082615 show dogs

Greensboro / Winston-Salem / High Point triad-city-beat.com August 26 – September 1, 2015

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Show dogs The Carolina Kennel Club’s annual conformation PAGE 17

Food upgrades in GSO PAGE 22

Katrina: 10 years on PAGE 16

Find the unicorn PAGE ?

Triad City Beat’s monthly home and real estate insert

Aug. 26 — Sept. 1, 2015

Fire Sale!

EVERYTHING

MUST GO! $400 full-page ads through September*

* New customers only. Minimum two-ad buy. Ads must be used the end of September.

20% Charge for color. Not applicable for political advertising

We’ve got loads of inventory left after the summer, and we’re letting it go at rock-bottom prices!

Plus, we really need the cash!

Call Brian Clarey at 336.681.0704 or Allen Broach at 336.210.5094 to place your ad today!

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Office: 336-256-9320

CONTENTS

by Brian Clarey

Business

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

Editorial

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

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

26 UP FRONT

ART

3 Editor’s Notebook 4 City Life 6 Heard 7 Commentariat 7 The List 8 Barometer 8 Unsolicited Endorsement 9 Triad power Ranking

26 Layers of paint

NEWS

GAMES

10 The rent is rising 13 New council structure next week 14 HPJ: Leftover beef

31 Jonesin’ Crossword

OPINION

32 East Cone Boulevard, Greensboro

15 15 16 16

Editorial: Open space closed?

Citizen Green: 10 years after IJMW: The Crown as a bar Fresh Eyes: Greensboro’s color line

COVER 17 Show dogs

Cover photography

by Caleb Smallwood

A local dog shows his diving skills outside the Carolina Kennel Club’s annual dog show.

Bonfire of the marketeers

FOOD 22 Upgrade!

23 Barstool: Silo Bistro & Bar

MUSIC 24 Mipso facto

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

STAGE & SCREEN 28 Ritual dances in the dark

GOOD SPORT 30 Save the Tiger

SHOT IN THE TRIAD ALL SHE WROTE 34 Loosie and the Sky, with Neil Diamond

In 20 years of journalism I’ve learned one thing: Stay away from marketers.

I’ve learned a lot of things, actually. But this is one that was drilled into me from the early days of my career. Marketers, any editor will tell you, will do or say anything to get you to cover their events/products/clients, preferably on the front page of the paper, if that can be arranged.

Editors get hundreds of press releases a week extolling the virtues of self-help books, snack foods, experts willing to go on the record, film premieres halfway across the country.

Often there are follow-up calls, because they know it’s harder to turn them down after you hear their voices.

To make matters worse, every newspaper I’ve worked at has had a whole staff of them willing to make pitches on behalf of their advertising clients, to which I have been known to reply: “‘Man owns business’ is not a compelling headline.” I use finger quotes and everything. In journalism circles, these folks are sometimes referred to as the “dark side.”

A good editor learns to filter the noise down to a trickle, every so often culling from the river a few prize fish.

To say I’m predisposed against marketers — which I years ago dubbed “marketeers” in a very snide way — is an understatement.

So imagine my surprise when I realized I was one of them.

I suppose every business owner is a marketer. Someone’s got to sell the thing, be it a sandwich or a T-shirt or a yoga studio. Might as well be the person who came up with the plan in the first place.

From the beginning I have had to sell Triad City Beat, first to investors and then to partners and then to employees who took the leap in joining a brand new company — a newspaper, no less! — run by someone who is clearly a madman.

It was only a matter of time before I tucked A good editor learns to a sales kit under my arm filter the noise down to a and started making calls. trickle....

In two years of marketing I’ve learned a thousand things. One of them is that at most newspapers, the sales side is just as dedicated and driven as my compatriots at the editorial desk, every bit as concerned with the ethics of the business, equally consumed with dedication to the readers.

Another is that marketing is everything, from where we put the racks to the image on the cover to the way we amplify the message with social media.

Even the journalism itself is a kind of marketing, in the sense that we work to craft a message and then figure out the best way to get it across.

And that, friends, is what I was afraid of. I’m becoming more and more comfortable on the dark side.

In the meantime, anybody wanna buy an ad?

triad-city-beat.com

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

EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK

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Aug. 26 — Sept. 1, 2015

CITY LIFE

August 26 – September 1

WEEKEND

THURSDAY

Nosferatu @ Hanesbrands (W-S) The Carolina Summer Music Festival continues with a screening of the silent vampire classic, with a live soundtrack provided by a six-piece chamber outfit. It begins at 7:30 p.m. and tickets acan be found at carolinasummermusicfestival.org.

Winston-Salem Open @ Wake Forest Tennis Center (W-S) The Winston-Salem Open ATP tennis tournament actually runs all week, but by the weekend the men’s singles and doubles field will be narrowed down to the finalists, who will be moving on to the US Open the weekend after. For tickets and more see vwinstonsalemopen.com.

An Inconvenient Truth @ the Weatherspoon Art Museum (GSO) It’s easy to make fun of Al Gore, but his landmark 2006 film about climate change introduced the peril of the melting polar ice caps and attendant sea rise, as well as launching a wave of science denial. Part of the UNCG Sustainability Film & Discussion Series, it begins at 6:30 p.m. Weatherspoon.uncg.edu has more.

Voting Rights Act anniversary @ International Civil Rights Center & Museum (GSO) The 1965 Voting Rights Act eliminated poll taxes and literacy tests at the polls. Theodore Shaw, professor of law at UNC-Chapel Hill expounds on its effects at 6 p.m. See sitinmovement.org for details.

FRIDAY Cat on a Hot Tin Roof @ Triad Stage (GSO) The stage version of Tennessee Williams’ New Orleans drama opened on Sunday and runs through Sept. 20 at the venerable Greensboro theater. See triadstage.org for the lowdown.

WEDNESDAY

Fourth Fridays @ Jackie’s Place/512 Collective (HP) The Historic Washington Street neighborhood sets the scene for this monthly artsbased gathering with food trucks, vending and Jack Bonney on the ones and twos.

Action begins at 5 p.m.

Paddleboard yoga @ Salem Lake (W-S) It’s cardio yoga on the water this week at 5:30 with the crew from the Breathing Room.

Register at thebreathingroomws.org.

Dr. Strangelove @ Reynolda House (W-S) Learn to love the bomb at this sunset screening of the 1964 Cold War classic directed

by Stable Kubrick and starring Peter Sellers, George C. Scott and James Earl Jones.

Part of the Cinema Under the Stars series, reynoldahouse.org has more.

The Notebook @ Center City Park (GSO) Center City Cinema screens the Nicholas Sparks romance at sundown.

See centercitypark.org for the rest of the schedule.

Restaurant Week @ the Downtown Greenway (GSO) Created to highlight all the fine eateries inside the greenway loop, Restaurant Week is in its inaugural year. It actually started on Monday, but there’s still plenty of time to hit some of the hot spots.

Downtowngreensbro.net has a list of restaurants and specials.

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Calilina Pop-up Grill @ Cincy’s Downtown (GSO) They’re putting aside the chili and spaghetti tonight for a one-off pop-up featuring a melding of the cuisines of California and North Carolina. Check the Facebook page — you might want to make a reservation.

triad-city-beat.com

SATURDAY

Cringe Con II @ Reanimator Records (W-S) The “weirdo music festival” and costume party begins at 4 p.m. with Eugene Chadbourne and just degenerates from there. The theme is heroes and villains, and the slate, fluid at this point, looks to have 13 bands so far. Reanimatorrecords.com has more.

Beth McKee’s Sugarcane Revival and Hurricane Party @ SECCA (W-S) New Orleans expat Beth McKee, who cut her teeth with Evangeline in the 1980s and ’90s, brings Tommy Malone from the subdudes and Jeffrey Dean Foster to remember Katrina — in a good way — followed by an extended jam based on her new album, Sugarcane Revival. It starts at 7 p.m., and tickets are at eventbrite.com.

SUNDAY

Small Batch Songwriter Night @ Gibbs Hundred Brewing (GSO) A mellow Sunday evening at the downtown brewery kicks off at 7 p.m. with Fer. from Rio de Janiero and Dean Driver of the Doodad Farm. Facebook has more.

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Aug. 26 — Sept. 1, 2015

Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Food Music Art

HEARD “We want you to recognize that the middle class is an endangered species in Winston-Salem. We don’t have to look for birds of a rare feather in the bushes. It’s all the people in this room.”

— Winston-Salem resident Lynn Byrd, in News, page 10

“I named them different things like, ritual of respiration which is circular, ritual of apology and forgiveness, witnessing the seasons….

They’re insights that came out of the studio and from being in the studio. It didn’t happen in a linear way, it’s been very puzzle-like and a lot of the times my process is very puzzle piece-y.”

— Choreographer Cara Hagan, in Stage & Screen, page 28

“It’s like you have this baby, it starts growing and it gets run over by a f***ing garbage truck.

But it helped me realize that I don’t want to spend my whole life trying to win the lottery or climb a corporate ladder. I’m a painter; I paint.”

All She Wrote

Shot in the Triad

Games

Good Sport

Stage & Screen

— Winston-Salem artist David Shaw, in Art, page 26

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“These dogs are bred to hurt people. They can be really tough. Strong-willed. Sometimes they just downright want to hurt people.”

— Dog handler Jamie Clute, in the Cover, page 17

I feared I would simply live in this claustrophobic new society awash in polo shirts and sundresses, watch relationships begin and fade, babies born and elders die.

— Anthony Harrison, on what it’s like to be nearly overrun by Tiger Woods fans in Good Sport, page 30

“We’ve already played over 100 shows this year in more than 30 states. Which is good. That’s what you go for.”

— Jacob Sharp, Mipso’s mandolinist, in Music, page 24

Good Sport Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

12. Tate’s Craft Cocktails (W-S) The bar in downtown Winston-Salem is well regarded for quality mixed drinks and capable barkeeps. Musicians occasionally entertain at the lounge while Winston patrons slowly fade away.

Stage & Screen

6. The Crown (GSO) The third floor of the Carolina Theatre hosts traveling folk artists and dance parties among other soirees. Piedmont Triad Jazz Orchestra has already scheduled two upcoming shows here — Sept. 20 and Dec. 8. Last time they visited the Crown,

11. The Worx (GSO) Musicians and hungry customers alike flock to the Railyard where, every Friday night, live jazz promises a good start to a night on the town.

Art

5. Winston-Salem parks (W-S) Camel City Jazz Orchestra wraps up its summer series Neighborhood Suites with a final concert on Aug. 30 in Winston Square Park. The band has also played at Bethabara, Washington, Miller and Rupert parks.

10. Milner’s American Southern (W-S) Winston’s West End restaurant features the Charlie Culbreath Trio every Sunday night. A few negative online reviews are worth noting; Milner’s jazz night conflicts directly with Foothills weekly show.

Music

4. The O. Henry (GSO) Greensboro’s high-class hotel lends a cultured atmosphere to the Triad’s bowtie-sporting, martini-drinking bourgeoisie. On Thursday nights and every second Saturday the sounds of American Songbook standards echo through the building’s maroon-carpeted halls.

9. Foothills Brewery (W-S) The brewery maintains a tradition of Sunday night jazz. Home to Hoppyum, People’s Porter and seasonal selections like Sexual Chocolate stout, the longstanding Foothills thrives in a state where local breweries seem to sprout from the sidewalk.

Food

3. Jackie’s Place (HP) High Point’s lone jazz club offers more than tunes. Wings, a fully stocked bar and old-school R&B only scratch the surface of this venue’s description; Jackie’s Place also hosts occasional burlesque shows.

8. Cheesecakes By Alex (GSO) Besides offering Greensboro some of the most scrumptious cakes and goodies, the recently expanded shop also welcomes live jazz. Free-flow soloists blow their horns on the bakery’s patio on First Friday and other special occasions.

Cover Story

2. Krankies Coffee (W-S) Winston’s coffee roaster and soon to be restaurant also has quite the reputation for live musical events. Every Monday night, Camel City Jazz Orchestra takes over, illuminating the shop with bracing, toe-tapping swing.

7. Stevens Center (W-S) The Winston-Salem Symphony regularly performs here, though they’ve been known to bounce around venues. Their focus on classical might be misleading; earlier this summer Robert Moody conducted a number of George Gershwin’s compositions including his magnum opus, “Rhapsody in Blue.”

Opinion

Becoming like a ghost town This property definitely needs some improvement, but at the rate that we are gentrifying downtown Winston [“Councilman in chess match with high-powered developer”; by Jordan Green; Aug. 19, 2015], it is eventually going to get too expensive to live. I am a young, single, professional woman with a good job and I cannot afford over $1,000/month on rent. Quite frankly, there isn’t a place worth that kind of money in Winston-Salem. That is why I moved back to Winston, instead of staying in a city I loved almost as much, Los Angeles. I love living downtown in my “rundown” old apartment. I don’t need fancy counter-tops or shiny appliances to be happy.

I just need a clean and safe place to live and would like to be able to continue

Working on a building If I could put a title to this response it would be, “Awaiting for failure.” [“That hip new building downtown? It’s (another) church”; by Eric Ginsburg; Aug. 18, 2015] Wow! Mr. Ginsburg, you sir, have been given the wrong impression (hoodwinked) on some refined details concerning the building and new proprietors on 421 W. Smith St. That beautiful facility is history in the making. This, sir, is not just another building and neither is it just another church playing musical chairs awaiting for the music to abruptly stop. Oh no, this building that you so beautifully displayed in your article is the complementary music to the surrounding businesses and public housing in that area. Please don’t be fooled by what you think is a commonplace. Make no mistake, there is more! “You risk a critical misunderstanding when you hear and believe only a single story about another person,” or in this case, place (Chimamanda Adichie). Mr. Ginsburg, you made some strong stereotypical remarks based on someone else’s opinion. You made irrational assumptions without gathering more information about the building and new proprietors. This building has another story attached to it. Yet, it takes a strong, open-minded person who’s willing to go after the other story or might I say the accurate story. With that said, Mr. Ginsburg, I encourage you to find out the new proprietor’s aspirations, and intentions for the new “hip building” on 421 W. Smith St. Instead of promoting the views and position of persons that lack subtlety and insight, go inquire about the other part of this story. There is more!

Barbara Kimber, via triad-city-beat.com

their set featured compositions by Herbie Hancock. Sadly, Hancock’s jazz-fusion hits like “Rockit” didn’t make the setlist.

News

Way to go, guys It was an awesome event [“Good Sport: And-one all-stars”; by Anthony Harrison; Aug. 19, 2015]. The fellas got their fair game in all the way to the end.

And the food was all around the scene, with plenty to feed. When you’re humble beyond measure God shows up with blessings. This was done through the Greensboro Streetballers Association and Mr. Kenny Slade.

Meyakka, via triad-city-beat.com

doing this in downtown Winston. One of these days, all of the investment that has been made in downtown is going to turn it into a ghost town, the way it was when I was growing up here.

Jennifer R., via triad-city-beat.com

Up Front

Impressions The measure of success for a campaign like this (I saw it in Delta Sky magazine) should never be the number of clicks [“Website promoting Greensboro flops in first month”; by Eric Ginsburg; Aug. 19, 2015]. We’re not asking people to make an instantaneous purchase order to register; we’re simply trying to build the brand. Greensboro and the Piedmont Triad do an insufficient amount of advertising already and should be encouraged to do more. I hope this article and the results will not be a deterrent to that.

Doug Copeland, via triad-city-beat.com

by Chris Nafekh 1. Tate Street Coffee (GSO) Performing Thursday night is a rite of passage for UNCG jazz students. The café fills with people, many of whom search fruitlessly for a free seat. The baristas are normally open to light conversation but a steady flow of business keeps them hustling behind the counter. Thursday is by far the busiest night of the week.

triad-city-beat.com

12 jazz-friendly venues in the Triad

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Aug. 26 — Sept. 1, 2015

Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Food

With the Winston-Salem Open running and the Wyndham Championship concluding last weekend, Winston-Salem and Greensboro have been awash in the sports of the elite (meaning both that pros flocked to town and that tennis and golf are often affiliated with country clubs). We asked our readers and editors which of the two they prefer.

Brian Clarey: Golf. When I was just 5 years old, my grandfather — a scratch golfer who shot an 80 his very first time out on the links — had his club maker build me a 5 wood. He taught me to swing it in his huge backyard, and brought me to the driving range to hit buckets of balls for hours at a time. When I was 12 he got me a full set. By that time he had moved to a townhome on Springbrook Country Club, where he attempted to school me in the finer points of the game. I got pretty good before I hung up the clubs when I was 15 or 16 — frankly, by the 13th hole I was usually bored stiff. But I still love video golf in almost any form, and the game itself will always remind me of my grandpa.

Jordan Green: Honestly, I have a hard time summoning much enthusiasm about either golf or tennis. Sorry, I just have other priorities. But if I had to choose I would

have to go with tennis, as much for aesthetic as athletic reasons. And I think I would appreciate the intensity of a tennis match over the leisurely course of a golf game.

I like the relative simplicity of the tennis court over the sprawling architecture of the golf course. It may be heresy for someone who lives in Greensboro to say this, but I’ve never been able to shake the perception of golf as a rich man’s game, or at least a game for a poor man able to navigate rich society.

54% Golf

Eric Ginsburg: To play? Tennis, unless I can count going to the driving range with a couple of friends and beers. To watch? I’ll go if you’re paying, with preference for tennis (a la the Winston-Salem Open), especially after seeing the massive tide following Tiger Woods at the Wyndham Championship.

Readers: This was a close one, and with pretty low turnout so that a vote here or there would tip the scales.

In the end, 54 percent said golf and 46 percent voted for tennis. Them’s the breaks.

New question: What percentage of new downtown housing in Winston-Salem should be affordable? Vote at triad-city-beat.com.

46% Tennis

All She Wrote

Shot in the Triad

Games

Good Sport

Stage & Screen

Art

Music

Tennis or golf?

8

The pouf

by Daniel Wirtheim

The pouf is about being closer to the floor, getting closer to friends and feeling at ease. Just introduce a pouf to any living room and the space instantly becomes more welcoming and exotic.

I first encountered these little cushion chairs while playing chess with a friend who had recently traveled to Morocco. It was there that he had haggled for the poufs that we sat on, those distant cousins to the ottoman but made for sitting.

The best part about the pouf is that it finds the balance between being a soft cushion and a firm seat. There’s a zipper in the bottom for stuffing old laundry inside. This is what gives the pouf rigidity under its surface softness. It also allows the poufs to be shipped out pretty easily, since they fold up so nicely.

You can buy poufs from Etsy in a variety of sizes and materials, the best ones being leather. So far, I’ve bought two, one about 35 inches in diameter and another about 20 inches. That means my poufs are pretty mobile.

If I wanted to, I could take my cushions wherever I go. I imagine that the park would be nice. But when you

have an apartment with poufs, you tend to spend more time inside.

It’s nice being so spread out while others sit rigid in their chairs.

On my pouf, I pivot around to speak with all my guests at once. I feel like the mediator of the group or a monk as I sit cross-legged and low.

The problem with chairs and sofas is that people get too comfortable.

DANIEL WIRTHEIM When they want to talk Everyone knows not to sit on Daniel Wirtheim’s pouf. they either keeping lying back and come off It also meant that I started using a coffee table as my as lazy or sit up and waste the back support. Lacking back desk and spending long hours in the living room. Everysupport with a pouf, my back became way stronger in a one knows not to sit on my pouf. It’s where I really thrive, matter of weeks. just 8 inches above the floor.

triad-city-beat.com

Groundbreaking brewpub

Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Food Music Art

JORDAN GREEN

Stage & Screen

Britt Lytle looks over construction of the brewhouse at the new Brown Truck Brewery in High Point, which is expected to open later this summer.

Good Sport

2. Winston-Salem

The website bringfido.com is a wonderful repository for all things dog related, including dog parks, dog-friendly hotels and more. It names nine Winston-Salem restaurants and bars that allow patrons to bring their dogs including chains Panera, Sonic and Mellow Mushroom. Local joints 6th & Vine, Finnegan’s Wake, Single Brothers, Silo Bistro & Bar, Recreation Billiards and the Tap at West End round out the list.

3. Greensboro

Sometimes Greensboro wins the ranking just by virtue of being the biggest city, but in this case it’s well deserved. More than 20 bars and restaurants inside the city allow the pups, including Natty Greene’s, Lindley Park Filling Station, Brass Taps, Liberty Oak, Fishbones, Fisher’s Grill, Café Europa, the Worx, Hops, Big Burger Spot and Gibb’s Hundred Brewing. See the full list at bringfido.com.

All She Wrote

We’re looking at dog-friendly bars and restaurants this week in the Power Ranking, and predictably High Point comes in third with just five that will allow pooches to come in and sit with their owners. Two of them are chains — all Sonics are dog friendly, apparently — leaving just Penny Path Café, the Brewer’s Kettle and Blue Rock Pizza & Tap.

Shot in the Triad

3. High Point

Games

Dog/Food Edition

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Aug. 26 — Sept. 1, 2015 Up Front

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

10

NEWS

Residents tell Besse to fight to protect affordable housing

by Jordan Green

Residents of the Ardmore Terrace and Cloverdale apartments, along with supporters from the neighborhood, tell Councilman Dan Besse they want to fight to save the apartments, or at least strike a compromise to preserve some of them.

Councilman Dan Besse had the mood gauged just about right at the outset of a public-input meeting in the gymnasium on Monday evening.

Roughly split between residents of the Ardmore Terrace and Cloverdale apartments and people who live in the greater Historic Ardmore neighborhoods, public speakers at the meeting hit a broad consensus of displeasure about a plan to demolish the affordable housing complex and upgrade it for a higher-income clientele.

About 150 people showed up at Miller Park Recreation Center in Winston-Salem, and residents who spoke supported the councilman’s desire to fight a plan by the ownership group to knock down the vintage two-story apartment buildings and redevelop the site.

Many of the residents of the apartment complex are elderly and disabled, while others don’t own vehicles. Besse has said that the 350 units, which rent in the $500s for a single bedroom and in the $600s for two bedrooms, are the single largest concentration of affordable housing in the Southwest Ward, which he represents on city council. The community is within easy walking distance of Baptist Hospital and Thruway Shopping Center. Residents have said they would have difficulty finding housing at an equivalent cost in an area where they could walk to work, grocery stores and pharmacies, and some have said they can’t afford the cost of moving.

“I challenge the developer and I challenge the owner of the property: Where is another part of the city that is affordable and meets the residents’ requirements?” Ryan White said. “There are two pharmacies in walking distance.

A lot of the residents have medical issues. Where is another place that will meet their needs?”

Besse has been meeting with the

Lea Moniz tells Winston-Salem City Councilman Dan Besse that residents are angry about a plan to demolish the Ardmore Terrace and Cloverdale apartments.

developer, whom he did not identify by name at the meeting on Monday, to discuss options for the property. The councilman has previously identified the developer as Robin Team of Carolina Investment Properties in Winston-Salem. The complex is owned by two companies, Ardmore Terrace and Cloverdale, which are controlled by heirs of the two families that built the apartments in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Craig Petross, the president of the two companies, could not be reached for comment for this story.

Hannah Ainsworth said she moved into Ardmore Terrace Apartments as a student. She was attracted to the walkability of the area and the safety of the apartments, allowing her to come and go at odd hours. She also likes the diversity, and the mix of families and single professionals.

“When I come back to that apartment, I see families playing in the yard,” Ainsworth said. “That’s literally like a snapshot of the perfect TV family. What can I do to help your efforts? What can I do to save this community?”

Besse replied that he might have a spot for Ainsworth on a citizens advisory committee.

Since Besse first exposed the redevelopment plan on Aug. 7, the plight of the residents has attracted broad sympathy from residents across the city.

“We want you to recognize that the middle class is an endangered species in Winston-Salem,” Lynn Byrd said. “We don’t have to look for birds of a rare feather in the bushes. It’s all the people in this room.”

Besse indicated he concurred with her assessment.

“We are beginning to see the dearth of affordable housing, which has increasingly hit cities across the state and nation,” he said. “It’s already hit places like Charlotte, Raleigh, Asheville and Durham. Historically, Winston-Salem was considered more affordable, while still retaining a quality of life.”

As an unwelcome side effect of the boom in reinvestment in and around downtown, the trend began with the demolition of the West Side Apartments, according to Besse. City council

JORDAN GREEN

approved a rezoning to allow redevelopment, which Besse said was easier to justify considering that the property was rundown, the apartments were operating at lower occupancy and the number of affected residents was lower.

The luxury apartments equipped with a fitness center, swimming pool and lounge that replaced the low-income West Side Apartments have not earned a lot of fans in Ardmore, which lies just across Business 40.

One neighborhood resident told Besse she would hate to see the Ardmore Terrace and Cloverdale apartments “turn into that monstrosity called the Edge with rents of $1,300 per month for one bedroom.”

It’s likely that the developers are aiming for the same market, Besse suggested.

“I can infer from circumstances that they would have to rent for substantially more than the current apartments, or else they would not have the motivation [to redevelop],” Besse said.

Not everyone is convinced that the developers understand the market.

triad-city-beat.com Up Front

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

“It’s gonna cost a pot of money to tear down those buildings,” said David Cone, a retired Army lieutenant colonel. “It’s gonna cost a pot of money to build new buildings. The only way to make money from that is to raise the rent exponentially. I think these people have overestimated the demand for high-end apartments.

There are plenty of high-end apartments in Winston-Salem.”

Besse said that with the residents backing he is confident he can get the majority of his fellow council members to vote down a rezoning request allowing the developer to build a mixed-use project with retail and residential units. The developer has indicated that as a fallback plan, they would proceed with a project limited to residential uses, which would not require a zoning change or the approval of city council. Besse has asked the developer to consider a compromise plan, which would preserve some of the affordable housing. As an inducement, the councilman is trying to identify federal and city funds to help make the deal attractive to the developers. He said a member of staff in the city’s community & business development department told him he thought it would be reasonable for the city to invest $1.5 million to $2 million in the neighborhood.

“I have to say I would not be encouraged about the end results if I just said, ‘No I’m not gonna deal,’” Besse said. “I am confident that if we negotiate we can get some concessions.”

One constituent challenged the councilman by asking what he was willing to concede and what would happen to the residents when he made the concessions in one-on-one negotiations with the developer.

“That’s what we’re here to do tonight, is hear from people about what principles are important to stick to,” Besse responded.

Earlier in the meeting he had said, “Displacement — that is a hot topic for discussion and negotiation.

As a practical matter, I think it’s not so much about whether there’s a plan for relocation as much as whether there’s an adequate plan. Just picking up the moving costs of an 80-year-old resident who can’t afford to move is not acceptable in my view.”

Residents said they were angry about the plan to demolish the apartments.

Robin Wyatt said her 16-year-old daughter was distraught when she discovered a flier left by Besse that exposed the owners’ plan to redevelop the property.

“She fell apart when she saw that because she thought we would have to be out immediately,” Wyatt said. “As a parent and as someone on limited income, to not be able to say, ‘We’re going to have safe housing and to have the money to move,’ it’s the worst feeling. I come here as a scared parent who didn’t want to bring her child because I don’t have any answers.”

Besse said he understood.

“I’m very sorry,” he said. “I just don’t think the owners can understand what it’s like to be in that situation.”

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Aug. 26 — Sept. 1, 2015 Up Front

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

12

Candidate criticizes opponent for recusals

by Eric Ginsburg

Two contenders for Greensboro City Council’s District 3 seat disagree about whether a possible conflict of interest deserves to be an election issue this fall.

This isn’t the first time that Michael Picarelli, who is running for Greensboro City Council’s District 3, has brought it up.

When Justin Outling — who is also a first-time candidate running for District 3 — was appointed to the seat by council this summer to fill the remainder of Zack Matheny’s term after he resigned, Picarelli and some other contenders for the slot expressed concern about recusals and conflicts of interest. Outling is a lawyer with Brooks Pierce, a firm that represents the city, and even Matheny made remarks about Outling’s potential conflicts of interest before vacating the post to work at Downtown Greensboro Inc. Picarelli raised it again to Triad City Beat shortly after officially filing to run for the seat. The two men and fellow first-timer Kurt Collins will face off in the Oct. 6 primary election, and

Justin Outling

Michael Picarelli

Picarelli said it is part of the reason he is running.

“You’ve got to applaud Justin for wanting to serve, it’s nothing against him, he’s just in a bad position because his firm represents the city,” Picarelli said. “All the residents of this district need to know that and understand that.”

And after last week’s city council meeting, Picarelli raised the issue again.

Outling recused himself from five items on council’s Aug. 18 agenda, a number that Picarelli called “an extreme amount.”

“That’s what compelled me more to run,” he said. “District 3 wants fair representation. Even if it’s not me, residents of District 3 want to feel comfortable and know that the district will always have a vote.”

But Outling brushed aside the concerns, referring to the issue as “the politics of distraction.”

“None of them were substantive votes,” he said. “Four were consent-agenda items, and the other that was not on the consent agenda was the second part of approving a contract.”

Each council meeting includes a

“consent agenda” of items that city staff expects council will pass unanimously all at once without discussion in order to streamline the process, though council members can pull items off the agenda for discussion or a separate vote.

Last week’s council meeting wasn’t the first time Outling recused himself from a vote, and it likely won’t be the last. But that’s partly because he takes “a very conservative view on the issue,” recusing himself to avoid any real or perceived conflict of interest.

Outling said his approach is in line with his own ethos and understanding of the city law, adding that there have been plenty of recusal matters for other council members in recent history and some cases where council members maybe should have recused themselves and didn’t but that nobody made a big deal out of it.

“If there is any question, I recuse myself,” he said. “I’m not looking to duck votes, but I have no interest in doing anything that’s not right. My focus is on doing things the right way and getting things done.”

New city council structure begins next week

by Eric Ginsburg

Your guide to the forthcoming Greensboro City Council format.

Greensboro will look a lot more like Winston-Salem and High Point come Sept. 1. The city council structure, that is.

Changes to the Greensboro City Council’s format, based on a long-standing model used in Winston-Salem, take effect next week with the formation of four standing committees to vet items before consideration by the full council.

Here’s how it works: Each city council member, save for the mayor, will serve on two committees.

The four — general government, public safety, infrastructure and community services — have chairs and vice chairs, with the mayor allowed to participate in any but holding a vote on none. Some items will work their way through multiple committees, such as a request for additional funds for police equipment.

Gone are the city council work

sessions; now the committees will meet once on either Monday or Tuesday mid-month between the city council meetings scheduled on the first and third Tuesdays. The meetings will be televised, and committees will vote on whether to approve items to bring before the full city council.

Public hearing items, recognitions and other city business will still appear before the full council. The goal is smoother council meetings where details have already been ironed out, but Assistant City Manager Mary Vigue said high-dollar or controversial issues will likely still receive thorough discussion within the full body.

“I don’t want to say that they’re mini council meetings, but they kind of are,” Vigue said of the committee meetings.

City council approved the plan on June 2, with council members Tony Wilkins and Sharon Hightower voting against it. Councilman Jamal Fox raised the idea, though others including

Councilman Mike Barber had expressed support for the concept in the past.

The council has a few existing ad-hoc subcommittees, and Vigue said they might continue. The participatory budgeting subcommittee of council hasn’t been active since making its recommendation to council, though it hasn’t officially been dissolved, she said. The complaint-review committee enhancement subcommittee met over the summer and council approved the east Greensboro subcommittee’s study last month, Vigue said. And Mayor Nancy Vaughan just appointed Councilman Fox to chair the fourth existing subcommittee, economic development, after former chair and councilman Zack Matheny resigned to run Downtown Greensboro Inc. Fox will also chair the new community services committee, which like infrastructure (chaired by Councilwoman Nancy Hoffmann) will meet on the second Tuesday of each month at 6 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. respectively. The day

before, the general government committee (chaired by Mayor Pro Tem Yvonne Johnson) will meet at 4:30 p.m. followed by the public safety committee (chaired

by Councilwoman Marikay Abuzuaiter) at 6 p.m.

The committee composition is mostly constant each day, with Johnson, Barber and Wilkins serving on both Monday committees and Hoffmann, Justin Outling, and Fox serving on the Tuesday committees. Hightower and Abuzuaiter are the only two with one meeting each day, with Hightower on general government and acting as vice chair of community services and Abuzuaiter chairing public safety and sitting on infrastructure.

The mayor aside, four council members don’t chair committees (though each is a vice chair): the two members who voted against the idea, the newly appointed Outling, and Barber, who has a poor attendance record at council meetings.

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HIGH POINT JOURNAL

Election challenge results in committee appointment dustup

by Jordan Green

A citizen serving on the High Point Parks & Recreation Commission finds that he is not reappointed to the board after challenging his city council ward representative in the last election.

Jim Bronnert holds a record of perfect attendance on the High Point Parks & Recreation Commission since he was appointed to the board by Councilman Jay Wagner in August 2013.

Bronnert says through his initiative and persistence, the city approved wi-fi for three recreation centers at Deep River, Oakview and Allen Jay, which respectively serve the north, north-central and south areas of town. And through a friendship with a community leader in the economically depressed east-central area, Bronnert observed two children balancing on a loose wooden plank placed atop a rail fence at a neighborhood park earlier this year. He saw to it that proper playground equipment was installed. Bronnert’s commitment evidently impressed his colleagues enough that they voted him vice chair of the volunteer citizen advisory board.

But Bronnert said he has learned that Wagner does not plan to reappoint him to the parks & recreation commission.

Bronnert’s term officially ended July 1, but he said he has been instructed to continue to attend meetings until his vacancy is filled.

The omission triggered an alarmed email from Mayor Pro Tem Jim Davis to City Clerk Lisa Vierling that was CCed to Wagner and three other members of council.

“Lisa, just following up on three appointments, noticed Jim Bronnert is not on the agenda!” Jim Davis wrote.

“He is the new vice chair of [the] parks & rec commission, has never missed a meeting, is [an] active and engaged member, active in community gardens and instrumental in wi-fi for three rec centers in this year’s budget! Is this an oversight or is Jay not considering his reappointment? He is eligible for reappointment, and parks & recreation needs to have a quorum. Sad we have some appointments that have not been making the meetings!”

Wagner responded, “I am not consid-

ering his reappointment. I have someone else in mind for that seat, and need time to realize it.”

Bronnert feels certain that the decision is based on politics rather than the quality of his service to the citizens of High Point. Bronnert challenged Wagner for his seat representing Ward 4 on city council in last year’s municipal election. Bronnert accused Wagner of neglecting the Oakview area, where Bronnert established an active neighborhood association seven years ago — a charge the sitting councilman vehemently denied. Bronnert opposed an initiative to diet North Main Street, aligning himself with the conservative faction on council that includes Mayor Pro Tem Davis, while Wagner has become the most vocal proponent of revitalization efforts centering on the Uptown business district.

“In a business sense, it’s a bad decision to take someone who’s worked hard and replace them with someone who doesn’t have the experience,” Bronnert said.

“This is sending the message that you get penalized for hard work,” he continued. “For me, it’s political; this is about me running against him. I’ve moved on a long time after the election.”

Wagner could not be reached for this story.

The application of fairness and consistency in the appointment of citizens to boards and commissions under various city councils in recent years has come up for debate.

Councilwoman Cynthia Davis, an atlarge representative who was first elected in 2014 as part of the conservative faction, said she had planned earlier this year to use her appointment to replace a member of the planning & zoning commission who reportedly wasn’t showing up for meetings.

“I let this individual know I had found a replacement,” Cynthia Davis recounted. “This individual contacted the mayor. The mayor told me I had to reappoint this person.”

Ultimately, the council members ended up resolving the impasse through a swap. Davis said Councilman Jeff Gold-

Jim Bronnert doesn’t want to give up his seat on the High Point Parks & Recreation Commission.

en reappointed the incumbent in fulfillment of the mayor’s wishes, considering that he didn’t have a candidate from his own ward, and Cynthia Davis was able to appoint her favored candidate.

“If the mayor was insistent, as he was with me, that an individual must be reappointed if they’re eligible to serve, then I think Jay Wagner should have to reappoint Jim Bronnert,” Davis said.

Mayor Bill Bencini could not be reached for this article.

Generally, Davis said she believes it’s the prerogative of each council member to reappoint or replace citizens on boards and commissions as they see fit.

Before she was elected to council, she found herself in the position of being denied a seat on the planning & zoning commission because the mayor blocked her appointment.

In late 2012, when Davis’ term on the planning & zoning commission was up, Councilman Mike Pugh attempted to reappoint her, but the move was blocked by then-mayor Becky Smothers. Pugh was a lame duck, having lost his race for the Ward 3 seat to Judy Mendenhall.

JORDAN GREEN

“Mayor Smothers explained there have actually been three reappointments on the planning & zoning commission since July 1st and informed council member Pugh that since he had not yet brought Ms. Davis’ reappointment forward, she suggested to council that this appointment be deferred until the new council is sworn in,” the minutes from the Nov. 19, 2012 city council meeting reflect.

When the new council was sworn in, Mendenhall used her privilege to appoint a replacement to the commission, Davis said. But again, a swap resolved the impasse. Councilman Foster Douglas, then the representative of Ward 2, used his appointment to put Davis back on the commission.

If there’s a custom of allowing any eligible person to continue to serve on a board or commission, Davis said it hasn’t been consistently applied.

“We can’t use the word ‘historically’ because it doesn’t apply,” she said. “I think it might apply to elite people and elite selections based on who you are and who you know.”

EDITORIAL

Open space closed?

10 years after Katrina: what was lost

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

Palestine, which I visited in 2002, or Mexico, where I traveled in 2009. When you’re there face to face with tragedy and struggle, the policy questions and real human lives are immediate. But for me, commitments to distant places are difficult to sustain over the years, and more local concerns eventually take precedence.

The last time I was in New Orleans was for the Association of Alternative Newsmedia convention in 2011. From the riverfront near the French Quarter and the genteel Garden District, there were few evident signs of destruction, and it was easy to believe that New Orleans had completely rebuilt. The restaurants and bars were full, and new retail seemed to be humming along. I knew better, of course, being familiar with the derisive term “sliver by the river” to refer to the high ground where the city’s more prosperous classes settled. I knew there was a vast portion of the city invisible to tourists where people make do with poorly paying jobs to scrape together enough income to make house payments and hang on to a tiny bit of equity — or not, as the case may be.

We almost reflexively talk about resilience when disaster strikes, but the truth is that the poor and powerless are often swept aside while the privileged return and reinforce their stake. Katrina only made quick work of the gentrification that had already reshaped cities like New York and San Francisco. The radical culture, communalism and eccentricity that made me love the Lower East Side when I first lived in New York in 1995 was all but erased by condos and high-end retail catering to the well-to-do when I returned in 2000. And only a few years after Katrina, the foreclosure crisis rippled across the nation, ripping the guts out of the middle-class dream of homeownership in a cruel wave of dislocation. The melancholy I feel for all three displacements is roughly the same.

Katrina conditioned us to dysfunction. When the Great Recession generalized the pain that had been acutely felt in the Gulf Coast, we all learned that the recovery would leave many behind.

While city leaders in New Orleans celebrate “one of the greatest urban revivals of our lifetime,” Gary Rivlin writes in the new book Katrina: After the Flood that the recovery looks vastly different to the city’s black population. A city of 455,000 before the storm, two thirds of whom were black, had become majority white within five years, Rivlin writes, with 118,000 blacks and 24,000 whites leaving never to return.

People carry stories and culture.

The Gulf Coast survived Katrina, but something important was lost.

News

Ten years after Hurricane Katrina made landfall in southeastern Louisiana, the primary emotion for me is still sorrow, not the triumph of resiliency laid out in the narrative of recovery.

by Jordan Green Like one of the other seminal events of the last decade, the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Katrina cleaves a clean line in history — a time before that seemed more innocent, and an after-time that would never be the same again. While the Iraq war was unfolding as an international catastrophe, Katrina confirmed that on the domestic front, the minor economic boomlet of George W. Bush’s presidency was a hollow charade for many low-income people on the Gulf Coast who were barely hanging on before the storm completely untethered them.

Although I visited New Orleans several times before and after the storm, my recollection of it is primarily mediated by others’ experiences, including a refugee in Colorado who told me her family’s harrowing story of escaping neighboring St. Bernard Parish as the floodwaters nearly subsumed their house. Impressions are also supplied by historian Douglas Brinkley’s masterful book The Great Deluge.

If I’m honest, I must also admit that I remember my colleague, Brian Clarey’s response far more than my own feelings, as we absorbed reports of the storm and the flooding that followed the failure of the levees from the newspaper where we were employed in Greensboro. He reminded me that he had to leave the office early because he was so upset. But what I remember was his palpable grief as he watched video footage of the flooding on his computer monitor, shaking his head in disbelief, and later how he listened and sang along to Randy Newman’s poignant song “Louisiana 1927,” which though written in 1974 about a much earlier natural disaster seemed to perfectly capture the horror of Katrina.

It seems almost immodest to pick up a media megaphone to revive memories of the storm without having a tangible link of family relationships and friendships staked down as a personal investment. For me it was a carefree place to visit for marathon poetry readings and plentiful Abita Turbodogs slid across the bar; for Clarey, it was home for many years.

Reflecting on New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast all these years later risks allowing it to become an abstraction. I carry a certain kind of shame in having moved on, not unlike how I relate to

Up Front

We thought we pretty much had the goods on the Guilford County Commission in their handling of the open space committee.

Our reporting began on a completely different track: a controversy over land the open space committee supposedly controlled that was being proposed as a site for a mountain-biking track.

We knew that the commission had been restructured through careful redistricting in 2011 to create a Republican majority through the 2012 election, and we supposed there was an overarching agenda beneath the moves.

But it wasn’t until Jordan Green started digging on the mountain-bike story that we discovered the minutes from every meeting of the open space committee, formed by civilians empowered by a vote of the commission in 2000, had disappeared.

Further investigation revealed that the very words “open space” had been scrubbed from the county website.

That’s when our alarms went off.

A month after our cover story ran [“Losing wild places”; July 8, 2015; by Jordan Green], the 13 years of minutes reappeared, found, Clerk to Board Robin Keller said, in a box that had been misplaced, like an old wedding dress, within an hour of Green’s calls to three county commisisoners. But the minutes — and the county record — still did not address the dismissal of the open space committee, which was executed by a letter from then-commissioner Bill Bencini, now the mayor of High point, informing them that their services were no longer needed.

It didn’t sound right to us, and our suspicions were confirmed

by Norma Houston at the UNC School of Government in Chapel Hill.

“If the committee has been created by a vote of the board of county commissioners,” she said, “then only the board can dissolve the committee.”

And sure enough, minutes from a July 2000 county commissioner’s meeting show a 10-1 vote to adopt the recommendations of the Guilford Open Space Report, which included the formation of the open space committee, which held its first recorded meeting in February 2001.

Seems like a pretty clear case of governmental overreach to us. What’s less clear is how that should play out.

Bencini, the author of the dismissal letter, is no longer on the commission. He didn’t return phone calls for our stories. There has been not even a whisper of a move for accountability, and certainly no law enforcement agency can act against the city or county government to which it reports, even if it is on behalf of the people getting screwed.

The incident has been described as a crime by the school of government, but a crime against whom?

The short answer: Everyone who lives in Guilford County.

And the only recourse for the wronged will come at the polls in the next election. The question is: Will voters remember this come election time, and will it matter enough to have an effect on the outcome?

CITIZEN GREEN

triad-city-beat.com

OPINION

15

Aug. 26 — Sept. 1, 2015 Up Front News

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

16

IT JUST MIGHT WORK

The Crown as a bar

Something didn’t feel right, as we socialized and sampled the menu at LaRue, relaxing on the patio on a recent weekend night. But the problem had nothing to do with the French restaurant, which thanks to its latenight menu is really more of a culinary fusion spot anyway. I blame the

by Eric Ginsburg surroundings.

Let’s back up for a second. One of Greensboro’s most prevailing problems is the sprawling design of the city, where commercial areas almost exclusively exist in shopping centers and strip malls, often along major thoroughfares. There are a few exceptions, of course, most notably Lindley Park and increasingly so in downtown. It’s a plague not unique to the Gate City, but more pronounced here than most other places I’ve visited. The car is king, destroying walkability in places like the emerging Midtown district and hogging up some of the best real estate for parking in downtown.

One of the major appeals of cities like Durham is better overall city planning, where pockets of neighborhood commercial activity create a more cohesive feel instead of energy ricocheting off soulless car culture.

Outdoor dining on sidewalks and patios is one major tool for combating this development trend — think about the role that Natty Greene’s patio plays in making downtown feel alive, or how much more energy exists on Winton-Salem’s Fourth Street thanks to sidewalk dining.

In several senses, LaRue is an example of the antidote to Greensboro’s man-spreading — urban infill, a patio, and it’s across the street from the Carolina Theatre, echoing the venue’s energy and making Greene Street feel more unified and inviting.

But the Carolina Theatre, which has overcome considerable odds to hold down the area in spite of closed storefronts across the street, is now in a position to catapult a deeper and more thriving rebirth on this downtown street.

The massive surface parking lot immediately north of the theater at Washington Street now seems like poor use of the space — selling it to make room for a building with a Greene Street storefront, or at worst a parking deck, are just two ideas. But there’s an easier way, that may be more profitable long-term, that the theater could contribute to the neighborhood, building on its foundation that drew in LaRue in the first place.

Open the Crown, the upstairs, part-time, cool-as-hell venue, as a full-time bar.

I have trouble imagining that the costs of scaling up the bar, staffing and movable seating wouldn’t be easily outpaced by beer (and possibly liquor) sales. In my dreams, there’s a rooftop component as well.

Lounging on LaRue’s patio that night, my friends and I tossed the idea around, convinced that it’s a stroke of brilliance. But the idea for more spaces that are consistently open to the public, facing each other across a walkable street, isn’t a luxury concept that Greensboro can choose whether or not to entertain (and the same goes for “dieting” Main Street in High Point); it’s essential for a viable future.

FRESH EYES

Decoding a city’s colorline from the mill village If you walk around my neighborhood you have some good views of the old Revolution Mill, once our economic engine when denim was king.

Long ago thousands left farms to come to

by Andrew Young the city to work, tripling Greensboro’s population. The mill’s smokestack still stands with its name spelled in elegant red caps, R-E-V-O-L-U-T-I-O-N. But it’s surprising this powerful image is seldom used to promote us, because without the vast labor force to run it, there would have been no Greensboro. Even today the mill houses stand, still functioning as intended. “Honest architecture” one community advocate called them.

You can’t see the smokestack from Aycock neighborhood, built to connect downtown to the mill and named after our state’s notorious white supremacist former governor. But you’ve got a great view looking down Vine Street. From the scruffy urban woods that makes up the Audubon natural area you see the smokestack in the late afternoon light. The big letters face west. I can also see them framed between my neighbor’s toolshed and cornstalks.

My neighborhood, McAdoo Heights, overlooks the mill, smokestack and the low ground through which Buffalo Creek wends. It is bounded by Elm and Church streets and Cone Hospital. Cross Elm and you’re in Irving Park. Cross Church and you’re effectively on the east side of town. The 2013 Racial Dot Map is instructive. On crowded football nights we hear game sounds from Page and in the summer the thump of downtown fireworks. A while back a bear cub was spotted. I once rescued an enormous turtle whose habitat was disturbed by torrential June rains. Last fall we saw a family of deer scurry past.

Michael Jordan dined here. Newt Gingrich came and promoted his book at the Carolina Coffee shop, operated by his daughter. After a few versions it was renamed Greensborough Coffee. Under the able stewardship of Luke and Tobey, a young couple, the counter’s tchotchkes disappeared in favor of decent bagels and muffins. Commuters would drop in and then be off quickly to work. But there were others like the church committee, the EMT crew, hospital doctors, Republican retirees eager to read the Wall Street Journal, and eventually more people who lived in the neighborhood, including dog walkers like myself. Luke and Tobey staged music events that spilled into the back courtyard. They started a community garden. Obama carried North Carolina.

They made the coffeeshop a welcoming place for everyone and it seemed things couldn’t get better.

They didn’t. The collapsed economy stopped

Irving Park guys going for haircuts because they’d lost jobs. Still Luke and Tobey kept the coffeeshop going. Prices rose as unemployment bit deeper.

Then the unbelievable happened: People ditched their SUV gas hogs. As my game-design contracts became spottier I spent more time working with refugees and poor people who were struggling even before 2008. The coffeeshop became a center where I’d meet people to fill out food-stamp applications. Being on the fringe of the white-black divide was convenient; it made it easy to dash from one side of town to the other. I began to see Greensboro in a different light.

To believe that the name “Revolution” referred to commercial innovation or the impact factory life would have on farmers, turning them into compliant clock-punchers living in company cottages with running water, is partly true. But Southern culture is built on code words. Revolution Mill was built at the height of lynching, something you’d never guess from Sallie Walker Stockard’s astonishing 1902 account: “Situated on a plain slightly inclined toward the sunrise, is Greensboro, Queen of Piedmont Carolina. Surrounded by beautiful, undulating fields covered with soft Japanese clover, buffalo grass and abundant wild flowers, she is called the ‘City of Flowers.’ Once this section was prairie, it is said, but there are now tall oaks, poplars and elms of such strength and size as to suggest forest primeval…. Her hotels are famous. Her people are kind, cultured and hospitable. Her health is perfect.”

In this reality distortion field, “Revolution” meant the Revolutionary War, a better time for white Southerners (Decoded: When slavery was kept intact and whites were allowed to exploit and kill African Americans). It also fit in nicely with their rebranding of the Civil War as Revolution No. 2, the noble defense of the first revolution. In 1898, Aycock and others succeeded in overturning Wilmington’s government and his name continues to adorn Greensboro buildings. In 1899, “Revolution” was code for a stupid, violent and defeated idea, but one that white Southerners would not let go. It called the city’s west side (the sign faces west) to remember what they fought for from 1776-1865, and how they should fight on. Today I live in a mill house, but Greensboro’s code no longer baffles me.

As I recall the old coffeeshop (it closed a couple of years ago), I wonder why the need for coded speech persists and how much better Greensboro would be without it.

Andrew Young’s favorite coffee place is the welcoming Deep Roots Market.

triad-city-beat.com

Show dogs

by Brian Clarey

The Carolina Kennel Club, founded in 1938, has it headquarters in Greensboro. The website is carolinakennelclub.com.

Cover Story

A Yorkie named Star prances excitedly on the Astroturf-ed runway, never taking her tiny black eyes off the orange ball in the hand of her owner, Robin Hutson of Greensboro.

Before them, a temporary pool constructed from laminated canvas and PVC pipe catches medallions of white light from the late-morning sun here in the parking lot of the Greensboro Coliseum. Hutson fakes the throw into the pool once, twice, then lobs it into the pool just a few feet from the precipice. Without the benefit of a good running start, Star launches herself into the water and lands five feet out. Nothing close to the record here on the second day of the Carolina Kennel Club’s annual dog show, but not bad for a pooch that’s roughly the size of a loaf of bread. ]The next diver, Violet, looks to have some Portuguese water-dog in her bloodline. Unconcerned with the competition, she’s ready to get in now. So one man holds her by the shoulders at the end of the runway as her owner tosses a bundle of sticks to the center of the pool. Violet explodes from the makeshift starting block and covers the distance to the edge in a sprint. But, like almost every other dog that will visit the Diving Dogs tent out here in the lot, she hesitates at the diving platform before jumping in the water.

Still, she makes it 14 feet.

The record so far, says Steve Mize, in from Jefferson, Ga. to run the tent all weekend, was a black lab named Mandy who made 24 feet on the first day.

The Dog Dive is sanctioned by the American Kennel Club, the same organization that governs the dog show circuit ranging from regional conformations like this one, held in the Special Events Center of the coliseum, to the big dance: the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, aired live from Madison Square Garden every year on Thanksgiving Day. The blueblood event is the second-oldest annual sporting event in the United States. The first one was held in 1877, just two years after the first Kentucky Derby and seven years before the AKC The history of the Carolina Kennel Club, like Westminster a

Victor the black Russian terrier with his handler, Jamie Clute before the conformation.

CALEB SMALLWOOD

17

Aug. 26 — Sept. 1, 2015

Cover Story

18

member of the national organization, is not quite as illustrious but no less sincere. Founded in 1938 and admitted to the AKC that same year, it is the oldest organization of its kind in the state, and its annual conformation is the Old North State equivalent of the big time.

Most of the dogs jumping into the pool at the coliseum won’t be going inside to watch their fellow canines compete — show dogs are no mere pets but purebreds of their respective breeds.

Only dogs with the purest expression of their subset’s attributes make it to these pageant-style conformations, where they are weighed by appearance, temperament and movement. They call them “conformations” because they judge the dogs by their conformity to the standard of each breed. Regular house dogs like Star aren’t even allowed into the lobby.

But they’re welcome to use the pool.

These dogs don’t bark.

One might think that a concrete space filled with more than a thousand dogs would be a cacophony of aggressive barks, mournful whines, defeated whimpers. But show dogs don’t do much of that even when they’re penned in cages or being teased with treats.

Show dogs, among their other skills, know how to keep it together.

The Special Events Center has been cordoned off into a dog show village, with fences made from stacked travel cages and crates of supplies. Eight competition rings take up half of the large space, with a couple others in the adjunct on the other side. Three children, two girls and a boy with a bowtie, walk four tiny, scrambling dachshunds down a side thoroughfare cut between the handler’s grooming stations and the vendors that line the room.

Haley Whitcomb, a handler in from Greenville, SC, grooms an Irish setter named Sweeney, fluffing out his red tresses with a special blow-dry unit called the K-9 until the mahogany hue along his back fades gradually to burnt sienna and a

Dogs and their entourages, including handlers, stylists, trainers and sometimes even owners set up a makeshift RV village in the Greensboro Coliseum parking lot. Below: Show dogs put up with things house dogs never would.

CALEB SMALLWOOD

August 26, 2015

triad-city-beat.com

Retro cool in High Point • Sweet downtown pad • $2 million in K-Vegas Frank Slate Brooks 336.708.0479 • frankslate.brooks@trm.info

• A steal in Winston-Salem

Retro c

in High P

1509 Cherokee Drive, High Point 4 BR, 2.5 bath 3,000 sqft $204,900 Schools: Northwood Elementary, Ferndale Middle, High Point Central High Agent: Frank Slate Brooks, Tyler Redhead McAlister 336.708.0479

This mid-century modern looks like something straight out of “Mad Men.” Or maybe “The Brady Bunch.” Built in 1962 by noted North Carolina architect William Sloan, original featured and fixtures make this house as much of a collector’s item as a home.

A classy two-car carport leads to a brick-

walled courtyard that runs along the side of the house, with gravel bedding and a slate pathway to the half-acre yard. Floor-to-ceiling windows allow generous daylight to the interior, where original fixtures like terrazzo flooring and period lighting add to the kitsch value.

Brick walls, a vaulted ceiling and recessed

bookshelves mark the upstairs den off an open staircase. An open, second-floor deck creates a covered patio underneath.

The kitchen featured the original wooden cabinetry with new appliances that blend in with the look.

In the master bath, original small tiles line the

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Not far from the High Point Country Club, in proximity to walking trails, dining and shopping, this one is a showpiece that shouldn’t last long on the market.

Realtor Frank Slate Brooks says that 27 people showed for the first open house over the

weekend, and he expects it will be sold before the leaves turn.

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Cover Story

Strong-willed. Sometimes they just downright want to hurt people.”

Vincent seems friendly enough. After his grooming he jumps his forepaws on Clute’s shoulders and looks him directly in the eye.

Clute slips on his suit jacket, affixes his handler number — 11 — around his bicep with a rubber band and brings Victor to his big moment.

It’s Victor’s first show — at just eight months old, he’s only been allowed to compete at this level since June — and the point is more to acclimate him to the ring than to take home a ribbon. Maybe by the time the St. Louis nationals come around in a couple weeks, Clute says, he could start winning.

He walks Victor to the ring with the gait of a ballroom dancer: shoulders square, spine erect, the dog’s bare testicles peeking out from the fur like a couple of small black eggs in a nest.

Today in Ring 9 he’s up against Ricky, a prizewinning Russian terrier whose owner, Sarah Gaunt, is one of the few in attendance this weekend. Most made the trip with trainers and professional handlers like Clute. Gaunt keeps her terriers in Signal Mountain, Tenn. and shows them all year long.

Gaunt, who works for the National Football League’s front office, invites a

triad-city-beat.com

creamy white.

“I actually take better care of his hair than I do mine,” she says.

Sweeney is 3 years old, “approaching his prime” Whitcomb says, one of a dozen dogs she and her partner, Jamie Clute, have brought north for their clients. She likes Sweeney’s chances.

“He’s a really nice breed type,” she says.

“His fur is rich where it needs to be. He’s just an overall pretty dog.”

At the table next to them, Clute works on a black Russian terrier named Vincent, who is due in the ring in eight minutes, with a hand-dryer and a spiky brush. He’s a large and dignified animal, with thick, coarse fur that droops from his snout like a moustache and covers his eyes in thin forelocks.

“He can see better than you think,” Clute says.

After the teasing, brushing and drying, Vincent looks like he’s wearing a gorilla suit.

The Russians bred these terriers from giant schnauzer, Rottweiler, Newfoundland and other stock for military and law-enforcement purposes. The AKC bullet-points them: “Powerful. Intelligent.

Calm.”

Clute knows better.

“These dogs are bred to hurt people,” he says. “They can be really tough.

Terriers have their own category, one of seven recognized by the American Kennel Club. Below: Dogs are judged by their conformation to the breed, general appearance and disposition.

CALEB SMALLWOOD

19

Aug. 26 — Sept. 1, 2015

seven categories, Stansell explains afterwards: herding dogs such as shepherds, collies, sheepdogs and corgis; hounds from Afghans to whippets; non-sporting bulldogs and Dalmatians; sporting dogs such as spaniels, retrievers and pointers; working dogs like boxers, pinschers, danes, schnauzers and the black Russian terrier.

There are separate categories for terriers and toy dogs, too.

Stansell says she looks beyond the dictates of the breed — though the dog’s physical structure is an essential attribute — to muscle tone and disposition. Grooming, she says, plays a large factor.

“It’s not just the muscle tone,” she says.

“It’s the hairdo too.”

Ricky, she says, did not so much as add another win to his portfolio as maintain a standard that the other dogs failed to live up to.

“The other dog was not quite as hard in muscle tone and that substance of body that [Ricky] had,” she says. “This is a size/ substance breed. [The Russians] wanted a dog that would survive the winter. They also wanted it to look like a black bear.

You know the Russians. If I was judging a toy category, I’d be looking for something else.”

And so it goes, all weekend long: a seemingly endless stretch of single-elimination rounds, breed by breed, leading up to the coveted Best in Show held at the

end of the day on Saturday.

In the vending ring that’s formed around the Special Events Center, merchants sell leashes, collars, dog beds and blankets. Dog owners can buy keychains with their favorite breeds on them, as well as sequined jackets, T-shirts, stickers, figurines and wall art. Dog-grooming products include shampoos, conditioners, volumizers and finishing spray. Toys are made of rope, bone, fabric and rubber; some of them squeak and some of them do not.

It’s a huge business — the pet industry itself will generate upwards of $60 billion

Cover Story

spectator to feel how solid Ricky is. The dog is built like a bear. Part of his daily exercise regimen, she says, is a four-mile run that helps him keep an even temperament.

“He’s our middle linebacker,” she says.

“If this dog does not run three miles a day….” She shakes her head slowly as she trails off.

Victor, Ricky and two other dogs enter the competition ring; one by one they make their paces around it — handlers have to run to keep up with these big dogs — and submit to Judge Cindy Stansell for up-close inspection. Ricky takes Best of Breed; Victor comes in third.

Dogs at the show are broken down into

20

Dog-grooming is an art unto itself. Most of them seem to like it. This champion English sheepdog has no problems with these hair clips.

CALEB SMALLWOOD

Photography by Sara Lyn

category, too, when a manicured poodle with tufts at his ankles, tail and haunches takes the breed. An English sheepdog that looks like a full-sized person in a dog suit takes herding, and a whippet named Brazen that looks like a curved bow takes the hounds. More dogs advance: a boxer for the working dogs, a wobbly Pekingese for the toys. Haley Whitcomb, Clute’s partner from Greenville, shows a golden retriever in the sporting category against the setter that beat her Sweeney. Both of them get knocked out by a black cocker spaniel named Time to Thrill.

The big moment is sort of anticlimactic: 1,200 dogs have been whittled down to seven, and most of the groomers, handlers and owners have left the building. What’s left are the crews behind the winning dogs, some industry types and a few dozen spectators in the bleachers.

In addition to the whippet, boxer and black spaniel, there is the manicured poodle, the Pekingese, a toy Manchester terrier and Rumor Has It. Judge Don Evans is clearly smitten with the German shepherd, pausing to admire her profile as she awaits his hands. The Pekingese, named General Tso, shows well, too, providing comic relief with its wiggly struggles to move across the runway.

But Evans awards the coveted blue ribbon to the whippet named Brazen, who owner Amanda Giles says was born to be a champion.

“She’s an amazing representation of the breed,” Giles says after accepting the ribbon on behalf of the dog. “She’s in beautiful condition. And she has an athletic tone.”

The dog’s a big deal. She would go on to win Best in Show this past weekend in Massachusetts, her 38th in the last two years. Bitch even has her own Facebook page.

Out in the parking lot, a little black lab in a Thundershirt excitedly barks her way to the platform of the diving pool. She runs full speed after the ball her owner throws into the water, but like almost all of the others she hesitates at the point of launch, mustering a last-minute effort to put her about six feet out from the ledge.

She then swims in the water for a while before padding up the ramp and shaking off, blissfully unaware that her jump was sub-par at best.

triad-city-beat.com

this year, and in this specialty niche the numbers get big real fast.

Jamie Clute, the handler, will spend the rest of the summer and fall showing other people’s dogs. He gestures to his friend Dennis Brown, who handles the grand champion German shepherd named Rumor Has It. She’s won the Working Dog category in every show she’s been in since 2012, with a slew of Best of Breed and Best in Show designations under her collar. She’s already on the short list for Best of Breed at Westminster, and Clute says her relentless touring schedule until then could run her owners upwards of $300,000 this year.

He’s been around the business since he was a kid, he says, and that all of the pro handlers know each other from the circuit. They’re living this week in an RV compound on coliseum property, as they’ll do in Atlanta the next weekend, and in Lexington, Ky. the week after that.

“It’s pretty much a carny,” he says.

He pulls out an inch-thick copy of this year’s Canine Chronicle, an industry mag with content about breeds, show etiquette and animal issues, and also loads and loads of full- and multi-page ads for individual dogs: a schnauzer named Asta (“This Girl is on Fire!”), a standard poodle named Markie and her trainer Michael (“Making More Magic!”), a fuzzy Norwich terrier by the name of Ted (“Type, Attitude and This Face Too…”). Rumor Has It’s ad is a twopage spread with shots from the winner’s circle and a main photo of the dog with her tongue hanging out, standing alert on an impossibly green, clipped lawn.

“If you’re serious about this,” Clute says, “you need to have an ad in the Chronicle.”

The first story, a deep dive about the Airedale, doesn’t begin until page 114.

Out in the competition rings, the field narrows.

In Ring 3, the terriers line up biggest to smallest, 19 of them in all: an Airedale, a blue, a pit bull, a cesky and one of those bedlingtons, with eyes on the sides of its head like a llama.

Apollo, a Manchester terrier, takes the category and will move on.

In Ring 5, Clute handles Sweeney, the lustrous Irish setter, against four other dogs of the same breed. Sweeney loses out to another setter with a better haircut.

In Ring 9, the great Danes run in a circle like a herd of trick ponies as the Best in Breed shows warm up.

A haircut prevails in the non-sporting

The Merit Pit Bull Foundation strives for a compassionate world where pit bull type dogs live in responsible homes and where owner education, training and anti-cruelty legislation support all pet owners regardless of breed. www.themeritpitbullfoundation.com

(336)618-PITS

21

Aug. 26 — Sept. 1, 2015 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story

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

22

Banquet

FOOD

by Chris Nafekh

Freeway Foodies Spring Garden Food Truck Festival @ Spring Garden and Chapman streets (GSO), Aug. 30 Like rock bands, food trucks thrive on festivals. Local favorites like Baguettaboutit, Masterbacon and Halal Haven, plus numerous others set up shop around the Blind Tiger, 913 Whiskey Bar and CFBG Records. The Facebook event has over 10,000 RSVPs. For more information, visit Spring Garden Food Truck Festival on Facebook.

Piping-hot pig East West BBQ Fest @ West McGee and South Greene streets (GSO), starting Friday Few things taste as authentically Carolinian as wet, hot barbeque cooked by the state’s finest pitmasters. The sizzle of greasy grilled pork, that chewy texture of well-chopped barbecue glazed in light honey sauce. So many styles can be devoured — Memphis, Lexington, St. Louis and Chicago — at this festival, which runs through Aug. 30. For more information, visit eastwestbbqfest.com.

Five days of feasting Downtown Greensboro Restaurant Week @ multiple locations (GSO), starting Wednesday Seven restaurants, including Crafted, Undercurrent, LaRue and Table 16 offer special greenway-themed items. Twenty-five percent of the profit goes directly to the Downtown Greenway, so not only do patrons get to gorge on generous grub, but they can walk away satisfied with supporting community development.

Visit downtowngreenway.org for more information.

Noma offeres pho (foreground), banh mi sandwiches (center), bowls, fresh rolls (background) and more. It opened on Monday.

ERIC GINSBURG

A watershed week for Greensboro’s culinary scene

by Eric Ginsburg

from Washington, DC, NC A&T UniverWatching sity graduate Brittney Drakeford can hardly believe her former city’s evolution.

“I feel like Greensboro has changed so much in four years!” she wrote on Facebook, responding to the news that Hops Burger Bar will open a second location.

It must be hard to tell, from a distance, how true Drakeford’s words are.

But maybe locals have an even harder time taking a bird’s-eye view of the rapid metamorphosis Greensboro has experienced.

The first Hops, which now feels like an old hat, only opened a hair over two years ago.

Forget the last four years — students who left town for the summer are cur-

rently returning to a city with a culinary scene that is markedly different. And this is another watershed week.

The first wave of the summer splashed ashore in May with a quick succession of openings: Crafted: the Art of Street Food, Preyer Brewing, 1618 Downtown and Freeman’s, all quick heavyweights deserving of praise. Not long before that LaRue showed up as the city’s only French restaurant, though the late-night menu ranging from tamales to pho may be more exciting.

The steady pace of progress continued almost as assuredly as shark attacks along the shores of the Carolinas. Cheesecakes by Alex completed a long-awaited expansion just as Harlem Express arrived onto the scene across South Elm Street. A few blocks down,

PB & Java welcomed the public, and makes the Gate City look like a veritable hipster haven.

And now in the last week, another massive wave has pummeled the beachhead established at summer’s start. On Monday, Noma Food & Co. launched as Greensboro’s first Thai & Vietnamese fast-food joint, the same day as former fancypants Josephine’s Kitchen reopened as a breakfast spot called Scrambled. Just two days prior, Urban Grinders coffeeshop headed by artist Jeff Beck kicked off downtown.

Two days before that, on Aug. 20, Hops declared it would expand to Lawndale Avenue, coming on the heels of the soft opening of Mac’s Speed Shop — a small restaurant chain with good ribs — down the road.

Oh, and this week is the inaugural

as of press time, has occurred in the previously caterpillar-esque Greensboro. Or maybe a hibernating bear would provide a better metaphor for the city’s nascent potential that is just now being woken up.

The vegan banh mi, the coffee, the beef empanadas, the PB&J sandwiches with bacon, the watermelon cocktails, the falafel waffles, the marrow butter… It’s easy to see there’s a shift underfoot, most of it in previously abandoned storefronts, even from Washington, DC. Maybe it will lead to more people reacting like Drakeford, who added: “I want to come back!”

Up Front News

opening its doors to a High Point outpost.

Some of the development is liquid — rather than food— oriented. This month Winston-Salem’s Hutch & Harris opened its Side Bar, not long after Wise Man Brewing said it would actually open in the Camel — rather than the Gate — City. Greensboro Distilling signed a lease behind the Nussbaum Center for Entrepreneurship where Triad City Beat is housed, and bottle shops like the Beer Growler in Winston and Craft City Sip-In in Greensboro invited the public in this summer as well.

It’s a banner season for food and drink, to be sure.

And the changes aren’t just the same-old-same-old; many of the new restaurants are innovative (at least around here), hip and delicious. The bulk of it, at least

triad-city-beat.com

Downtown Greenway Restaurant Week, with three of this summer’s centrally located eateries participating.

When you look at the rapid evolution all at once, it’s baffling for even a food writer to take in. Brittney Drakeford, if she’s reading this, is no doubt astonished. And the incoming first-year class of 2015-16 may never hear the city’s unflattering nickname “Greensboring.”

Greensboro isn’t alone in its dining-oriented development, of course. This summer, Camel City BBQ Factory and the Famous Toastery trumpeted their intentions to open on the northern side of Winston-Salem’s downtown. We’re lucky enough to start seeing more cross pollination too, with High Point’s Penny Path Café disclosing plans for Trade Street in Winston-Salem and Greensboro’s Spring Garden Bakery

Opinion Cover Story

by Eric Ginsburg

Silo Bistro & Bar

Food Music Art Stage & Screen

The brie, green apple and fig chutney sandwich is a tasty vegetarian lunch option, but more notable are the $1 mimosas on Mondays. Wow.

All She Wrote

Visit Silo Bistro & Bar at 114 Reynolda Village (W-S) or on Facebook.

Shot in the Triad

or indoor dining, quiet surroundings not far from Reynolda’s gardens and the lack of a wait all contribute to the appeal.

But regardless of who comes along, one of the best motives for showing up at Silo Bistro & Bar for drinks is the specials list. Among the more common half-off wine bottles or $3 beer promos are two mimosa days priced so cheaply it looks like a typo: $2 on Sundays, and just a dollar all day every Monday.

Starting off the week never sounded so good.

Games

gorgonzola cheese small plate, or the s’mores dessert with melted chocolate under marshmallows with dipping graham crackers for dessert?

Silo is the site of the worst first-date I’ve ever suffered through, but that’s a whole ’nother story. The important thing to know is that all blame rests with the other party, and not the venue itself.

In fact the assortment of food and drinks available — albeit reduced now that Crown & Cork bar next door, which had been owned by the same people, is now closed — and the ambiance are more than enough to qualify it as a pretty ideal date location. A variety of drink options, small plates, vegetarian cuisine, outdoor

ERIC GINSBURG

Good Sport

It’s about time somebody named a drink after Chris Paul. There’s one here for Maya Angelou, too.

Right after the more generic sounding “very berry mojito,” “sunrise lemonade” and the slightly more creative “partly cloudy with a chance of rum” is a drink that some people would confuse with a Star Wars reference.

It’s hard to say if the CP3 contains any ingredients that its namesake — former Wake Forest University basketball standout and now LA Clippers star Chris Paul — would like: Absolut Mandarin, Malibu Red, pineapple juice and grenadine with a golden sugar-rimmed glass.

But hey, at least it has red to represent the Clippers primary color and gold for the Demon Deacons.

If anywhere is going to pay homage to Wake Forest’s big names, it makes sense that it would be a venue in Reynolda Village, the posh shopping center next to campus owned by the college. There’s a nod to another Wake-turned-pro celebrity too — the Duncan Delight martini. The mental image of the giant Tim Duncan carefully sipping a blueberry vodka, vanilla vodka and limoncello frosty martini is mildly amusing, to say the least.

Will Kingery, the owner of King’s Crab Shack and Willow’s Bistro, gave Silo Bistro & Bar a makeover when he took over recently, but there was already a lot to work with. Manicured flowerbeds lead up a path to outdoor seating in front of the restaurant, where incoming firstyear students and their families could be found eating lunch last week. With intriguing vegetarian options like the brie, sliced green apple and fig chutney sandwich, an assortment of seafood choices like an Old Bay shrimp roll and classic Southern ingredients like pulled pork and pimiento cheese, who could blame them?

And how about the prosciutto-wrapped figs with

23

Aug. 26 — Sept. 1, 2015 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Food

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

24

Setlist

MUSIC

by Jordan Green

What is that flower that you have on?

Delta Rae @ the Blind Tiger (GSO), Thursday Songs drawn from the mythic American landscape featuring the interplay of female and male voices, darkness and light, Delta Rae launched out of Durham, but a grueling schedule and contract with Sire Records likely means they’ve transcended any specific locality. Show starts at 8:30 p.m.

Musical pals Jeffrey Dean Foster @ the Garage (W-S), Friday Jeffrey Dean Foster, dubbed “the gentleman rocker emeritus of Winston-Salem,” is all over the place this weekend (see the next item). He plays this show with his full band, the Yes Men, and to sweeten the deal, certifiable North Carolina legend Don Dixon opens the show. Some ancient and recent history: Arrogance, the band Dixon cofounded in Chapel Hill in 1969, is considered by many to be a magna carta of sorts for North Carolina’s indie-rock scene.

And Dixon co-produced Foster’s recent and critically-acclaimed album The Arrow. Show starts at 9 p.m.

The many faces of Dean Ween The Dean Ween Group @ the Blind Tiger (GSO), Friday Former Ween frontman, professional fisherman and occasional classic country dabbler Michael “Mickey” Melchiondo Jr., aka Dean Ween, brings his group to the Tiger. Show starts at 9 p.m.

A little help from friends Beth McKee and friends @ SECCA (W-S), Saturday Southern traveler Beth McKee celebrates the resilience of New Orleans 10 years after Hurricane Katrina with a songwriterin-the-round showcase with friends Jeffrey Dean Foster and Tommy Malone (from the Subdudes). During the second set McKee debuts her new album, Sugarcane Revival.

Show starts at 7 p.m.

Jazz and urban Paul Brown @ Corpening Plaza (W-S), Friday Paul Brown, a master of smooth-jazz guitar, headlines the final night of the Downtown Winston-Salem Partnership’s summer Downtown Jazz series. His new album, Truth B Told, branches out from the jazz idiom, incorporating more soul and blues than previous outings. Local players Urban Standard II open the show. Anchored

by Steve Thorntan on sax, Jo Dread Daniels on keyboards and Gerald Robinson on bass, members of the group have extensive experience working in the Winston-Salem/ Forsyth County Schools. Show starts at 6 p.m.

Wood Robinson, Jacob Sharp, Joseph Terrell and Libby Rodenbough finished with an encore of “Farther Along.”

JORDAN GREEN

New twist on traditional music takes Mipso far

by Jordan Green

or two songs into Mipso’s Aug. 21 concert, a line was forming in the venue’s long hallway. As a disappointed woman threaded her way back from the host stand, an enterprising man intercepted her to share that he had two tickets she could buy to the sold-out show.

It’s not every night in the Triad that a venue even as intimate as the Garage fills to capacity for live music, and owner Tucker Tharpe, grinning as he wove through the queue, acknowledged that it’s an even more rare occurrence in mid-August. Many a toiling journeyman, accomplished veteran and overlooked talent has played the Winston-Salem room to scarcely a dozen or more listeners; a bustling scene with eager fans packed elbow to elbow and cheering lustily at the end of every other song is indeed an occurrence worth

One

calling home about.

It’s not as though the traditionals-plus quartet of freshly scrubbed UNC-Chapel Hill grads came out of nowhere. With three previous appearances at the Garage over the course of their five-year history, Mipso has always enjoyed an enthusiastic reception at the Winston-Salem venue. Considering that three of the band’s four members are from Greensboro and High Point, it’s somewhat remarkable that they’ve largely leapfrogged the local scene on the way to quickly establishing a national profile — not unlike the Carolina Chocolate Drops before them. In Mipso’s case, that’s partly a function of performing largely in Chapel Hill for the first couple years before they graduated.

“We’ve already played over 100 shows this year in more than 30 states,”

mandolin player Jacob Sharp announced from the stage. “Which is good. That’s what you go for.”

Concluding “4 Train,” a song by guitarist Joseph Terrell that showcases his mate’s sparkling mandolin playing, Sharp revealed that it was the second time the band had performed the tune from the new album Old Time Reverie before a live audience. Debuting it for 800 fans in Boone the night before had been “nerve-wracking,” he said, adding, “But we’re cool with y’all.”

Terrell’s preternaturally stoic vocal lent a core of spiritual authenticity to the next song, a country-gospel number that he wrote called “Father’s House.”

“If y’all get tired of hearing all those new songs, just say, ‘Play the hits,’ and we’ll get the idea,” Terrell joked.

The title of the band’s last album, Dark Holler Pop, characterized by sunny

band’s relationship with its fans.

After one typically spirited song, Stark expressed appreciation for the way the Garage’s massive, propeller-like fan blew his hair back, confessing that he had been fantasizing about a music video featuring himself riding a unicorn.

“That’s where I’ve been for the past three minutes,” he said.

“That’s not the first music-video idea Jacob has had that involves a unicorn, trust me,” Rodenbough added.

When it came time for an encore, there were no fiery solos or showy vocals. They stepped forward and sang together without amplification, tender voices rising above an industrial hum.

A reverent quiet descended on the room, and some in the audience took up the lyrics of “Farther Along.” The four members of Mipso gave a testimonial of encouragement and patience through the traditional song.

“Cheer up, my brother, and live in the sunshine,” they sang. “We’ll understand it all by and by.”

Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Food

former laying a foundation for virtuosic hoedowns by the latter.

Terrell is a solid songwriter, with a knack for wry observation and allegorical lyricism, but the two songs Rodenbough brings to the new album showcase a startling emotional depth.

Rodenbough, who was classically trained in violin and studied fiddle in Ireland for a short period, sings on “Everyone Knows”: “Everyone’s here, everyone knows/ Wearing our pride like the emperor’s clothes/ You’re feeling bare and, honey, it shows.”

One grizzled veteran of the music scene who has been admiring Mipso for several years remarked on his way to the bar: “They’re just good, attractive young people — the type of young people I would typically hate.”

He had a point: Good looks and exceptional talent don’t always add up to soulful artistry. But in Mipso’s case, wonderful songs that make an immediate impression are only made more irresistible by four musicians whose friendship anchors them in the shared endeavor. Smug self-congratulation or egoism could easily derail a less grounded group, but a relaxed confidence and sense of humor seems to reinforce the

triad-city-beat.com

and affirmative telegrams like “Carolina Calling,” provides a good summation of the band’s sound. A string quartet with traditional Piedmont instrumentation — acoustic guitar, double bass, mandolin and fiddle — there are plenty of rhythmic and harmonic divergences from both bluegrass and old-time. A pop gloss more apparent on the previous album than the new one and clearly articulated vocals are a couple of the group’s distinguishing features.

With the addition of Libby Rodenbough on fiddle — bassist Wood Robinson, along with Terrell and Sharp, formed the original trio — the band has emerged as a cohesive unit with each member individually making essential contributions, whether through songwriting, instrumentation or vocal leads and harmonies. Sharp’s effervescent, sweet tenor complements Terrell’s deeper and more resonant vocal. As musicians, all four members display an uncanny sense for when to lean in and when to lay out, their solos nestling and building a framework for the next rather than ricocheting one to the other. The instrumental chemistry between Terrell and Rodenbough is particularly apparent, with skeletal note runs by the

Stage & Screen

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Music

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Good Sport

The Steep Canyon Rangers + Mt. Park Old-Time Band Saturday, September 5th @ 7 pm, Wayne Henderson

Shot in the Triad

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All She Wrote

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25

Aug. 26 — Sept. 1, 2015 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Food Music

Tear down the wall Jonathan Brilliant On-Site Destruction Party @ Greenhill (GSO), Wednesday Creating art takes time, patience and commitment, but destroying art takes a hammer. Everyone can enjoy Brilliant’s coffee-straw sculpture for one last time before it’s too late, then watch it fall to the floor in dozens of tiny, shattered plastic poles. For more information, visit greenhillnc.org.

Freedom fighting In Hopes of Freedom @ International Civil Rights Center & Museum (GSO), Wednesday The art of Michelle Nichole depicts the African-American heroes of the Revolution who fought in hopes of a new nation, one without slavery. The exhibit, which runs through Saturday, includes more than 30 pieces that recount the history of brave, under-recognized soldiers. For more information, visit sitinmovement.org.

Coloring books Unbound and Unleashed: Celebrating Books & Authors Through Art @ Womble Carlyle Gallery (W-S), Friday Instead of reading to appreciate literature, Forsyth County students fashioned visual art inspired by their favorite books and authors. With any luck, there will be no more than one portrait of Katniss Everdeen, a couple romanticized Edwards and Jacobs, and zero shades of gray. For more information, visit cityofthearts.com.

David Shaw is inspired by television, empathizing with what he sees as the disruptive nature of technology.

DANIEL WIRTHEIM

Layers of paint

by Daniel Wirtheim

subjects of David Shaw’s work are his own youthful memories from a time when Winston-Salem was still fresh to him and he didn’t have to worry about paying rent. As he moves along Third Street, his right hand is wrapped in gauze, the result of dropping a steaming tray of lard-soaked chicken out of an oven. He walks purposefully, not talking unless necessary.

A ragged looking man approaches him, asks for a cigarette and Shaw asks him for a quarter.

Just a few years ago, Shaw was able to support himself with his interior-design business. But now, since it tanked, he got a job at BB&T Park and continues to paint in his free time. He’s currently painting murals with the non-profit organization, East Winston ARTUP. “The layers are what make up our lives,” Shaw said in reference to his

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painting style, “the strands that make us humans, always experimenting, building on top of that the way we build upon our lives.”

His painting style is abstract, to say the very least. Like a musician bends a note or a DJ hits a turntable, David Shaw’s brushstrokes are repetitive, relying on a visceral feel for the canvas.

He repeats the lines so much that his paintings are thick with layers, and the meaning fairly indecipherable.

“George,” a painting inspired by the memory of a photograph of Shaw’s grandfather is an eye-catching cluster of lines. A figure poses but the face is a mess of white streaks. Hair, a nose or eyes are completely unrecognizable.

“George” is both creepy and captivating.

Like a lot of Shaw’s work, appreciating “George” relies somewhat on understanding the process.

“George” is Shaw’s response to a photograph of his grandfather that was kept in his childhood home. “It’s like a muscle memory almost, the shadow of that memory was burned in my mind,” Shaw said. “I like to leave things amorphous.”

Most of Shaw’s paintings show a similar process of meticulous abstraction from a memory. An occasional figure surfaces but Shaw’s work for the most part is a detachment from reality and into the world of layered dreams and hyperactivity.

“40th Avenue” is a good standard for Shaw’s landscapes, which are mostly one or two colors fragmented with stripes of varying shades and tones.

Occasionally, price stickers or other artifacts of consumer culture to balance the painting.

Small shootouts to Shaw’s friend,

“It’s like you have this baby, it starts growing and it gets run over by a f***ing garbage truck,” Shaw said. “But it helped me realize that I don’t want to spend my whole life trying to win the lottery or climb a corporate ladder. I’m a painter; I paint.”

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“George” is painted from the memory of a photograph.

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Mike, who died of a random food allergen, are dispersed throughout his paintings. It gives Shaw’s work a homegrown feel, a very human streak in an otherwise abstract collection.

“I remember being a kid and going to Reynolda House and seeing this one huge piece by Nam June Paik,” Shaw said. “That for some reason was captivating to me as a kid, because I had never seen conceptual art before.”

Like Paik, who pioneered video art, Shaw finds inspiration in television. In his recent exhibition at Delurk Gallery, a screen that played overlapping layers of a Korean commercial and a girl eating noodles was shown in a shelf that he designed.

“I like things that are disruptive,” Shaw said. “To do anything abstract you have to know the rules before you can totally smash them into pieces and rearrange them, or otherwise you’re just a moron.”

At a recent exhibit Shaw sold nothing. The paintings are just sitting in his apartment that was recently flooded.

The seasonal employment has been taking a toll on his social life and he still doesn’t like to talk about his old business.

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Aug. 26 — Sept. 1, 2015 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Food Music Art

A harsh history Black Lives Matter Presents Spike Lee’s 4 Little Girls @ Geeksboro Coffeehouse Cinema (GSO), Wednesday This documentary recalls the terror of white supremacy when, in September 1963, KKK members bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. and murdered four young black women.

Lee’s 1997 film was nominated for Best Documentary at the Academy Awards.

For more information, visit Geeksboro on Facebook.

Undead, when it was cool Nosferatu silent film with live music @ Milton Rhodes Arts Center (W-S), Thursday Loosely based on Braham Stoker’s Dracula, this film is the first on-screen depiction of a vampire and widely considered a cinematic masterpiece, the inception of the horror genre. Because the original score is lost, the composition’s rearranged with most adaptations. Visit rhodesartscenter. org for more information.

Doomsday as a metaphor Dr. Strangelove @ Reynolda House Museum of American Art (W-S), Friday Cold-war satire imbued with dark comedy characterizes Stanley Kubrick’s renowned cult classic. On the brink of nuclear catastrophe, miscommunication creates a state of panic between Western nations and Moscow. Peter Sellers’ multi-character performance, alongside the rest of the cast exemplifies international stereotypes of the ’60s — the tough American general, the cowboy-patriot pilot and the stubborn Russian diplomat. For more information, visit reynoldahouse.org.

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by Chris Nafekh

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Brianna Taylor (left) and Ashlee Ramsey scratch charcoal patterns during “Depth Measures.”

CHRIS NAFEKH

Ritual dances in the dark

by Chris Nafekh

piano crashed in the night. Atop a long, Dissonant white paper board, Ashlee Ramsey and Brianna Taylor lay prostrate, charcoal smudged their faces, feet and hands.

Waving her hands around her body, dragging charcoal like nails on chalk, Ramsey blackened the white board below her with circles and swift, oscillated crescents until a dark and dirty snow angel took shaped around her. Taylor rolled on the opposite end, turning and twisting, scratching the charcoal around herself to form a chaotic, cryptic grid. The two women, both yoga instructors by day, performed a ritual of mystery and duality.

“Depth Measures,” performed on Aug. 21, was the last in a series entitled Rituals: An Evening of Dance and Music at the Milton Rhodes Arts Center in Winston-Salem. The dance, choreographed by Amy Love Beasley, experimented with special elements of movement and dimension.

The concepts of depth and duality

prevailed throughout Beasley’s work. In the end, Ramsey and Taylor’s three-dimensional movements had been recorded on the white board; evidence of fluidity and chaos was mapped by their movement.

The show began at sundown, as an orange cream sky lit the third floor windows at the arts center. Middle-aged men in sweater vests shuffled into the room alongside women who smelled abundantly of herbal remedies.

Periwinkle curtains hung from the rafters, a minimalist set for the first performance. To the left sat a grand piano; the black and white keys sullenly waiting to be played, beckoning the oncoming performance.

The doors closed and the set darkened. Eric Schwartz, whose music has been performed across the world from New York City to Melbourne, Australia, took his seat at the keyboard and played a soft impromptu. His lightly distant piano waves rose and fell, trilling gladness and breaking emotion.

A deep bass momentarily contrasted ephemeral high keys, and soon Cara Ha-

gan entered the stage for the evening’s opening performance.

Hagan, a former student at UNC School of the Arts who now teaches dance at Appalachian State University, performed a dance she choreographed titled “Ritual of 100 Tiny Circles.” Like most pieces of choreography, “Rituals” tells a story, except this one is non-linear. According to Hagan, the dance doesn’t present a clear beginning, middle or ending.

“It’s a narrative but not in a storybook kind of way,” Hagan said. “There’s about 100 haikus that go with this dance that I wrote as a student.”

While attending UNCSA, Hagan’s dance teacher presented her with a multitude of simple rituals and asked her to name them.

“I named them different things like, ‘ritual of respiration,’ which is circular, ‘ritual of apology and forgiveness,’ ‘witnessing the seasons’…” she said.

“They’re insights that came out of the studio and from being in the studio. It didn’t happen in a linear way, it’s been very puzzle-like and a lot of the times

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La Cenerentola @ Aycock Auditorium (GSO), Friday A dramatization of Cendrillon by Charles Perrault, the classic fairy tale known as Cinderella, this Italian opera is showing only twice this weekend (also on Aug. 30) on the campus of UNCG. Although Cinderella is a children’s story, this performance diverges significantly from the Disney cartoon and remains truer to the original story, with Italian libretto. For more information, visit greensboroopera.org.

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The Addams Family: A New Musical Comedy auditions @ High Point Community Theatre (HP), Friday These horrific half-wits will hit the stage with music and dark comedy later this season. Available roles include Morticia, Wednesday, Alice, Gomez and more. Actors should arrive prepared to sing 32 bars of a song in their range. For more information visit hpct.org.

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and clear faces. Goldstein tapped tortured keys in the distance as they unraveled a white poster which, within minutes, became an obscured map of ritual dance, duality and darkness.

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Debussy’s enchanting melodies which could hypnotize the audience into dreaming, lost in thought and darkness.

Soon after, Ramsay and Taylor walked onto the black stage with clean hands

Opinion

my process is very puzzle piece-y.”

As Hagan walked into the spotlight, her gray uniform shimmered. Soft, broken piano echoed in the chamber, and Hagan slowly raised her hands.

Suspense rose with every moment, her concentration building until her hands reached above her head. With a crouch, she slapped her knees and began to step, jump and spin around the stage.

The piano picked up as her interpretive dance swiftly sped, her muscles flexed and her breath grew louder. Surefooted, Hagan never missed a step.

Between dances, pianists Peter Kairoff and Louis Goldstein played classical compositions by Debussy and Bach.

“It is said that music dances, or sings, or both,” Kairoff said as he approached the piano. “I think it’s safe to say there’s no composer in music history who dances and sings as magnificently, and in such a balanced way, as the composer we’re about to hear from: JS Bach.

His music has a rhythmic vitality and a melodic inventiveness that is seemingly inexhaustible.”

As Kairoff played Bach’s English Suite in G-minor, the melodies intermingled, repeated and chased each other across the keyboard.

Before the Ramsey and Taylor walked on the dark stage to finish the evening with “Depth Measures,” Louis Goldstein played Claude Debussy’s impressionist “Three Preludes.” From Goldstein’s fingers into the warmth of night air flowed

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Cara Hagan on stage performing “Ritual of 100 Tiny Circles.”

Bad Habits Nunsense 2: The Second Coming @ Theatre Alliance (W-S), Wednesday This play, which runs through Aug. 30, tells the odd story of a group of nuns who, after putting on their first benefit concert, decide to perform a thank you for their patrons. Quickly, chaos ensues and everything runs awry. To learn more about this comedic performance, visit wstheatrealliance.org.

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This cat’s not coming back Cat on a Hot Tin Roof @ Triad Stage (GSO), starting Wednesday This production of Tennessee Williams’ classic drama runs through Aug. 30. Set on a Southern plantation during a stifling summer’s eve, the Pollitt family gather for dinner and an evening of dramatic irony, desire, death and depravity. For more information, visit triadstage.org.

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by Anthony Harrison

Causing a racquet 2015 Winston-Salem Open @ Wake Forest Tennis Complex (W-S), Wednesday The Winston-Salem Open started on Aug. 22 with the qualifying round, and the third round of the singles tournament starts on Wednesday afternoon. Top talents from around the world like France’s Gilles Simon and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, and South African Kevin Anderson will vie for the total purse amounting to over $550,000 with finals played on Saturday. For more information, visit winstonsalemopen.com.

Pickleball > picklebacks Second Annual Greensboro Summer Pickleball Classic @ Greensboro Sportsplex (GSO), Thursday I honestly had to look up what in the world pickleball is, but color me intrigued.

It’s a racquet game blending elements of tennis, badminton and racquetball, played in doubles on a badminton court with a wiffle ball. It’s pretty much the opposite end of the spectrum of the Winston-Salem Open — no offense intended — with groups ranging from 19 to over 70 years old and up. The tournament is free and open to the public and begins with a practice session at noon. To register, visit greensborosportsplex.com.

O, say! Can you see?

Frederick Keys @ Winston-Salem Dash (WS), Thursday The Keys (60-66) make the trip back down from Maryland to once again meet the Dash (65-60) on the diamond at BB&T Park. While the Dash proved victorious when I covered them back on July 4, the Frederick Keys have rightly pummeled the Triad team, posting 10 victories over 15 games thus far. The Dash, coming off a four-win streak, have a chance to level the field a little more with four home games this weekend starting on Thursday. For tickets and game times, visit milb.com.

Save the Tiger Davis Love III took his time on Sedgefield Country Club’s 15th hole on Sunday.

He read the green like a

by Anthony Harrison Russian novel, slowly and meticulously. His mid-range putt tiptoed into the cup for eagle, clinching the lead at 17 under par and eventually taking the 2015 Wyndham Championship.

It was the Charlotte native’s third Wyndham, but his first tour win in nearly seven years, and his victory marks the first time in 40 years a player aged 51 or over captured a PGA Tour event.

No one could catch up to Love — not third-round leader Jason Gore, not 2011 Masters winner Charl Schwartzel, not former Wyndham champ Webb Simpson.

Not even Tiger Woods could challenge Love’s lead.

Instead of witnessing a possible comeback, Greensboro’s thronging crowds watched a meltdown of golf’s former clutch king.

First, he drove his Hole 7 tee shot into the gallery, bogeying the par 3.

Things soon grew painfully worse.

Approaching the green on the 11th, Tiger landed in the fringe to the left. The routine chip turned into a catastrophe as Woods shanked the shot, sending the ball screaming past the hole into the rough on the other side. His next chip

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didn’t even roll over the berm of the green, and he wound up three-putting for triple bogey.

After another bogey on 12, three consecutive birdies did little to wipe the egg off his face, the damage done and irreparable.

It’s such a shame, too, after things went so well for him on Saturday.

After parking at a family friend’s house on the first hole, I caught Jim Herman and Martin Kaymer’s tee off with my cousin Ted at 1 p.m. Wisps of cirrus spread across the sky, and a light breeze softened the heat of the beaming sun.

Already, scores of people watched as Tiger Woods practiced on the putting green. A sea of fans split along the driveway as his cart scooted him to the driving range. The crowd was hyped to glimpse a living legend.

Anticipating the flood of Tiger fans, we walked down course and seated ourselves on a patch just past a small drainage ravine diagonally bisecting the fairway, figuring it would be a nice place to catch approach shots.

Love and his partner Chad Campbell landed just short of the ravine, and as they walked downhill, cheers and shouts of, “Tiger! Go Tiger!” could clearly be heard 250 yards away, even before his first swing.

Tiger’s iron glinted in the sun as he teed off, and the congregation wailed.

His shot landed short in the right fringe, and a murmuring tide of gossip flowed down the hill.

But the mood shifted again as Woods neared his ball.

I must admit: Awe gripped me. After all, this was the same Tiger Woods who won his first green jacket in 1997 at 21, smashed the competition by 15 strokes at the 2000 US Open and defied physics with his birdie chip-in on Hole 16 at the 2005 Masters — and I’d seen it all happen live on TV. Woods didn’t disappoint the lucky spectators on this hole, either.

While his tee shot proved inauspicious, Tiger’s second hit sat down eight feet in front of the pin.

Affirmations showered the man like rose petals as he strolled by, somehow

regal despite holding his head low.

Even the songbirds and cicadas seemed to politely silence themselves as he putted, and when the ball dropped into the cup, the celebratory roar deafened.

Ted said he’d skip ahead to the seventh hole without watching the denouement, and after Woods’ birdie, I envied my cousin’s wisdom.

The Tiger Era has certainly passed, but you wouldn’t know it from trying to follow him that day. The amorphous crowd swelled towards the second tee, and I was caught in the middle of it all.

Escaping Tigermania proved difficult as the mob folded me in as one of its own.

I did wind up only a few yards away from Woods, close enough to see beads of sweat forming on his brow, but at risk of being crushed and trampled.

I feared I would simply live out my life in this claustrophobic new society awash in polo shirts and sundresses, watching relationships begin and fade, babies being born and elders dying.

I made it out, though, cutting through thick rushes and poison ivy to beat the head of the crowd and rejoin Ted at No. 7.

I must have looked dazed, because Ted asked, “You doing all right?”

I shook my head.

“It’s crazy in there, man,” I replied.

Tiger Woods is the Lancelot of golf.

He was the golden boy poised to be the greatest until his fall from grace. The world’s been searching for such a dominant player for five years. Few pretenders have yet claimed the vacant throne.

My late father, with whom I watched many of Tiger’s shining moments, believed that Woods had a few big wins left in him, and while Sunday’s collapse doesn’t inspire confidence, no one knows what the future holds for Woods.

Hell, we might even see him back in Greensboro next year.

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‘O for Two’ singles only, please.

by Matt Jones

Across

Down

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

Answers from last issue.

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1 Pocketed, as a pool ball 2 Butter substitute 3 Bean mentioned in “The Silence of the Lambs” 4 “Do the Right Thing” Oscar nominee Danny 5 Hereditary helix 6 “Club Can’t Handle Me” rapper Flo ___ 7 Old French coins 8 “Hey sailor!”

9 Biographical bit 10 Hawaiian pizza ingredient 11 Shaq’s surname 12 “Live at the Acropolis” New Ager 13 Overhead storage 18 Breakneck 19 “Straight ___ Compton” 24 Brush-off 26 Wants to know 27 Hot springs 28 Julia’s “Notting Hill” costar 29 S-shaped molding 30 Botanical transplant 31 Marcia’s mom 32 Battery’s negative terminal 36 “___ be sweet!”

37 Flat fee 38 Farming prefix 40 ‘50s sitcom name 42 L.A. hardcore punk band with the 1994 album “Punk in Drublic” 45 Green sauce 47 Moved about 50 Pushing force 51 Like corduroy and, um... (hey, get your mind out of the gutter!)

52 Crucial 53 “Chasing Pavements” singer 54 Cautionary list 58 Aqueduct feature 59 “Frankenstein” helper 60 ___ contendere (court plea) 62 100 cents, in Cyprus 63 Agitate 64 Actress Daly 66 Disgusted utterance 67 Dedicatory verse

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1 Place for a nap 5 Part of a sequence?

10 Georgetown athlete 14 Jai ___ 15 Specialty 16 Nursing school subj.

17 Comment about all-soloist concerts?

20 Critter with a pouch 21 “___ Like It” 22 “Fuel” performer DiFranco 23 Audiophile’s collection, perhaps 25 Slanted printing style 27 Haulers that repel everyone?

33 Wrinkly dog 34 Half a new wave group?

35 “Rashomon” director Kurosawa 39 Like fine wine 41 Member of the peerage 43 Flying solo 44 Shaun, for one 46 Eugene of travel guides 48 8 1/2” x 11” size, for short 49 Say “I guess we’ll take DiCaprio”?

52 Disappear into thin air 55 “Sweet” Roman numeral?

56 Yes, at the altar 57 Hit the weights, maybe 61 “At the Movies” cohost 65 “O.K., pontoon, I hear ya loud and clear”?

68 Succulent plant 69 Bawl out 70 Brockovich of lawsuit fame 71 Grateful Dead bassist Phil 72 Pang of pain 73 Pineapple packager

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All She Wrote

ALL SHE WROTE Loosie and the Sky with Neil Diamond Scene: At the lake and on Day 3 of a bathing cleanse prescribed to me by Greensboro-based intuitive

by Nicole Crews spiritualist Sky Bradshaw. I’m texting her frantically because I’m in recovery from the loss of my mother and I’m open to anything that will make the transition easier. I’m also a Standard Operating Procedure dork — and this groovy business is all new to me.

Me: So, Christina Calabria gave me a third-eye cleanser — chakra-enlightening crown oil. Is it okay for me to use it after the bath? I don’t want to mix the medications.

Sky (laughing): Yes, Nicole that will be fine.

Me: I told her that you said I could use any crystal I had and that I laughed and said, ‘Who do you think I am — Christina Calabria — with a bucket of crystals just lying around?’

Sky: I love Christina.

Me: Me too, but she got the hippie gene. I got sent to military school so my idea of letting loose is not having two fingers delineating each hanger in my closet.

body, talking to kind and loving people.

Nurturing my nest. I called Sky for an appointment because I think we can all use a readjustment at different junctures in our lives and a good spiritual cleanse sounded a lot more appealing than a coffee enema or a decade of therapy.

Sky lives in Westerwood and thanks to the Greensboro neighborhood dive bar’s signature line I already knew it was “the place where dreams come true.”

Her home, with its sparkling bottle tree, red porch furniture, fairway greens and tidy rocks, looks a lot like a place where Glenda the Good Spiritualist might live.

Sky, with a corona of blond curls and fitted, brightly-hued yoga-meets-shaman-meets-80s-workout-video attire emerges and welcomes me to her home where she takes me on a journey inward. We laugh, we cry, I circle the block and have a good visit with my favorite boho-elegante, Christina, and her best friend Pam Glosser. We laugh, we cry.

I’m spent.

Scene: Cleansing bath No. 4 at the lake and I’m cranking Neil Diamond because I’m sick of listening to cicadas crackling, tree frogs humping and Gregorian chant. Concerned that I’ve fumbled the cleanse, I text Sky again because of a disturbing development.

Me: So my question to you is has anyone ever gotten into their cleansing bath with their crystal and gotten out without it?

I should interject and say it’s going as best as can be expected. I’m looking inward, eating right, moving my

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Sky: No, I can’t say that has ever happened before.

Me: Did I sit on it? Oopsie.

Sky: Well it wasn’t a selenite stone so it shouldn’t have dissolved.

Me: We shall see if it emerges. I’ve heard of passing kidney stones but not carnelian.

Sky: I’m pretty sure (at least let’s hope) you would know if you took it ‘in.’

Me: Carnelian: It’s the holistic IUD. Sky: Ha ha. The energy within. Works great with your root chakra. That would be a great pick up line. ‘I lost this stone — I swear it’s in there somewhere.’

Me: ‘Just keep looking.’

Sky: Maybe it’s like ‘The Princess and the Pea’ and only the correct prince can find it.

Me: Adult children’s book.

Me: What’s even funnier is that I named it Don Carnelius. ‘I took a bath

with Don Carnelius and he wound up in my vagina.’

Sky: Who needs douches? You have the most cleansed vagina in Greensboro. It’s balanced and energized too.

Me: You can add that to your website. Want me to write a testimonial?

‘Sky Bradshaw knows how to cleanse a vagina!’

Me: So how do you want me to describe you? Shaman, psychic, spiritualist?

Sky: I hate labels but I would say I’m an intuitive spiritualist. I really like oracle but that freaks people out.

Me: Oracle of the Orifice? That would really freak people out. But you probably already know that!

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Welcome to the

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