Greensboro / Winston-Salem / High Point triad-city-beat.com August 12 – 18, 2015
Hip-hop travelogue PAGE 22
The next Unicorn PAGE 24
A primary concern in GSO PAGE 10
FREE
Belongings
Select items from the Maya Angelou estate PAGE 16
August 12 — 18, 2015
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CINEMA UNDER THE STARS August 14 | Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) August 21 | Up (2009) August 28 | Dr. Strangelove (1964) September 4 | Rushmore (1998) $5/person; $20/car; RAH Passholders free Gates open at 7:30 p.m., films shown at 8:30 p.m. Beer and wine are available for purchase and picnicking is welcomed. In case of rain, films are shown in the auditorium. Co-presented by the School of Filmmaking at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.
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August 12 — 18, 2015
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CONTENTS
Publisher Allen Broach allen@triad-city-beat.com
Editorial
Art
Art Director Jorge Maturino jorge@triad-city-beat.com
Sales
Director of Advertising and Sales Dick Gray dick@triad-city-beat.com Sales Executive Alex Klein alex@triad-city-beat.com Sales Executive Lamar Gibson lamar@triad-city-beat.com Sales Executive Cheryl Green cheryl@triad-city-beat.com
Contributors Carolyn de Berry Nicole Crews Anthony Harrison Matt Jones
22 UP FRONT
MUSIC
4 Editor’s Notebook 5 City Life 6 Commentariat 6 The List 6 Barometer 7 Unsolicited Endorsement 7 Triad power Ranking 8 Heard
22 Hip-hop travelogue
NEWS
GOOD SPORT
9 Let them eat steak 10 District 3 up for grabs 12 An illegal dissolutioin?
28 It’s not all in the wrist
OPINION
29 Jonesin’ Crossword
13 13 14
Editorial: Where is everybody? Citizen Green: The inartful sheriff It Just Might Work: Kibbutz-style
14
Fresh Eyes: Black Urbanist in KC
gardening
COVER 16 Belongings: Selections from the estate of Maya Angelou
Courtesy image
An artistic rendering of Maya Angelou
FOOD 20 A Dominican adventure 21 Barstool: Local House Bar
TCB IN A FLASH DAILY @ triad-city-beat.com 4
Passing the hat
by Brian Clarey
Business
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 Chris Nafekh Daniel Wirtheim intern@triad-city-beat.com Investigative Reporting Intern Nicole Zelniker Photography Interns Amanda Salter Caleb Smallwood
EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK
First copy is free, all additional copies are $1.00. ©2015 Beat Media Inc.
ART 24 Taking the unicorn by the horn
STAGE & SCREEN 26 Words at midnight
GAMES SHOT IN THE TRIAD 30 St. Jude Street, Greensboro
ALL HE WROTE 31 She ain’t heavy, she’s my mother
Back in the day we used to have a darkroom next to the newsroom, and we assembled our paper manually, cutting paper with X-Acto knives and slapping it up on the flats with hot wax. I was in my twenties before I ever emailed a story to an editor. And I was in my thirties when the social-media explosion changed the way people consumed news. Fully half of our traffic, often more of it, comes via social media, much of it from Facebook but I suspect as more years roll by that something else will supplant the behemoth. Another change that came about in the last couple years is even more sweeping: Most of our web visitors are hitting the site through their mobile devices, mostly iPhones. Being able to access information on the go is an amazing thing, something I could never have foreseen when I was just a stupid kid pounding out sentences on an old Macintosh desktop that wasn’t connected to anything but a printer. But it’s also a devastating blow to the altweekly business model. Our papers are free. So is our site. The only way we pay for it is by selling ads. And you can’t serve up ads on an iPhone. I mean that literally. The newest ones will have ad-blocking software as part of their operating system. Most desktop browsers are implementing the same technology. This leaves the modern free newspaper publisher in something of a quandary. But we’re figuring it out. New streams of revenue have It’s something I could never have been forged in this foreseen when I was just a stupid kid ancient business pounding out sentences on an old model — we’ll be Macintosh desktop that wasn’t rolling some of connected to anything but a printer. them out in the weeks to come. And we’ve got some other ideas, too. We’ll never charge for our newspaper, or our website. Information, as we used to say, wants to be free. But it still costs money to put it out there. So we’ve added a donation button to our website, an unobtrusive little thing near the top of the home page. It’s there for our regular readers who appreciate what we do and want to support our work. Like all of them, our business runs on money — passion, smarts, hustle… all of that, too, but we can’t pay our printer with heart. So please don’t be offended by our meager ask. The donate button can easily be tuned out. But if you read something you like, learn something new, discover something that changes the way you see our cities, go ahead and give it a click.
WEEKEND EMF Fringe Series @ Carolina Theatre (GSO) Two offerings from the Eastern Music Festival’s Fringe come to the Carolina this weekend. On Friday the Honeycutters bring pedal steel and dobro to the Crown. And on Saturday, Harpeth Rising takes the main stage. See easternmusicfestival.org for tickets.
WEDNESDAY
Immigration Salon series @ New Winston Museum (W-S) Hispanic Roots in Winston-Salem begins at 5:30 p.m., a discussion on “the reception and impact of immigrants in the Winston-Salem community,” according to the site, featuring Mari Jo Turner, executive director of the Hispanic League of Winston-Salem. See newwinston.org for more.
THURSDAY
WUAG Kickoff Show @ Empire Books (GSO) Simon Mantooth come from Asheville. Serfs are Charlotteans. And Echo Courts is pure Greensboro. They’ll throw in together tonight at Empire Books to celebrate another year of college radio. Check the Facebook page for details. Art Amplified opening reception @ SECCA (W-S) The Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art presents an exhibit by young artists from Brenner Children’s Hospital with live music inspired by the work. The party begins at 6 p.m., and you can find out more at secca.org.
SATURDAY WhoDat Festival @ Doodad Farm (GSO) The daylong festival has seven “killer” bands along with comedy, poetry and beards. All local, all volunteer, all nice and easy, no tickets in lieu of donations at the door. The site, whodatfestival.com, has the rest.
triad-city-beat.com
CITY LIFE August 12 – 18
Close to You: The Music of Burt Bacharach @ Old Salem Visitor’s Center (W-S) It’s possible that birds will suddenly appear when you get near the classic sounds of Burt Bacharach interpreted by a stripped-down chamber group with a jazz foundation. It’s part of the Carolina Summer Music Festival, with shows at 4 and 7 p.m. Pretty sure you can score tickets at the door. GFW Drink Reveal Party @ Marshall Free House (GSO) The official drink of Greensboro Fashion Week will be revealed tonight at 9 p.m. in the mixology lab. See greensborofashionweek.com for more. Royal House/Big Shoals @ the Garage (W-S) Big Shoals comes straight off a gig at the Gray Eagle in Asheville and just before a night at the Cave in Chapel Hill. Royal House claims Walnut Cove as the base for its indie-folk rock. They meet at the crossroads of the Garage.
SUNDAY
Gazebo Concert Series @ Teresa’s house (GSO) It’s a Greensboro house show in the grand tradition, at Teresa Staley’s house on the 3700 block of Parkwood Drive. Listen for the sounds of Jessica Pennell and Tony Low beginning around 7:45 p.m. to find the right place. Mr. Destiny/the Rockers @ Winston Square Park (W-S) Had enough free outdoor movies? Not so fast! This one pairs the 1990 Jim Belushi film with local band the Rockers, who open the evening at 7 p.m.
FRIDAY Ferris Bueller’s Day Off @ Reynolda House (W-S) Reynolda House begins its late-summer Cinema Under the Stars with the 1986 film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, which still totally holds up. The lights go down around 7:30 p.m. Talladega Nights @ Center City Park (GSO) Center City Cinema screens the story of Ricky Bobby, who was born to drive, on it big screen at sunset. Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill @ Hanesbrands Theatre (W-S) This Twin City Stage production turns Hanesbrands into a cocktail lounge for the evening in a tribute to Billie Holiday. Find out more at rhodesartscemnter.org.
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August 12 — 18, 2015
Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Food Music Art Stage & Screen Good Sport Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote
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Contact from the candidiate Thanks for naming me in the article [“Mayor’s race, District 3 will see primaries”; Aug. 7, 2015; by Eric Ginsburg]. Touché on the “long winded” blog but keep in mind the blog was not intended for anything other than my writing enjoyment and to provide some cover for those that are not defended. I am not limited to word counts as you folks in the print media. I look forward to sitting down with you soon. Thanks again for the opportunity. Marc Ridgill, Greensboro Ridgill is running for Greensboro City Council at large. Crepe nation I’m a student at HPU just down the road from Penny Path and I try to go at least once a week [“Penny Path creperie to open new location in Winston-Salem”; Aug. 7, 1025; by Jordan Green]. The crepes are delicious and affordable, and the staff are amazingly kind. Miro and his staff truly deserve success for making such a friendly atmosphere with such amazing food. My favorites are the original crepe, with strawberries, bananas and nutella, and the pizza crepe! Sephen Edwards, via triad-city-beat.com Memory vs. reality A handful of octogenerians who want to exclude any user group that would conflict with their childhood memories of the forest area? [“Losing wild places”; by Jordan Green; July 8, 2015] Seems like that’s a much more obvious example of a “special-interest group” than the much, much larger subset of the population that respects and cherishes the outdoors while also utilizing it for health and wholesome family exercise. Tommy Rodgers, via triad-city-beat.com High Point street Most of the people people who have a lot to say live in poor neighborhoods [“A High Point rapper shouts out the city’s poor neighborhoods”; Aug. 10, 2015; by Jordan Green]. I have lived in High Point all my life and am happy he chose to keep it about where he’s from. Fantasia just forgot where she came from and didn’t even make her movie here. I ain’t mad at her though, but never forget where you came from, so I wish him luck. Denise Almond, via triad-city-beat.com Great article about a great young man. Hope only the best and $$ucess for him. Stay positive, young blood. Brad Lilley, via triad-city-beat.com
4 highly anticipated fall video-game releases by Chris Nafekh 1. Super Mario Maker — Sept. 11 The power to create lies the in palm of the player. With this release, Nintendo gives fans easy access to construct their own Super Mario levels using the WiiU game pad. Scenery and characters from every 2D Super Mario title, ranging from original NES to 3DS, embellish level creation. Builders can construct landscapes for difficulty, friendly competition or just for fun. After uploading the levels online, fans can attempt each other’s creations. Thus, shortly after its release, this game will include an entire database of newly customized, mushroomy landscapes and lava-laden castles for fans to discover and voyage. 2. Lego Dimensions — Sept. 27 In what universe can Gandalf the Grey, Batman and Marty McFly drive the mystery machine down the Yellow Brick Road then use the Tardis to travel space and time? In Lego Dimensions, everything is canonical. This title offers the cartoon violence and pop-culture chaos seen in The Lego Movie, plus the youthful creativity that Lego games are known for. Warner Bros. boasts 14 dimensions, each with vast explorative levels. But the starting pack only includes three dimensions — Gotham City, Middle Earth and The Lego Movie — and only a few characters to choose from. The rest cost extra. The starting pack is expensive, but prices will drop with time.
3. Fallout 4 — Nov. 10 After a preview of Fallout 4 won E3 2015 Best in Show and Best RPG awards, the game is rather anticipated. The series is highly regarded for its post-apocalyptic storyboards, writing and subtle humor. The role-playing style adopted in earlier versions of Fallout is on par with Skyrim, both developed by the Bethesda Softworks. An openworld wasteland of post-apocalyptic Chicago provides plenty of freedom. Fans were disappointed when that freedom disappeared at the finale of Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, but Bethesda has promised they won’t make the same mistake again. 4. Star Wars Battlefront 3 — Nov. 17 Preluding the release of The Force Awakens (the latest Star Wars film) is a reboot that video-gamers across the globe have waited years to enjoy. The gameplay footage is captivating; beautiful graphics transport players onto foreign planets like Hoth and Endor. The familiar orchestral soundtrack is gripping and captures the essence of adventure. Whether the fight is on terrestrial planes between rebels and stormtroopers or in the sky among X-Wings and TIE-fighters, the creative combat is engaging. This title won Best Online Multiplayer at E3 2015. Up to 40 players can fight these chaotic battles at one time online, making this game much more competitive than its predecessors.
Dopplegänger Edition 3. High Point
We’re ranking our cities by the originality of their nomenclature this week, by which we mean we’re scouring the internet looking for places with the same name. High Point, a fairly generic appellation, is shared by nine different towns, neighborhoods, locales and a township in Iowa. High Point, Mo. makes our own High Point look like a metropolis, an unincorporated piece in the middle of the state with just one church, one school and a population of about 5,000.
2. Greensboro
Greensboro makes the cut for second place with just seven other communities that share the name, though the Triad city is the biggest of the bunch. Greensboro, Md. has just 1,800 residents. Greensboro, Fla. has 600 or so. Greensboro, Ind. has fewer than 200. Greensboro, Pa. sounds nice, right on the banks of the Monongahela River, though it must not be that great because only 250 people live there.
1. Winston-Salem
Here are the facts: There are nine geographical entities in the United States named Winston — the closest an unincorporated tract in Georgia and the furthest a small dot in New Mexico where just 61 people live. And 33 places in the country are named Salem, dropping all over the map, though the most famous may be the village in Massachusetts where the witch trials took place. But there is only one Winston-Salem, putting the city in first place for the week.
triad-city-beat.com
NBTF celebrity sighting Tangerine (the movie) by Eric Ginsburg
News Opinion
COURTESY PHOTO Actor Lamman Rucker, who played Sheriff Troy in Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married, showed up at the National Black Theatre Festival in Winston-Salem last week.
Food
National Black Theatre Festival
Both
5%
All She Wrote
New question: Should Winston-Salem rename the Dixie Classic Fair because of the name’s association with the Confederacy? Vote at triad-city-beat.com.
Shot in the Triad
Readers: Y’all chose the National Folk Festival overwhelmingly (71 percent). “Can’t decide — love both!” and “other” were options, but hardly anyone chose them. The remaining 24 percent picked the National Black Theatre Festival, which was more than halfway over by the time we released the poll (so maybe that hurt anticipation). Nobody left a comment explaining their reasoning, though.
Games
Eric Ginsburg: National Folk Festival, and here’s why — I generally prefer live music to theater and like that the folk festival will be free, therefore making it more accessible. The National Folk Festival is more exciting because it’s new, while the theater festival has run since 1989. But let’s be real: Both are incredible and we’re lucky the Triad hosts them. So really I should probably say both, but that feels like a cop out.
24%
Good Sport
Jordan Green: I could say that I’m equally excited about the National Black Theatre Festival and the Nation-
71%
Stage & Screen
Brian Clarey: I see this as an apples and oranges. The National Black Theatre Festival has been going on for decades, and it fills a much-needed niche even today. It’s one of the few arenas in which small, black theater troupes can have their work performed in front of an influential audience. It costs much less to produce than the National Folk Festival will, but the tickets can run upwards of $40. The National Folk Festival is more mainstream. And while it serves a similar multicultural function, this is an event for just about everyone. The shows are free, the acts diverse and the whole city is in on it — even the buses will be free for the National Folk Festival.
al Folk Festival, but a man is judged by his actions rather than his words, right? I think the black theater festival is awesome, and I fantasized about taking the week off to immerse myself in performances with an eye towards discovering some hidden avant-garde gem, sadly I didn’t clear my busy schedule to see even one show. Meanwhile, I talked my mom and two of her sisters into driving from Illinois to attend the folk festival. It helps that the folk festival is free. All the same, this is kind of an embarrassing admission.
Art
Black Theatre Festival or Folk Festival?
National Folk Festival
Music
Tangerine is showing at A/perture Cinemas (W-S) and Geeksboro (GSO). Check their websites for details.
With the National Black Theatre Festival in Winston-Salem all last week and the National Folk Festival coming up in Greensboro on Sept. 11, we wanted to know which one our readers were more excited about. Here’s what you (and our editors) had to say.
Cover Story
by James Ransone. Everyone else in the film is a fresh face, while Ransone is recognizable from all sorts of supporting TV roles including on “How to Make It in America” as Ziggy Sobotka on “The Wire” and on “Treme,” as well as half a dozen other film and television appearances. He does just fine as Chester, though it isn’t his best performance, but the recognizable face is jarring as the only mug that sticks out. It brings the focus away from Sin-Dee-Rella (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) and Alexandra (Mya Taylor), where it belongs. The two are unbelievably talented at portraying the two characters, from their sinking despair to kinship to rage. The range so skillfully displayed keeps viewers riveted, only enhanced by the up-close-and-personal iPhone filming approach. Ransone’s familiar face is all that jerks the viewer into remembering it’s all fiction. But the film is unquestionably worth seeing, and is likely already achieving instant-classic status.
Up Front
The line, uttered by Armenian cabdriver Razmik’s mother-in-law, sums up the narrative bent of Tangerine too well to be a coincidence. “LA is a beautifully wrapped lie,” she says. She’s talking about Christmas Eve in Los Angeles, and how strange it seems without snow or cold weather. But the parallels between the conversation — as she tries to expose Razmik’s unsavory hidden side — and the film’s main conflicts are apparent. Tangerine wowed at Sundance, in part because it was filmed on an iPhone but also because of its unwavering focus on two trans women who are sex workers as protagonists. Both are triumphs. The film, which makes excellent use of bombastic music to animate emotions, wastes no time cutting to the issue: Sin-Dee is fresh out of jail, and pissed once her best friend Alexandra accidentally lets slip that Sin-Dee’s boyfriend slept with someone else. She’s ready to burn it all down, and seems destined to return to jail as she pursues revenge. The film’s main fault is its casting of SinDee’s boyfriend and pimp Chester, played
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August 12 — 18, 2015
Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Food Music
HEARD “There’s some debate about whether that was really an official committee.”
— Guilford County Commissioner Marty Lawing, on the open space committee, page 12
But these kids couldn’t do much better than an estate sale for the woman who won a Grammy and spoke at two presidential inaugurations, among a laundry list of other historic accomplishments. — Eric Ginsburg, in the cover about Maya Angelou, page 16
“Your grandmother had her hands on every organ within a 100 mile radius.” — Some lady in line at the bank, to Nicole Crews, All She Wrote, page 31
“It’s sort of a cliché of the literary life that a young man in his thirties decides to start a small press. You’ll know many of these foolish characters before you die — I’m one of them, I guess — but I’m not starting a press, I’m reviving one.”
All She Wrote
Shot in the Triad
Games
Good Sport
Stage & Screen
Art
— Andrew Saulters, soon to be the director of Unicorn Press, page 24
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How could I leave a city that supplied me endless Biscuitville, cupcakes worth standing in line for at Maxie B’s, and food served at establishments owned by families of folks I considered friends, colleagues and classmates? Where not just one, but two fellow young black professionals are sitting on its city council? That, along with Winston-Salem, does festivals like no other (seriously, if you’re coming into town for the National Folk Festival, you will learn). — Kristen Jeffers, in Fresh Eyes, page 14
“However, after several officers, including Officer Lloyd, sought some clarification, Chief Deputy McPherson spoke again with Sheriff Johnson and then reported back that the sheriff ‘didn’t mean [to arrest] just Hispanics’ but rather also ‘Hispanics, whites and blacks.’ While the clarification was inartful at best (there being no need to refer to race at all), it demonstrates that the directive was either misstated or misunderstood and was meant to apply to everyone.” — Judge Thomas Schroeder, in Citizen Green, page 13
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Let them eat steak
Affordable housing program pays for downtown redevelopment by Jordan Green
Opinion Cover Story Food Music Art Stage & Screen Good Sport Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote
voter-approved bond funds, that ties together the downtown government district with the thriving Restaurant Row and the Downtown Arts District to the north on Trade Street. The financial assistance package A year after the state General Assemwould come from the city’s new afbly eliminated the historic preservation fordable workforce housing program, tax credit, a local developer is turning which was forwarded to city council for to the city of Winston-Salem for help in approval on Monday through a unanfinancing the rehabilitation of an iconic imous vote of the finance committee. 1927 building in the heart of downFunds for the housing program also town. come from general obligation bonds apMike Coe, proved by voters who owns the last year. Pepper Building, The addition of six rental units “Every dooris requesting way and every at $575 per month represents a $1.6 million hallway is a chalthe city of Winston-Salem’s low-interest loan lenge,” Coe said first step in opening affordable from the city as of the building. housing in downtown as part part of an $8.1 “It’s built solid, of a financial assistance packmillion overbut it will take a all investment lot to restore it to age to help renovate the iconic to restore the its former luster.” Pepper Building. building as a Coe said the mixed-use projbuilding predates ect with retail and rental housing that 1927, the year county tax records list will be anchored by a Cowboy Brazilian it as being built. Before that, it was the Steakhouse chain restaurant on the first Phoenix Hotel, whose roof was defloor. stroyed in a fire. Located at the corner of Liberty Coe said the restoration building and West Fourth streets, the building would be doable without the city’s assisfaces onto Merschel Plaza, a key public tance, but he wouldn’t want to underspace slated for development through take the project.
News
The Winston-Salem City Council wants to keep downtown affordable, but the real impact of a new loan program might be to replace historic preservation tax credits eliminated by the state of North Carolina.
JORDAN GREEN
Up Front
The long-dormant Pepper Building is considered a key piece of downtown Winston-Salem’s continued revitalization.
Jeff Prioreschi, Coe’s partner in the 10 percent of total units must be leased project, said North Carolina once had to households with incomes 50 to 120 one of the most attractive historic percent of area median income. For a preservation tax credit programs in the family of four, that would range from nation, adding that the state is now at $28,050 to $67,300. risk of losing out on projects. The income limit for the affordable “The cities of North Carolina will housing units would be enforced for 15 have to be creative in financing historic years, or the duration of the loan, under restoration,” he said. “I live in South the guidelines of the proposed program. Carolina. South Carolina is far superior The $1.6 million loan for renovation to North Carolina in its historic restoof the Pepper Building would amount ration tax policy right now.” to $266,667 per unit, easily enough to The developers are requesting $1.6 finance the purchase of two modest million in gap financing from the city. homes in residential neighborhoods like Assistant City Manager Derwick Paige West Salem, Dreamland, Kimberley said under the guidelines of the proPark and Southside. posed program that the city’s portion Comparing the low end of the range of the financing would never exceed 20 for market rents in the Pepper Building percent of the total project cost. with the subsidized rate, the developHistoric preservation is not the exer would sacrifice $108,000 in rental plicit goal of the affordable workforce income over the 15-year life of the loan housing program. In approving the loan in exchange for the favorable loan terms program, council members expressed of the $1.6 million financing package. concern that residents with modest Community and Business Development incomes are being priced out of a resurDirector Ritchie Brooks said interest gent downtown, increasingly catering rates for loans approved under the proto the housing and entertainment needs gram could range from 0 to 7 percent. of highly educated and well compensatBrooks said staff felt that 10 percent ed tech workers. Councilman Derwin as a minimum requirement for the share Montgomery noted a worrisome trend of units set aside for affordable housing in cities across the nation whose downstruck a good balance. towns have rebounded while the poor “We wanted to present something are pushed out to suburban areas with that would be reasonable as a starting less access to public transportation, jobs point,” he said. “If you say 25 percent and services. Montgomery said the city or 30 percent, that may run a developer has an obligation to blunt some of the away.” impact of rising housing values on low-income workers. Assistant City Manager Derwick Paige said rents for most of the 54 housing units in the Pepper Building are expected to range from $675 to $1,218 per month. To meet the eligibility requirements of the loan, the developers are agreeing to set aside six units for affordable workforce housing, with subsidized rents of $575 per JORDAN GREEN month. Under the guidelines Mike Coe and Jeff Prioreschi (foreground) are partnering on developed by staff, at least redevelopment of the building.
triad-city-beat.com
NEWS
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August 12 — 18, 2015 Up Front
News Opinion Cover Story Food Music Art Stage & Screen Good Sport Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote
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Candidates emphasize nonpartisanship in competitive primary by Eric Ginsburg
Despite there being nine seats on Greensboro City Council, only two contests drew enough candidates to force a primary election this October. The most competitive of those two, where three first-time candidates will do battle, is District 3. The voters of District 3 have an outsized influence in Greensboro’s primary election this fall. The district, a wedge beginning in downtown and widening as it moves north, is loosely framed by Battleground Avenue to the west and Church Street to the east. And it hasn’t seen a competitive race since Zack Matheny locked down the district in 2007. Matheny resigned — an unusual occurrence in city politics — shortly before this year’s election season began to take the helm of the embattled Downtown Greensboro Inc. Council appointed Justin Outling, a lawyer with Brooks Pierce and the district’s first black representative, to fill the remainder of his term. Now Outling is beginning his first election season, and without Matheny as a heavyweight holding down the office, two more first-time candidates jumped in the ring. The top two contenders in the Oct. 6 primary will move on to the Nov. 3 general election, so the biggest question for now at least is which one of these three will be knocked out. But with the same voting rights as anyone else on council, including the mayor, the outcome of the race has implications for the entire city. Likewise, the victor will ultimately represent all Greensboro residents. Triad City Beat will continually cover this race as it develops, but here is an introduction to each of the District 3 candidates who want to represent you. In alphabetical order by last name: Kurt Collins All three candidates emphasized economic development first, a common darling of city council contenders and one that is particularly unsurprising in District 3; the district covers a portion of downtown, which is experiencing a development boom, and former councilman Matheny championed the
Kurt Collins
Justin Outling
Michael Picarelli
cause and headed council’s now-defunct economic development committee. Kurt Collins, who like Justin Outling moved to Greensboro in 2012, first started actively engaging with city politics thanks to a byproduct of downtown’s growing pains: the controversial noise ordinance. Collins moved out of the center city, in part because of excessive noise. “It hit home for me because I experienced noise issues when I lived downtown,” he said. “I started paying more attention.” Similar downtown issues are part of what pushed him to run for city council, as well as the window created by Matheny’s departure. But at the time of the noise ordinance, Collins chose to pursue civic engagement through other platforms. He joined SynerG, a young professionals organization that is part of the economic development group Action Greensboro, where he now serves on the leadership committee with Outling. With the help of Matheny, Collins was appointed to the city’s human relations commission, where challenger Michael Picarelli also serves. Collins is part of the commission’s complaint review committee, which oversees residents’ complaints about police conduct. Collins said public safety is also a major concern, referring to downtown specifically, striking a tone similar to his predecessor who repeatedly pushed for
a teen curfew in the center city. People need to feel safe coming downtown to patronize businesses and to live, Collins said, adding that the city could do a better job listening to residents’ public safety concerns but that he supports the police chief ’s neighborhood-oriented policing approach. Collins, who described himself as a fiscal conservative and “an everyday middle-class guy,” aligned himself with Matheny’s relatively conservative legacy and allegiance to economic development. “One thing I would tell the citizens of District 3 is that if you like Zack, you’re probably going to get some very similar leadership from me,” he said. Collins, who works at United Guaranty, also said he is interested in improving transparency, referencing closed-session meetings, and a need for a more efficient city budget that doesn’t rise sharply.
because the position would focus on ironing out red tape and walking each project from one step to the next. As an appointed councilman, Outling is already working on this idea, he said. Before becoming a councilman, Outling served as the chair of the city’s minimum housing commission, and he maintains an interest in improving Greensboro’s housing stock both for the sake of residents and business opportunities. There is more the city could do to connect prospective buyers with condemned properties that need buyers, a win-win proposition, he said. Like Collins, he pointed to downtown and the airport as areas of great economic development opportunity, but he also said the city needs to partner with other local government bodies on a Randolph County megasite project that could bring thousands of jobs to the area. Outling, a registered Democrat who worked as a corporate lawyer on Wall Street and now on Elm Street, is running against two white Republicans in a district with demographics that lean towards his competition. But the election is nonpartisan, and Outling downplayed party affiliation, as did Collins and Picarelli. “I’m results-driven and solution-oriented,” Outling said, adding that voters don’t care about party politics in a race like this as much as whether a candidate can get things done. “I’ve proven that I
Justin Outling Outling also trumpets the cause of economic development, which he said the city can strengthen by making it easier and more efficient to invest money. One way to do that would be creating an ombudsman in the city manager’s office, he said. The ombudsman would track projects and make sure they didn’t get stuck in the city’s process, Outling said. It would differ from the assistant city manager for economic development
Picarelli distanced himself from some local Republicans who decry government waste, saying careful spending is important but that council’s job is also to invest and help grow the tax base so
that budget cuts aren’t necessary. “We have to develop a stronger base so that we have enough money coming in to avoid future cuts,” he said. “You can’t save your way to prosperity.”
Up Front
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Michael Picarelli Picarelli, the former chair of the Guilford County Republican Party and a human relations commissioner, put in his paperwork to run for District 3 in the last hour of filing, delayed because of confusion created by a state law that could have radically reformed city council and as he waited to see if another rumored contender would file. Picarelli works at the regional manager for Grande Cheese Company, and wants to see the food and beverage industry grow as part of downtown’s economic boom. His position gives him insight into the industry and valuable connections that would inform his perspective on council, he said. Economic development is one of his top issues, alongside downtown specifically, public safety and also food deserts. Like Collins, Picarelli quickly mentioned his support for the police department’s new community-oriented policing emphasis. He has often spoken in support of the department, and shortly after filing said he applauds the Greensboro Police Department for being an early adopter of body-worn cameras. While discussing policing, Picarelli admitted that the city suffers from a “big divide” on race relations overall, saying the city could do a better job facilitating discussion and harmony. The city could also do more to promote the benefits of downtown development, turning away from the city’s sprawl and filling in underused space in the city core. Blossoming cities like Asheville are a great example of what is possible, he said. Picarelli also wants the city to look more closely at what it can do to support public education, mentioning the
local Say Yes to Education campaign. The county officially oversees education, but some current council members have expressed similar sentiment about opportunities for partnership.
triad-city-beat.com
am analytical and can develop solutions to complex problems.” Outling described himself as more than a participant, but a leader, saying he helped reduce the amount of time it took to reach a solution for minimum housing cases and helped initiate a new city approach to fines and landlord accountability that is better for all parties involved. “I have a disposition for action,” he said. “Action over talk, solutions over rhetoric. People respond to what you can actually do for them and how you make them feel.”
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August 12 — 18, 2015 Up Front
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HIGH POINT JOURNAL
Dismissal of open space committee might have been unlawful by Jordan Green
The legality of how the former chairman of the Guilford County Commission dissolved the open space committee is called into question. Bill Bencini, the former chairman of the Guilford County Commission, may have acted beyond his legal authority when he dissolved the open space committee through individuali letters to members in late 2014 informing them their services were no longer needed. “If the committee has been created by a vote of the board of county commissioners, then only the board can dissolve the committee,” said Norma Houston, a faculty member at the UNC School of Government in Chapel Hill. “If the board has delegated authority to the chairman to create the committee, then the chairman has the authority to unilaterally dissolve the committee. The general rule of thumb is that the entity that creates the committee has the authority to dissolve the committee.” In his letter dismissing members of the open space committee, dated Nov. 12, 2014, Bencini wrote: “As the acquisition of property has now been completed, the county will not reappoint the subcommittee for the new year and your appointment will be completed on Dec. 1, 2014. Please know that the open space committee has helped place the county in a great position to maintain the properties moving forward. On behalf of the county and its residents, we thank you for your time, commitment and dedication throughout the years as the duties and responsibilities of the open space sub-committee have drawn to a close.” Bencini could not be reached for this story. The county commission did not take a formal vote to dissolve the committee. County Attorney Mark Payne said he recalls that the members of the county commission were notified that the letter was going to go out. Payne said Bencini, among others, asked him if he had the legal authority to dissolve the open space committee without a formal vote of the county commission, and that he responded in the affirmative. “Yes, it was authorized,” he said. The position of county officials that
Bill Bencini is now the mayor of High Point.
JORDAN GREEN
Bencini did not need a formal vote of the county commission to dissolve the open space committee is based at least in part on the view that open space was not an official committee of the county. “The open space committee is a bit of a misnomer,” Payne said. “They’re not a committee created by the county commission and created by statute. They didn’t have any legal status beyond being a subcommittee that was created to provide advice to the parks and recreation commission, which is an advisory board to the county.” County Manager Marty Lawing offered a similar read. “There’s some debate about whether that was really an official committee,” he said. The establishment of the open space committee is memorialized in the minutes of the county commission’s July 20, 2000 meeting. The minutes record that the county commission accepted a document called the Guilford Open Space Report and approved its recommendations on a 10-1 vote. The motion was made by then commissioner Jeff Thigpen, who is now the county’s register of deeds.The 2000 report is not incorporated into the minutes, but the recommendations, as approved by the county commission, clearly establish an open space program and a committee responsible for its oversight. Recommendation No. 4 specifically holds “that a citizen advisory board, serving under, and as a subcommittee of the parks and recreation commission, provide leadership and oversight of the program.”
Comments by Norma Houston at the UNC School of Government back up members of the open space committee, who contend that they were an official committee of county government from start to finish. “Based on what you’re telling me, then I would consider that an action by the board to create a committee,” she said. An expert in local government law, Houston served as chief of staff and chief counsel for former state Senate president pro tem Marc Basnight. Lawing, who took the job of county manager in 2013, indicated he was unfamiliar with the county commission’s 2000 vote to establish the open space committee. “To have a subcommittee of a committee that has oversight over a program seems kind of odd,” he said, “but if that’s what it said, then that’s what it said.” Based on her limited knowledge of the matter, Houston said she could not comment on whether the county commission authorized Bencini to take action on its behalf. But any such delegation of authority would also need to be done through a formal vote, she said. “Simply polling a majority of the board has no legal effect other than giving the chairman a sense of the board,” Houston said. “For the board of commissioners to take a lawful action it has to be done sitting in a properly called meeting, whether it is a regular meeting or a specially called meeting.” Lawing said he is not aware of any official action by the county commission to delegate authority to Bencini to dissolve the open space committee. Beyond establishing an open space committee, the 2000 report records that the county commission approved a recommendation to “establish an active, focused, long-term open space preservation and acquisition program.” Also approved by the county commission was a recommendation that the program be supported by the equivalent of one full-time staffer. As recorded in minutes that were temporarily lost but are now available for review at the Old County Courthouse, the open space committee met regularly
from 2001 through 2014. A county employee acted as recording secretary until the county withdrew staff in mid-2014. The open space committee adopted bylaws on Feb. 27, 2001, the first meeting officially recorded in its minutes. The bylaws laid out the number of voting members, while reserving one position for a member of the parks and recreation commission. The bylaws also outlined the appointment process: “Application shall be made through the secretary, who is a member of the county staff. The committee shall make recommendations to the county parks and recreation commission. Members are subject to their approval.” The bylaws continue: “Appointments from the parks and recreation commission are effective upon approval and a new member may serve immediately.” Jack Jezorek, a former member of the open space committee, noted that the county commission’s 2000 action emphasized not only acquisition but also preservation of open space lands. “By dissolving the committee, does that end the program?” he asked. Answering his own question he said that from a legal standpoint, the open space program appears to still be in place. But as a practical matter, the phrase “open space” has been excised from the county website, with the phrase “passive parks” substituted to describe a handful of the properties acquired over the years through the program. Among the recommendations approved by the commission was establishing a minimum goal of protecting 100 acres of parks and open space per 1,000 residents by 2030. By that yardstick, the committee’s life was cut short at the midway mark. “My belief is that Guilford County needs an open space program,” said Jack Jezorek, a former member of the open space committee. “That doesn’t say anything about an open space committee. All the urban counties in North Carolina have ongoing open space acquisition programs, with Mecklenburg and Wake obviously leading the way. Guilford County is pushing a half-million people, and the land is going fast.”
Where is everybody?
The inartful sheriff, or judicial whiplash
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civil rights law, I do consider myself a pretty good judge of common sense. In an age of hyperawareness about the taboo of racial discrimination, any police chief or sheriff with half a brain will tell you: “Racial profiling is against the law; we don’t tolerate it or practice it.” Even if they actually do. Only a halfwit would maintain a document outlining a policy of targeting Latinos. It gets better. “Only a very few officers claimed to have heard such a statement,” Schroeder writes. “And, had any officer regarded such a statement to be a directive, like those from the sheriff that he or she was dutybound to obey, as the government suggests, it is odd that not a single officer or employee ever complained about it, challenged it, or was concerned that he or she would risk any adverse action at all for failing to follow it. Whatever Sheriff Johnson may have said, it is unlikely that it was as portrayed, singling out Hispanics expressly.” Notwithstanding the judge’s inclination to give the sheriff the benefit of the doubt, it doesn’t really seem that odd that subordinates who are professionally disposed to respect authority would be reluctant to challenge questionable practices. The judge noted that one officer testified that Sheriff Johnson once said, “Go get the Mexicans” and “arrest every chili s***ter in the park.” But the judge said he questioned the veracity of the officer’s testimony, and concluding that the sheriff likely said, “Go get those Mexicans” in reference to a specific Mexican gang. That puts a pretty fine point on it. Then there is another officer with the Alamance County Sheriff’s Office who testified that a chief deputy had reported that the sheriff said that any Hispanics driving without a driver’s license at a checkpoint at the predominantly Latino Rocky Top trailer park should be arrested. “However, after several officers, including Officer Lloyd, sought some clarification, Chief Deputy McPherson spoke again with Sheriff Johnson and then reported back that the sheriff ‘didn’t mean [to arrest] just Hispanics’ but rather also ‘Hispanics, whites and blacks.’ While the clarification was inartful at best (there being no need to refer to race at all), it demonstrates that the directive was either misstated or misunderstood and was meant to apply to everyone.” Inartful is one way to put it. Another way to read it is that once a subordinate questions an unlawful practice, an agency leader who wants to evade detection would be wise to cover his tracks. Oh wait, weren’t we told that “not a single officer or employee ever complained about” a policy of targeting Latinos? Weren’t we told that no employee ever challenged the policy or was concerned that he would “risk any adverse action” for failing to follow it? Feeling whiplash yet?
News
We have a pretty good idea of how federal Judge Thomas Schroeder will rule in the lawsuit brought against the state of North Carolina’s election law by the US Justice Department, the North Carolina NAACP and others following the conclusion by Jordan Green of the trial last month. After all, the federal judge denied the plaintiffs’ preliminary injunction last year, ruling that they were unlikely to succeed on the merits. Schroeder’s ruling last week dismissing the federal government’s racial discrimination complaint against Alamance County Sheriff Terry Johnson reveals a judge with a skeptical view of federal intervention in the practices of local and state government. Schroeder is nothing if not thorough. His 253-page memorandum and opinion, released on Aug. 7 nearly a year after the conclusion of the Alamance County racial profiling trial, is a testament to the judge’s attention to detail. Schroeder ruled that the government failed to make the case that the sheriff’s office in Alamance County, our neighbor to the immediate east, violated the Fourteenth Amendment by denying Latinos equal protection under the law through a pattern and practice of discriminatory traffic stops. Before we get into the dense thicket of Schroeder’s judicial reasoning, it warrants mention that the judge admonished the sheriff’s office to get a handle on the racist comments of its employees. “The language, epithets and slurs used by some ACSO officers, particularly in the [county jail], are abhorrent and, if not already, should cease immediately,” Schroeder wrote. He added that the sheriff’s office may have already taken steps to curb abuses of its email system, but if not, “the sending of racially- and ethnically-insensitive jokes and games must stop.” His musing on testimony about alleged orders given by Sheriff Johnson is telling. The government had attempted to make the argument that the sheriff ordered deputies to “arrest Hispanics” during a meeting and then on another occasion during a checkpoint near a predominantly Latino trailer park. The judge was not persuaded that the evidence put out by the government established that there was policy singling out Latinos. “The government points to no ACSO document containing any policy, and no witness testified to any,” Schroeder wrote. “Rather, the government relies on testimony as to Sheriff Johnson’s verbal directives to arrest Hispanics on these limited occasions and evidence that all deputies are duty-bound to carry out all of the sheriff’s orders.” While I can’t claim to understand the finer points of
Up Front
After the clock ran out in the Greensboro City Council election filings, we’re left with 19 candidates, nine of them incumbents, for the entire slate. Just two races managed to draw more than two bodies per seat, so only the mayor’s race and District 3 will be featured in the Oct. 6 primary. And that doesn’t make any sense. Where are the “business leaders” so insistent on the ineptitude of our leadership that they enlisted the aid of Roy Carroll and Sen. Trudy Wade to reshuffle the deck? Where are the malcontented citizens who constituted a plurality in the poll conducted by the Rhino Times in April? We’d cite the numbers, but the story about the poll and its results appears to have been scrubbed from the Rhino website. And as long as we’re asking questions: Why would they do something like that? And where, we ask, are the candidates who were supposedly waiting in the wings, ready to answer the call to service by running for these seats we were told had been taken over by an elite group of special interests that were running the city off a cliff? According to everyone who aided and abetted Wade’s Gambit to recalibrate Greensboro City Council, we were in full crisis mode, amid an emergency that could not wait for clean process or the next election for rectification. And now… what? Nobody wants to run just because she’ll have to face an incumbent? In 2011 25 people ran in four primaries. In 2013 we had six primary contests, with 24 candidates. And that’s why it makes no sense that we’re left with two paltry primaries, one of which barely merits watching. Mayor Nancy Vaughan shouldn’t have too much trouble advancing in her primary against 27-year-old political novice Devin King and straight-up jabroni Sal Leone. District 3 is another matter. Justin Outling, named to succeed departing councilman Zack Matheny, must fend off two challengers in fellow SynerG leader Kurt Collins and former Guilford County GOP head Michael Picarelli. Add to that, Outling has the chance to become the first African American elected to a non majority-minority council district in Greensboro history. For political junkies, it’s the only thing worth watching until November. We’ll never know what might have been, had only the proponents of Wade’s Gambit gotten their way.
CITIZEN GREEN
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OPINION
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August 12 — 18, 2015 Up Front News
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IT JUST MIGHT WORK
Kibbutz-style gardening It’s easy to get lost in romanticizing about life on a kibbutz, which is essentially a socialist utopia where food is plenty and everyone is healthy. Kibbutzim were communal farms set up by Jewish Zionist settlers in early 20th Century. Aside from the by Daniel Wirtheim brand of kibbutz promoted today that are making sandals and hosting traveling volunteers, the early kibbutz movement was based on agriculture and provided most of the diet for settlers in the deserts of Ottoman-controlled Palestine. Taking notes from the kibbutz movement could boost community garden output in any city and in particular the Greensboro-High Point area, which was recently dubbed one of the hungriest places in America. Think of a food desert, a place devoid of real food markets where community members hunt for ramen noodles and soda at convenience stores. There may be a community garden in the area, but it’s highly unlikely that it provides enough produce to sustain even a single household. A little restructuring could have a huge impact on these gardens. The standard model for a community garden is based around family plots. One family is only responsible for only what they planted. Sure, there are a few Good Samaritans that might water a neighbor’s lettuce bed, but holding a volunteer accountable for the entire garden means that things get done, that garden members are held responsible for the wellbeing of the garden and their efforts are rewarded, too. In a kibbutz, products are bought with vouchers indicating the amount of work each person has contributed. A 15-yearold kid who spends a few hours in the garden could bring home a basket of fresh zucchini while developing a work ethic. Neighborhoods with a large portion of immigrants or low-income workers, which are most at risk for living in food deserts would benefit from having their own food source with fresh veggies. It’s a longshot, but so was setting up a kibbutz in the middle of a desert.
FRESH EYES
From an ambassador to Kansas City Roughly six weeks ago, coming into town for the National Folk Festival, you after loading almost all of will learn). my worldly possessions It’s simple. One must see that the grass they someinto a moving truck, times think is brown is really always green. And that’s relatives helped me pack true even for metros that seem to steal so many away the rest into two cars and from Greensboro. The Raleighs, Charlottes, DCs, we departed our southChicagos, Atlantas and New Yorks. And even this west Greensboro home Kansas City, where mine seems to be the only North by Kristen Jeffers at about 5 a.m., naviCarolina license plate in the line of cars outside my gating the freeways past my father’s gravesite at the mid-city apartment building. Ebenezer Baptist Church, on a hill created due to the Here, suburbia is really suburbia and the city is cutting in of new highway. really the city, with more than 450 million inside its Within an hour, I’d left the Triad. In roughly 48 limits and another 2 million in the metro area, twice more, I’d have wound my way in the caravan through as large as Greensboro and the Triad. Good luck six states and the entire length of Missouri, where I finding a big-box store north of the 40th Street. Oh, would disembark Interstate 70 into my new home: and forget a street numbering pattern that exists Kansas City. only in a long-absorbed mill village. Hundreds of That’s the simple, physical way I describe leaving numbered streets form the metropolis, consisting of Greensboro. But it doesn’t scratch the surface of why 7,000 square miles total, split between two states, 15 I psychologically moved. counties and dozens of municipalities. There were years where I was happy staying put. Slaw doesn’t come on hot dogs here, but they do Those of you who knew me personally knew that I was this cool thing called burnt ends with their barbecue, constantly writing about the state of which suits me just fine, as I’ve said city, both the good and the bad, never been a vinegar sauce fan. I but probably more of the bad. Here, suburbia is know, don’t start. Yet, on a bad day, I’d call up a friend Yet, what brought me to Kansas really suburbia and soon I’d be on the grass at NewCity, other than needing to leave Bridge Bank Park, enjoying a Natty’s the family nest, is the ability to and the city is brew and venting our way back into make a passion a livelihood. Back really the city. being the do-good, world-changers home, I was on the transit board, the bike/ped advisory committee we really were, who truly loved our and the bikeshare task force, and balanced slightly city. If it was winter, we’d do this sitting at the Natty unrelated full-time jobs. Here, it’s 100 percent bike Greene’s second floor bar. and pedestrian advocacy, with a bonus of helping run Even when I exposed flaws in how we see our a bikeshare system. Although the Gate City has the neighbors, especially when it came to how we walked ingredients for a robust bike/ped advocacy group, I and carried ourselves on the downtown streets, I still couldn’t duplicate my current job in Greensboro. knew we could all party on the pattern I helped paint So here I am. on February One — the very block against whose One thing’s clear, though. I am still part of Greenspatron saints I was juxtaposed in this publication boro. I am its ambassador, sharing the stories of our earlier this year, as we continued our work to make recent struggles of self-governance, and the awethe dreams and desires embodied by the courageous someness of a local fast food chain that creates magic A&T Four come completely only between 5 a.m. and 2 p.m. Maybe some Kansas true. City folks who need a change of scenery will hear one How could I leave a city that of those stories and consider the Triad. supplied me endless BiscuitAnd I make manifest the words of one of the Triad’s ville, cupcakes worth standing greatest transplants, the late Maya Angelou, words in line for at Maxie B’s and I mentioned before in this very publication: “You are food served at establishments only free when you realize you belong no place — you owned by families of folks I belong every place — no place at all. The price is considered friends, colleagues high. The reward is great.” and classmates? Where not just one, but two fellow young black Kristen Jeffers is author of A Black Urbanist, a professionals are sitting on its Greensboro native and currently resides in Kansas City, city council? That, along with Mo., where she is the communications and membership Winston-Salem, does festivals manager for BikeWalk KC. like no other (seriously, if you’re
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August 12 — 18, 2015
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Belongings Select items from the Maya Angelou estate by Eric Ginsburg
By the final afternoon of a three-day estate sale for the great Maya Angelou, a few of the legendary writer’s neighbors had carved out their own piece of the action. The author, poet and activist loved hosting parties, but it’s hard to imagine there had ever been this many cars lining the small side street where Angelou resided, wedged between Wake Forest University, where she taught, and Old Town Club’s golf course and country club in northern Winston-Salem. Somewhere approaching 6,000 people lined up in front of the grand, fenced-off home before the sale opened on Aug. 6, waiting to enter in groups of 50 at most. With two hours remaining in the sale on the cloudless Saturday afternoon, the line of cars stretched all the way to the busy Coliseum Drive in one direction where local police had lined parking cones to stop attendees from pulling over along the thoroughfare. The closest parking spot could be found almost half a mile down Bartram Road — free parking, that is. Neighbors at three nearby houses had positioned themselves in collapsible lawn chairs at the edge of their stately circular driveways, with hand-drawn signs offering $5 parking. Coolers with bottles of water, going for $1 each, rested besides them, and in one case, umbrellas blocked direct sunlight. If the same kids had set up lemonade stands at the edge of their sprawling front lawns when they were younger, they would’ve been lucky to bring in enough money for a bag of lemons. But these kids couldn’t do much better than an estate sale for the woman who won a Grammy and spoke at two presidential inaugurations, among a laundry list of other historic accomplishments. All three driveways appeared full, and soon police blocked non-residents from driving down the street altogether. Only then did the line in front of Angelou’s massive home — one of two in the city — begin to dwindle as the multigenerational throng wove its way from room to room, circulating between three stories and taking the opportunity to gander at the complex’s magnificent backyard, patios and porches. The day before it all began, Larry Laster and his family sat inside a front living room off the main entrance pricing paintings and sculptures while two more people sorted through belongings in the finished basement and an adjoining two-car garage, not far from another that could fit three next to a small greenhouse. As they prepared, a large passenger van emblazoned with the insignia of the National Black Theatre Festival — based in walking distance from Angelou’s home and being held the same weekend as the estate sale — pulled up in front of the house. But with a gate and intercom system guarding the driveway, the van quickly turned around and left, offering passengers the type of view one would receive on a Hollywood tour of homes. The celebrity status drove many of the purchases; a used typewriter
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1. Handmade stained glass chandeliers ($1,000 each) 2. “Carolina Parrot” color lithograph ($225) 3. Large gold mirror ($895) 4. Statue of graduates on a boat, “The College Fund/UNCF Frederick D. Patterson
Award presented to Dr. Maya Angelou, March 7, 1996” ($5,500)
7. Duke ($27,50
5. Rose medallion table lamp decorated with Japanese figures ($320)
8. Bria B acrylic
6. Artis Lane “Emerging Classic Head I” made of bronze and ceramic ($22,000)
9. Lithog 10. Color
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ERIC GINSBURG
Ellington playing flying keys 00)
a desk adorned with poster of Malcolm X and an SCLC poster of Martin Luther King Jr. ($950)
rand “Untitled [African Woman]” c on canvas ($1,650)
11. Portrait of Angelou, oil on canvas ($2,750)
graph “Tahitian Landscape” ($225)
12. Asian horse table lamp ($130)
pencil drawing of Angelou behind
13. Upholstered brown corner chair, one of
two ($595) 14. Decorative chest ($90) 15. Small Gandhi bust (not yet priced on the eve of sale) 16. A brass and enamel globe ($325) • Not pictured on wall to the left: Huge
collage on canvas, “Match-ups,” of Boston Celtics champ John Havlicek and Cleveland Caveliers player Campy Russell ($38,500) • Not pictured on table to the right: Framed and inscribed photo of Angelou with televangelist Robert Schuller ($385)
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August 12 — 18, 2015
Four things the TCB team took home
Larry Laster’s loves
1. Chopsticks ($10) Freelance photographer Amanda Salter, who took most of our pictures of Angelou’s estate sale, bought a pair of $10 chopsticks with detailed blue design work at the base. The solo set ranked among the most affordable, yet pretty, of the sale. Salter bought a notebook, too.
Laster, who ran the estate sale, said two portraits of Angelou that he hung on either side of an armoire were his favorites. He priced one, a colorful oil-on-canvas piece from 1999, at $6,600. “I love that one because that’s how she smiled,” said Laster, who knew Angelou from her visits to his fine arts store in town, where she would come and sometimes pass a couple hours. P. Ryan painted the second — a black, white and gray oil-on-canvas portrait with a red background — which Laster priced at $4,400 and which graces our front cover.
Cover Story
2. Empty Champagne ($20) It seems a little stupid, really, to buy an empty bottle of Champagne, but I like to imagine what Angelou celebrated as she popped the cork on this shiny gold bottle of Armand de Brignac. Decorating with empty booze bottles is pretty passé, even for modern frat boys, but this token still took up residence next to a tap handle and a few other fancy empties on a shelf in my guest room. Side note: The line “Gold bottle of that ace of spades,” in Jay Z’s 2006 hit “Show Me What You Got” is about this bubbly, and the video prominently featuring the beverage upped the drink’s profile. 3. Kentucky Derby shot glass ($10) Angelou liked to go to the Kentucky Derby, sale manager Larry Laster said, so in a way, this 2010 memorabilia is significant. Like the Champagne bottle, the allure of imagining Angelou using it is strong, but it’s still functional. Imagine a guest using it and asking if you had been to the derby and nonchalantly remarking, “Oh no, that was Maya Angelou’s.” 4. Cocktail shaker ($10) What good is a shot glass without a cocktail shaker? This plastic mixer, with the recipes for several cocktails listed along its sides, is pretty generic, but given that it’s perfectly usable, I thought it would pair well as a takeaway gift from the sale for my girlfriend, who couldn’t attend. The $27,500 Duke Ellington figure plays the flying keys.
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would never fetch $5,000 otherwise, and some rather mundane kitchen items would be priced lower at another estate sale. Many of the countless pieces for sale were remnants, having already been picked over by friends and family. Laster sold about 200 more pieces of art from Angelou’s collection at his store, Laster’s Fine Art & Antiques, on Stratford Road in the months immediately preceding last week’s deluge. By the time the public entered Maya Angelou’s primary residence, it hardly looked the same as she kept it. More than a year had passed, and in the interim much of what had made it hers changed hands. But considering how many things already left the expansive house, the resid-
Visit triad-citybeat.com to see more photos of Maya Angelou’s house and items that were part of her estate sale last week.
AMANDA SALTER
ual pool of items still overflowed. New books lined shelves, and despite hanging paintings and drawings on practically every piece of open wall space, a stack leaned into the space by the top of the open staircase down to the basement. Her bedroom had been blocked off by furniture, in accordance with her family’s wishes, but five upstairs rooms and three bathrooms would be accessible, as well as a former dining room, bookcase-lined basement and several other memorabilia-stocked rooms. The stained glass chandeliers in a front room would be priced too, at $1,000 each, and Laster said he believed the house built in 1960 would eventually be sold as well.
An appraiser had assessed the value of dozens of pieces of fine art, including a handful of sculptures, for the sale, but on the eve of the three-day affair, the team inside the house was still making judgment calls on smaller pieces. Someone carried a 12-pack of Fat Tire beer with a 2003 expiration date out to a dumpster in the front driveway, but a gold bottle of champagne gleamed next to six matching decanters. It would fetch $20. Attendees gawked at the house itself — the pink walls upstairs, a raised screen porch off of a wraparound, a pool with stairs and a slide built into a rock fixture that had long since been filled in — but the colorful home, though impressive, isn’t grandiose or decked with frills. It wouldn’t
stand out compared to the other expensive residential properties in the neighborhood on its own. That isn’t why people stood in line, or lugged boxes down a hill to their cars, or turned around with intentions of returning later when the crowd might thin. They came, of course, because of the woman who lived here, to touch a piece of history before the brief moment slipped between their fingers. They came to take part of that history — in the form of dish towels, autographed books, birdhouses shaped like church hats, Queen Anne’s side chairs, portraits of Angelou or a dulcimer — home with them.
1. Her personal typewriter ($5,000) Maya Angelou’s typewriter, an Alder from Executive Business Machines in Winston-Salem, would’ve been easy to overlook on a table in a room towards the back. But given that writing is what Angelou is most known for, this tool of the trade deserved a neon arrow pointing to it. Despite the high price, it sold before the sale ended. 2. An old radio ($395) A Philco floor model radio was one of the first, and certainly the largest, item greeting visitors as they entered. Standing more than waist high, it would appeal to young hipsters and aged antique collectors alike. 3. Duke Ellington figure ($27,500) A statue of musical pioneer Duke Ellington, his tuxedoed torso rising out of the base, shows the legend playing a set of flying keys. It’s a beautiful piece, to be sure, but the work by an unknown artist costs as much as two new cars. 4. The lounging Pink Panther ($30) It’s hard to say whether Maya Angelou used the cube-shaped container to store cookies, or at all, but it’s amusing to think about her chuckling about its design. The Pink Panther, lounging in a bathrobe in a modeling pose holds up a martini glass, acts as the handle for a jar painted like a black die with green dots. 5. Eggbeater plates (6 for $50) A set of six small, white side plates featuring a simple black illustration of an eggbeater was one of the more accessible choices that would’ve been worth it regardless of the previous owner. Another set, with a drawing of a rolling pin, was also available to a good home for the same price. Angelou loved to host, so it’s also easy to imagine these saw their share of action in a highly cultured circle. 6. Crosley Select-O-Matic ($58) A table in the rear dining room sported a much smaller, and more affordable, radio. This one is more like a mini jukebox, with select hits from artists such as Fats Domino, the Shirelles, Marvin Gaye and Chubby Checker. Nice.
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The 10 coolest things at Maya Angelou’s estate sale 7. “Sun Down at the Hole” painting ($6,600) I don’t know what it is about this Alonzo Adams acrylic painting of a man, facing away from the viewer, fishing, but the piece is alluring. If money was no object, I might possess it. 8. The books (various prices) An entire room — and not a small one — off Angelou’s bedroom had been turned into quite the library. And even more titles populated shelves in the basement, as well as a few in a front room on the first floor. With the National Black Theatre Festival in town, the $33 Blacks in American Theatre History by HD Flowers likely sold. Others of interest included I Have Risen: Essays by African-American Youth, dozens of Angelou’s own writings including signed copies, a book on Tibet, a few by Tavis Smiley and the ubiquitous Original Chicken Noodle Soup for the Soul guide. Laster said that last he heard, the remaining books would be given to Wake Forest University, where Angelou taught. 9. Poster-board quote ($200) Shelling out this much for a quote on poster-board isn’t advisable, but the Maya Angelou quote emblazoned on it summarized why the whole event resonated so deeply with the thousands who turned out, and is worth remembering. “People live in direct relationship with their heroes,” it said. The night before the sale began, the piece hadn’t found a prominent place yet, instead tucked aside and barely visible in the front foyer. 10. Berry Gordy cards ($40 each) Christmas paraphernalia filled two tables in an upstairs bedroom. But besides the usual tchotchkes are two holiday cards from Berry Gordy, the 85-year-old founder of Motown Records. The first, from 1998, reads, “Let love, laughter and music light up your holidays!” while another from 2003 is longer, yet still impersonal. Both look like plaques, and are among the only items from celebrities that remained after family and friends sifted through Angelou’s things.
Cheers: This bathrobed Pink Panther rests — with a martini — atop a jar designed to look like a die. It cost $30.
ERIC GINSBURG
AMANDA SALTER Each room on the first floor of Angelou’s house was packed. Top right: One of Larry Laster’s favorite items, a portrait of Angelou priced at $6,600.
Two birdhouses shaped like church hats hang from corners of a screened-in porch.
AMANDA SALTER
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August 12 — 18, 2015 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story
Food Music Art Stage & Screen Good Sport Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote
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Banquet
FOOD
by Chris Nafekh
Chef de l’amour Dr. Brownstone’s Sweet Summer Luvluv Festival @ Spring House Restaurant, Kitchen and Bar (W-S), starting Wednesday Celebrated chefs from across North America deliver sizzlin’ satisfaction to Triad palates. The four-course feast of artisan cuisine includes seafood and gourmet cookout served al fresco. For a high-priced ticket, foodies enter “the belly of the beast” to dine with the chefs. For more information, visit springhousenc.com. Keep on truckin’ Retro Run Food Truck Rodeo and 5K @ Gibb’s Hundred Brewing Co. (GSO), Saturday This fitness/food-fest employs some of the Gate City’s finest food trucks, including but not limited to Ghassan’s, Dusty Donuts, King-Queen Haitian Cuisine and Food Freaks of NC. Contestants running their hearts out can win prizes and gorge themselves on drive-by-delicacies, but hopefully not at the same time. For more information, visit retrorun5k.com If every day was Tuesday… Taco Tuesday @ Spice Cantina (GSO), Aug. 18 Tuesdays are for tacos, and the perfect taco can make a Tuesday. A soft tortilla lined with cool sour cream, filled with hot cooked beef, fresh pinto beans and a rice-veggie mix — the stomach rumbles at mere thought. Nowadays, people have a strange obsession with cheap-old Mexican grill, but that falls short compared to fat, home-made tacos. For more information, visit railyardentertainment.com.
Family style is the way to go, with things like shrimp mofongo (front left), beans with plantains (center left), beef with onions (center) or the friquitaqui sandwich with salami and egg (right).
ERIC GINSBURG
An unpredictable Dominican adventure by Eric Ginsburg
menu at Mangu Bar & Grill may look extensive, but there are two things that should be kept in mind when ordering at this relatively new Dominican restaurant in Winston-Salem: Order family-style and ask about the best dish available. That’s because the menu acts as more of a compilation of what the kitchen is capable of rather than a guide to what’s on deck. The sancocho, a fantastic soup popular in the Dominican Republic because it’s affordable to make at home, is made on Sundays along with the other soups noted on the menu such as the mondongo beef tripe option. And arriving for dinner, rather than lunch, on a weeknight could mean Mangu is fresh out of other items. On a recent Tuesday, the signature mangu — a side of boiled and then mashed green
The
satisfying Dominican sausage side, but plantains, sometimes served with other ingredients — had been depleted before the key is to order a handful of items to share, especially for those looking 8 p.m. to explore Dominican cuisine. Don’t So rather than pre-reading the miss the beans, which are appropriately menu online and arriving heart-set on salty and come with pieces of plantain something particular, round up a group that’s down for in them, a good side with rice an adventure and see where for any meal. To Visit Mangu Bar & Grill at 2225 some, the beans the night leads. Old Salisbury Road (W-S) or at are enough The server may mangubarandgrill.com reason to visit recommend the alone. shrimp mofonLess advengo — a dish with turous eaters may enjoy the friquitaqui origins in Puerto Rico but that is served in the Dominican Republic as well, comsandwich with salami and egg. For party poopers (see also: Difficult husbands plemented well by a moat of red sauce who are stuck in their ways) there are and shrimp. Or it could be the bistec enhamburgers, hot dogs and chicken cebollado, a thin yet sizeable cut of beef fingers. topped with onions and melted butter. The storefront Mangu inhabits on Both are worthwhile choices, as is the
looking up. It makes sense, considering Mangu brags a liquor license, carries the Dominican beer Presidente and seems to be the only watering hole in the vicinity. But the food takes center stage during lunch and on weekend nights, despite the added competition of karaoke and occasional live music played on the guira and tambora, two instruments hailing from the Dominican percussion section. The restaurant brings in all comers,
the owner says, a claim that holds true for the staff as well, which includes a Dominican chef and servers from Venezuela and Puerto Rico. It feels safe to guess that there are only two distinct groups of people who haven’t shown up in the three months since Mangu opened: those who don’t know about the tucked-away spot, and those with an aversion to boisterous reggaeton music playing on the stereo.
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for its authenticity, and while there is little nearby for comparison’s sake, the restaurant’s island food is a memorable delight. Still, almost all of the patrons on a recent Tuesday during dinnertime came to drink, taking advantage of a tiny bartop in the right corner with just four barstools. They spread out at adjacent tables, some watching the Red Sox/ Yankees game overhead and others the Mets/Marlins matchup, but most were engrossed in conversation, hardly
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Old Salisbury Road in the southern part of the city used to house Miami Café, a Cuban restaurant that is rumored to be reopening on Broad Street near downtown. Besides the generalized similarity of serving Caribbean fare, Mangu carries on the tradition with a Cuban sandwich as well. But despite the few food items paying homage to other nations, the Dominican food is more than enough of a draw on its own. Mangu came recommended by a Dominican friend of a friend who vouched
News Opinion
by Eric Ginsburg
Food Music Art
Local House Bar has improved lately, with the addition of a second skeeball machine and occasional food trucks parked outside by the parking-lot patio.
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Visit Local House Bar at 422 N. Edgeworth St. (GSO) or at localhousebar.com.
Shot in the Triad
added a second machine since my last visit, allowing for simultaneous rolls. A skeeball score of 35,000 — up from the original 30,000 because too many regulars hit the threshold — will win you a free beer, and despite the raised bar, I hit my first that night. And my girlfriend, who joined the excursion, brought in two more. Katie didn’t fare as well, but that hardly mattered. Because despite its drawbacks, Local House Bar is a place that’s turned into a nostalgia generator, enough so that I won’t wait for the next visitor to justify my return.
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When my sister Katie visited recently, there were flashier places in walking distance to take her that hadn’t existed when Danny or Claudia came. But after a flight at Preyer Brewing and an incredible dinner of small plates at the new Crafted, we were looking for something more. The north side of downtown is changing quickly, and will likely look radically different the next time Katie comes to town. But for now the closest nightlife options in walking distance remained deep on South Elm Street, save for my steady Westerwood Tavern or the early closers at Fisher’s Grill. But I already had something else in mind. We stopped in at Local House on our way home, the allure of skeeball more than enough to entice my sister. They’ve
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the Greensboro Grasshoppers’ downtown stadium, is a strange one. It looks out of place there, and did in its previous incarnation as Boston’s House of Jazz too, oriented towards a side street rather than the thoroughfare of Smith Street to its left. Over time the front patio has evolved and improved. It’s similar to one at Hoots Roller Bar in Winston-Salem – just a carved out section of the adjoining parking lot. But inside lacks the cohesive and inviting décor of the Winston brewery, and is a little overly dominated by the TV screens over its taps. And the name is so generic it’s almost like the owners wrote down a placeholder on their incorporation paperwork and forgot to come up with a replacement before turning it in.
ERIC GINSBURG
Stage & Screen
Despite its name and being the closest bar to my long-time apartment, the only time I seem to bring people to Local House Bar is when a friend is in town. I first walked into the windowless brick rectangle what feels like ages ago, with the plan of pre-gaming with my hometown friend Danny before going out that Saturday night. But the lit-up skeeball machine at the back of the bar beckoned, and somehow we found ourselves trading dollar after dollar for quarters and knocking back beers out of an icefilled bucket. We would later stumble out and attempt to join a Guy Fawkes Day party at the Gecko House, a nerd haven on my street that had the ridiculous idea that year of deputizing a partygoer who turned the annual rollick into an invite-only affair. Boo. But Danny — one of the more traveled and, as of late, bohemian of my friends who was on his way from Denver back to Boston — thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing. It easily went down as the most memorable aspect of his stay. The same may be true for Claudia, another high school friend who stopped in as she headed to Austin for grad school. It would be hard to go wrong with skeeball, and we also spent a considerable amount of time playing darts. Claudia has since graduated; in that time I only sporadically returned to Local House Bar. The venue, which sits in a parking lot just over the left-field wall of
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Local House Bar
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August 12 — 18, 2015 Up Front
For old-timer’s sake Gulley, Nathan Arizona & the New Mexicans and Drat the Luck @ the Garage (W-S), Friday Interjecting a personal note here, a friendly dude who described himself as a nearly-fortysomething punk rocker handed me a flier for his band Gulley at First Friday last week. Nathan Arizona, who has one of the coolest band names ever, used to play with Instant Jones, whose T-shirt I wear to this day. With that company, I can only imagine that Drat the Luck is pretty awesome, too. Show starts at 9 p.m.
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MUSIC
by Jordan Green
That old-time religion Hiss Golden Messenger @ Bailey Park (WS), Thursday North Carolina folklorist and songwriting sensation MC Taylor, aka Hiss Golden Messenger, plays a free show at Bailey Park. Jeffrey Dean Foster opens. Food trucks and spirits on hand. Show starts at 6:15 p.m.
Jazz study hall Endeavors Jazz @ Marshall Free House (GSO), Friday Endeavors Jazz takes up residence at Marshall Free House for the first in a run of second Friday shows through the end of the year. Steve Haines, the director of the Miles Davis Jazz Studies Program at UNCG, plays double bass in the quartet, along with Brandon Lee on trumpet, Thomas Linger on Piano and Larry “Q” Draughn on drums. Free. Show starts at 8 p.m. Rock and/or roll After the Movies et al @ the Blind Tiger (GSO), Saturday After the Movies is first among equals in a showcase of 13 North Carolina hard-rock, metal and hardcore bands curated by Shoot the Moon Media and Entertainment. Show starts at 2 p.m. Late enough to see the moon, or… Be the Moon @ Foothills Brewing (W-S), Saturday An alt-country band with inflections of early REM, Be the Moon has haunted the small towns around Burlington for the past five years. They surface at the Twin City’s original brewpub on Saturday. Show starts at 10 p.m. Free the music, power to the people Camel City Jazz Orchestra @ Rupert Bell Park (W-S), Aug. 16 The last gasp of summer means free outdoor concerts. Camel City Jazz Orchestra is taking the music to the people with free concerts at parks around the city. Look for them in coming weeks at Miller Park and Winston Square Park. Show starts at 6 p.m.
Rapper Jadon Success hangs out with his father, Johnny Rouse, at the lot where he washes cars for extra money.
JORDAN GREEN
Shouting out High Point’s poor neighborhoods by Jordan Green
video for “Welcome to High Point” by rapper Jadon Success went up on YouTube in January 2013, but it was a year before it really started to take off. A quick name-check of Central High School within a hometown travelogue of neighborhoods, public housing projects and other local landmarks seemed to do the trick. More than two years later the video is approaching 21,000 views. As a measure of the song’s popularity, Jadon accepted an invitation to Central, and was greeted with a rousing cheer at a school football game followed by a thunderous rendition of the hook by the students: “Welcome to High Point/ I love my city.” The 33-year-old rapper, who was born Johnny Rouse, doesn’t forget his roots. “What up, Murder Street? What up Commerce?” are the opening lines of “Welcome to High Point.”
The
The house where Jadon Success grew up and where his mother, Martha Zeb, lives today is at the intersection of Meredith and Commerce. “I love this,” he says, gesturing towards the hulking International Home Furnishings Center, which houses High Point Theatre. The grandeur and wealth of the largest home furnishings showroom in the city feels both distant and at the same time somehow intimately close and tangible. “I feel like it’s the best view in the city,” Jadon continues. “It’s always been my dream to do a concert at High Point Theatre.” He turns and gestures towards the more immediate surroundings of his neighborhood. “This is where it all started,” he says. “This is the bus stop. Luckily, it was in front of my house, so all the kids came
to me. I used to rap on the corner. We didn’t have anything, so you have to make your own motivation.” “Welcome to High Point Part 2” was posted on YouTube last October and Jadon is working on a third installment. Lyrically and cinematically, the videos celebrate ghetto communities with concentrated poverty — predominantly African American but with a growing number of Latinos and Southeast Asians. The videos promote a sense of pride by representing the community alongside the city’s two prominent institutions: the iconic furniture showrooms and the opulent High Point University. Jadon’s girlfriend, who modestly demurs my request to identify herself for print, is driving us around High Point in a 2013 Chevy Impala on a sunny and unseasonably cool recent Saturday.
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There are a lot of things about High Point that need to change, Jadon says, and the first example he offers is the boarded-up houses that blight virtually every block of the Meredith Street area. We’re looking at one right across the street from his mother’s house. The phrase “hard body” is inscribed in red spray paint across a panel of plywood covering the living room window. “It’s hard out here for black brothers,” Jadon offers by way of interpretation. Jadon spent a lot of time at Carson Stout Homes, a nearby public housing community, playing basketball and hanging with friends. He recalls it as one of the most dangerous parts of the city, plagued with violence, drugs and not too infrequent drama. A lot of his old friends have scattered to other parts of the city, possibly for the better. The railroad tracks just north of Kivett Drive was a dividing line, across which Jadon and his friends had to venture by necessity to attend Welborn Middle School and Andrews High School. North of the tracks they encountered kids from the Daniel Brooks and JC Morgan public housing communities, as well as the Five Points neighborhood. “We had our own little crew called MSP — Meredith Street Posse,” Jadon recalls. “Coming up you had to affiliate because it was rough. On the school bus you would run into people who would try to start something with you out of ignorance. We came over to this side because we had to go to school.” We drive over to Juanita Hills, a public housing community on the west side of town that is oriented towards Thomasville. It’s not a place where Jadon spent a significant amount of time growing up, although he tells me had at least one or two friends in every area. But like Carson Stout, Daniel Brooks and JC Morgan, Juanita Hills gets equal representation in “Welcome to High Point,” a rap video that promotes High Point pride and unity over neighborhood loyalties. We see three boys on bicycles. “Some people feel down being where they’re from,” Jadon says. “People feel stressed. Their mom doesn’t have money to buy them new shoes. I was just like these kids — nothing to do but ride bikes.”
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August 12 — 18, 2015 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Food Music
Art Stage & Screen Good Sport Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote
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Palette
ART
by Chris Nafekh
This won’t hurt a bit The Life and Times of Charlie Wagner, Tattooist exhibit @ Tattoo Archive (W-S), Thursday Charlie Wagner was a nationally renowned tattoo artist. He worked at the Bowery, a NYC ink shop until his death in 1953. He survived the Depression through his creative work and revolutionary, patented machinery. The exhibit shows his work and history through photographs, Wagner’s personal art and relics. For more information, visit tattooarchive.com Je suis enchante Cultural Communique exhibit @ Milton Rhodes Center for the Arts (W-S), Friday Traveling the globe is never this easy. This exhibit includes artistic works as statements on modern secular culture, the artist’s personal culture and those that surround them. For more information, visit associatedartists.org. Ladylike censorship Feminist Responsibility Project @ Weatherspoon Art Museum (GSO), Saturday In her Feminist Responsibility Project, Beverly Semmes utilizes myriad medium to express an artistic interpretation of the female form. With an antipathy against oppression and vulgarity, she takes pornographic imagery and transforms it into distorted beauty. For more information, visit weatherspoon.uncg.edu.
Andrew Saulters is taking over Unicorn Press come January.
DANIEL WIRTHEIM
Taking the unicorn by the horn by Daniel Wirtheim
by bottles of glue, stacks of paper, manuscripts and a Surrounded homemade wooden brief case, Andrew Saulters’ presence has become a fixture in the Greensboro coffeeshop scene. His glasses slide down his nose as he delicately places a set of pages together and stitches through them to make a book’s spine. His work is methodical and polished. He’s cranked out about 500 copies of 15 different books since 2011. Come January, Saulters will assume the role of director for Unicorn Press from Al Brilliant, who along with Teo Savory founded the publishing
business in 1966. Brilliant was given the Benjamin Franklin Award by the Small Press Center in New York for a “lifetime achievement in American literature” for his toils at Unicorn Press, but after 50 years of publishing, Brilliant is ready to hand it down. “The first time that I heard of Al and Unicorn Press, I didn’t believe it,” Saulters said. “The story was presented to me as: ‘So I know this 74-year-old guy who makes his own books by hand and he’s involved in a 45-year-old press… the story’s so charming.” Saulters began binding his own books shortly after meeting Brilliant. The first few were test runs, complete recreations of Moby Dick only so that Sault-
ers could design the book in the fashion he most liked. Even now, he’s most passionate when he’s designing everything — the page layout, the typeface and aspect ratio, and the shape of the book. Each one is different, based on the tone he picks up from the written work. When printing poetry, Saulters examines each line break, considering what effect it might have on the reader. In his view, this is what literature formatted for electronic devices is lacking. Kindle and other electronic reader formatting is designed to allow you to increase the size of the text, or decrease it as fits your eyesight, Saulters said. Your ability to do that means that more or less words might fit on the screen so that the idea of a measure of a piece is
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Saulters binds roughly 500 copies of each book by hand.
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distributor are moves that he plans to make immediately. “Now that I’m in this spot, not in the spot that I’m looking at books that are being made, I’m making them — spending maybe 80 hours a week making them,” Saulters said. “My concern now is publishing good work and getting it to people who want to read it.” Eventually, Saulters wants to buy a printing press, a Vandercook SP15. It’s the kind of machine that Unicorn Press had in its heyday. It’s a clunky machine, about the size of a regular three-cushioned couch. The equipment would be too large to fit in his “halfway condemned” second-floor apartment, but Saulters imagines that one day he could be living in a store with his press, his equipment sprawled out around him, carrying on the Unicorn Press legacy.
Art All She Wrote
inapplicable, the page size is meaningless, and the notion of where the text is put on the page is “kind of kaput.” “It’s sort of a cliché of the literary life that a young man in his thirties decides to start a small press,” Saulters said. “You’ll know many of these foolish characters before you die — I’m one of them, I guess — but I’m not starting a press, I’m reviving one.” At one point, Brilliant had urged him to develop a house style, something that could be recognized as exclusively his own. But Saulters finds designing a new page layout part of exploring an author’s work, so he gives every book a distinct feel. “Designing it is almost less than half of the enterprise,” Saulters said. “You design it, you print it, you bind it, but is it published yet? No, it’s not. You have to be able to get the thing to someone who maybe doesn’t even know that it exists.” One of Saulters’ main concerns as director of Unicorn Press is attracting an audience. Getting books reviewed, creating a catalogue and finding a
DANIEL WIRTHEIM
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August 12 — 18, 2015 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Food Music Art
Neo-McCarthyism Dazed and Confused @ Carolina Theatre (GSO), Wednesday Tracking a group of unruly teenage stoners on the brink of summer vacation, this film captures life in the ’70s like rolling paper captures burning, green grass. Randall “Pink” Floyd is posed with a dilemma. What’s more valuable — the abstinence promised to his football team or a summer of debauchery? The film stars big names like Ben Affleck and Mila Jovovitch before they hit the big time; many consider it Matthew McConaughey’s best performance. For more information, visit carolinatheatre.com Free films and cityscapes Mr. Destiny Photo Contest @ various locations (W-S), Friday Friday is the last day to submit entries to the city-wide photo contest in Winston-Salem. A/perture will award the first prize — a year of free movies at the theater. Contestants journey through the Camel City and snap their best pictures of various locations and post them to Facebook of Instagram for a chance to win. For more information, visit cityofthearts.com. Save Ferris Ferris Bueller’s Day Off @ Reynolda House Museum of American Art (W-S), Friday Matthew Broderick set the bar for smartasses everywhere with his 1986 portrayal of a true, American rebel. Watching this cult classic is a rite of passage; if someone hasn’t seen it, they’re missing a handful of pop-culture references. For more information, visit reynoldahouse.org
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STAGE & SCREEN
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Poets and attendees surround Midnight Poetry Jam hosts Petri Byrd, taking a selfie next to poet Helena D. Lewis.
CHRIS NAFEKH
Words at midnight by Chris Nafekh
I am not Michael Brown,” poet D. Noble declared into the microphone. “That’s the wishful thinking of the already defeated, an empty slogan for those who’ve already conceded that this world can’t be radically changed, thus, there’s no incentive to organize and strategize to redirect our lives towards revolution.” It was half-past midnight already when Noble recited his original poem “I Am Not That Corpse” at the National Black Theatre Festival on Aug. 8, and a crowd of 800 observers fell silent, listening to Noble’s impassioned prose. As he stood onstage at the Benton Convention Center in downtown Winston-Salem, a pinkish hue emanated from the lights above him; the rest of the auditorium remained dark. “I am alive,” Noble continued. “I am alive! Which means there is no excuse to not struggle for revolution, study for revolution… organize for revolution. I am alive.” Noble was one of dozens of po-
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ets that night on the third and final Midnight Poetry Jam. Before the show started, the ticket line outside the auditorium stretched around the massive downtown convention center. Complaints rumbled from those in the front of the line when the house managers attempted to reorganize the queue, for efficiency. Some people had waited an hour just to get inside the auditorium. The first session on Wednesday didn’t get much attention, a house manager said, and Thursday night’s event was rained out after a flash flood warning. But the final poetry jam on Friday evening drew hundreds of listeners and poets The poetry endured past 2:30 a.m. and the crowd never tired. At midnight the floodgates opened and 800 tiny, cushioned seats were filled. The audience, high on the tired euphoria of late-night celebration, breathed life into the auditorium. Though it was midnight, the congregation was wide awake.
The hosts walked on stage like rock musicians ready to tear something apart. “Winston-Salem make some noise!” poet Helena D. Lewis shouted. “Are you ready for some poetry!?” comedian Petri Byrd added. The crowd erupted around quarter-past midnight when the event finally commenced welcoming Noble and his tribute referencing Mike Brown, a teenager shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo. almost exactly a year ago. After Noble, Dr. X walked on and recited softly sensual words, revealing fetishist prose. “Those toes,” he said. “Those toes. Kissing them, caressing them, sucking on them, loving on them, ha-ha! Whoo! Those toes.” “Those lips,” he said, and the crowd wooed. “Those hips!” he bellowed, to the delighted gasps of the crowd. “Lawdy, I’m whipped!” he cried, and the crowd filled the auditorium with
by Chris Nafekh
Sisters of holy hilarity Nunsense 2: The Second Coming @ Winston-Salem Theatre Alliance (W-S), Friday Featuring the male members of the Theatre Alliance who brought you Nunsense, Nunsense 2 revives the international hit musical for the Triad. This play is full of laughs and witty characters that’ll have the audience praising in hilarity. For more information, visit wstheatrealliance.org.
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Got a show coming up? Send your theater info to brian@triad-city-beat.com.
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Burn ’em at the stake! Auditions for The Crucible @ Historic Bethabara Visitors Center (W-S), Aug. 17 This production of Arthur Miller’s classic dramatization of the Salem witch trials comes courtesy of the Triad Shakespearience, a small acting troupe that produces free plays to keep the classics alive. There are a number of parts to audition for, including but not limited to Betty Parris, Reverend Parris, Abigail Williams and Tituba. For a full list of available roles and more information, visit triadshakes.com.
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A day in the life Everyman @ Hanesbrands Theatre (W-S), Aug. 16 National Theatre Live is screening Everyman staring Chiwetel Ejiofor from Twelve Years a Slave. It’s a modern retelling of a story old as time. An average guy has built a successful, happy life and has to abandon everything when death comes knocking. But Everyman runs from death, justifying his life to the Grim Reaper itself. For more information, visit hanesbrandstheatre.com.
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“I’m sick of charlatan poets with their self-righteous crap, throw a couple lines together all for a finger snap,” she continued. “I’ve paid my dues so you better show some respect.... I’m true to this and I write what I go through, I don’t need to reiterate all the local news… f*** your college degree.” The poet Axiom took a more reserved approach, recounting a conversation between a slave-owner and an enslaved African, which started with the question, “What do you know about Jesus?” In a thick accent, Axiom recited the slave’s response. “I have heard of this man you call Christ. His passion deeds, sacrifice …his mother Mary, crying, unaware her son was bought three years away from perfection, three days from resurrection and a spear’s throw from heaven and I believe… he must have looked like me.”
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laughter and applause. Halfway through the show, the audience climbed onto the stage to take selfies with the hosts. The DJ boomed Michael Jackson and people in the front rows grooved lowdown and slowly.. When the event resumed, djembes and bongos resounded off the walls. Johnell Hunter and James Webb played the instruments on stage around 1 a.m. and their beats echoed through the auditorium. Hunger chanted “love, joy, peace and unity,” and every time he did, the audience yelled them right back. Eurydice White, a Winston-Salem poet, grabbed the microphone when the hosts called her name. Angrily she challenged the audience in an expletive-laced piece. “Man, f*** your poems,” White recited. “F*** your metaphors or lack thereof. F*** the poems you write after you watch TV, f*** your lack of experience, f*** your false crusades, f*** that s*** you spit and everything you say.
CHRIS NAFEKH
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James Webb (left) and Johnell Hunter perform their spoken word poetry with hand drums.
Two half’s of one man The Servant of Two Masters @ Children’s Museum of Winston-Salem (W-S), Saturday The classic play about one servant divided by two masters comes to life in Winston-Salem to poke fun at test standards and mathematics education in North Carolina. Full of slapstick humor and subtle political satire, this is the play’s second and final weekend. For more information, visit childrensmuseumofws.org.
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Kids these days Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune @ Brown Building Theatre (GSO), Saturday After kicking it off on their first date, Frankie and Johnny slide into bed for a night of debauchery. For Frankie it’s just that, a night of sinful decadence. But Johnny’s found true love and possibly a soulmate. Throughout the night, they slowly expose themselves to each other, sharing their true feelings and aspirations. For more information, visit performingarts.uncg.edu.
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August 12 — 18, 2015 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Food Music Art Stage & Screen
by Chris Nafekh
Kicking it with college kids Fan Fest @ BB&T Field (W-S), Saturday Wake Forest is opening the floodgates to fans from across the Triad who can meet the college athletes playing in the fall sports semester. Fans can shake the hands that throw and catch split-second touchdowns and ask all the hard-pressing questions that college athletes need be asked. For more information, visit cityofthearts.com. Fight or flight Winston-Salem Dash vs. Myrtle Beach Pelicans @ BB&T Ballpark (W-S), Thursday The Dash’s record this season in the Carolina Minor League is spotted with victories and losses. On Aug. 5 the Mudcats crushed the Dash 7-1, then lost 3-0 to them the next day. The Dash defeated the Salem Red Sox twice this past weekend, and now face the Pelicans, who employ Chesny Young. He holds highest batting average in the Carolina Minor League. The Pelicans hold the highest standing in the Southern Division with 66 wins, compared to Winston’s 56, and will give the Dash some trouble For more information, visit wsdash.com. Elders of meditative wisdom 200 Hour Yoga Teacher Training @ Gateway YWCA (W-S), Friday For the experienced yoga student, learning to teach is a solid next step. This class focuses on yoga history, philosophy, physiology and technique while furthering the student’s understanding of meditative spirituality. With graduation comes the ability to register as a yoga teacher with Yoga Alliance. For more information, visit ywcaws.org/gateway-yoga.
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GOOD SPORT It’s not all in the wrist Most arm-wrestling matches are over very quickly. Contrary to what the only movie by Brian Clarey ever to be made about the sport — 1987’s Over the Top, starring a backwards-capped Sylvester Stallone — would have you think, most professional matches go down in a matter of seconds as one contestant gains instant leverage and applies it with a groan. Yes, there is a professional arm-wrestling league. It’s on TV and everything. But the group assembled in the back room of Geeksboro on Sunday afternoon didn’t concern themselves with the intricacies of the sport so much as the spectacle of it, and its potential to do good in the community. Rachel Scott, who owns Geeksboro with her husband Joe, first had the notion for the GRAWL — that’s Greensboro Arm-Wrestling for Ladies — after learning that the epicenter of the sport is just a few hours down the road. A trip to see CLAW in Charlottesville, Va. convinced her of the viability of women’s arm wrestling here. “I just think it fits well with our city,” she tells the dozen or so women in attendance at the group’s first interest meeting. “UNCG was Women’s College, Bennett College. We have more women than men. And Greensboro has amazing ladies.” She noted, too, the preponderance of nonprofits in the city; charitable giving is a key component of the women’s game. It’s semi-theatrical — wrestlers wear costumes and have backstories; they roll with theme music and posses. Scott says the Charlottesville bout was “like a rock concert,” with sound and lighting, audience participation, food trucks and beer. Sounds like a pretty good time. Nicki Marder arm-wrestled her cousin the night before in an Asheville diner in preparation for the big meetup. “I beat her with both arms, the right
and the left. But then I did it with her boyfriend….” She pauses. “He beat me, but I think I did okay.” After hearing about the meeting at Geeksboro, she insisted on making the drive home. “It just spoke to me,” she says. It spoke to all of them: former roller-derby queens, college athletes, sisterhood seekers and some who just wanted to be in an arena where a woman’s strength is celebrated instead of stigmatized. One woman has dreads, and says she usually brings her 10-year-old son with her. Another says roller derby wore out her legs. A newlywed in a polka-dot dress, black hose and heels says she’s looking for a way to meet new people. A woman with tattoos and a salon coif says she’s eager to compete. Now Marder curls her arms and holds the flex: strong in the upper arms and shoulders, but thin wrists and small hands that could hurt her in a prolonged match. But arm wrestling is about more than pure strength. Grip is important. Leverage and speed. Short arms with compact musculature can be an advantage. Flexibility comes into play. As with the other leagues of this nature, the sport is secondary to, though not independent from, the show. “It’s semi-theatrical,” Scott says, “but we do not pre-determine winners.” At the Charlottesville event, she watched a wrestler by the name of Kary OK — a jilted bride who soothed her pain by singing karaoke in her wedding dress — finesse her way into the final round. Another wrestler brought the guys from her construction crew as her posse. They carried her in on a ladder and went shirtless through the crowd to solicit charity bucks that played a role in the scoring. Scott envisions her friends from the costuming and crafts community getting involved, the video gamers and trivia buffs and film nerds and sci-fi aficionados that already populate Geeksboro as potential allies and fans. The venue, too, provides a home for the events and meetings, the biggest
cost in the whole deal. The Scotts have that covered. “This is kind of like when I was in college,” the UNCG grad says. “I needed a sisterhood, but I couldn’t afford to join a sorority, so I joined the women’s rugby club.” But the muscle behind the movement doesn’t see competition at the table as one of her functions. “Probably not,” she says, “because I need my wrist for pouring espressos.” She might want to think twice about that. Wrist strength is a key component to arm wrestling. She’s got good forearms, too. Look for the GRAWL page on Facebook soon.
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1 Kimono closers 2 Match (up) 3 Petri dish goo 4 “Just ad-lib if you have to” 5 Plant malady 6 Full-screen intrusions, e.g. 7 Cole Porter’s “___ Do It” 8 “The Ego and the Id” author 9 Bud 10 “This way” 11 “Famous” cookie guy 12 Modernists, slangily 13 TV component? 19 Aquafina competitor 21 Snoop (around) 25 “___ a biscuit!” 27 Newman’s Own competitor 28 Burn, as milk 29 Assistants 30 Drug store? 32 “Wildest Dreams” singer Taylor 34 Curie or Antoinette 35 Big name in the kitchen 36 Comes clean 38 Aardvark’s antithesis? 39 Feature with “Dismiss” or “Snooze” 44 “I give up [grumble grumble]” 47 Instruction to a violinist 48 Interpol’s French headquarters 50 Get there 54 Take-out order? 56 Wranglers, e.g. 57 “Don’t be a spoilsport!” 58 Light headwear? 59 Dwarf planet discovered in 2005 61 Guitarist Clapton 63 Dance party in an abandoned warehouse 64 “Length times width” measurement 65 Hose snag? 67 “___ the land of the free ...” 68 General in Chinese restaurants
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1 “August: ___ County” (Best Picture nominee of 2014) 6 Furry TV alien 9 Secret audience member 14 “So help me” 15 “___ Kommissar’s in town ...” 16 “Voices Carry” singer Mann 17 Struck with amazement 18 Silver metallic cigarette brand? 20 Cut corners 22 4x4, frequently 23 “To be,” to Brutus 24 Art colony location 26 Hummus and tzatziki, broadly 28 Bathrobe closer 31 Daily ___ (political blog) 33 Airborne stimuli 37 Non-military person good at getting smaller? 40 “___ dreaming?” 41 “Win ___ With Tad Hamilton!” (2004 romantic comedy) 42 “Black gold” 43 Visnjic of “ER” 45 “___ Troyens” (Berlioz opera) 46 Head of all the bison? 49 E flat’s equivalent 51 Effort 52 Votes in Congress 53 Broccoli ___ (bitter veggie) 55 Austin Powers’s “power” 57 “Believe” singer 60 Feldspar, e.g. 62 ___ pathways 66 Video game plumber’s reason for salicylic acid? 69 On the ball 70 Greek salad ingredient 71 Bro’s sibling, maybe 72 Beauty brand that happens to anagram to another brand in this puzzle 73 Brown-___ 74 Non-polluter’s prefix 75 Move stealthily
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ALL SHE WROTE She ain’t heavy, she’s my mother Robert was killed in World War II and my father, Joe, inherited the antebellum farmhouse in the 1940s after both my grandparents died of war-torn broken hearts.
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The truck is packed tighter than a tin of kippers when Tracy and her young huns strap in to follow me — convoy style — to my Fisher Park home. We’ve managed cram a few lifetimes and then some into 24 feet of metal, rubber and steel. Me: Crap, I almost forgot the ashes. Tracy: Where are they? Me: They’re in the cracker box. Tracy: No way. Me: Well, temporarily. Those were actually her final wishes.
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The bell tolls at 6 a.m. and it’s time to haul my rig to to the Chair City to cart away… well, chairs. So many chairs. And teapots and bowls and Christopher Radko glass ornaments and rugs reeking of the tobacco that grew within chaw-spitting distance from the circa 1860 home that I grew up in, as my ancestors did before me. I rent the largest truck that U-haul will let me without a commercial driver’s license and barrel the short distance to Salem Street. The day is overcast and so am I. I’m an only child and the last in my line and about to scrape away the final vestiges of material history making its mark on this land. My grandfather, a dentist who owned the first Model T in town, bought the house in the 1920s for his bride Corinna Auman. His first son
Me: This is creepy. I feel like I’m pillaging. Tracy: You’re not. You’re moving on and living your life. Your mother wanted that for you. Me: Are you sure she didn’t want me to live with her and take care of her until the end — ‘Grey Gardens’ style? That would have put you out of a job. Tracy: No way. You both would have needed me. Me: True.
Tracy: Well I know she loved that tin Saltine box. I tried to get rid of it and she made me clean it up and told me it was her favorite ‘thing.’ Me: I know! I told her I was going to put her in it and she totally approved. Tracy: That sounds like your mother. Unpretentious to the end. Me: Let’s just hope she doesn’t haunt me. Fisher Park doesn’t need anymore ghosts. Tracy: I think JoAnn will fit in nicely. Me: Amen.
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Me: That banquette hasn’t been moved in a 100 years. Tracy (Mother’s caretaker of 15 years): I know. I’ve been cleaning it for about that long. Me: So why do you think Mother had so many crystal champagne glasses? Was she entertaining Napoleon’s army on weekends when I wasn’t around? Tracy: If she was she was serving them creamed corn. There must have been 30 cans of it in the pantry. Me: That explains the firing squad of Dijon mustard lining up the other side of the pantry. Tracy: What are you going to do with your grandmother’s piano? Me: I don’t know. I kind of feel like it belongs with the house. Tracy: I know. It’s perfect in its setting. Me: You have no idea how many old ladies have come up to me over the years and told me that my grandmother taught them piano or played organ at their church. Tracy: I’ve heard the stories. Me (face cupped in hands): One lady yelled over at me through crowded bank lines, ‘Your grandmother had her hands on every organ within a 100 mile radius.’
behind a penumbra of petticoat clouds as we lug Windsor chairs, once-fine upholstery, Oriental rugs laden with spilled gin and menthol, boxes of heavy hardbacks and hoards of serving dishes and platters from house to ship. Indeed, it feels like a cargo hold of bounty that sparkles in its original palace but pales into the ordinary once strapped in the dank, dark bottom of a pirate vessel.
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Mother (waving her cigarette in circular pattern a la Bette Davis): So, what are you gonna do with all of this crap when I’m by Nicole Crews gone? Me: What do you care? You’ll be six feet under over there in Holly Hill. Mother: The hell I will be. I’m going to be cremated. Me: So that’s just another pile of crap for me to cart around? Mother: I ain’t heavy, I’m your mother.
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