sandwich with vegan ribs, red curry with vegan tofu and pho with vegan steak. And one of the two women opening it runs Boba House.

Hair of the dog

Food Music

It’s hard to argue with $3 mimosas, especially with the strong pour, at Fisher’s Grille in Greensboro.

Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

Visit Fisher’s Grille at 608 N. Elm St. (GSO) or at fishersgrille.com.

Good Sport

around the corner at Preyer Brewing and Crafted long ago if the other corners weren’t being underutilized as a funeral home and a church, among other things. It’s sad, in a way, to look out at that wasted potential. But then again, Fisher’s Grille wouldn’t have the same hyper-localized appeal, and routine patrons would migrate elsewhere. The first mimosa, though refreshing, did little to ease my slight headache, but the second delivered what fried food and an attempted nap could not. As I tabbed out, I silently said my thanks for humble pubs like Fisher’s, which are as dependable and consistent as the commandments of drinking.

Stage & Screen

so cheap. There are other appeals to Fisher’s Grille too, including a food menu that includes a California chicken sandwich with guacamole and a side of sweet-potato fries. My friend Anthony is an advocate of the bar’s martinis, though he may receive special treatment because his father was one of the famed regulars. I’ve taken one or two dates and scheduled one or two off-the-record meetings at Fisher’s too, because despite having been in dozens of times, I only recall running into someone I know here thrice. That’s no small feat in a city this size, and adds to the appeal of a townie bar such as this. Corner Slice, the pizza place and bar next door, is owned by the same family, and runs alternating drink specials, upping the appeal of an excursion to the area. The intersection would’ve grown into something akin to what we’re seeing

ERIC GINSBURG

Art

for a free mimosa, but a belated return to town nixed that option. (I do plan to take my sister, who will be visiting from Boston, to the next Spoonmosa event on July 26. See you there.) So I drummed up two neighbors and rolled to my tried and true. Any bar has its regulars, but Fisher’s Grille at the edge of Greensboro’s Fisher Park neighborhood is the kind that’s practically run by regulars. They are lawyers stopping in on the way home from the courthouse, service-industry types from places like Smith Street Diner and harmless neighborhood ruffians. Fisher’s Grille is a sports bar with allegiances to the Detroit Tigers above all else and paraphernalia including a NASCAR fender as decoration. But even though several televisions project live sports — this Sunday the lineup included a rodeo and a seemingly important car race — it’s not a true sports bar. The fans are mostly too casual, though occasionally a patron dons a jersey. More importantly, the place closes so early that I’ve regularly been pushed out before an NBA game finishes in regulation time, as happened two weeks ago during the NBA Finals. Then, like this Sunday, Fisher’s drew me in with its convenience to downtown and its $3 mimosas, which consist of what looks to be 90 percent champagne and a quick dash of orange juice. Nowhere else I know, save for the free Weatherspoon event, has that heavy a pour for

Cover Story

I have nobody to blame but myself. Admittedly I started drinking later than most of my peers — I was 20 before I drank my first beer, after years of self-identifying as a straight-edge punk — but I drew up ground rules for drinking long ago, and when I do right by them, they do right by me. There were extenuating circumstances this last Saturday: a beer-pong tournament, and a host of new friends at a Raleigh house party, including someone who’s tight with the owners of Mystic Bourbon Liqueur in Durham. That’s really where it began, when the keg briefly stopped working and we switched over to a taste of Mystic, straight up. Friends, enemies and strangers, trust me on this: “Beer before liquor, never been sicker” doesn’t just sound cute, it’s one of the Ten Commandments of boozing. But since I wasn’t a total idiot and also scarfed down a burger, a copious amount of snacks and fruit tarts, and switched to water before catching a ride to an air mattress for the night, another drinking commandment could save me: A hair of the dog really can help the next day. I woke up the next morning with a mild enough hangover to be perfectly functional, but Biscuitville and a treat from Monuts in Durham still couldn’t erase it. I intended to swing by the Spoonmosa Sunday event at the Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro

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5. Jack’s Corner This establishment proximate to UNCG has long been known as a vegan haven thanks to its falafel wrap combo with tahini — rather than cucumber tzatziki — sauce. The Mediterranean Platter with falafel, hummus, tabouleh, pita and baba ghanoush is another fine choice.

8. Taste of Thai Ever heard of pad ma kua? It’s stirfried eggplant with salted soya bean, bell pepper and sweet basil. Order it with vegetable and tofu at Taste of Thai on Westover Terrace and you won’t be disappointed.

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tacos — fake chorizo made with tofu.

July 1 — 7, 2015 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Food

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MUSIC

by Jordan Green

July on this Banjo Earth Banjo Earth @ Gia Drink Eat Listen (GSO), Wednesday Mystic Appalachian banjo visionary Andrew Eversole has a dream to take his instrument to China and several other corners of the earth to collaborate with folk musicians and promote world peace. He’s trying to raise $17,500 on Kickstarter. In the meantime, he’s girding himself for the journey at Gia restaurant in Greensboro. Show starts at 9 p.m. Juvenile at 40 Juvenile @ Ziggy’s (W-S), Friday The thing about taking on a rap name like Juvenile is that you quickly age out. In the case of 40-year-old Terius Gray, that milestone has long past. But if Jagger can swagger into senior citizenship, then there’s no reason the rap game needs to have an expiration date. The creator of “Back That Thang Up” is also known for gritty depictions of his native New Orleans. A flash of social conscience after Hurricane Katrina is only one facet of his long career. Heavy rebels and a gentleman rocker Heavy Rebel Weekender @ Millennium Center, (W-S),July 3-5 Winston-Salem’s annual bacchanal of hot-blooded American rebel music, the Weekender runs a generational gauntlet from rockabilly through garage and punk, with more than 50 acts from Friday through July 5. Dex Romweber, the Othermen and the bo-stevens are three of the highlights. Visit heavyrebel.net for more information. Meanwhile, Jeffrey Dean Foster, the local godfather of alt-country, will be doing an instore performance down the street at Mast General Store on Friday at 7 p.m. Steal your face Grateful Dead ‘Fare Thee Well’ webcast at the Blind Tiger (GSO) and Ziggy’s (W-S) Not technically local live music, but I’m making an exception here because the Grateful Dead’s 50th anniversary and threenight run of farewell concerts in Chicago is a historic moment in American music culture. The Blind Tiger is streaming the webcast all three weekend nights — with a fireworks display to celebrate the Fourth of July on Saturday. Ziggy’s is only streaming the third night on July 5, with a $10 cover charge, albeit with a bonus show by Big Daddy Love. The listing on the venue’s website includes the tagline, with no apparent irony: “Shakedown St. in full effect.” For those who want the immediacy of live music played in the same room, the Grand Ole Uproar and Space Canoe celebrate the Dead at Wahoo’s in Greensboro on Thursday.

Body Games performed behind a screen with old-school video-game text projected on to it.

RYAN SNYDER

Dance From Above celebrates first anniversary by Jordan Green

Gallab, a London-born artist of Sudanese Ahmed heritage with roots in electronic and pop music, defied expectations at last month’s Dance From Above party in Greensboro by turning up with a redhot live band and making a delightful excursion into early ’70s jam rock in the mode of the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers Band, albeit with an African twist. Celebrating its one-year anniversary, Dance From Above’s June 25 installment at the Crown made a similar frontal assault against the distinction between programmed electronic sounds and live organic sounds. Body Games, a Chapel Hill trio, did the honors. The group’s newest EP, Local Love Vol. 1, is a sincere tribute to North

Carolina bands with conventional guitar-bass-drums-vocals instrumentation that range stylistically from indie-pop and psychedelia to alt-country. With laptop computers, an occasional electrical guitar, keyboards and conventional song structures, Body Games is not far off the beaten track, but you would be advised to not worry about the provenance of the sounds in their arsenal. Body Games’ set opener, a cover of “Alex Impulse” by the Southport fuzzpop punk band Museum Mouth, offered up a revelatory example of just how far you can carry the baton. In Body Games’ hands the song was transformed from a careening pop-punk anthem into a melancholic ’80s pop dirge, with saxophone music setting a somber and romantic tone. Kate Thompson and Dax Beaton traded vocals, considerably slowed

down from the original and at times processed through a Vocoder. Half the fun was the light show, which played across double screens, one in front of and the other behind the group. The double screens transformed the stage into a gauzy cocoon, and if it’s possible to imagine three chemists — Adam Graetz is the third member of the group — at work in a lab that doubled as a boudoir, that would be the effect. Midway through the song, a sampled voice (“When you meet someone special and you want to toss them the key, say, ‘Open up, step inside,’ but you can’t.”) found a complement with letters projected onto the front screen, which dissolved into snowflakes and then coagulated into hearts. Another song jumped off with a relentless kosmiche — a quick history

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Marley Carroll of Asheville broke down conventional song structure during his DJ set.

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lesson: the term refers to the German psychedelic offshoot that laid the groundwork for disco — beat and strains of dissonant Velvet-esque guitar, all of which would melt into a droning soup, still retaining fairly conventional vocal structures. The words “more more more” playing across the screen significantly enhanced the experience, with falling Tetris combinations and an old-school video-game format providing an epiphany. “Game over — please try again” is a fitting message from a group that calls itself Body Games. Not ones to take themselves too seriously or to fully turn their backs on pop song structures, Body Games also dropped a cover of Don Henley’s “The Heart of the Matter,” it’s plaintive cry of “Forgiveness!” cutting through a chaotic scree of noise.” The alchemy of pop shoved into the blender of experimentalism called to mind Sonic Youth’s 1988 cover of Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love.” Despite not being overtly danceable, Body Games elicited a rapturous response from the crowd, with rousing cheers growing more frenetic with each song. “Thanks for putting up with our slow songs,” Beaton said. “We don’t like to go beyond 88 BPM.” From high concept during Body Games’ performance, the party moved into shamanistic ritual with Marley Carroll’s DJ set. Going on about 15 minutes after midnight, the Asheville DJ brought the series full circle, bookending with his appearance at the inaugural Dance From Above a year ago. Casually taking the boards, Carroll established a deep groove. For the most part the visuals took a backseat to the music, in contrast to Body Games’ nearly seamless integration of the two media. Also less cerebral than Body Games, Carroll’s music created a transfixing dance beat that he and his audience could easily lose themselves in. Carroll also completely dispensed with the convention of songs that play out in chunks of three to five minutes. His music gradually evolved, almost imperceptibly changing meter and instrumentation, so that a handful of “songs” might fit into a 20-minute stretch, none of them identifiable as discrete entities. A bass groove from a deep soul cut married with bell tones suggesting Gregorian chants might evolve seamlessly into polyrhythmic percussion or a sound like raindrops on steel drums. Carroll was like a pacifistic pugilist, leaning into his rig and swaying lightly. The dancers in the audience were similarly lost in the beat — lunging, twirling and sculpting the air with their hands. Like any good musician, Carroll seems to understand that there are places to confound with complexity, and others to pull back so as not to clutter the sonic canvass. That’s where magic happened: With the beat essentialized and repeated, the dancers became the soloists, improvising off the rhythm track.

Carroll’s music was more intuitive and less cerebral than Body Games’ set.

RYAN SNYDER

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ART

by Anthony Harrison

Three presses, four poets Poetry and … Beer, Wine, Food? @ Scuppernong Books (GSO), Wednesday I’m not being lazy with this subhed; that’s how Scuppernong titled this event on the Book of Faces. A poetry reading featuring four poets from Press 53, Sable Books and Jacar Books starts at 7 p.m. Richard Krawiec — winner of the 2015 Sable Books chapbook competition — Ralph Earl, Debra Kaufman and Kevin Boyle all read from their recent releases as you enjoy some free vittles and beverages. As an added incentive, Scuppernong will be handing out coupons to attendees. Timber! Threads and Timbers: Materials Hard and Soft @ Piedmont Craftsmen (W-S), Friday As part of the July gallery hop, Piedmont Craftsmen on Trade Street debuts a new exhibit featuring two artists. Jane Jennings works in mixed media, while Alan Hollar’s primary medium is woodworking. The exhibit will run from Friday through the very end of the month. The reception begins at 7 p.m.

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Travis Phillips lounges in his studio in Chapel Hill, his home away from home.

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More collaboration and less competition by Sayaka Matsuoka line the walls of the bright studio, interrupted only by Canvases a single guitar that hangs in the corner of the room. Empty paint buckets rest on the floor next to boxes brimming with tubes of paint. In the center of it all, Travis Phillips lounges in a striped, paint-splattered armchair. The studio, just off of Airport Drive in Chapel Hill, is his second home. “This is my full-time job,” Phillips said. But he understands well enough that many other creatives do not have the luxury of supporting themselves by making art. He hopes to change that, starting in Winston-Salem. A native of the Camel City, Phillips grew up in Winston-Salem, worked and made connections with many of the city’s art organizations. He left to pursue soccer in college but always

continued creating. He was previously strong culture begins with artists and the director of the graphics program businesses working together. at Sawtooth School for Visual Art and “A lot of organizations don’t have has collaborated with many other art artists working for them,” Phillips said. programs in the city. Now he is pursuing “That’s a problem.” an MFA at UNC-Chapel Hill and dreams He talks about biotech companies of reinvigorating the arts scene in the and businesses using artists to translate Triad. His new project, Currentmaking, the language of their fields to the rest would help artists make money and of the world using art. fund an artist residency program, is His own work deals with many finding support among some of the subjects including psychology, physics city’s art leadership. and math. “As the City of Arts & And he knows others Innovation, we need to who are also “pushing live up to that name,” the right buttons.” To learn more about Phillips said. “I studied “We need to start the project, visit the Winston-Salem participating in a larger currentmaking.com arts scene. I started conversation with the noticing some really world at large,” he said. significant gaps.” “We need to build an He cites the lack of connection infrastructure that artists can survive between the many organizations in. We give back to the community but working independently in the city, we have to be supported; it needs to be a spirit of competition rather than a reciprocal relationship.” collaboration. He believes that a And while he may be an idealist,

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Experimental works hang on the walls of Phillips’ studio, drawing the attention of those who drop by.

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Phillips also has concrete ideas to start making a change. Currentmaking was born out of the need to create sustainable and profitable lives for artists. “A lot of artists work day jobs and people embrace the ‘starving artist’ mentality,” Phillips said. “That shouldn’t be the case.” The project, which operates online, allows for six artists with local ties, including Phillips himself, to exhibit and sell their work to the world. While it sounds like a standard online gallery, the difference with this project lies in where the proceeds would end up. According to his plan, 50 percent would go to the artist and the other half would go to the arts council, which would use the money to create an artist residency in Winston-Salem. Devon MacKay, the director of major gifts of the Arts Council of Winston-Salem & Forsyth County, says that while no organization has stepped forward to begin the artist residency program, many have talked about it and it’s certainly something the arts council would love to see happen. And Phillips believes it to be vital for the transformation of the arts scene. “[I]t could be a recipe for something great to happen,” Phillips said. “Artists need reasons to be ambitious, but it has to be sustainable.” And he believes that the Triad area could fill a gap between artistic hubs like New York City and Los Angeles. “There are a lot of motivated artists in Winston-Salem,” Phillips said. “We know what we want to say but we just don’t have the platform and the support.”

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A lone guitar hangs next to three sprawling canvases prompting viewers to wonder if it is also art.

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Episodes

STAGE & SCREEN

by Anthony Harrison

That’s what they all say The Wrong Man @ SECCA (W-S), Thursday One of Alfred Hitchcock’s relatively underrated works, The Wrong Man is also one of the only Hitchcock films based on a true story. Actually, his cameo in this film is the director himself in silhouette saying so. Henry Fonda stars as a musician who’s falsely identified as a thief; Vera Miles co-stars as his wife and Anthony Quayle supports as his attorney. It’s all part of SECCA’s Going Dark: Film Noir screening series; the show starts at 8 p.m. A day without laughter is a day wasted The Circus @ Geeksboro Coffeehouse Cinema (GSO), Friday The Circus comes on the heels of The Kid and The Gold Rush, two immortal silent classics, in the pecking order of Geeksboro’s summertime festival, Chaplin: 100 Years of a Matinee Icon. This film finds the Tramp falsely accused of pickpocketing — what a strange, coincidental theme — and finding cover from the police by working for a traveling circus. He falls in love with a lovely young acrobat, but must compete for her attention against another suitor. The matinee begins at 2:30 p.m. A great man, lost Boulevard @ A/perture Cinema (W-S), July 7 Robin Williams’ suicide last year robbed us of a comedic genius and Academy Award-winning dramatic actor. Williams completed a final film before his death, Boulevard, also starring Kathy Baker and Roberto Aguire. In the film, Williams lives in monotony as a bank teller, but when he meets a troubled young man, he recognizes the confines of his life and accepts who he is. A/perture Cinema shows Boulevard as a one-night-only event in conjunction with the New York Film Critics Series; preshow begins at 7:30 p.m.

Jim “Jemima” Hawkins (Patsy Ferran) and Long John Silver (Arthur Darvill) marvel at constellations, shown by a planetarium in London’s Olivier Theatre.

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Royal Theatre tries on Hanesbrands by Anthony Harrison

curved, skeletal ribs of a pirate ship loomed over the stage as people of all ages packed the theater for Treasure Island. The swell of the sea roared along with the din of the crowd. But that was all across the pond. Only seven people sat in Winston-Salem’s Hanesbrands Theatre, including the projectionist. They watched a screened broadcast of the Royal National Theatre’s adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. National Theatre Live brings the top-notch productions of England’s greatest theater company to Winston-Salem. Earlier this season, Hanesbrands showed David Hare’s Skylight,

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Tom Stoppard’s The Hard Problem and George Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman, the latter starring Ralph Fiennes. Sunday’s matinee was an encore screening, but the experience remained just as thrilling. Before the show started, Emma Freud — famous English broadcaster and Sigmund Freud’s great-granddaughter — interviewed Polly Findlay, Treasure Island’s director. “[Keeping the show kid-friendly] was something very much in my mind when approaching this production,” Findlay said. “There’s a way to be visceral while also embracing these audiences.” Treasure Island stands as one of the classics of the adventure genre. It established many public perceptions

of pirates, from “X marks the spot” to seamen with peg legs and talking pet parrots, while the narrative also challenged black-and-white notions of morality. For these reasons, it’s one of the most adapted works of Western literature, and every adaptation stands against the rest. Playwright Bryony Lavery decided to push the tried and tested boundaries with her dramatization — for one thing, main character and narrator Jim Hawkins was turned into a girl. Up-and-coming stage star Patsy Ferran played the teenaged “Jemima” Hawkins with wide-eyed charm, and her androgyny wound up being the butt of many jokes. “Be you boy, or be you girl?” Billy

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Award-winning play is back again The Osanbi Deal @ Greensboro Cultural Center (GSO), Thursday Marilyn Bamer Anselmi’s newest play, The Osanbi Deal, won the 2015 North Carolina New Play Project’s award for best play, and while it premiered earlier this spring, it’s back for another run at the Greensboro Cultural Center. Taking place in rural North Carolina, the Solid family lives near a waste dump. The family and the waste site collide in this commentary about modern life and mistakes from the past. It’s a drama with a comic twist. For tickets and showtimes, visit the Drama Center’s page at greensboro-nc.gov.

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Comedy homestand Josh Alton @ Laughing Gas Comedy Club (W-S), Thursday You know it’s a really slow week when I’m having to throw stand-up comedy into the mix. Jock-turned-comedian Josh Alton played football at an Iowa community college before giving a turn at stand-up. His friends found him funny, so naturally he dropped out of school and moved to Chicago to study improv at Second City. He’s opened for big-time acts from Jon Lovitz and Dave Attell to Bobcat Goldthwait and David Alan Grier. And he’s in Winston-Salem all weekend. For showtimes and tickets, visit laughingas.net.

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the London theater scene without the expense of flying across the Atlantic to witness startling drama. With its dry English humor, marvelous staging and innovative casting, Treasure Island stands as a glowing example of that scene, breathing new life into a venerated story.

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thing National Theatre Live delivered to the small audience in Winston-Salem. While Winston-Salem, High Point and Greensboro all produce high-quality theater, the production values evident in the Royal National Theatre outpace most of what can be accomplished in the Triad. National Theatre Live provides a service to Hanesbrands Theatre and those who attend the screenings. The program shows what’s going on in

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Captain Flint, Long John Silver’s squawking macaw, portrayed in Steadman-esque style for Treasure Island.

Make it GLOS-y Phantoms of the Opera @ Temple Emanuel (GSO), Wednesday It’s a terrifyingly slow week for theater after seeming months of veritable gold rushes. But that doesn’t mean whatever’s happening won’t be quality. Greensboro’s Light Opera and Song — GLOS for short — hosts Phantoms of the Opera at Temple Emanuel in conjunction with the Eastern Music Festival. Phantoms combines opera and musical theater together while telling a compilation of different stories. The performance is in the fellowship hall. For tickets and showtimes, visit opera. uncg.edu.

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Bones, a canvas of tattoos played by Aidan Kelly, asks Hawkins off the bat. “That’s my business,” Hawkins replies, to laughs from both the crowd in the Olivier Theatre and the baker’s half-dozen in Hanesbrands. Hawkins wasn’t the only new woman in the cast: Dr. Livesey (Helena Lymbery), Israel Hands (Angela de Castro) and Tom Redruth — changed simply to Red Ruth (Heather Dutton) — were also played by women. “If we absolutely obeyed Treasure Island, the only woman character would be the mother,” Lavery said in an interview shown during intermission, “and I didn’t think that would be fair to girls.” Strangely, somewhere during the gender swap, Israel Hands morphed from terrifying villain — one of the most intimidating characters in classic children’s literature — to a bumbling fool, exploding herself with an errant match thrown into a powder keg instead of dying at Hawkins’ hands from the crow’s nest. But gender-bending wasn’t the only deviation from Stevenson’s sacred narrative. Long John Silver — the public’s imagination of the grizzled old seaman — transformed from hulking to handsome when played by Arthur Darvill. While Silver’s appearance changed, the effect wasn’t simply superficial. Turning Silver into a younger man made his conniving intelligence and moral complexity all the more compelling. Additionally, while Treasure Island established the cliché of “X marks the spot” on treasure maps, Lavery flipped the discovery of Captain Flint’s treasure completely on its head. Instead of a skeleton pointing to the treasure, the pirates must find the cache through a complex series of riddles, eventually searching through a series of underground caverns. The subterranean environment showed off the incredible stage the Royal National Theatre constructed for the show. A large, circular portion of the stage could elevate to display the Admiral Benbow Inn, the lower decks of the Hispaniola and the series of tunnels beneath Treasure Island. This dynamic layer-cake could also rotate between scenes, spout fire and undulate the island’s bubbling mud pits. It was a mesmerizing, living organism; a true marvel of stage design. That’s perhaps the most important

July 1 — 7, 2015 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Food Music Art Stage & Screen

by Anthony Harrison

The real football 7-on-7 Adult Soccer League Team Registration @ High Point Parks and Recreation Administration Office (HP), Wednesday If you scramble, there’s time to put together a 7-member team to play some soccer late this summer. Teams will be divided into two divisions: men’s and co-ed for adults over 18. The league guarantees eight regular-season games and a postseason tournament at the High Point Athletic Center. Also, there will be an organizational meeting at the Deep River Recreation Center at 6:30 on July 22. For more information, contact Anthony Ellis at 336.883.3480 or anthony.ellison@highpointnc.gov. Hoppers homecoming Hickory Crawdads @ Greensboro Grasshoppers (GSO), Saturday The Grasshoppers (29-45) are performing the opposite way as the weather — in other words, not so hot. They’re on an eight-game losing streak at press time. However, they seem to hit more confidently at home, and they’re looking at a nine-game homestand stretch. Unfortunately, they’re kicking off the first half of it on the Fourth of July against the Hickory Crawdads (46-27), who lead the South Atlantic League both in the northern division and overall. For tickets and game times, visit milb.com. And the home of the brave? Frederick Keys @ Winston-Salem Dash (WS), Saturday We had a quick giggle over this in the newsroom. You read “Frederick Keys” and just assume it’s the name of a man. But no; it’s a baseball team based in Frederick, Md.; however, they take their name from Francis Scott Key, the author of “The Star-Spangled Banner” and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s second cousin. The Dash and the Keys are pretty evenly ranked — by that, I mean they’re equally bad — posting records of 34-40 and 34-41, respectively. For game times and tickets, visit milb.com.

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GOOD SPORT Between sport and expression Heather line routines in this championship left Chan beamed me stunned and speechless. I don’t fully with confiunderstand how judges can catch the dence during exact moves and skills these men and the USA women performed. They bound like biGymnastics pedal deer for a second, then twist their Championship body into impossible positions with the elite finals at speed and accuracy of a bullet flying out by Anthony Harrison the Greensof a rifled barrel. It’s poetry in motion, boro Coliseum but the quickest, most stilted poetry on Saturday. She was a rainbow, from imaginable. her peacock-like leotard featuring Though the tumbling and trampoline bold yellows and greens to her ribbon gymnasts stunned me, I saw displays featuring every color of the spectrum. of talent which boggled my mind while She maintained a bright smile for the watching the routines of the rhythmic judges and the audience throughout her and acrobatic gymnasts. incredible twirls and her clutch catches Acrobatic gymnastics might demand of the baton, thrown impossibly high in more concentration — and in that conthe air, caught in rhythm with late-Rocentration, more physical fortitude — mantic orchestral music and the claps than any sport I’ve ever seen in my life. of the crowd. Duos or trios of young women would As I watched the competition, I was dance and tumble across a stage a reminded of a debate I had with my sisfew dozen feet across, cartwheeling ter Hannah long ago. and somersaulting in Hannah danced ballet sync with the rhythm for years, and I rememof their soundtracks, ber arguing with her which ranged from I connected that ballet could be a bombastic classical more with this sport. music to sitar-twinged Hannah denied this side of gymnastics techno. vehemently. She mainThe tops — the tiny, — especially when youngest members of tained that, while ballet took strength, skill, these teams — confeaturing batons. practice and concentorted themselves atop tration comparable to their partners into rings any professional sport, ballet was never and other absurd shapes. sport and never would be. The most popular acrobatic pyramid Maybe it’s because I was never meant amongst trios seemed to be the “neeto be a “sporting” person — I have terdle” — a seeming Eiffel Tower wherein rible ankles, bad back pain, hamstrings the base bends over backward and the of steel and the nerves of a squirrel on middle woman serves as a triangular speed — but I still found my sister’s mount for the top, who strikes whichearly passion to be a form of elite athever angular pose they decide will bring leticism. their team the most points. I’ve watched the Olympic gymnasBut one group brought style to a new tics competitions with awe for years pinnacle. without really grasping what the hell While a Spanish theme played on a is going on. Men and women perform lute, two larger young women, Confeats of strength, poise and artistry on nerney and Dyer, formed a triangular hoops the size of small plates, or bars arch while standing on their hands, the width of VHS tapes, and hopetheir feet meeting at the apex, while fully dismount on their own two feet the lighter top, Bentov-Lagman, perwithout an apparent bead of sweat. It’s formed a handstand on the tips of their enthralling. upstretched feet — the only true Eiffel Watching the tumbling and trampoTower.

These three women eventually placed first in the junior elite group finals. While the acrobatic exercises demanded extreme athleticism alongside impressive artistry, the rhythmic gymnastics routines presented the vice-versa situation. I connected more with this side of gymnastics — especially when featuring batons. Nearly every move those rhythmic gymnasts performed reminded me of watching my sister on War Memorial Auditorium’s stage as she danced for Greensboro’s holiday presentation of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker. And they did it all while twirling batons with six-meter-long ribbons attached to the end, achieving a kaleidoscopic effect with the colored cloth. Aliya Protto possessed the most dancer-esque build, tall with long limbs drawn against a thin but strong frame. While she did tangle the ribbon on her head right off the bat, she showed a ballerina’s finesse and control in her leaps and turns. But there can be only one winner, and Laura Zeng deserved it beyond any doubt. Zeng possessed incredible poise and balance despite the difficulty of her routine. She engaged eye contact with both the audience and the judges simultaneously, swirling her purple, blue and green ribbon around her bright-red, sequined outfit to the pounding intensity of clacking percussion. She ended her routine by tossing her baton high in the air with her foot before flinging it back and forth for a flourishing finish. From my ignorant layman’s perspective, the performance seemed utterly flawless. The judges thought so, too. As my sister quickly pointed out years ago, there’s definitely a difference between the art of ballet and the sport of gymnastics, but it’s a slim difference, in the same way that not all rhombuses are squares: gymnastics are scored. But art isn’t meant to be a competition.

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1 Korean pickled dish 2 Barely make 3 “C’mon!” 4 Step into character 5 “Ain’t gonna work!” 6 “That was no joke” 7 Ex-Smiths guitarist Johnny 8 Pistol-packing 9 Not so snug-fitting 10 Fidel’s comrade-in-arms 11 Away from the city, maybe 12 Musical Fox show 13 Actress Rue 18 Took on a roll? 19 Jonah Hill sports flick 24 They’re coordinated to look random 25 ___-en-Provence, birthplace of Cezanne 27 ABC’s “___ Anatomy” 30 Brand of kitchen appliances 32 Damage the surface of 33 157.5 degrees from N 34 Cartoon “Mr.” voiced by Jim Backus 36 Binary component 37 Expressive rock genre 38 Nailed at the meter 40 Fight (with) 43 Reprimand 45 Zoo doc 48 Called on the phone 49 Self-conscious question 50 As it stands 52 Till now 54 A, to Beethoven 55 A long way off 56 Bagel shop 58 Italian sparkling wine 61 “Game of Thrones” weapon 62 Free (of) 63 Government org. concerned with pollution

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1 “Kenan & ___” (late-’90s Nickelodeon show) 4 Varmint 10 Gear teeth 14 Tina’s ex 15 Chevy model since 1966 16 Dance with gestures 17 Device that reads other temperature-taking devices? 20 Price basis 21 “You ___ busted!” 22 Costar of Rue 23 Really avid supporter 26 Down Under predator 28 Judge who heard a Kardashian, among others 29 She sang “Close My Eyes Forever” with Ozzy 31 Blood fluids 34 “Hot 100” magazine 35 “The Lion King” bad guys 36 With 41-Across, hip-hop producer’s foray into Greek typography? 39 Lincoln’s youngest son 41 See 36-Across 42 “Put me down as a maybe” 44 Bright stars 46 On the way 47 Biblical brother 48 Narrow estuary 51 Some cigs 53 Minimally 55 Gator chaser? 57 Become swollen 59 ___ for the money 60 Overly pungent cheeses? 64 Judd’s “Taxi” role 65 Result of “pow, right in the kisser” 66 “Pulp Fiction” star Thurman 67 Astronaut Sally 68 Curly-haired “Peanuts” character 69 Shih tzu or cockapoo, e.g.

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All She Wrote

July 1 — 7, 2015 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Food Music Art Stage & Screen

The grateful and the dead I would never go to Chicago without my guys. And that’s not gonna happen. I’ll be in Washington, DC for the by Brian Clarey Fourth of July weekend, snaking my way through the National Mall. But surely a piece of my will be in Chicago, where the Grateful Dead will be getting the band back together for a farewell reunion show. My history with the Dead goes back to the 1970s, when I would sometimes find my aunt in her attic bedroom suite at my grandparents’ house just zoning out and listening to their music — mostly their studio work, as my aunt was never a huge tape collector, and usually with the window open. I was more into Johnny Cash back then — I was about 7 — but the music had set a foothold in my consciousness before I became a full-fledged teenager. I pulled back a bit from the new-wave stuff I had been exploring and immersed myself in the Dead throughout the 1980s. I used “Brokedown Palace” as an analogy for my angst-ridden life, and soothed a bad breakup with “Loser.” I learned the hippie boogie dance to “Alabama Getaway.” A tie-dyed and sideburned English teacher in junior high gave the young Deadheads something to coalesce

around (Thanks, Riv!); the well-heeled thousands of words to understand what kids in my school wore tie-dyes underI took in that day and what happened neath their rugby shirts and their older to me afterward, but by the time the brothers played in Dead cover bands. whole tribe queued into a surreal paWhat my father never understood rade that led inside the venue, I knew I until much later, right after Jerry Garcia wanted to do this — the music, the peodied in 1995, was that the band’s image ple, the party, the vibe — some more. as a drug-fueled carnival — largely I was 16 years old. By the time I true, by the way — and its iconography graduated high school I had clocked rich with badass images of skulls and a few more shows — a dozen? Who flowers, lightning bolts and frivolous really knows? — and become part of a cartoons never really squared with the small cadre of heads who between us music. hit every show in the Northeast circuit. Sure, the Dead could That summer, and for — and will — rip into a a few summers afternumber hard enough to ward, I’d pile in a van Its iconography rich raise armhairs. But even or someone’s mother’s with badass images at its most electric, sedan and make for the Dead’s music was Pittsburgh and Philadelof skulls and flowers, always beautiful and phia, Saratoga Springs lightning bolts and melodic, with Garcia’s and Madison Square frivolous cartoons flowery guitar work laid Garden. It all sort of like lace atop Bob Weir’s never really squared blends together — was jammed-out rhythm. I there when Weir’s with the music. I didn’t see my first rendition of “Looks Like show until 1986, a Rain” caused what we billing with Bob Dylan, in whom I had perceived to be an actual thunderstorm recently become interested, at Giants inside the Hartford Civic Center? Does Stadium. A few dozen of us had made it even matter anymore? Hotel rooms the drive out from Long Island, and we and parking lots, strange bars and miles set up camp in a corner of the parking of road, ticket scalpers and candymen — lot before noon, throwing away cash at they were all part of one larger experithe open-air market known as Shakeence. down Street for trinkets, baubles and By then my crew was tight: just me, dry goods. I had never seen anything Cap, Reals and Dr. Lawyer. Together we like the people at the Dead show: aging traipsed through the New England hinhippies and beautiful scenesters and terlands and the edge of the Midwest, rich boys dropping cash. It would take down through Maryland and along

the New Jersey coast. There’s a book in there somewhere…. That’s when the Dead shows became, for me, more about a golden moment of my youth than the music, which I still dug immensely. And without my guys, it’s just not really a Dead show. Reals has been gone since 1995, just a few months after Jerry Garcia, when a tragedy on the Meadowbrook Parkway extinguished his light. Twenty years, and I still can’t type that without crying a little. Last anybody heard of Cap, he had just come off the street in Queens and was promising to give sobriety a shot — a real shot this time — as soon as he could get out of the halfway house. I often wonder what role those lost nights on tour played in his struggles with addiction. Dr. Lawyer’s out in Tucson, ostensibly to run a hospital but I suspect he’s there to find a way to become an Indian chief, just so he can make the jokes. And like I said, I’ll be in the nation’s capital when the Dead & Co. take the stage in Chicago. It’s better this way. Without my friends, it would be too much to bear.

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