TCB Sept. 9, 2015 — Folk yeah!

Greensboro / Winston-Salem / High Point triad-city-beat.com September 9 – 15, 2015

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FOLK YEAH! A curated guide to the National Folk Festival PAGE 20

Zack attack!

PAGE 10

Fixing the NFL PAGE 18

Coltrane baby steps PAGE 30

Sept. 9 — 15, 2015

Featuring a live performance by

thursday, september 17, 6–9 pm reynolda after hours passholders free members/students $10, non-members $15 reynoldahouse.org/harvest | 2250 Reynolda Rd. 2 RH_HarvestMoonTCBadFull.indd 1

9/8/15 2:09 PM

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 Daniel Wirtheim intern@triad-city-beat.com Investigative Reporting Intern Nicole Zelniker

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 Amanda Salter Caleb Smallwood

28 UP FRONT

ART

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

32 At the hop

NEWS 10 Zack attack 12 Houseing on the cheap 14 HPJ: Fixer-uppers

OPINION 16 16

Editorial: The duckling on the wall Citizen Green: Celebrating Labor

18 18

I t Just Might Work: An NFL fix Fresh Eyes: School days

Day, by working

COVER 20 Folk Yeah!

Cover photo courtesy of the NCTA Grand Master Seiichi Tanaka & the San Francisco Taiko Dojo perform at the National Folk Festival in Greensboro.

Everybody I know

FOOD 28 The best burritos 29 Barstool: Corks, Caps & Taps

MUSIC 30 Artists wrestle with Coltrane

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

GOOD SPORT 34 September crap shoot

GAMES 35 Jonesin’ Crossword

SHOT IN THE TRIAD 36 South Elm Street, Greensboro

ALL SHE WROTE 37 Treatise on trim

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

EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK

Everybody I know has been talking incessantly about the National Folk Fest that’s hitting downtown Greensboro this weekend for the first installment of a three-year stretch.

Everybody I know has got people coming to town, made parking arrangements, perused the schedule and, some of them, already taken days off work.

Everybody I know is pretty pumped about it.

Or so I thought. Turns out I know a lot of people, and they’re not all on the same page.

In the course of my ordinary life, I became a member in a local chapter of a benevolent and protective civic organization, which offers benefits like a barroom I can smoke in, a gym (that I think I can also smoke in) and a wonderful pool where my family and I spent much of the summer.

It was over last weekend at that very pool where I started asking people about their plans for the folk festival. And none of them knew what I was talking about.

How, I wondered, is that even possible?

Stories and photos have been running in the papers for months — ever since the big announcement last year. Signs have gone up all over downtown. The NFF Twitter feed is so active it’s almost obnoxious. Under what sort of rock would one have to exist in order to avoid being informed about this thing?

And yet there I was, surrounded by more than a hundred people — business owners, corporate types, parents and voters — who had not heard of the biggest event of the season in the city of Greensboro.

After I finished sputtering (“It’s actually a pretty big deal…”), it came to me just how big the Triad is, and just how small our personal circles of influence.

Think about it: There are almost 1 million people in Guilford and Forsyth counties. According to research out of Columbia University in 2013, the average American knows about 600 people. You think you know everybody? Trust me: You don’t.

Most of us live in silos, surrounded by people similar to us.

We reinforce these walls with curated news feeds, monotonous behavioral patterns and aversion to things of which we aren’t already aware. It’s why people go to the Olive Garden.

Everyone I know has Everyone I Know Disease, which is what it means to take a very small and specific sample and apply it to the larger world. When I was 12 years old, everyone I knew had a bicycle and a baseball mitt. Everyone my mother knows went to college. TV pundit Bill Maher likes to say, “Everyone I know got high last night.”

Me, I know a lot of people. And after this week’s issue, I hope I can say all of them are at least aware of the National Folk Festival.

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Sept. 9 — 15, 2015

CITY LIFE September 9 – 15 WEDNESDAY

Michael Brantley, Memory Cards @ Scuppernog Books (GSO) Michael Brantley is an award-winning professional photographer and freelance writer with a new book, Memory Cards. It’s a drive down memory lane in old pickup truck and a tale of growing up in the South.

FRIDAY

Amy Grant @ High Point Theatre Amy Grant has been called the “Queen of Christian Pop.” That could be appalling to some, but righteous to others. No matter what they say, Amy Grant has enough Grammy awards to beat the haters off, although she wouldn’t do that because she’s Amy Grant. Her music is focused on the more virtuous and merciful moments of the human experience but she that’s not to say she can’t dance.

Go to highpointtheatre.com for ticket prices and more general information.

THURSDAY

Bookmarks 2015 Keynote Opening Event @ RJ Reynolds Auditorium (W-S) David Baldacci is an author who hit it big. His books have been adapted for screen — one starring Clint Eastwood — and been sold in 45 different languages. He’ll be speaking at Bookmarks’ opening event to plug his new book The Keeper, and he’s bound to have some interesting thoughts on a literary life.

Gem, Mineral, Jewelry and Fossil Show @ Dixie Classic Fairgrounds Education Building (W-S) These guys and gals have been at it for 43 years showing and selling their precious gems. “Sulfides, sulfates and sulfosalts” is this year’s theme. If you have no clue what those are, there will also be meteorites and fluorescent minerals to rock your pebble brain.

Find schedules and where to park at forsythgemclub.com.

75th Annual Folk Festival @ downtown (GSO) Check out our cover story to all the best highlights of the National Folk Festival, which runs through Sunday. Be sure to stay hydrated; it’s going to be a huge weekend.

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Artist Talk: Xi Jie and George Jenn @ Elsewhere (GSO) Two artists tell stories of their lives and talk about what they’re going to make during their artist residency.

SATURDAY

Flea-East @ Bailey Park (W-S) Hoots Flea Market is hosting this flea extravaganza that includes a food-eating contest, live bids starting at $1 and a four-band lineup of Crooks on Tape, Bolmangani, Axis-Sova and Spirit System. It’s your chance to find that carpet that really ties the room together while you get down in the park. Go to hootsflea.com for the full scoop.

BUY TICKETS T ODAY! PRESENTED BY BANK OF NORTH CAROLINA

AUGUST 23SEPTEMBER 20

Bernie Sanders @ Greensboro Coliseum The economic populist presidential candidate from Vermont who is scaring the hell out of Hillary Clinton appears at the Special Events Center in the Greensboro Coliseum Complex at 7 p.m. Free.

triad-city-beat.com

SUNDAY

Back to Church Day

AT GATE CITY VINEYARD CHURCH

Sunday, September 13th @ 10:30am Join us for coffee and snacks at 10am

This is a personal invitation for you!

School has begun and summer vacations are behind us. It’s time to get Back to Church.

• Would you like to attend an awesome church?

• Would you enjoy making a bigger difference by being of service to others?

• Do you desire to connect with a wonderful group of people?

• Are you ready to hear wonderful messages that will change your life forever?

Triad Stage reimagines Tennessee Williams’ Pulitzer Prize-winning play about truths, lies, desire, and family.

TICKE T S STA R T AT J U ST $10!

JOIN US. You will fit right in!

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336.323.1288 204 South Westgate Dr., Greensboro in the Pomona Business Park, just off of Spring Garden Street.

GREENSBORO

CALL FOR TICKETS: 336.272.0160 / Toll-Free 866.579.TIXX ORR ONLINE: www.triadstage.org or STOP BY THE BOX OFFICE: 232 South Elm Street, Greensboro, NC

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Sept. 9 — 15, 2015 Opinion

patio daily specials

All She Wrote

Shot in the Triad

Games

Good Sport

Art

Music

Food

Cover Story

Up Front News

paninis salads small plates craft beer & wine

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Golden Gate Shopping Center

2270 Golden Gate Dr. Greensboro, NC meltkitchenandbar.com

Read the beat, talk the beat, walk the beat.

Shirts for sale at... triad-city-beat.com

Daily Showtimes 7 pm Tickets are $6 each!

Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine

Games

Daily Showtimes 5 pm Tickets are $6 each! (12 pm only on Tuesday)

Kahlil Gibran’s “The Prophet” Daily Showtimes 12 pm Tickets are $6 each!

Wes Fest 2015 Presents “The Darjeeling Limited” Daily showtimes at 2:30 pm and 10 pm* (*2:30 pm only on Tuesday) $6.50 ticket includes a FREE COLLECTOR’S CARD!

Beer! Wine! Amazing Coffee!

2134 Lawndale Drive, Greensboro geeksboro.com • 336-355-7180

All She Wrote

TV CLUB PRESENTS“Fear The Walking Dead” The thrilling prequel/spin-off to “The Walking Dead” Series premiere 9 pm Sunday! FREE Admission with drink purchase!

Shot in the Triad

8. Yanceyville bus Riders from as far north as Pisgah Church Road can catch the Yanceyville bus, which loops through the Brightwood and Rankin neighborhoods as well as the Aycock Historic District on its way to the depot.

DUDE BRO PARTY MASSACRE III

Good Sport

7. Randleman/South Elm-Eugene bus The neighborhoods along Florida Street between Randleman Road and South Elm-Eugene Street can pick this one up, ride it through Warnersville and be downtown in 15 minutes.

OPENING FRIDAY:

Art

6. Gate City Boulevard bus You can pick this well-traveled bus line up all the way out at the Jamestown campus of GTCC, running along Gate City Boulevard the entire way in.

Playing September 11 – 17

Music

5. Battleground bus The Battleground bus runs all the way from the Brassfield area with stops on Green Valley and the Women’s Hospital on the way.

Food

4. Friendly bus It’s basically a shuttle that leaves the Friendly Center every half hour or so.

11. Self-propulsion Got a bike or a scooter? Now is a great time to use it. Ditto for skateboards, Segways, hoverboards, rollerskates and jetpacks.

Cover Story

3. Summit bus This line originates in the Walmart off Highway 29 in the northeast with a stop at Cone Boulevard and Yanceyville Street before taking Summit Avenue into downtown.

12. Park N Ride The festival will have two Park N Ride stations, one at the Greensboro Coliseum on Gate City Boulevard to the west and another at War Memorial Stadium on Yancevyille Street to the east. The shuttles are free.

Opinion

Maybe the dealer was misinformed Some interesting observations. [“Fresh Eyes: A Canadian at the gun show”; by Chris Nafekh; Sept. 2, 2015] As a gun owner, I am not a supporter of gun shows nor the NRA. I am for documented background checks to purchase firearms. But also we need correct information when justifying change to our way of gun sales. There were no sales of fully automatic weapons at the show, nor does holding your finger on the trigger empty the magazine. Fully automatic guns are illegal. Holding the trigger gives you one shot, engaging the trigger over and over will empty the magazine. Thus if that was the information being told to the author at the gun show the sellers of the guns are misinformed and should not be selling guns. If the NRA representatives or gun seller won’t give their names what does that say about their reputations? If you want to really learn, know and enjoy a great hobby, go to a real gun store.

Talk to a knowledgeable dealer who has made a investment in his community and abides by the law.

Jeff Ruben, via triad-city-beat.com

2. Four Seasons bus The Four Seasons line runs from Vandalia Road in the southwest past the mall on Gate City Boulevard and through Glenwood on its way to the J. Douglas Galyon Depot. There should be plenty of free parking at the mall.

9. Parking deck If you insist on driving (so last century!), downtown parking decks will run on a $10 flat rate, just be aware that on Friday just about every downtown street will be closed.

News

Would love to see condos on top of shops, restaurants, etc.

Residents would have to have elevator & private parking. Hubby & I want to move downtown in couple of years!

Cynthia Wassong, via triad-city-beat.com

by 1. Wendover bus Greensboro is anticipating crowds into the six figures for this week’s National Folk Festival, which means that downtown streets and sidewalks should be flooded. Fortunately, all city bus lines will be running for free throughout the weekend, which should alleviate some traffic concerns. The Wendover Bus, for example, runs from the Walmart at Bridford Parkway past the strip malls and through a section of Spring Garden Street before hitting downtown.

Up Front

Ideas for what to do with the old Lotus Andy, check out the farmers market in Nashville, Tenn. [“Lotus Lounge building under contract”; by Eric Ginsburg; Sept. 3, 2015] That would be so wonderful!

Shirley Vestal, via triad-city-beat.com

11 transit options for the National Folk Festival

triad-city-beat.com

Getting off on the wrong foot I am disappointed by the tone of this article [“No easy walk: Two cities’ cycling and pedestrian infrastructure in the post-sprawl age”;

by Jordan Green; Sept. 2, 2015]. It seems like you pulled out a lot of the negative elements of the Greensboro BiPed Plan Update, and in contrast to Winston-Salem, Greensboro seems like it is hobbling behind. I don’t know if your intention was to show Winston-Salem in a better light, but I do not believe you gave equal footing to the two cities. For example, you note that Greensboro’s greenway system “tilts to the affluent northwest side of town” and when speaking of the Southeast Greenway you start to get into the racial politics of the city, without getting into the same discussion in Winston-Salem. Greensboro has definitely made progress in its bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure throughout the city, even if it has been slow, but I think it is characterized as woefully plodding and dragging along, by your article.

Daniel Amstutz, Greensboro The writer is the bicycle and pedestrian coordinator for the city of Greensboro.

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Sept. 9 — 15, 2015

Up Front News Opinion Cover Story

After running a cover story last week about the bicycling and pedestrian plans in Winston-Salem and Greensboro, we wanted to ask our readers and editors which Triad greenway is the best. Their answers may shock and surprise you — okay, not really at all, but we got your attention, didn’t we?

considerable time on every greenway path, I’m not sure I’m the best source. The Atlantic & Yadkin Greenway in Greensboro is pretty dope, though.

Jordan Green: The Strollway, connecting downtown Winston-Salem to the UNC School of the Arts, might be the loveliest of the Triad greenways, and it’s the one I’m currently the most enamored with. I’ve definitely enjoyed the Atlantic & Yadkin Greenway, which links Greensboro’s northwestern neighborhoods to Bur-Mil Park. But when it comes to the best, I think you have to acknowledge the Downtown Greenway as the most forward thinking greenway in the region. It’s a hub that lays the groundwork for a complete greenway for pedestrians and cycling.

Brian Clarey: I can dig the Downtown Greenway in Greensboro, even in the face of naysayers I know who feel it’s a waste of prime real estate and attracts a bad element to downtown. I love the Lake Daniel Greenway, too, which runs along Wendover in a beautiful part of town.

But I personally use the Latham Park Greenway all the time for my short runs through town. I pick it up by the tennis courts and run through Westerwood, cut across Friendly Avenue and then circle back, taking it all the way to Elm by Moses Cone Hospital, then circle back for a total of about 4 miles. It’s also right near my sister’s house.

Readers: Our readers who participated in this week’s poll favored the Atlantic & Yadkin Greenway in Greensboro (38 percent), while the Salem Creek Greenway (Winston-Salem) and Downtown Greenway (Greensboro) tied for second with 19 percent each. The Strollway in Winston-Salem received 11 percent. No other greenway topped 10 percent. Criticizing the Downtown Greenway, “Juan Doe” wrote: “At $7.5 million per mile, is there any doubt it’s GSO’s downtown 4-mile sidewalk?” And “Chuck” offered a different standard for measurement: “Whichever greenway they put a skatepark on.”

Eric Ginsburg: The Downtown Greenway won’t be completed until probably well after I turn 30, even though it was named as a major project in the Greensboro Center City Master Plan back when I was in middle school. Yeah. Come on, people. In the interim, the Triad’s best is probably the Salem Creek Greenway in Winston-Salem, though having not spent

New question: What is the best Triad college football team? Vote at triad-city-beat.com!

Gra ha m H o lt

Music

Food

Best Triad greenway?

All She Wrote

Shot in the Triad

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38%

19%

336. 5 01. 2 0 01

11%

P.O. Box 10602 Greensboro, NC 27404

g ho lt p llc @ g m a il.c o m

g reensboroat torneyg rahamhol t .com

Other

Downtown Greenway (Greensboro)

Salem Creek Greenway (Winston-Salem)

19%

C r i mi n a l • Tra ffi c • DW I

Strollway (Winston-Salem)

Games

Good Sport

Art

Atlantic & Yadkin Greenway (Greensboro)

ATTORNEY

13%

triad-city-beat.com

Pop-up public art

Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Food Music

ERIC GINSBURG

Art

A passing train covered in colorful graffiti pauses on a bridge in downtown Greensboro, temporarily adding a public art installation to the center city.

Good Sport

Bison jerky

by Eric Ginsburg

All She Wrote

hours to no avail, I started to surrender to the notion that the delicacy is out of reach.

There are online options that will ship nationally from places like northstarbison.com, which sells a 4-ounce pack seasoned with raw honey and sea salt for $10, but there’s a $15 order surcharge and you’d need to ship it refrigerated.

The cheapest choice from the Buffalo Guys (in Wyoming) is $43 for 12 ounces before shipping costs — not bad, but journalism doesn’t pay that well.

Meanwhile, Carolina Bison in Asheville doesn’t offer jerky (at least not on its website) and there’s no bison at the Beef Jerky Outlet in Concord, NC. I’ve considered driving out to Sunset Ridge Buffalo Farm, and even briefly fantasized about a brewery-based trip to Green Bay with a detour west to Seymour. It really does taste that incredible.

Shot in the Triad

discovered the Wisconsin Bison Company’s jerky.

Cured with salt, sugar and spices and containing a little onion and garlic powder, this bison jerky tastes good enough that it should be savored like expensive chocolate.

I would tear small pieces off the lean sheets of dried meat, sometimes inhaling its aroma for a while like a wine snob and then letting it sit in my mouth, as if it would melt.

We really tried to make the bison jerky last, only allowing ourselves to indulge in a small amount at a time considering how finite a luxury it was. Our hearts leapt when her work planned to send her back to the area, but when the plans were nixed, I started looking elsewhere.

I found Sunset Ridge Buffalo Farm in Roxboro, NC, which claims to cover Greensboro and the Triangle. But after filling out an order form for seemingly overpriced bison jerky online and calling twice during normal business

Games

Beef jerky is a waste of time.

I don’t say that as someone who spent eight years as a vegetarian, but as someone who has experienced a miraculous thing called bison jerky.

The idea of reverting to beef jerky, in any form, after savoring the magnificence of the Wisconsin Bison Company is unbearable. The notion would be akin to consuming Manischewitz wine after a tour of vineyards in Bourdeaux — it just isn’t done.

Bison jerky came to my attention through a combination of coincidences and accidents. Outside Green Bay on a work trip a few months ago, my girlfriend stopped to take a picture of grazing buffalo. After noticing a sign for meat products inside, she circled back to the family farm in Seymour later that day. Inside looking through the products for something that would travel home well, she

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Sept. 9 — 15, 2015 Up Front

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

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NEWS

Dramatic changes underway for Downtown Greensboro Inc.

by Eric Ginsburg

Two months in, Zack Matheny is charting a dramatically different course for Downtown Greensboro Inc. It was Zack Matheny’s fourth time in Urban Grinders coffeeshop in a week, he said as he sat on a couch in the café on Sept. 3, and it was only a Thursday.

Only two months have passed since Matheny resigned from the Greensboro City Council, where he represented a portion of downtown, to run Downtown Greensboro Inc. The economic development and downtown booster organization has had no shortage of detractors in recent years, including a few of its former board members, and a year ago at this time, Matheny was one of the biggest.

The 42-year-old criticized the direction and leadership of the organization both broadly and specifically, including after a shooting incident not far from two downtown nightclubs. Now that he’s taken the helm, he is driven to make sure he doesn’t let anyone down.

A black Fitbit fitness watch around his wrist keeps track of his sleep — he’s averaging just over four hours a night lately. In the mornings he’d been coming into Urban Grinders, a new coffee shop and art gallery that opened just a few days prior, for a much-needed coffee. Most days are like this one, he said, where by midafternoon he’d only spent an hour in his office, though he expected he’d crash over the upcoming Labor Day weekend.

Matheny always said his predecessor needed to be out walking the streets of Greensboro’s downtown more, constantly engaging with residents, business owners and visitors and implementing improvements. His four trips to Urban Grinders are part of that, as is his aim to buy something wherever he goes.

Julia Roach, his 23-year-old new marketing hire who graduated from NC State University just like he did, seemed to be taking Matheny’s cue. Thirty minutes after Matheny sat down at the café on Sept. 3, Roach walked in for a meeting with Hillary Meredith of Action Greensboro designed to strengthen the

relationship between the two groups that have only loosely collaborated lately despite similar aims.

Matheny brought a folder with him, which among other things includes a list of 74 things that he is actively working on in his capacity as the head of Downtown Greensboro Inc. He’s bitten off a lot — that may be part of what keeps him up at night, along with the countless new ideas for things he wants to initiate — but he loves his job and appears eternally upbeat.

At Downtown Greensboro Inc.’s most recent board meeting on Aug. 27, Matheny ran through many of those new ideas.

Some, like a building façade grant program, are things the organization used to do that he’d like to bring back.

Others, like an idea to give away downtown gift cards to drive people into the center city while capturing their contest entrants’ con- Zack Matheny resigned from the Greensboro City Council to be the president and ERIC GINSBURG tact info for future mailings, CEO of Downtown Greensboro Inc. are new. At the meeting, of the year after a final signoff by neigha black “G.” And Matheny wants the Matheny barreled through bors at Lincoln Financial. organization to move into a street-level them almost like a kid reading out a The changes at the organization office, something that had been origiChristmas wishlist. extend to the staff.

Two employees on nally set as a goal to be reached by 2001 There may be two new restaurateurs the team have left in recent months, but that he sees as part of a reenergized coming from Charlotte, including a one right before Matheny’s arrival for effort to be accessible and engage peobreakfast project, new construction a higher paying position, he said.

Only ple in downtown. planned and more than 15 economic the chief financial officer and Cyndy Much remains to be seen. Matheny’s development projects, he said.

Hayworth — who came on to fill the list is long, covering everything from “Hopefully all of your stores will have new position of director of operations an idea of hiring homeless people as great new neighbors soon,” Matheny less than a year ago — remain.

Matheny ambassadors to help direct unwanted said to his board, which is comprised of quickly hired Roach, who started last activity out of downtown including many business and property owners. month, and brought on an intern from public urination to a vision for more He’s implemented new weekly meetUNCG to help with research. public art projects.

He wants to bring ings with the city to discuss infrastruc“When you come into an organizaback the scuttled parklet idea — they’re ture needs like street resurfacing, and tion, sometimes you have to realign,” mini-public parks temporarily set up in he’s pushing for a new parking deck Matheny said, declining to elaborate on parking spaces — likely in front of Melsomewhere like the lot next to M’Couls. the details of the other recent employee low Mushroom, and maybe revive the In an interview, he added that he hopes departure. idea of a rubber-tire trolley from several that plans to make all of Greene Street Even the organization’s logo has years ago. two ways will move forward by the end changed; now it’s a much simpler, just At a strategic retreat just over a year

triad-city-beat.com Up Front

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ago, the organization’s board decided to stop focusing on events and several other things it hoped to support in favor of drilling down to several top economic-development priorities. Matheny has scrapped that — he wants Downtown Greensboro Inc. to support more events, now fewer. As far as he’s concerned, they can do it all, as long as they prioritize and work strategically.

Under his leadership, Downtown Greensboro Inc. will join the downtown holiday parade, float and all.

And there are several accomplishments or changes already under his belt, including a decision to rejoin the International Downtown Association for guidance and ideas, fence wraps to beautify blight in advance of the National Folk Festival, personally helping to paint an artistic crosswalk in front of the central library and the installation of new downtown signs.

Matheny also played what he described as an “integral” role in the deal for developer Andy Zimmerman to put the former Lotus Lounge property under contract after the fatal shooting of a 19-year-old clubgoer outside less than a week earlier. During his tenure on council, Matheny pushed for a downtown teen curfew and an entertainment security ordinance in response to violence, often leading the way with what some called a heavy-handed approach to public safety. His more diplomatic and behind-the-scenes work that may lead to the sale of the Lotus property demarcates a different tack.

And it isn’t the only meeting he’s arranged out of the public eye; Matheny also bought beer at Beer Co., the downtown bottle shop, and brought it over to the CityView apartments for a casual conversations with millennials about downtown. He aims to do the same with twenty and thirtysomethings at the Greenway at Fisher Park apartments on the other end of downtown to gain valuable feedback at a later date.

He’s in more meetings now than during his time on city council, Matheny said, and he’s figuring out how to “block and tackle.” Right now he feels like he’s building the foundation, setting the tone and prioritizing, and soon more implementation will begin.

The real measure of his success likely won’t be apparent until a year from now, but his attitude and ideas already signal a change for Downtown Greensboro Inc. “This organization needs to have fun,” he said at the board meeting.

In college, Matheny always wanted to be around all the fun, he said in an interview, which is why downtown appeals to him so much.

“I don’t want to miss anything,” he added. “When you have this strong a passion, it’s hard to train it. Now I’ve got the opportunity to do that.”

All She Wrote

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Sept. 9 — 15, 2015 Up Front

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

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Roads not taken in Winston-Salem’s quest for affordable housing

by Jordan Green

Winston-Salem planners have been putting a lot of thought into public-policy tools that might address the challenge of economic mobility.

In spite of downtown’s impressive revitalization, poverty remains a dismaying fact of life in some parts of Winston-Salem, and local planners have grown increasingly concerned about the role geography plays in determining children’s life outcomes.

In a July 2015 memo to Mayor Allen Joines and members of Winston-Salem City Council, Planning & Development Services Director Paul Norby cited a recent Harvard University study finding that Forsyth County ranks among the worst in the country in helping poor children move up the income ladder.

“A child growing up in Forsyth County is expected to earn $6,200, or 24 percent, less per year as an adult than a child growing up poor in an average county,” Norby wrote. “A companion study found that children who moved at an early age to lower-poverty areas earned approximately 31 percent more than those who remained in high-poverty neighborhood. And, while adults moving to lower-poverty areas did not see the same income gains, they greatly improved their mental and physical health.

“In fact, where you live can even affect how long you live, as life expectancy is shown to vary by 16 years or more between ZIP codes in the same city. These studies do not conclude what makes living in high-poverty areas so detrimental, but it is likely a combination of lower performing schools, fewer job opportunities, less access to primary care doctors, lower availability of fresh foods, the presence of lead and other environmental toxins and the stress of living in high-crime areas.”

Norby’s memo, which relied on research by Project Planner Kelly Bennett, was prepared in response to a request by city council for a report on potential revisions to the city and county’s development ordinance with an eye towards finding ways to incentivize affordable housing in areas where residents have better access to jobs and services.

The planning staff’s examination of various options for incentivizing or

The developer of the Pepper Building in downtown Winston-Salem is including six affordable units in exchange for assistance with financing from the city.

mandating affordable housing highlights the limited range of public-policy options in influencing market conditions in a growing city. Faced with structural economic and legal barriers to other avenues of addressing the need for more dispersed affordable housing, city leaders have settled on a financial incentives program to encourage developers to include more affordable units in their projects.

Winston-Salem and Forsyth County have had a policy of bonus density for affordable housing, also known as voluntary inclusionary zoning, on the books since 1994. The policy allows developers to increase the density of their projects by 25 percent for multifamily units if 40 percent are rented to families earning less than 60 percent of average median income or if 20 percent are rented to families earning less than 50 percent of median income. Not a single unit of affordable housing has been pro-

duced as a result of a developer taking advantage of the provision, according to the Norby memo.

The city and county of Durham adopted a bonus density for affordable housing provision about 15 years ago, with Asheville and Charlotte following suit in 2010 and 2013, respectively. The other three cities also have nothing to show for their efforts.

Local planners determined that the main reason the policy hasn’t worked is that developers can already get the density they want through stick-built construction of buildings up to three stories high. For higher-density, mid-rise buildings of four stories or higher, the building-code requirement to use steel and concrete drives up the cost, canceling out any advantage the incentives would provide.

The potential loss of hundreds of units near Baptist Hospital and Thruway Shopping Center with the

JORDAN GREEN

announcement of plans to demolish the Ardmore Terrace and Cloverdale apartments has prompted renewed discussion about what the city should do to preserve affordable housing.

City council adopted guidelines for financial incentives for developers who agree to include affordable units in their projects. Under the policy, known as affordable workforce housing, the city may provide low-interest financing for up to 20 percent of the cost of the project, provided that the developer commits to setting aside at least 5 percent of the units for households with incomes at 50 to 80 percent of area median income. The renovation of the Pepper Building in downtown — the first project to take advantage of the incentives — would include six affordable rental units. Councilman Dan Besse, who represents the Southwest Ward, has lamented that the number of units created under the policy pales in

someone growing up in a poor neighborhood. It’s not an issue of averages; we’re looking pretty good if you take the average. The problem is the diversity of affordable housing options in all areas of the city, particularly in places close to services.

“There are a lot of people in East Winston who have to go to a lot of trouble or expense to get certain types of services,” he continued. “We’ve got to increase the services in places that don’t have them, and we’ve got to make it easier for people to live in the places where the services and jobs are.”

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urbanized pattern similar to the central business district.

The city already has a large stock of affordable housing, but it’s not necessarily in the right places. And the large stock of affordable housing is, perhaps ironically, a barrier to incentivizing it in the places where it’s most needed.

“It really is a study of contrasts,” Norby said. “When you look at it nationwide, this is a low-cost area in terms of housing costs. On the one hand, you say, ‘What’s the problem?’ On the other hand, you see we’re one of the worst counties of allowing upward mobility of

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a four-bedroom apartment. We might have an opportunity to say that if a project with multifamily units is located within X feet of an employment center, grocery stores or other places of service, that could be reduced, given that people can walk to many of the places where they need to go.”

Expanding infrastructure for public transportation could also potentially make relaxed parking requirements more attractive for developers. The city has studied the feasibility of building a streetcar system, but council members opted to not include the project in a 2014 bond referendum.

“When the streetcar study was being done in the area within short walking distance of the streetcar line, one of the things we were talking about was waiving or seriously reducing the off-street parking requirement so the developer wasn’t required to provide as much parking,” Norby said. While developers would have the option of providing off-street parking as part of a package of amenities to tenants or homeowners, the area around the transit lines would be expected to develop in a more

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comparison to the 350 affordable units that could potentially be lost with the demolition of the Ardmore Terrace and Cloverdale apartments.

State law has discouraged city leaders in Winston-Salem from taking the more aggressive tack of mandating affordable housing, as Chapel Hill, Davidson and Manteo — all struggling with high housing costs — have done. The three towns require that a percentage of owner-occupied housing units be priced affordably.

“These provisions push the limits of the law as there is no enabling legislation for this type of provision in the NC General Statutes and rent controls are expressly prohibited,” Norby wrote.

“Davidson’s provision is currently facing a legal challenge.”

One additional tool discussed in the memo as a potential lever for encouraging affordable housing is relaxing parking requirements.

“Right now, parking requirements for single-family homes are two spaces per unit,” Norby said. “For multifamily units, it’s one space per unit for efficiency to three spaces per unit for

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City pays for home repairs

by Jordan Green

The city of High Point is providing grants severe plumbing problems, dangerous to low-income households with special needs to electrical problems and heating and pay for home repairs. air-conditioning deficiencies.

Many homeowners can relate to the To qualify, residents must live in the dilemma of needing to make thousands city of High Point and have a household of dollars worth of repairs to preserve income of not more than 50 percent of the value of their home — often their area median income. For a family of most significant asset — but having no four that would be $28,950. To be eliextra income after mortgage payments, gible, residents must also have a special utilities and groceries to make the need. investment.

“You have to be elderly, or handiEven if they’ve built up some equity capped or disabled,” Fuqua said. “Or in their property, they might not be able you have to be a single parent with a to shoulder the additional debt burden child living in the home, a family of five that comes with taking out a new loan. or more household members, or if you Meanwhile, the city of High Point have a child under the age of 6 that has holds a vested interest in helping homean elevated blood level.” owners make repairs both to shore up The state funding guidelines cap the the city’s tax base and to encourage new amount that can be spent at $8,000 investment. For both the resident and per property, but Fuqua said the city the city, the worst thing that can happen allocated an additional $10,000 to cover is for the home to be lost to foreclosure, repairs in instances when the cost has because it becomes uninhabitable and exceeded that amount. the homeowner stops makThe repair funds availing monthly payments. able to eligible residents The city’s Urgent Repair To learn about are described in a broProgram provides funds of chure produced by the city the city of up to $8,000 to low-inas an “unsecured deferred, High Point’s come residents to make interest-free loan,” but repairs. Now in its second Urgent Repair function as a grant. Recipyear, the program is fundare required to sign Program, call ients ed by the state Housing a promissory note, but the 336.883.3349.

Finance Agency. To date, loan is forgiven at a rate of the city has rehabbed $1,000 per year until the 12 properties through the program, principal is completely eliminated.

Affordable Housing Manager Richard Fuqua said the city is eager to Fuqua said. The city recently received publicize the program, particularly to $100,000 from the state with plans to residents with very low incomes. address about 20 properties.

“We are wanting to make sure the The program is targeted at housecommunity is aware of the resources holds who earn 30 to 50 percent of area available, particularly to people in the median income. Fuqua said the city very low-income category of 30 percent determined that asking residents to put or below area median income,” he said. up their own money to match the city’s Most of the households that have investment would be unrealistic. taken advantage of the program to “With the income levels of each of date are in older areas of the city near these households it was found that there the center. “We have representation was very little or not any disposable inthroughout the city, but the majority comes to be able to stay in their home,” of our focus has been in the core city, Fuqua said. “If you’re handicapped and where a lot of the older homes have you need grab bars in your bathroom or been built and continue to exist,” Fuqua access ramps, these funds can be used to said. “We want to continue to improve provide those accessibility aides as well.” the housing stock and help people who Common repairs addressed by the don’t have the income to maintain those program also include leaking roofs, homes.”

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OPINION EDITORIAL

Duckling on the wall

The mural applied to the side of the old Daily Bread Flour Mill quickly became a point of pride in downtown Greensboro after it went up in April.

It was just eyes and ears, a mouth and a nose, but the people looked upon it as a harbinger of things to come in the downtown district, where large corporate interests had already carved up the choicest parcels and there seemed to be little concern for allowing the grassroots to flourish.

This piece, created by LA muralist Art of the Chase and organized by new-urbanist Ryan Saunders, seemed a perfect countermand to the notion.

Maybe that’s why everyone got so upset when, over the course of a few hours in early August, the mural disappeared, literally whitewashed while the building’s owner, Eric Robert, was out of town.

Derision bubbled forth freely from the social-media spring before Robert had even pulled into his parking lot to see what had been wrought. The general consensus among those who cared was that this was just another victory of corporate interests over the creative community, and it tapped into a fear that it would ever be thus in the city of Greensboro.

Last week, the final insult came in the form of a sharp Duck Head logo painted on a field of yellow, the shade of which some have likened to the complexion of Spongebob Squarepants.

And while it’s easy enough to channel populist rage against the corporate machine — especially if you’re actually listening to Rage Against the Machine — it’s probably a mistake to cast this episode in such stark tones.

For one, if the first mural had never been applied and the Duck Head logo sprung up on that wall overnight, people would have loved it, and it would have been a shoo-in for coverage on the front page of the daily newspaper and the television news.

For another, this is not exactly the destruction of the Library of Alexandria we’re talking about here. It’s not even the same as when the mural by Charleston artist Patch Whiskey was painted over at Common Grounds coffeeshop last year.

It’s more like when Shea Stadium, home of the New York Mets and named after the man who brought the team to town, was rebuilt and named Citi Field, after the bank.

So don’t be so hard on Duck Head or its owner, Prospect Brands, which after all is just exercising its right to advertise on its relatively new corporate headquarters — a common enough occurrence. And even though the message is a corporate one, there is still one less blank wall in downtown Greensboro, and dozens more ready to be covered.

CITIZEN GREEN

Celebrating Labor Day — by working Happy Labor Day. Around the office at Triad City Beat we say it with a wry smile.

We have a small crew and the work is relentless, from prospecting stories and sales on Thursdays and Fridays, to

by Jordan Green pursuing and executing leads and assignments over the weekend, writing and planning the next issue on Mondays, production on Tuesdays and distributing the paper on Wednesdays. The workload rarely varies and everyone’s effort is essential, so anytime one of us wants to take time off, it generally requires banking work a week or two in advance.

It suddenly strikes me as ironic and a little ridiculous that I’m in the office digesting the NC Justice Center’s State of Working North Carolina 2015 report in the early morning hours on Labor Day going into Tuesday.

My family doesn’t have the option of taking time off to celebrate Labor Day. For that matter, I’ve never been a member of a labor union, and as of the past 18 months I’m a shareholder in the company that employs me. But sincerely, fellow workers, I’m with you in spirit. All the way.

I’ve rehearsed the line about how we have labor unions to thank for the 40-hour workweek. But this truth has to be acknowledged: I’ve never had a 40-hour workweek, with the exception of 11 miserable months in 2003 and 2004 working in a newspaper sweatshop in New Mexico that forced its employees to grind out 12 stories per week in the allotted time. It left me anxious and sleepless in my downtime, while dreading the start of the new workweek.

If accelerated productivity, austerity and precarity are the hallmarks of a society where organized labor has been rendered powerless, then I would have to say the dream unraveled years ago. A significant pivot point in the American economy was reached in the mid-1970s, which happens to be the time when I was born. As the State of Working North Carolina 2015 report details, “The percentage of gross domestic product paid out to workers, often referred to as the ‘labor share,’ has slipped in many countries around the world. But the decline began in the United States in the mid-1970s and accelerated post-2008.”

How it happened is no secret.

Again, from the report: “As in the broader United States, workers in North Carolina have been experiencing significant long-term wage stagnation over the past 30 years despite producing historic productivity gains for their employers. The American economy has seen a growing wedge between business productivity — basically the amount of goods and services produced by each worker — and workers’ wages. By holding wages flat and using strategies like contingent labor, businesses have ensured that these histor-

ic gains have gone to the corporate bottom lines rather than workers’ paychecks. In turn, corporate employers have spent these gains — largely achieved by reducing labor costs — on executive compensation, expensive stock buy-backs, dividends, and income distributions to shareholders, benefitting wealthy investors at the expense of their workers.”

Before launching Triad City Beat, Brian Clarey, Eric Ginsburg and I worked at newspaper whose owner opposed the Affordable Care Act with a barely suppressed rage. While his employees almost to a one derived a measure of small hope from healthcare reform, our publisher warned us that it would be the ruin of the company. Whatever our personal beliefs, he counseled, we needed to protect this most precious asset so that it could continue to support us. The implication was that opposing the Affordable Care Act was a stand for the common good, and not a selfish reflex on his part to hoard his private wealth.

As an employee of a company where I hold a significant ownership stake, I now earn a fraction of what I once did.

Yet I can say without reservation that it feels liberating to be able to completely see through the lies of austerity without worrying that my own personal conviction could be wielded as a sword against me.

As an entrepreneur, my conviction has grown only more resolute that we need a higher minimum wage (as a small business, we’re exempt, but I know we’ll pay ourselves more when we can afford it). We need to strengthen the social safety net by expanding Medicaid and other programs, and we need a more progressive system of taxation. While a more robust safety net might mean paying higher payroll taxes on the front end, I know that in the long run it will stimulate demand for goods and services that will translate into more business.

I’m glad that, as a complement to policies designed to strengthen labor unions, the State of Working North Carolina 2015 report also recommends the promotion of co-ops, credit unions and employee stock ownership programs.

As entrepreneurs, my colleagues and I consider ourselves to be part of a local craft economy that lifts up the whole rather than suck out maximum profits without heed to our impact on the community. Jorge Maturino, our art director, holds an ownership share in the company, along with me and Ginsburg, and Clarey, our president, of course. And we bank with a credit union.

“These programs promote private property while simultaneously allowing workers to gain power and a greater share of the profits from their productivity,” the report reads.

“These efforts, most popular in North Carolina through credit unions but growing in the area of grocery stores, provide workers with the opportunity not only to set their own labor standards and business practices but represent a community wealth-building opportunity.”

This is work that is worth the long hours and sacrifice.

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IT JUST MIGHT WORK

A cure for pre-season NFL

FRESH EYES

School days

I leave the house, hoisting Everyone knows that pre-season football my backpack as I sucks. head towards the The games are meaningless. The best players campus, past the only come on the field for a few plays — and restaurants and then exposing themselves to injuries that could bars at the corner have real consequences. It offers little in the of Walker and way of predictors for the upcoming season. And

by Daniel Bayer Elam. The sidenobody — besides a few TV and league execs

by Brian Clarey walks are empty this early; now and then a — cares. bicyclist passes, and slowly I’m joined by others But my friend Big Al Ray cared enough to come up with a better plan. as I cross the Chapman Street intersection.

We should end the pre-season as we know it, Big Al said the other day, By the time I reach University Village, a block and extend the regular season to 18 games, upping it from the current 16from UNCG, I’m one of a line of students game schedule. moving slowly through the muggy August air.

That would cure the fans’ hunger for late-summer football and the games My calves and Achilles tendons ache; I’ve only would actually mean something. People would want to go, or watch on TV. walked about half a mile, maybe less, but I’m The NFL knows this, which is why it extended the season by a couple not used to this much physical exertion every weeks by instituting the bye week, giving day. My breathing labors as I cross Aycock each team one week off during the regular Street and walk past the softball field. season, but still keeping the schedule at 16 We should end the Becoming a full-time college student at 47 games. wasn’t a decision I made lightly. I’d gone back pre-season as we There’s a reason the league didn’t add before, almost a decade ago. After leaving my games the regular season: It’s because know it, Big Al said last newspaper job, I went to Randolph Comfootball at the professional level is as brutal the other day, munity College for an associates degree in as they come. Every team deals with injuries photojournalism. Somehow that was different, by the end of the season, when having a though. The plan was to use my photography deep bench can equate to a playoff berth. degree to further my journalism career, but Big Al has a solution for that, too: During the regular season, every I found the experience to be enjoyable in player on the roster must sit out one week, a sort of personal bye that would and of itself, aided by the fact that I lived in maintain a consistent level of activity for each player as it stands. It would a collective house with young people from also add a wild-card element to the regular season — say if the Patriots were backgrounds where one wasn’t necessarily on a winning streak around Week 12 but had to schedule a bye for QB Tom expected to forego a creative life in favor of Brady. That would be awesome, though knowing the Patriots they’d probamore utilitarian concerns. It was a wonderful bly find some shady way around it. time, full of new friends and experiences.

Anyway, Big Al’s plan sounds good to me. It adds length to the NFL seaI walk into class and take my seat. It’s British son just as people are primed for it in the late summer. It makes the season Authors, Romantic to Modern. I’ve never been more competitive. It hardly exposes the players to more injuries than they much into Wordsworth and Coleridge, or poare currently willing to permit. etry in general, but I notice that the Romantics’ And because the NFL is a tax-exempt nonprofit, we should all get a say in obsession with the wonders of nature mirrors how it’s run. the same in the Insane Clown Posse’s “Miracles.” I wonder if Shaggy Too Dope and Violent J are fans of 18th Century British bards. Stranger things have Three friends passionate happened, I suppose. I don’t bother to about exceptional food and bring up my theory in class, though. entertainment.

As I walk from one class to another Check us out on Facebook I notice a distinct lack of middle-aged or give us a call to find out students. In my first week on campus I more about us. only see two others who appear close to my age. Makes sense; most people in their forties probably attend school Mary Lacklen • Allen Broach • Bob Weston at night or online, studying around adult responsibilities such as family, (336)210–5094 • catering@capers.biz career, mortgages and the like, and 5000 Heathridge Terrace • Greensboro, NC 27410-8419 can’t really afford to toss it all out the

window to become full-time students. I didn’t have much of an adult life to give up, though.

No wife or kids, still living in the same house that I resided in when I went to community college and a delivery job that was draining me, financially and otherwise. I had nothing to lose by packing it in and going back to school.

Again.

The next class is American Politics. I have a leg up on this one. I was an activist for years, covered local issues as a journalist and argue politics on Facebook almost every day. (I’ve tried to be clever in choosing my classes for my first semester, picking ones that I think I’ll be good at so as to get my scholastic career off to a successful start). The professor breaks us up into groups to discuss the merits or lack thereof of different healthcare delivery systems around the world. Contrary to the hell-ina-handbasket hand-wringing of pontificators and pundits, the students in this class don’t appear to be any dumber than my cohorts and I were at their age, and are maybe even a bit more serious; the class weisenheimer appears to have become an endangered species. Can’t say I blame ’em. They’ve known nothing but international conflict and economic stagnation since they were toddlers, a far cry from the carefree days of hair metal and Pac-Man that my generation enjoyed.

Outside of class, I don’t really talk to other students. I didn’t come here to make friends necessarily, but it would be nice to feel at least somewhat in sync with those around me, a little less alone. I attend an interest meeting for the school literary magazine, but it’s short and most of the talk centers around how to get published and establish a career as a writer or artist. I sign up for an email list and leave.

As I’m walking home I see a mob of students marching across the campus, chanting something indistinguishable. I think it has something to do with Take Back the Night. Then it occurs to me: Whatever our common interests, all this stuff is new for these young people. Getting published, passionately throwing themselves into activism and/or romance — they’ve got a million things to look forward to, things I’ve already done and left behind.

I hoist my backpack again and begin the walk back to the house, feeling a little older than I did this morning.

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

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FO YE

A curated gu

Mythili Prakash, an exemplar of the classic Indian dance style Bharata Natyam from Los Angeles, performs five times, on Saturday and Sunday, during the National Folk Festival in Greensb

uide to the National Folk Festival

boro.

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE NCTA

When the 75th annual National Folk Festival makes its inaugural outing this weekend in what will be a three-year run in Greensboro, don’t expect a showcase of sensitive singer-songwriter types like James Taylor and Jackson Brown. Or a festival restricted to Appalachian stringband music or the blues, although those traditions will certainly be represented.

Since its founding in 1934, the festival has taken a decidedly multicultural stance in curating a lineup that represents the patchwork quilt of American experience.

“It’s the music of the people writ large,” said Julia Olin, executive director of the National Council for the Traditional Arts, which collaborates with local host communities to produce the festival. “We are looking to celebrate grassroots traditions of the broadest range of cultural traditions that represent all the people who make their home in our nation — which today, is everyone. Yes, there will be those deep vernacular traditions that have been developing in our country over hundreds of years. And there will be cultural traditions that have been brought here recently with new immigrants.”

The National Folk Festival is a stage where the hardcore honky-tonk of Dale Watson (see feature story on page 22) fits comfortably with Grand Master Seiichi Tanaka & the San Francisco Taiko Dojo, and Lutchinha, a Cape Verdean singer who makes her home in Massachusetts.

Olin said the festival strives to represent the breadth of folk culture across the nation while also highlighting the regional traditions surrounding its host cities. The 13 acts rotating through the North Carolina Traditions Stage range from Piedmont bluesman John Dee Holeman to Appalachian ballad singer Sheila Kay Adams, from the Warriors of AniKituhwa, the official cultural ambassadors of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, to the Monitors, an African-American soul, R&B, jazz and gospel group with a 60-year pedigree. As a complement to the music, the North Carolina Folklife Demonstration Area will showcase more than a dozen potters from across the state.

Greensboro’s seminal place in the civil rights struggle provides a thematic thread for much of the festival’s programming, supported in large part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to ArtsGreensboro. Olin said the local arts agency independently applied for the grant, and the National Council for the Traditional Arts eagerly embraced the opportunity to collaborate on the program, dubbed Fabric of Freedom. Songs of Hope and Justice, a concert of songs from the folk canon and new original songs about contemporary social issues kicks off the festival at the Railyard on Thursday. Among the North Carolina artists participating in the concert are Rhiannon Giddens, a Guilford County native whose national profile has recently exploded with an acclaimed solo album and participation in The New Basement Tapes project, and Alice Gerrard, a legendary old-time musician, singer and curator.

Once ArtsGreensboro landed the federal grant for the Fabric of Freedom program, it was almost intuitive for Olin to approach Mavis Staples about performing at the festival, based on her solo work and with the Staple Singers.

“My gosh, the music was so central,” Olin said. “It was really a soundtrack to so much of the activity of the civil rights movement. Pops Staples, her father, met Martin Luther King Jr., and said, ‘I like what this man is doing.’ And he says, ‘If he can say it, we can sing it.’ To later empowerment anthems like ‘Respect Yourself.’ Mavis is an amazing woman.” Staples performs on the Belk Stage on Saturday at 4 p.m.

Olin worked a personal connection to bring Staples on board. Both Mavis Staples and her late father, Roebuck “Pops” Staples, have been awarded National Heritage Fellowships. Olin’s organization, the National Council for the Traditional Arts, has worked with the National Endowment for the Arts to produce the awards ceremony since 1983.

Olin calls Mavis Staples and her family “a spiritual and moral force” as artists who walk the talk and put their entire being into their music.

Yet while Staples might enjoy the highest profile of any of the performers, with the possible exception of Rhiannon Giddens, every one on the festival lineup projects excellence, Olin said.

“Honestly, every artist in this festival is so special in a way that people will just have to come and experience for themselves,” she said. “They’ve come to this with a very open and sharing attitude: ‘This is the music from our house. I’m here to share it with you.’ Not, ‘I’m the star and you’re the audience.’ That feeling, that kind of open, accessible environment — it gives the festival a very special feel. They’re humble, but they’re great. You may have never heard of them, but they’re great.”

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OLK EAH!

by Jordan Green

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The man who seceded from country music

by Jordan Green

There’s a little piece of all the legends in the original songs that comprise Dale Watson’s 1995 debut album: the brooding remorse and wry, dark humor of Johnny Cash in “Holes in the Wall” (“Holes in the wall and the stains in the carpet/ Use elbow grease and spackle and Pinesol”) over the simple boom-chucka rhythm of an acoustic guitar, and the bleak sentimentality of Merle Haggard in “She Needs Her Mama.” He even cops a little Shakespeare in “Caught” with the line, “What a web we weave when we practice to deceive.”

While his baritone register is deeper than his heroes George Jones and Gary Stewart, Watson is a master of the

warbled heartbreak vocal wrung through clenched-jaw stoicism that made those singers so great.

“I came from a time when the music still had a lot of the roots,” Watson said by phone. “What was being played on the radio when I recorded my first 45 at Gilley’s Recording Studio in Pasadena, Texas was George Jones, Merle Haggard, Charlie Pride, Gary Stewart and Ray Price. It was still very much what country used to be. I was wanting to join them

ranks. When I was out searching for the deal, that was the big shock is that they didn’t want that anymore. They wanted the pop stuff. I needed to change to that.

It never entered my mind they weren’t looking for me. They’re not looking for an old Chevy; they’re looking for a Maserati.”

From the outset of his career as a recording artist on the Oakland, Calif. roots label HighTone Records, Watson has struck a defiant, anti-Nashville posture. Over the years, his pompadour has taken on a silvery sheen, and his humor has grown sharper while his feel for the tragic has deepened with personal setbacks. He has retained a preference for performing in honky-tonks — a venue equivalent in intimacy to a punk-rock house show.

He no longer identifies with country music; after all, the industry never made a place for the man who sang on his first album, “I’m too country now for country, just like Johnny Cash/ Help me, Merle, I’m breakin’ out in a Nashville rash.” Watson now describes his music as Ameripolitan, which he defines as “original music with prominent roots influence,” including four distinct subcategories: Western swing, rockabilly, honky-tonk and outlaw music.

As a congenital outsider who has staunchly resisted the commercial imperatives of Nashville’s star machinery, Watson should feel right at home at the National Folk Festival in Greensboro, where his songs will hold a place in a multicultural mosaic comprised of both longstanding vernacular traditions and the music of recent immigrant groups.

“I know it’s politically incorrect to bring up the Civil War and the South, but it’s time to go Robert E.

Dale Watson emulates country legends like George Jones and Merle Haggard, but he prefers the term “Ameripolitan.”

LEANN MUELLER

Lee on this thing and say, ‘They won,’” Watson says of his stylistic divorce. “They took over the name of country music and they’ve successfully turned it into something else. What happens when you lose the war? You let the victor occupy it, and you move on down the road and start your own thing.”

Or, to use another metaphor that may go down easier in North Carolina’s urban corridor: “I don’t belong in country music. It’s kind of like gentrification. What happens is you have neighborhoods in every town that you consider it poor. People live there forever and then somebody builds a Starbucks and it ruins the neighborhood. Rich people move in and make these sidewalk diners, and tax values go up. And we can’t afford to be there anymore.”

This will be the first time Watson has performed in Greensboro, but he spent part of his childhood in North Carolina.

His family lived outside of Wilmington until he was 12, when they moved to the Houston area so his stepdad, who worked for the Brown & Root construction company, could get a better job. Watson’s pithy description of his time in North Carolina could easily fit in a song lyric.

“We lived on a dirt road,” he said. “It’s fond memories being at that age in North Carolina, where I learned to dig for clams, rake for oysters and pick tobacco.”

While Watson’s songs are imbued with conviction, he’s a natural entertainer with a repertoire of exaggerated facial expressions, whether performing on the hallowed “Austin City Limits” or in a dive bar in the Netherlands. For example, on his signature tune “I Lie When I Drink,” broad smiles intersperse comical self-mortification and eye rolls. It’s not an affectation.

“I had the good luck of my dad being a singer, and getting to go out and see my brothers play with other bands and the way they interacted with the crowd,” Watson said. “They knew everybody in the audience. It rubbed off on me; it wasn’t a conscious thing. I always look at every show like people are in my living room or in my house. I appreciate their time, and want to make sure they enjoy themselves.

Can’t miss: Henry Butler & Jambalaya (8:45 p.m., Belk Stage) Trust me on this one: Henry Butler is one of New Orleans’ greatest piano players, in direct lineage with Professor Longhair, Dr. John, Mr. Eddie Bo, James Booker, Fats, Tuts, Jelly Roll… like that. He can do the boogie-woogie and the finger-roll, the Storyville stomp and the swampy groove.

And like all the greats, he adds a bit of his own spice. I actually shook his hand once. It was like grabbing a pack of hot dogs.

Other acts: Los Tres Reyes (8:45 p.m., Church Street Stage) A trío romántico 60 years in the making, melding vocal harmonies with flamenco fingerwork.

The Dardanelles (9:45 p.m., Church Street Stage) Traditional music from Newfoundland played by twentysomethings with a punk sensibility. Sells itself.

Henry Butler

Wild card: Frank London’s Klezmer Brass All Stars (7:15 p.m., Belk Stage) Klezmer music is the original funk, and when you add a serious horn section and fat bassline, it can speed up a hora circle into something lethal. The music is a proven crowd pleaser. The only wild card is if the folk fest audience can keep up with the beat.

triad-city-beat.com

Friday

Suggested itinerary: I’d suggest catching the opening parade through downtown and then parking it at the Balk Stage for the night, moving closer to the stage as opportunity and crowd shifts allow. There you’ll catch the opening remarks at 7 p.m., the klezmer act and a storyteller set by Sheila Kay Adams before Henry Butler brings the magic.

Stick around for some Afro-Cuban action by the Pedro Martinez Group at the late set if you’re of a mind. By then you’ll be in the front row.

— Brian Clarey

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE NCTA

Saturday afternoon Can’t miss: Mavis Staples (4 p.m., Belk Stage) Saturday afternoon, at 4, is the only time that unofficial headliner Mavis Staples performs her legendary gospel, soul and R&B music. Do. Not. Miss. This.

Other acts: Steve Weintraub (3 p.m., McDonald’s Family Stage) Also only once, Steve Weintraub will perform his “awesome Jewish stunts & dances.” How can you say no to that? If he bombs, there’s Cajun music going down nearby simultaneously.

Rhiannon Giddens (1 p.m., Lawn Stage) Rhiannon Giddens (1 p.m.) plays several times this weekend, but we’d be remiss not to highlight her here.

This set reunites Giddens with Justin Robinson, one of the founding members of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, and it’s a tribute to the late Joe Thompson, their mentor for African-American string-band music.

Wild card: Yuqin Wang & Zhengli Xu (3:35 p.m., McDonald’s Family Stage) Chinese rod puppetry? I think so. Performing twice this afternoon, it’s worth stopping by to at least see what Yuqin Wang and Zhengli Xu are up to. The hardest choice of the afternoon may be between Iraqi oud versus Afro-Cuban music; Rahim AlHaj’s picking is stirring and somber, which may outweigh the more danceable and lively sounds of the Pedrito Martinez Group.

Suggested itinerary: Catch the Warriors of AniKituhwa Cherokee ceremonial dance to begin your

Saturday at noon at Center City Park. Wander over to Grace Chang’s Chinese guzheng (a plucking instrument) followed by Yuqin Wang & Zhengli Xu Chinese rod puppetry, both at the nearby McDonald’s Family Stage. Frank London’s Klezmer Brass Allstars sounds rad, but they’re further away and also play without competition the night prior.

The Heavenly Harmonies Gospel Traditions takes place at 1 p.m. at the Wrangler Stage, but you can’t go wrong with local (yet national) star Rhiannon Giddens with former Carolina Chocolate Drops bandmate Justin Robinson performing with an African-American string band at the Lawn Stage. Skip out early to see the Japanese taiko drumming at the Church Street Stage at 1:30 p.m.

It’s a serious toss-up at 2 p.m. between Rahim AlHaj’s Iraqi oud music at the Lawn Stage or the Pedrito Martinez Group’s Afro-Cuban groove. I lean towards the Caribbean on this, and the Wrangler stage is more central.

The only performance of the Jewish stunts and dances is at 3 p.m., so find Steve Weintraub at the McDonald’s Stage. Mavis Staples, of course, takes the Wrangler Stage at 4 p.m. It’s her only performance.

Save the Monitors for Sunday, and maybe go catch the Pine Leaf Boys’ Cajun music at 4:30 p.m. at the McDonald’s Stage.

I don’t know exactly what the World Rhythms Percussion Traditions will entail — the festival website just lists a half-dozen artists from around the world. But what’s cooler than a bunch of different drummers? Basically nothing. Starts at 5:15 at the Wrangler Stage.

— Eric Ginsburg

Mavis Staples

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE NCTA

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Sept. 9 — 15, 2015

Cover Story Grand Master Seiichi Tanaka studied taiko drumming in Japan.

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PHOTO COURTESY OF THE NCTA

Tanaka’s San Francisco Taiko Dojo is likely to be one of the most visually compelling performances of the festival.

Bill Myers plays flute with the Monitors, a group from Wilson that has been playing jazz and gospel music for 50 years.

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE NCTA

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE NCTA

Can’t Miss: Grand Master Seiichi Tanaka & the San Francisco Taiko Dojo, Church Street Stage @ 9:45 p.m.

When Grand Master Seiichi Tanaka visited the Cherry Blossom Festival in San Francisco’s Japantown, he was disappointed in the lack of drumming that he remembered from similar festivals in Japan. He returned to Japan, devoted himself to the art and is now the only grand master of taiko drums in the United States and the leader of a tight regimen of taiko drummers.

Other acts: Aurelio Martinez, Belk Stage @ 7:15 p.m.

The Garifuna are a micro-ethnic community from the Caribbean coast of Central America. Their music is a mix of Spanish guitar and African rhythms pounded on drums made from logs.

Aurelio Martinez is a Garifuna superstar.

His songs are traditional, rhythmic melodies that capture the hopeful spirit of a marginalized community. With both danceable and complex moments, there’s something for everyone in Martinez’s music. That’s not to mention the guy’s charisma. From 2006 to 2010 Martinez served in the Honduran Congress, where he fought for the concerns of the Garifuna.

the North Carolina Folk Heritage Award.

His music is gritty, driven by a scratchy blues voice and some mean guitar licks. Williette Hinton buck dances next to Holeman.

Buck dancing is a mix between juba and clogging, the precursor to tap dancing.

Suggested Itinerary: Start at the Wrangler stage where World Rhythms: Percussion Traditions is happening. There you’ll be hitting a few birds with one stone since they feature a widespread of percussion from acts like Mythili Prakash Dance Ensemble, the Pedrito Dance Ensemble and the West African Highlife band. At 6:15 p.m., head to the Traditions Stage where John Dee Holeman and Williette Hinton are playing. It’ll be their only performance, so if you want to see Piedmont blues this is your only shot.

You’re going to want to be at the Belk Stage for Aurelio Martinez’s performance at 7:15 p.m. And that puts you in a good position to walk down to the Church Street stage where you’ll stay all night. Argentine tango starts at 8:45 p.m. followed by Japanese taiko drumming at 9:45 p.m.

— Daniel Wertheim

Clarification Last week’s cover story, “No easy walk: Two cities’ cycling and pedestrian infrastructure in the post-sprawl age,” misused the term “centerline” in the context of measuring bikelanes. Centerline refers to roadway miles, while lane miles refers to sections of bike lane on either side of the roadway. Thus, the number of lane miles is typically twice the number of centerline miles. In lane miles, Greensboro’s biped plan recommends construction of 268 miles of bike lanes, 20 miles of protected bicycle lanes, or cycle tracks, and 41 miles of shared lane markings by 2035. Since 2006, the city has been adding 2.9 miles of bike lanes per year.

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Saturday evening

Wild card: John Dee Holeman with Williette Hinton, North Carolina Traditions Stage @ 6:15 p.m.

John Dee Holeman is the last of a dying breed. He was born in Hillsborough, NC and started playing the Piedmont blues in the mid-1940’s. He’s collaborated with Taj Mahal and been awarded

Sunday Can’t miss: The Monitors (5:15 p.m., North Carolina Traditions Stage) One definition of folk music is the culture that people of a particular region or locale have decided together is important and worth preserving. By that definition, it would be hard beat the Monitors, a band with a 60-year history that has excelled at R&B, soul, jazz, blues and gospel — representing many of the currents of African-American music in the post-World War II period. Exemplifying the versatility of black music traditions in North Carolina — they’re based in Wilson County, on the coastal plain — band members have backed James Brown, and Roberta Flack was a former Monitors lead singer.

Other acts: Lutchinha (12:45 p.m., Dance Pavilion) The lilting vocal music of Cape Verde, an archipelago off the coast of West Africa, has a haunting quality, perhaps the because the islands were settled in the 1500s as a result of the Portuguese slave trade. It makes sense that many Cape Verdeans wound up in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, working in the whaling industry. Lutchinha, aka Maria Neves Leite, is a world-class exemplar of the tradition. She returns to the stage after a hiatus to raise her four children accompanied by an all-star band of Cape Verdean musicians from New England.

Babá Ken Okulolo & the West African Highlife Band (1:45 p.m., Dance Pavilion; 5:15, Belk Stage) If anyone was more funky and politically on point than James Brown in the early 1970s, it was Fela Kuti in Nigeria.

Fela’s revolutionary music built on the foundation of highlife, a dance-music hybrid of Western and traditional African sounds. Bába Ken Okulolo played bass with Fela and other West African luminaries like King Sunny Ade, before settling in the San Francisco Bay area in 1985.

Wild card: Grace Chang (noon, McDonald’s Family Stage) Blues and jazz, America’s original art forms which laid the foundation for rock and roll, soul, funk, hip hop, electronic dance music and virtually every other genre of popular music, dates back more than 100 years. If you think that’s a long pedigree, try going back 2,500 years to the advent of the guzheng, or zither, in China. Grace Chang, the director of the Chinese Harp Music Center in Queens, NY and one of the foremost players of the instrument, performed recitals in Taiwan, Japan and Korea.

She plays solo at the festival and also provides musical accompaniment to Yuquin Wang & Zhengli Xu’s Chinese rod-puppetry act.

Suggested itinerary: Start with the Sunday Gospel & Traditional Music showcase at the North Carolina

Traditions stage at noon. Co-hosted by the inestimable Rhiannon Giddens, it covers the stylistic gamut from sacred Appalachian songs by Sheila Kay Adams to African-American congregational hymn singing by the Branchettes. Head over to the Dance Pavilion at 1:45 p.m. to catch Babá Ken Okulolo & the West African Highlife Band. That’s where it’s at for the next three hours, with Garifuna guitarist Aurelio taking the stage at 3 p.m., followed by St. Louis bluesman Marquise Knox at 4:15 p.m. That said, Iraqi oud player Rahim AlHaj at the Lawn Stage at 2 p.m., Hector Del Curto’s Tango Quartet at the Belk Stage at 2 p.m. and New Orleans’ Henry Butler & Jambalaya at the Church Street Stage at 3:30 p.m. are all tempting alternatives. You could finish out the festival with a bluegrass band from Ohio or a Cajun group from Louisiana, but I suggest giving the home-team advantage to the Monitors, who play the North Carolina Traditions Stage at 5:15 p.m.

— Jordan Green

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Sept. 9 — 15, 2015

Cover Story

Available: • 120 West Lewis St. • 532 S Elm St.

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DISTINCTIVE PROPERTIES ENRICHING GREENSBORO

Contact Andy Zimmerman at (336) 255-4813

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We’re also offering locally prepared items in select locations, such as desserts from The Sweet Shop & Pound Cakes by Margaret Elaine. Also, get a cup of locally roasted organic coffee from Carolina Coffee Roasting Company!

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3920 Cotswold Ave • 3011 Randleman Rd • 3930 High Point Rd Mayberry Mall, Mt. Airy • 1629 Freeway Dr., Reidsville

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Sept. 9 — 15, 2015 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story

Food Music Art Good Sport

Banquet

FOOD

by Daniel Wirtheim

Zen hops Kula Yoga @ Gibbs Hundred Brewing (GSO), Sept. 13 Kula Yoga, the community for yoga and beer, is stretching it all out before they start drinking. Yoga makes your body and mind feel refreshed and not worried that you’re drinking a beer before 1 p.m. Yoga starts at 10:45 a.m. and offers mixed-level practice. Visit gibbshundred.com for more information.

Dog Days Pints and Patties for Paws @ Natty Greene’s Brewing Company Co. (GSO), Saturday Almost everyone loves dogs. Hot dogs, that is. The folks at Natty Green’s don’t make a distinction because they have both. Pints and Patties for Paws is their way of giving back to dogs on four legs while giving humans on two nice deals on alcohol and hot dogs. Dogs are welcome and proceeds benefit the Humane Society of the Piedmont. The event starts at 4 p.m. Visit nattygreenes.com for more information.

Flea but not free Hoots Fleast @ Bailey Park (W-S), Saturday Lots of events have a food truck, maybe even a few. Hoots Flea Market East, or Fleast Fest, will have 10. The entire event will feature 100 food vendors. With all that food they’re going to need some type of food eating contest, which they also have.

There will be beer and wine, and fun for all age levels. There’s a whole lot more to be found at hootsflea.com

The Blue Agave Burrito, here with chorizo and chicken, is one of the best in the Triad.

ERIC GINSBURG

Burrito blues? Try this ‘choripollo’ special

All She Wrote

Shot in the Triad

Games

by Eric Ginsburg

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people, at least in this area Most of the world, are not as stingy with their burrito endorsements as I am.

The Triad suffers from what TCB’s Brian Clarey calls “Good Enough Disease,” where low expectations in any arena, but especially food, contribute to the elevation of what would be considered subpar or unacceptable in a larger market. So it goes with the San Francisco-style, handheld burrito (as opposed to a “wet” burrito covered in toppings and cut with silverware).

The shortcomings emerge in an as-

sortment of ways, like a poorly wrapped other sane Triadian) just order arroz con burrito that is otherwise delicious but pollo, a tostada or quesadilla. And with a dearth of options, I’d rather endorse where the foil is tucked into the meal, nothing forcing the consumer than give credence to to pull it out Visit Blue Agave Mexican Bar & Grill and creating an impostor. at 3900 Battleground Ave. (GSO) or So when I a mess, or at blueagavemexicanbarandgrill.com. say that the mediocre signature ingredients burrito at contributing to a less-than-memorable experience.

Blue Agave may be ranked as my second With plenty of high-quality Mexican favorite in the Triad — jostling with food in the area, a disappointing burrito Taco Riendo 3 in Winston-Salem for the position behind Greensboro’s Villa del is no burrito at all, and I (along with any

of advertising than journalism, we argue. But it would feel like malpractice not to mention that Blue Agave is currently running a Monday special like none I’ve ever seen: 40 percent off all food.

Not appetizers, not BOGO entrees.

Almost half off the bill for all food items running from 4 p.m. until close at 10. I mean, damn.

Dining out isn’t an option for many people in the Triad, but a nicer meal out — rather than a quick and cheap lunch sandwich or cooking at home — can’t get much more attainable.

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Agave arroz con pollo with just the right amount of cheese and sour cream to cover the vegetables and main fare and other menu items that incorporate the choripollo, like the tacos.

The fresh guacamole, although expensive, may be unparalleled in quality in the local market. And this is no example of “Good Enough Disease” — it tastes impeccable. Blue Agave’s sangria margarita arrives in a goblet (and is cheapest on Saturdays), but the simpler lime margarita on the rocks is big as well, and is only $3 on Mondays.

Here at Triad City Beat we usually don’t talk much about specials and deals in print — that’s more a function

Up Front

comes with a salad and a delicious aioli that is even better on the burrito than the salad, is in line with what you’d expect to pay for a filling dinner like this.

But that’s almost double the price of its more fast-food-styled counterparts.

Blue Agave is much more than a burrito joint, however. A large dining room area with booths and tables, well endowed bar space and flanking outdoor seating make the restaurant appealing for any sort of outing.

Patrons can order one of two egg items during lunch — the huevos rancheros or huevos con chorizo, which both sound appealing — any number of house specials including a fantastic Blue

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Mar — that should mean something.

Blue Agave, a more upscale restaurant than its two divey counterparts at the top of the burrito hierarchy, is actually a purveyor of both the forkand-knife and handheld variations on the dish. Located far enough down Battleground Avenue that it’s pushing Greensboro’s city limits, Blue Agave serves something its counterparts don’t: a “choripollo” option blending chicken and chorizo.

The Blue Agave Burrito, as it’s called on the menu, comes cut in half and unwrapped, filled with orange rice, black beans, sour cream, cheese and one of five meat choices. The $10 meal, which

Opinion

Corks, Caps & Taps

Music

One of the best options on the automatic wine dispenser at Corks, ERIC GINSBURG Caps & Taps right now is the Boneshaker zinfandel from Lodi, Calif.

Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

Visit Corks, Caps & Taps at 626 W. Fourth Street (W-S) or at corkscapstaps. com.

Games

more than worth its price tag. The same could be said of the 2012 pinot noir from Santa Lucia, Calif. vineyard Gallo, but the more expensive 2009 Amarone della Valpolicella from Santi in Italy — a fruit-forward and somewhat overpowering wine — didn’t make the grade.

Other wine shops offer automatic wine dispensers by the ounce too, of course. What makes Corks, Caps & Taps appealing, besides its central location, is the mélange of choices, be it a wine club, growler fills or the ability to appeal to younger late-night drinkers or people stopping in after or during work.

Good Sport

machine.

For someone like me who appreciates wine but who is still relatively clueless, it’s a step up from bad habits formed at half-off wine nights or snagging the cheapest bottle of a particular kind of wine available to bring home. My self-doubt magnified as I perused the selection, realizing that Lodi, Calif. isn’t a town invented by “Sons of Anarchy” but rather is home to Boneshaker winery, and finding out that, though apparently his products have been around since the ’90s, I had no clue that NASCAR star Jeff Gordon makes pretty decent wines.

And that’s where the samples come in, or the general benefit of drinking wine at a bottle shop where you can sample by the ounce or glass and leave with more under your arm. A $2 one-ounce pour of Boneshaker’s zinfandel proved enough to know the $17 full bottle is

Art

in seeking hard cider for his roommate.

The bottle shop has a few options, on draft and bottled, among its broader selection of beers and wines.

Corks, Caps & Taps helps distinguish itself with growler fills, with a beer selection that isn’t overly concerned with North Carolina crafts as competitors are. Two Triad breweries are currently on draft: Gibb’s Hundred and Pig Pounder, both in Greensboro, though featuring neighbor Foothills might be redundant and Small Batch in Winston-Salem doesn’t distribute. With about 35 taps, there’s plenty to choose from.

In addition to wines by the glass, Corks, Caps & Taps also offers eight wines — four red, four white — from automatic dispensers in 1, 2.5 and 5-ounce pours. After preloading any amount of money on a card, customers can sample the wines.

The current whites trend sweet. But one of the reds, the Chateau Pas de L’Ane Saint-Emilion Grand Cru, a 2006 red blend from Bordeaux, is one of the best wines the bartender said he’s ever tried. At $7.32 for a 1-ounce pour, it isn’t exactly cheap, and even at the fiveounce rate, there’s no discount for the larger buy.

Rather than a different way to sit and drink, the automatic wine machines are best utilized as a way to check a wine before buying a bottle — the bottle shop retails each directly below the sampling

Food

“Well,” she said as she tipped up her glass for the final sip of wine, “I better go back to work.”

Not that it was particularly early — Corks, Caps & Taps, a downtown Winston-Salem bottle shop and bar, had opened its doors more than five hours prior. But this woman had slipped in some time around 5 p.m. on a recent Wednesday, picking one of the white wines available by the glass as an afternoon tide-over.

She wasn’t alone — at the other end of the bar, a man nursed a beer and watched a women’s tennis match with the bartender, noting the player’s skill and apparel. Later, a woman who appeared to be his wife joined him.

“Uh oh, here comes the fun police,” he joked as she walked through the door, and the bartender noted that he already had her drink ready for her like clockwork. The only other folks in the place, a couple, stayed at a table outside.

The scene at Corks, Caps & Taps can be much rowdier, like on a recent Friday night as patrons formed a boisterous clump on the sidewalk who seemed like an overflow crowd from a house party in comparison to the more orderly and seated customers at Foothills brewery a few doors down. But the venue’s greater appeal is as a grab-and-go joint, despite a well-finished interior.

Not long after the woman’s mid-shift dip-in, a twentysomething alt kid walked

Cover Story

by Eric Ginsburg

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Sept. 9 — 15, 2015 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Food

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

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Setlist

MUSIC

by Jordan Green

Conscience of the folk Songs of Hope and Justice @ the Railyard (GSO), Thursday Vocalist and instrumentalist Rhiannon Giddens is only one of the luminaries participating in this concert highlighting songs from the folk canon and original songs about contemporary social issues, which kicks off the National Folk Festival.

Bluegrass pioneer Alice Gerrard also appears, along with singer-songwriters Laurelyn Dossett, Molly McGinn, Bhi Bhiman and Django Haskins. The show is free and starts at 7 p.m.

Sonic weirdness from Hoots Flea Spirit System @ Bailey Park (W-S), Saturday Reanimator Records curates an afternoon concert at the fantastic Bailey Park for Hoots Flea East. Spirit System, an ambient Brooklyn band whose sound owes a debt to Joy Division, is one of the out-of-towners, along with the more aggro Axis: Sova from Chicago. Crooks on Tape and Bolmongani fill out the bill. The free show starts at 4 p.m.

Donkeys in the street The Donkeys @ Fourth Street (W-S), Sept.

13 The music of the Donkeys, a San Diego band, conjures Kerouac’s “end of the land sadness” with a languorous, rich sound.

Not a bad way to spend a pleasant, late summer afternoon at Second Sundays on Fourth in downtown Winston-Salem. The show is free and starts at 3 p.m.

Rock and roll study hall Sheer Mag @ Guilford College (GSO), Sept. 14 Philadelphia’s Sheer Mag, which our intern Daniel Wirtheim describes as “low-fi punk crossed with the Jackson 5,” headlines WQFS’ showcase at Sternberger Auditorium, sharing the stage with New York City garage rockers Hankwood & the Hammerheads, the Greensboro stonersurf-rock combo Wahyas and a band called Bad Eric. No time is listed on the Facebook invite. The show is free; would you expect anything else?

Jazz and soul vocalist Lalah Hathaway closed out the John Coltrane International Jazz & Blues Festival on Sunday.

JORDAN GREEN

Artists wrestle with Coltrane legacy at festival

by Jordan Green

Did anyone play one John Coltrane song today?”

Coming from Lalah Hathaway, the headliner for the Sunday-night finale of the John Coltrane International Jazz & Blues Festival in High Point, the question bore an odd provenance, but it was cloaked in an unmistakable feeling of lament.

It was the second time Hathaway had interrupted the song, a cover of Luther Vandross’ “Forever, For Always, For Love,” teasing an audience that was beside itself with anticipation for a hit.

The first was to plug her forthcoming, crowd-funded album Lalah Hathaway Live! “‘A Love Supreme’?” she continued. “‘Giant Steps’? Not one?”

It would be hard to argue with Hathaway as a headliner for the festival, considering her 20-plus-year recording career, building on her father, Donny

“

Hathaway’s extraordinary legacy as a jazz and soul vocalist. The younger Hathaway’s technical excellence — her lustrous voice is played like a finely tuned instrument — makes her a fine standard-bearer for a festival honoring one of the greatest jazz saxophonists and composers of the 20th Century.

You could hear the distillation of beauty from suffering and the spiritual questing of Coltrane’s music in Hathaway’s exquisite performance of her song “Breathe,” her voice suggesting birds fluttering above crashing waves as a counterpoint to the lyrics: “All around me, everywhere/ Seems like nothing but despair/ Confusion, disillusion….”

And yet even in Hathaway’s set, with an emphasis on uplifting and classy relationship material, the absence of Coltrane in spirit was notable, never more so than when the singer’s utterance of “Thank you, and goodnight” set

off a scramble for the exits rather than applause or cries for an encore.

To be fair, there were moments of direct reference and spiritual lineage to the Coltrane legacy. To answer Hathaway’s question, the NC Coltrane All Star Band, led by Greensboro pianist Turner Battle, performed “Body and Soul,” and conguero Poncho Sanchez and his band paid sincere tribute with their rendition of Coltrane’s harmonically complex “Liberia” earlier in the day.

Electric bassist Marcus Miller, an audience favorite, channeled Coltrane’s spirituality on the first day of the festival with his song “Gorée,” a reflection on the trans-Atlantic slave trade that he introduced as “a celebration that somehow we managed to survive that period of history.” With somber reflection giving way to a gale-force flurry of bass notes, it was perhaps the most political moment of the festival.

Opinion

develop a sonically bracing, culturally relevant and musically excellent jazz festival in North Carolina.

While it’s a shame to squander the good name of one of the greatest jazz performers and composers of the 20th Century, it’s also hard to blame the organizers for looking for an export product that’s clearly in demand. If High Point is centrally located in an urban corridor within 100 miles of X number of African Americans aged 40 to 65 with disposable income and a preference for inoffensive smooth jazz, so be it. Beyond the North Carolina market, the festival’s appeal was also demonstrated by the sighting of license plates from Georgia, Tennessee, Ohio, Virginia and New Jersey. Even if the festival doesn’t make any waves in Coltrane’s old neighborhood, the city’s hoteliers undoubtedly appreciate the business.

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of food and drink provided on site, the festival provides no incentive to outof-town visitors to explore the city and get a sense of the local conditions that nourished and frustrated Coltrane.

Perhaps next year, when repair work is complete on Washington Street, the festival could collaborate on programming in the community. A midnight jam session at Jackie’s Place for fans who want to hear more music after the final set at Oak Hollow Park comes to mind as one idea.

It’s hard not to come away from the festival wishing the programming were more bold, more restlessly innovative — more directly tied to the monumental legacy established by John Coltrane.

Durham’s Art of Cool Fest, which featured Roy Ayers, the Kenny Garrett Quintet, 9th Wonder and Avery Sunshine this year, has proven it’s possible to

Up Front Cover Story Food

appearance with Snarky Puppy. Riffing off the band’s laidback early ’70s funk, he scratched out deceptively simple couplets that imperceptibly flowered into full-fledged, Hendrix-style solos.

While several sets heaved up small epiphanies here and there, much of the festival tended towards pleasant and saccharine smooth jazz, including portions of the performances by Miller, Hathaway and David Sanborn, who headlined the first day. No one exemplified the tendency more than Earl Klugh, whose technically impeccable acoustic guitar playing sets a mood for a romantic dinner without summoning feelings more turbulent or disruptive than that.

It made for a perfectly pleasant couple of weekend days lounging in the sun with a gentle breeze wafting off Oak Hollow Lake, but as an overall experience fell far short of the iconoclastic grandeur summoned by the Coltrane name. The setting itself — geographically proximate, but a world apart from the gritty and now deteriorating neighborhood where Coltrane grew up near High Point’s historic Washington Street district — might be part of what’s so jarring about the festival. With a single stage at one location and all amenities

triad-city-beat.com

And Snarky Puppy, who followed Poncho Sanchez — and added a younger, more multicultural cohort to the festival’s core audience constituency of African-American boomers — proved themselves a worthy successor to Coltrane’s challenging legacy of searching innovation. Snarky Puppy’s set provided an excellent primer on the band’s genre-busting sound to uninitiated listeners, with a sinewy bass evolving into unexpected melodic expositions, radiant guitar coupled with tight bursts of horn playing, a pairing of conga and in-the-pocket drumming, and distorted squibs of synthesizer.

A guest appearance by Hathaway, with whom the band shared a Grammy last year for Best R&B Performance, was a festival highlight. Without the benefit of rehearsal, they took some risks with a cover of Herbie Hancock’s “Come Running to Me.” Hathaway’s lovely and virtuosic handling of the vocal prompted one audience member to remark, “Why doesn’t she just stay up there?”

But there were more surprises in store.

Eric Gales, the Memphis blues guitarist who now makes his home in Greensboro, made a triumphal and unexpected

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

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Sept. 9 — 15, 2015 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Food Music

Art

All colors included Art+Dialogue Ambassador Meeting @ Greensboro Cultural Arts Center (GSO), Wednesday Here’s a chance to talk about racial tensions in Greensboro and across the nation. Art+Dialogue is a collaboration with African American Atelier, Center for Visual Artists, Greenhill, Guilford Native American Art Gallery and the National Conference for Community and Jusice. They call for North Carolina artists to come up with work to frame their discussions. On Wednesday you can get the full scoop: a timeline of events and other announcements. Meeting starts at 5:30 p.m.

A more objective view The Art of Seeing @ Weatherspoon Art Museum (GSO), Saturday The Weatherspoon aims to help professionals in the healthcare field to view patients and art more objectively through this workshop. They’re going to guide up to 15 participants through the museum’s galleries while demonstrating strategies to see art and people more objectively. For more information visit weatherspoon.uncg. edu.

First is the worst, second is the best Second Sunday @ Fourth Street (W-S), Sept. 13 It’s Sunday’s best family-friendly event and it’s back with arts, crafts and two happy bands. Silver Sedans, a new project from Jason Groth of Magnolia Electric Company are going to play their twangy alt-rock before the headliner the Donkeys hit the stage. The Donkeys have a chilled-out California sound that’s like the Grateful Dead. In 2012 they won the San Diego Music Award for Best Rock Band, so they’re kind of a big deal. The event starts at 3 p.m.

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Ian Dennis’ plush alien sculptures were among the most eye-catching work in Reanimator’s ‘IIIans Art Show.’

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Gallery hops showcase tight-knit arts community

by Daniel Wirtheim

young violinist and a wandering saxophonist played along to the buzz of energy that was happening on Trade Street during Winston-Salem’s First Friday gallery hop.

New exhibits were showing at most galleries in the city and most of the artists seemed to know one another.

Mary Thomas Bailey was at Studio 7, showing her new pieces that might surprise some of her students. Bailey is a photographer and educator. She teaches darkroom classes at Sawtooth Center for Visual Arts and as an adjunct photography instructor at Salem College, but her Studio 7 exhibit shows her skills as a painter.

A series of Bailey’s paintings featuring a woman in various poses has a photographic quality in the hyper-realistic rendition of shadows and light. It’s clear that Bailey has mastered the manipula-

A

the Triad since the ’90s, has a huge body tion of light throughout her long career as a photographer. of work including landscapes and more abstract, compositionally complex Donell Williams, a resident artist of pieces. Walters paints nightmarish and Studio 7 was live-painting just a few detailed scenes of fictional beasts and doors down at Hubris Boutique. The artthings he encounters in his dreams. ist collective at Delurk Gallery teamed up with Ember Heron’s take on Walters, “Dane’s Audio and Video to The Collective Impressions: Delurk Sunglasses,” pays present Collective on Delurk shows until Sept. 26. tribute to the artImpressions: Delurk Visit the IIIans Art Show page ist’s dark fantasies on Delurk. For this on Facebook for updates. Mary in a burst of color one, each artist Thomas Bailey will be showing her specks and floating drew the names work at Studio 7 through Sept. 30. of other collective objects — an egg, an eye, an eagle and members from a floating heads that hat and then made look pissed off. Sunglasses sit on what a painting in those artists’ styles. Paintlooks like psychedelic cacti. ings from the exhibit were shown at Walters’ Heron piece is a portrait of galleries in both Delurk and Ember. Jack Heron in his typical splotchy painting Heron and Dane Walters were the only two to draw one another’s names. style. He painted Heron with a very bright and amiable color palette, a Heron has been exhibiting his work in

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Listen to Me Marlon @ A/perture Cinema (WS), Friday Told in his own voice, Listen to Me Marlon is the story of legendary actor Marlon Brando. Using video clips from his personal archives as well as hundreds of hours of audio recordings, Listen to Me Marlon promises to be the most intimate look at the prolific actor yet. Visit aperturecinema. com for more information.

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Got a show coming up? Send your theater info to brian@triad-city-beat.com.

Making heroes Movie Makers Studio @ McGirt-Horton Public Library (GSO), Thursday What makes a hero a hero? Young adventure movie lovers are meeting up to discuss Joseph Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey.” That’s the guy who inspired George Lucas as he was making Star Wars. The talk will be primarily about how Campbell’s philosophy of the hero’s journey is applied to the adventure/action movie genre. The discussion is aimed at teens and begins at 5 p.m.

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You know you love this guy Wes Fest @ Geeksboro Coffeehouse Cinema (GSO), all week The Coffeehouse Cinema is devoting eight weeks to America’s loveable, quirky and whimsical director, Wes Anderson.

This week The Darjeeling Limited is the showcased film. It’s a train ride through India with three brothers recently reunited and on a journey to find their mother. If not for the film, stop by for the Wes Anderson themed artwork. The film will play at 2:30 and 10 p.m. daily.

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The good kind of stage fright Auditions @ Greensboro Cultural Center (GSO), Sept. 14 and 15 This is for those who want to take Halloween to the next level. The City Arts Drama Center is taking auditions for An Evening of Short Horror Plays. The performances are going to be play through Halloween, so this is the real deal. Anyone aged 16 or older can try out. Visit thedramacenter.com.

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To Iraq and back In Conflict @ Huggins Theatre (GSO), starts Thursday The drama in these monologues hardly needs embellishing. In Conflict is a play adapted from audio-recorded stories of Iraq War veterans. It won a Fringe First Award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2008 for its harrowing take on the war. It follows soldiers who earnestly loved their country and those who joined the military to escape poverty as they attempt to reintegrate into civilian life.

The stories are real and that’s why it’s called a “docudrama.” A Greensboro College senior, Lilly Allemond is directing the play.

The show starts 7:30 p.m. Visit Greensboro. edu for more information.

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departure from the bulk of Walters’ downbeat and sinister paintings. It’s a nice change, a way to poke fun at another Winston-Salem artist and underlying that the art scene is a close-knit circle. All of the collective members pick to others to imitate. Jack Heron’s other piece, a sculpture in the style of sculptor Aaron Gibbons, uses The Book of Inside Information with attached wheels and a clock mounted to the middle. It’s called “A Speed Reader for Aaron.” Although Gibbon’s work is much more technically complex than Heron’s, seeing the painter take on sculpting is an exciting departure from the typical Heron style. The Book of Inside Information could be an analogy for the sense of inside humor that ran along the gallery’s walls. Although the art was interesting and refreshing, it gave off the sense that everyone knew one another fairly well.

Sometimes, that’s what keeps a gallery interesting, as was the case with Reanimator Records’ IIIans Art Show, an exhibit featuring three Winston-Salem artists named Ian. For the exhibit, Ian Dennis, Ian Bredice and Ian Killea provided their art on the theme of robots, monsters and aliens.

The venue is a tight squeeze in any situation but on first Friday admiring the exhibit meant maneuvering around the 15 or more people hanging out inside.

The largest and most eye-catching pieces of the IIIans Art Show were Ian Dennis’ three stuffed plush aliens. One hangs from the ceiling like a floating space-robot and two more are fastened to the wall. The sculptures are colored in vibrant, neon-like hues. They’re like the objects of nightmares with elements of childish amusement. People that they knew surrounded the Ians and by 8:30 p.m. they had already sold three pieces of art to their friends, a testament to the tight-knit scene at Reanimator Records.

But the overwhelming number of gallery-goers didn’t seem to be interested in buying artwork as much as enjoying one another’s company. Even as the night dwindled down and the violinist kid rosined up for his last song, some artists stood outside their gallery spaces talking to one another, maybe sharing their stories of another gallery hop come to pass.

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Sept. 9 — 15, 2015 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Food Music Art

Good Sport

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by Anthony Harrison

HPU cordially invites…

Panthers Invitational Volleyball Tournament @ High Point University (HP), Friday High Point University hosts the volleyball teams of Wake Forest University, Davidson College and Marshall University in an invitational tournament this weekend at the Millis Center. The first matchup, between Wake Forest and Marshall, starts at 4:30 p.m.; the Davidson Wildcats go up against the HPU Panthers later that night. Then, HPU and Wake Forest switch opponents for games at 10:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m., respectively, before taking a short break to take each other on at 7 p.m. For more information, visit highpointpanthers.com.

Familial rivalry High Point Central Bison @ Grimsley Whirlies (GSO), Friday I couldn’t resist the temptation to throw a gridiron matchup featuring both my late father’s alma mater and my own into this week’s sidebar. Dad was a huge football fan and used to recount tales of Grimsley and High Point Central. He remembered the Whirlies uniform was such a dark blue back in the 1950s as to be purple, so they were then called the “Purple Whirlies.” Also of note: Central’s yearbook is called Pemican, which I find deliciously clever. The game starts at 7:30 p.m.

Crosstown combatants Greensboro College Pride @ Guilford College Quakers (GSO), Sept. 15 Guilford College, another alma mater of mine, meets up on the soccer field with its closest geographical rival, Greensboro College, this week. The Quakers host the Pride for a women’s soccer match on Tuesday starting at 7 p.m. The next day will be the men’s turn as the Quakers make the short drive downtown to meet the Pride on their home field at 4 p.m. For more information, visit guilfordquakers.com or greensborocollegesports.com.

September crapshoot My two male cousins — Madison and Ted — and I got up at 6 a.m. to get ready for the hunt. We slipped into our

by Anthony Harrison camo, threw back some Nescafé, set our shotguns in the back bed of the Gator — Madison’s affectionate name for his ATV — and chugged down the road to a family friend’s farm in Gold Hill, NC, which could be described as the middle of the middle of nowhere.

A quilt of dreary clouds spread across the sky, and the air hung mildly, slightly humid from the morning rain. Madison slowed the Gator as we drove past the farmhouse and the pair of greenhouses composing the front of the Gold Hill property and headed towards a soybean field to the right of a pond splitting the farm. On the other side of the pond, corn grew tall and more soybeans were planted in vast swaths for hundreds of yards until the woods halted them.

A line of red cedars stood along the shore of the pond, a boundary between the beans and the water. Madison parked the cruiser in the middle of the cedars near where a powerline bisected the field. We loaded our guns, spread along the line of trees and readied ourselves for mourning doves.

Dove season, traditionally beginning the Saturday before Labor Day, opens

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hunting season, which dominates the minds of country boys like Madison until early May when the spring turkey season closes.

However, for a city slicker like me, hunting season means occasional weekend forays into a world atavistic, foreign yet familiar.

So, unlike Madison and his friends, I fall into complacency in the months leading up to hunting season.

Doves thrive on complacency.

If the field you hunt isn’t cut, doves won’t fly in. If you don’t keep up with your wing shot, any doves flying in blow right by you.

And though dove hunting can be something of a crapshoot, you can’t ever let down your guard. That always seems to be when the doves decide to show up.

All three potential pitfalls plagued us that day.

The soybeans hadn’t been cut. There was one strike against us. Also, we figured the doves wouldn’t be flying in the dreary morning.

Yet within five minutes of our arrival, I heard Madison shout, “Birds!”

A pair of doves jetted over the field.

Madison got a shot off. So did Ted. Neither dove fell. I was last in line. I pumped a shell into the chamber. I fired.

Both birds whistled over the pond and beyond.

Robert Ruark, North Carolina’s Hemingway, wrote in his short-story collection The Old Man and the Boy, “In all the ballistic computations of mankind, ain’t nobody ever figured a way to lead a dove too far.… My blanket suggestion is just to point the gun about 20 feet ahead of him, pull the trigger, sweep the gun around and pray.”

I clearly forgot that maxim, because I shot at both those birds way behind.

As Ruark also wrote, doves are the easiest hard shooting in the world, or the toughest easy shooting.

The last time I’d gone for a dove hunt — something I did every year from ages 10 until 16 — was a few years ago, and I went through my only box of 20-gauge shells and had only six doves to show for those 25 shots. But I’d needed to

warm up; if my memory serves me well, I dropped most of them with the last 12 shells.

I recovered, and told myself I’d be ready next time.

But no other doves came through.

There was one false alarm: A flock of about a dozen pigeons flew in from the pond. I’d managed to croak out, “Birds, birds over the water,” barely loud enough for my cousins to hear before realizing they were flying rats. I clicked my gun’s safety back on.

With two unexpected booms, Madison took out two of them anyway.

“They ain’t doves, but f*** it,” he said.

“Might as well shoot somethin’.”

After an hour and a half, we packed it in for the morning, seeing one more dove fly out from the corn as we were hitting the road.

Following the traditional barbecue lunch by our hosts, we went back out to the other soy fields to have another go.

Madison didn’t even bring his gun.

More cedars provided cover at this field. We again fanned out, hoping for doves, but also taking the chance that Canada geese might fly in. Geese eat soybeans the same way cows graze.

No dice.

I decided to scout around. I did rouse one dove from a sandy patch, but it lighted into a tree before I could take a shot, then flew off with a whistle as I stalked it.

I got back and told my cousins, and as I was recounting my uneventful story, seven doves flew in over the cedars.

I cut myself off in mid-sentence, shouting, “Birds, hey, birds!” Ted grabbed his gun. I had mine already in my hands, so as the birds crossed the field, quartering away from us, I emptied my shotgun. Again, nothing fell.

We didn’t see another bird the whole day.

But one thing’s for certain: I’m going to work on my wing shot before November’s duck season.

‘Bar Hopping’ going from bar to bar.

by Matt Jones

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1 True statement 2 Arena cheers 3 Carefree diversion 4 Fountain drink option 5 Pack on the muscle 6 “... ___ a bag of chips” 7 Irish coffee ingredient 8 Beside oneself 9 X-ray ___ (back-of-comic-book glasses) 10 “That looks like it stings!”

11 Mallet to use on the “Press Your Luck” villain?

12 The moon, to poets 13 Knee-to-ankle area 18 Pokemon protagonist 22 College composition 24 “Exploding” gag gift 26 M minus CCXCIV ... OK, I’m not that mean, it equals 706 27 Italian bread?

28 Sister channel to the Baltimore Ravens Network?

30 Groundskeeper’s buy 31 Heart’s main line 32 Full of spunk 34 Neighbor of Tampa, Fla. 36 Watch again 39 Google : Android :: Apple : ___ 41 Higher-ups 44 Resident of Iran’s capital ©2015 Jonesin’ Crosswords (editor@jonesincrosswords.com) 47 SEAL’s branch 49 Club proprietors 52 Become narrower 53 Common Market abbr.

54 “Am ___ only one?”

55 Zilch Answers from last issue.

56 It is, in Ixtapa 58 Golden Rule preposition 59 “Saving Private Ryan” event 60 Author Rand and anyone whose parents were brave enough to name their kids after that author, for two 63 “Take This Job and Shove It” composer David Allan ___

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1 Call it quits 5 Sobs loudly 10 Some barn dwellers 14 Jai ___ (fast court game) 15 Out of season, maybe 16 “Ain’t happenin’!”

17 How to enter an Olympic-sized pool of Cap’n Crunch?

19 “Please, Mom?” 20 “Naughty, naughty!” noise 21 First substitute on a basketball bench 23 Public Enemy #1?

25 That boy there 26 Art follower?

29 Safe dessert?

30 Slangy goodbyes 33 Biceps builders 35 Greek sandwiches 37 “Ode ___ Nightingale” 38 Zagreb’s country 40 Letter recipients 42 Altar agreement 43 New York and Los Angeles, e.g.

45 Grimy deposits 46 GQ units 48 Abbr. in a help-wanted ad 50 After-school production, maybe 51 Calif. time zone 52 Post outpost?

54 Like ignored advice, at first?

57 Chilean Literature Nobelist 61 Margaret Mitchell mansion 62 Milky Way and Mars, for instance?

64 Home theater component, maybe 65 Guy’s part 66 “American Dad!” dad 67 “That’s ___ for you to say!”

68 Sign of some March births 69 Edamame beans

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All She Wrote

ALL SHE WROTE Facts about trim Me: Ugh. I can’t seem to get a rug or a fur or anything leather cleaned in this town.

Mother: They don’t have the

by Nicole Crews right equipment or they don’t want the responsibility. You need to be in a big city to get those things taken care of properly.

Me: What the hell does everyone else do?

Mother: They keep it dirty.

can transfer to other parts. Red dyes are a particular problem.” (Gingers just can’t seem to get a break.)

It fell off!

“Sometimes trim is just glued on so it can dissolve. This can happen to buttons, glitter, suede, snakeskin, beads, sequins or fur trim.” (The fancier the trim, the harder to clean.)

It disappeared “If it’s plastic, it might disintegrate.”

Button breakage “Some buttons that look like a pearl are fragile and can chip, break or crack during a cleaning. The service of the button is often determined by how it is made as well as how it is attached.”

In honor of the upcoming Greensboro Fashion Week (Sept. 16-19) and a recent costly visit to the fancy dry cleaners, I offer you a primer on fabric care — more specifically, Facts About Trim. The pamphlet I procured at said dry cleaners is published by the International Fabricare Institute in Silver Spring, Md. and sanctioned by the Association of Professional Drycleaners and Launderers. It was published in 1992, but I feel that its contents withstand the test of time and document numerous errors that I have personally encountered while caring for trim. Here is what I’ve learned — and a paraphrase:

Looks like leather but is not “Imitation leather and suede is often vinyl these days. When treated it may separate, peel or blister. Some finished fabrics are made to give the appearance of leather and may wear off in both use and care.” (Trust me on this one. I left a square foot of faux leather trim on an airplane seat once and it looked like Danica Patrick had just peeled out.)

Color rub-off “Crocking” is not a new dance move.

It is the literal rub off of colors. If you are not careful you can leave a trim mark on upholstery, garments worn under or over trim or even you!

Poor construction “No matter how attractive your trim may be, it may have very limited serviceablity to washing and cleaning.

Steam is used in finishing to remove wrinkles and restore shape but should never be used on leather or fur trim.”

Summary There is often risk when cleaning your trim. And by my gathering, the more bedazzled and blinged out it is, the more dangerous the procedure. Leather, suede and fur complicate things and then there is the conundrum of the button. As utilitarian and beautiful as they might be, buttons are easily damaged, each one is different and should, above all, be handled with care.

Fur trim “Fur is often used as an intricate detail and in some cases may be composed of older or thinner fur. Shedding during cleaning may occur. Much fur trim does not have the same wear and cleaning characteristics as other mate-

Color loss on trim “Dyes on trim don’t perform the same as other parts. Dry-cleaning may cause a general fading, dulling or even entire color loss. Even worse, trim dye

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