Greensboro / Winston-Salem / High Point triad-city-beat.com October 14 – 20, 2015
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October 14 — 20, 2015
In the Blue Room by Brian Clarey
20 UP FRONT
OPINION
24 Art: South Asian film
3 Editor’s Notebook 4 City Life 6 Commentariat 6 The List 7 Barometer 7 Unsolicited Endorsement
13 Editorial: Hypoc-Raleigh 13 Citizen Green: Stealing wages 14 It Just Might Work: Tool shares and libraries 14 Fresh Eyes: Portlandia
GOOD SPORT
NEWS 8 District 2 in play 10 Revisiting Hanes-Lowrance 12 HPJ: Market time
COVER 16 The 2015 Beer Issue
CULTURE 20 Food: Meating up 22 Music: Judy Barnes and the soul of opera
26 Miss Livingston, I presume
GAMES 29 Jonesin’ Crossword
SHOT IN THE TRIAD 30 Bridford Parkway, Greensboro
ALL SHE WROTE 31 Lenslinger
QUOTE OF THE WEEK The typical reaction when we start playing is for people to freeze in place, mouths open not sure what they think, but they’re pretty sure they like it. — Jodi Burns, vocalist and pianist for Judy Barnes
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EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK
CONTENTS
You know the election was a dog when they kick the results over to the Blue Room of the old Guilford County Courthouse. And that’s where we sat on Tuesday night: a handful of journos, a small flock of well-wishers, some — but not all — of the candidates on the slate and three sitting councilmembers not on the primary ballot that night but ready to lend support to the incumbency, all in a space as big as a three-car garage. Just 7,000 people came out last week to vote in a single citywide contest for mayor and a historically significant race in District 3 — more on that later. Just below 4 percent of the electorate showed up, not even enough to fill NewBridge Bank Park, the lowest anyone in the room could remember, even for a primary this small and with the winners so clear. Some might call this primary a waste of taxpayer money. But democracy is never free, I suppose, and we needed to figure out who would come in second place. Michael Picarelli, former head of the Guilford County GOP, had his chances to face Justin Outing in the general election aggravated by a campaign from Conservatives for Guilford County backing Kurt Collins, who took the slot by 150 votes. In a low-turnout election like this one, every vote counts. I didn’t see Devin King getting quite as many votes as he did in the mayor’s race: more than 500 people to challenger Sal Leone’s 362. Vaughan got more than 6,000, about 88 percent of the vote. King will have to raise funds at a breakneck pace to make a dent in that. But the backstory in District 3 was more compelling. Justin Outling got the seat when his predecessor, Zack Matheny left to head Downtown Greensboro Inc. Outling became the first African-American ever to represent a district not specifically cut for minority representation — at least that’s what legendary Greensboro elections-watcher Bill Burckley, Rhino Times Editor John Hammer and I figured. The closest thing, Burckley said, was when Henry Frye was elected to the NC House in 1968 to become the only black legislator in the state. Outling’s got a legal background, too: a law degree from Duke and a job as an associate at the city’s white-shoe firm. He strode into the Blue Room after the returns had come in, wearing a disheveled but nonetheless fancy suit. It was Burckley’s first time meeting the candidate; he eyed him the way a big-league scout does a teenager with a 100 mph fastball. Burckley reminded me that Outling voted with District 5 Councilman Tony Wilkins — “the most conservative member of council” — on big issues of minimum wage and museum loans. He can work with that.
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October 14 — 20, 2015
CITY LIFE October 14 – 20 WEDNESDAY Documentary film screening @ Central Carolina Worker Justice Center (GSO), 7 p.m. The Hand That Feeds chronicles undocumented migrant workers’ fight against abusive working conditions and sub-legal wages at a popular New York City bakery. Visit carolinaworkers.org for more information.
THURSDAY Becca Stevens Band @ the Crown (GSO), 8 p.m. Becca Stevens is a North Carolina-bred musician with a huge following. Her original sound is a mix of jazz, soul, pop and folk. She also plays covers of Frank Ocean, Usher and Steven Winwood. Visit carolinatheatre.com for more information.
by Daniel Wirtheim
FRIDAY Fall Festival @ Center City Park (GSO), 6 p.m. It’s a night of games at the Center City Park. Celebrate fall with food trucks, live music and family-friendly games. Find the page on Facebook for more information.
Art & Soul: The Eclectic Works of Phil Young @ Earshot Records (W-S), 7 p.m. Phil Young has an eclectic array of music-inspired artwork he wants to share with the public. His work channels into hip-hop energy with a lot of color and spunk. Find the Facebook page for more information.
SATURDAY Furniture Market @ downtown (HP), 8 a.m. The annual High Point Furniture Market is here. Drink lots of water, put on a comfortable pair of shoes and spend the day reveling in the largest furnishings industry trade show in the world. Visit Highpointmarket.org for more information.
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City Market @ The RailYard (GSO), 5:30 p.m. The theme is Lions, Tigers and Bears. Oh, My! at the October City Market. Catch your favorite food truck, live music and some neat crafts. It’s all things Triad. Find the Facebook page for more information.
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Organic Gardening, the Permacultural Way @ Deep Roots Market (GSO), 10 a.m. A “Green Living Workshop” will demonstrate how to prepare soil using permaculture methods. Later, the workshop will move to Tiny House Village to prepare a village garden. Find the Green Living Arts Festival page on Facebook for more information.
Start Your Engines! @ New Winston Museum (W-S), 10 a.m. As a part of the Family Saturday series, New Winston Museum offers an intimate look at how cars shaped local history. Antique automobiles and racecars will be on display. Visit newwinston.org for more information. Pumpkin Palooza @ Greensboro Science Center (GSO), 10 a.m. Costumes are encouraged at this Halloween-themed pumpkin festival. The Fresh Market provides tasty pumpkin treats for people and animals. Visit greensboroscience.org for more information. Piedmont Chamber Sings @ Home Moravian Church (W-S), 7:30 p.m. To open their 38th season, Piedmont Chamber Singers perform Life, a concert exploring the living journey from the womb to the tomb. The concert features the work of Dan Forrest’s Requiem for the Living. Visit piedmontchambersingers.org for more information. Annual Extravaganza @ Elsewhere Art Museum (GSO), 8 p.m. Elsewhere’s annual fundraising events have become notorious for musical and fun indulgence. “Sports of All Sorts” is the theme of this year’s fundraiser. Visit goelsewhere.org for more information.
SUNDAY Sunset Flicks featuring Ghostbusters @ Winston Square Park (W-S), 6 p.m. A/perture Cinema, Coffee Arts Park and the Arts Council bring you the classic tale of ghost-busting fun. Food trucks and music are on the itinerary. Visit intothearts.org for more information.
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October 14 — 20, 2015
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Photography by Sara Lyn
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The Merit Pit Bull Foundation strives for a compassionate world where pit bull type dogs live in responsible homes and where owner education, training and anti-cruelty legislation support all pet owners regardless of breed. www.themeritpitbullfoundation.com
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Beautiful people
Parkour partisan
7. Cherchez la Femme Milk Stout, Gibbs Hundred Brewing (GSO) Not just a great name, Cherchez la Femme is a great beer, combining 10 different malts and flaked barley, with just a hint of milk sugar. Its name translates into “follow the woman,” which has connotations of its own.
All She Wrote
The fact of the matter is the city of High Point is run by neo-conservative good ol’ boys and gals of the Tea Party ilk that want to take the city, state and nation back to the Jim Crow days where white privilege flourished while African Americans [and] other minorities were marginalized and often terrorized into accepting white privilege as the status quo [“Embattled human relations director has many fans”; Sept. 23, 2015; by Jordan Green.] Wake up High Point progressives! Tell the mayor, city manager and others that we need more public servants like Director [Al] Heggins who advocates for the little guy and believes that all lives matter! Mr. Perplexed, via triad-city-beat.com
Shot in the Triad
Inhuman relations
6. Snozzberry, Green Man Brewing (Asheville) This lambic-style wheat beer borrows a page from Willy Wonka, infusing the mythical snozzberry into the flavor profile. This one’s a limited release, so watch for it.
Games
Glad to hear there is someone teaching kids about parkour [“Good Sport: Pint-size parcour”; Oct. 17, 2015; by Anthony Harrison]. I’ve heard of parkour gyms for adults around the country. Greensboro is fortunate to have a qualified teacher who is able to encourage a child’s enthusiasm while teaching them form and safety. Cynthia Tate, via triad-city-beat.com
5. Freak of Nature DIPA, Wicked Weed Brewing (Asheville) This one’s a high-octane hop bomb, with 8 percent ABV and an “absurd” amount of hops — more than 3 pounds per barrel.
Good Sport
Yay. Bout damn time for some pour-over up in here [“Providing a Framework for pour-over coffee”; Oct. 7, 2015; by Eric Ginsburg]. Jo Rutter, via triad-city-beat.com
4. GasHopper, Hoots Beer Co. (W-S) The best thing about this American IPA from the Winston-Salem brewbar is that is was named for the shady gas station next door.
10. Lunsford Robust Porter, Preyer Brewing (GSO) More impressive that this malt-forward brew is its legacy, named for the esteemed Greensboro banker, jurist and legislator L. Richardson Preyer, whose descendants founded the downtown brewery, or perhaps his grandfather, Lunsford Richardson, who invented Vicks Vapo-Rub.
Culture
Pour-over partaker
3. Skillet Donut Stout, Burial Beer Co. (Asheville) Oatmeal gives this stout a breakfast flavor reminiscent of homemade doughnuts cooked on a stovetop, along with strong coffee notes.
9. Golem, Wedge Brewing Co. (Asheville) Named for the Old Testament avenger, this is a high-octane Belgian strong pale ale is 9 percent ABV and, according to one Beer Advocate reviewer, contains notes of bubblegum.
Cover Story
Nicole: I just love your tribute [“All She Wrote: The most interesting man in the world; Oct. 7, 2015; by Nicole Crews]. I would have loved to be there on Saturday. But living in Switzerland now for the last seven years made it too difficult. Thinking back when I first met you at that beauty contest. I think you won, of course. Was it in Thomasville? You were very beautiful then and you still are. I met Christina much later thanks to her dad, but that’s another story. And you’re right, she is beautiful and the most incredible human being I’ve ever met. Yvonne Polson, via triad-city-beat.com
2. The Event Horizon, Old Hickory Brewery (Hickory) Event Horizon is an imperial stout aged in bourbon barrels that won a bronze medal in the World Beer Cup. And, evidently, when you drink it, something is about to happen.
8. Pistols at Dawn, Lonerider Brewing Co. (Raleigh) This surprisingly smooth beer, with lactose and oats contributing to its velvety texture, is a high-caliber shooter at 7.5 percent ABV.
Opinion
This paints a picture for a more hopeful world [“Let it grow: Urban gardeners till the Triad; Oct. 7, 2015; by Caleb Smallwood & Brian Clarey]. Great article. Jenny Kimmel, via triad-city-beat.com
by Brian Clarey 1. Sexual Chocolate, Foothills Brewing (W-S) The beer that put the Triad brewing scene on the map, Foothills’ Sexual Chocolate comes out every February, bringing long lines to the Fourth Street brewpub. The name comes from Eddie Murphy’s Jheri-curled band in Coming to America, and the beer itself, an imperial stout, has notes of coffee and chocolate.
News
Tending soil and community
10 best NC beer names
Up Front
Thanks for writing this, Ed [“Fresh Eyes: Why Warnersville matters”; Oct. 7, 2015; by Edward Cone]. Warnersville deserves a central place in Greensboro’s civic identity. It was frustrating to see the city’s foot-dragging on recognizing Warnersville as a Heritage Community, but in the end they did it. And city staff and volunteers from the Historic Preservation Commission worked closely with James Griffin — an amazing person — to develop the Heritage Community concept, which, as far as I know, is unique in the state. David Wharton, via triad-city-beat.com
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Black historic neighborhoods matter
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All She Wrote Shot in the Triad
Games
Good Sport
Culture
Cover Story
Opinion
News
Up Front October 14 — 20, 2015
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Most exciting planned brewery?
80 70
Eric Ginsburg: It’s a toss-up between Joymongers Brewing (not officially included in the poll) and Wise Man for me. I can basically see Joymongers’ planned site from my apartment, and I hope to walk to it and nearby Preyer frequently. But I’ve tried Wise Man Brewing’s beer and renovations are already underway, so for now, it may win.
60 50 40
20 10
49% 43%
4%
XII Tribes Wise Man Mansfield
4%
Brown Truck
Culture
New question: Should city council races be partisan like Winston-Salem or nonpartisan like Greensboro and High Point? Vote at triad-city-beat.com!
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Cover Story
Readers: What a race. Wise Man in Winston-Salem and XII Tribes in High Point launched campaigns in their quest for the top spot, and totally blew away Mansfield Brewing (GSO) and Brown Truck (HP). The two planned beer makers traded first several times. As of press time (2:30 p.m.) on Tuesday, more than 900 people had voted, and XII Tribes came out on top with 49 percent (437 votes). Wise Man trailed slightly, with 43 percent (390 votes) while Mansfield (4 percent with 38 votes) and Brown Truck (4 percent with 35 votes) lagged significantly behind.
Opinion
Jordan Green: I’m going with Brown Truck Brewing, and only partly because I had the opportunity to report the story about plans to open the brewpub. More importantly, I can’t think of a brewpub whose location has more potential to transform the surrounding area and jumpstart new investment. The partners behind Brown Truck bought a building on North Main Street in High Point even after residents shouted down a proposal to “diet” the street to slow vehicular traffic and make the corridor more friendly to
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News
Brian Clarey: It’s been nearly four years since I’ve had a beer, so I can’t pretend to understand the nuances of the local scene. But I am privy to the workings of the beer business as it pertains to the Triad. That’s why I’m casting my vote for Brown Truck Brewing, and I’ll tell you why: Winston-Salem has got beer covered with three breweries and another on the way. Greensboro, similarly, has tapped into the culture with a fine slate of breweries. But High Point has just the one, Liberty, which these days seems a bit like a dinosaur. And I’m always pulling for High Point. With my city narrowed down, I choose Brown Truck because they are closer to opening than XII Tribes, at least according to my sources.
pedestrians. They stuck to the idea of creating a destination gathering spot where Emerywood residents and High Point University students can walk or ride their bikes to meet and unwind. They’re sticking to beer, driving business to food trucks and nearby restaurants. I could go on. Now, maybe the High Point police will start enforcing pedestrian crosswalk in front of the new brewpub so patrons on foot can actually get to it.
Up Front
This is kind of funny — when we decided this week’s Barometer question a week ago, there were four planned breweries in the Triad. But before this 2015 Beer Issue was released, we discovered plans for a fifth, Joymongers Brewing in Greensboro on Sunday. We asked readers if they are more stoked for XII Tribes and Brown Truck (HP), Wise Man (W-S) or Mansfield (GSO).
Good Sport
The Indian by Daniel Wirtheim
All She Wrote
slightly disappointed to know that The Indian is not as hilarious as one might expect. It is, however, nice to know that Gnarr is just as witty and entertaining as a dramatist. Notes from a psychologist analyzing Gnarr are interspersed throughout the book. The notes might be the book’s best offering for an introspective look at the creation of the punk politician who is often out of touch with the rest of society. Although, he means well, Gnarr never really confronts the injustices of the Native Americans; he only uses the fantasy of native warriors as armor against the boring life outside of his daydreams. There is no book like The Indian. There are moments when one might wonder: What am I doing reading this? But like Gnarr, who gets by on his boyish wonder, sometimes the best plan of action is just enjoying life as it comes — earnestly and strangely.
Shot in the Triad
form. Thinkers like Noam Chomsky have praised Gnarr’s political party, aptly named the “Best Party” for challenging the legitimacy of government entities. Gnarr is a comedian, but The Indian proves that’s not the foremost aspect of who he is. “The future scares me,” writes Gnarr. “Everyone’s headed somewhere together and I’m not invited. I’ll go alone, somewhere else. I don’t know where. I never know anything; I’m unable to do anything. No one cares about me at all. I’m all alone in the world. I’m an Indian.” Gnarr is weird, gentle and preoccupied with being accepted. His autobiography speaks to the ADHD generation in a way that most books have failed to do. There is no real takeaway from The Indian, no a-ha moment — it’s about a misfit who often finds himself at the center of attention. Anyone who is familiar with Gnarr’s antics might be
Games
When Jón Gnarr was campaigning for mayor of Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland, he ran on a platform of refusing a coalition government with anyone who had not watched the HBO series “The Wire” in its entirety. In 2010 Gnarr became mayor, making himself famous for dressing in drag and leading the Gay Pride Festival through Reykjavik. And in 2015 he released his part-fictional autobiography, The Indian. It’s a memoir of an often reclusive and unsociable hyperactive child. Gnarr tells stories of unintentionally becoming the class clown and setting fire to his parent’s living room. Words stumble out of the young Gnarr’s mouth uncontrollably. He dresses and acts in homage to the Native Americans, which he only knows through storybooks. Gnarr is untamed but his writing points to an underlying intelligence that breaks everything down to its most basic
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NEWS
Second look: Hanes Lowrance school closure might have been rash by Jordan Green
An environmental contamination expert who consulted with locals after toxic chemicals were found beneath a Winston-Salem middle school says the school board’s decision to close the school was unwarranted. Parents of Hanes Lowrance Middle School students were angry when Lenny Siegel, a national expert on environmental hazards, addressed them at SciWorks on a Monday night in early February. Weeks earlier, they had learned from a newspaper exposé that the ground beneath the school was contaminated with tetrachloroethylene, or PCE, that can cause damage to the liver, kidneys and central nervous system. The chemical had migrated in the groundwater from the Kaba Ilco Corp. plant on Indiana Avenue on the city’s north side. The parents were furious that they hadn’t learned about the contamination earlier from school administration. Siegel empathized with their betrayed trust, but urged them to put aside their anger and look at the scientific evidence. A new round of testing by the school district was underway that would remove potential indoor sources of contamination that might trigger false positive readings. “If you’re serious in trying to protect people, that’s what you need to do,” Siegel said. “Belatedly, I think that’s what’s finally happening here, but at a cost of the community losing trust in the entity that was responsible for protecting them. What I’m hoping is that you can set aside the injury that you suffered by not being informed and still try to make an informed decision about what you think needs to be done.” Siegel is the executive director of the Center for Public Environmental Oversight, based in Mountain View, Calif. Siegel said that while he is not a scientist, he specializes in translating science into terms that are understandable to ordinary citizens. Earlier in the day, Siegel had fielded questions from members of the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County School Board during a special meeting at
The Winston-Salem/Forsyth County School Board voted 7-2 to close Hanes Lowrance Middle School in February before the district received results from indoor air quality tests.
Atkins High School. Paramount: Should they go ahead and close Hanes Lowrance Middle School? “The risk of PCE, the principal contaminant at the site, is gauged by standards that are based on 30 years exposure, 24/7,” Siegel told the school board. “Based on the science, I don’t think there’s any reason to panic. There’s a need to address the problem, but I don’t think there’s a need necessarily to pull kids out of school or close the school right away.” The next day the school board voted 7-2 to close the school. Siegel said recently he was surprised that the district opted to close Hanes Lowrance. “Why in an area [of the country] that does not seem to be particularly environmentally sensitive, did they close a school without waiting for the test results to come back?” he asked. Siegel, who is based in the Silicon Valley area of northern California, cited a contrasting example of four schools in Sunnyvale with exposure to TCE. “TCE is worse than PCE,” he said. “TCE is considered more of a risk
right now. EPA studies say TCE can cause birth defects. With exposure to PCE, you have to protect against longterm exposure; with exposure to TCE during pregnancy you have to worry about peak exposure. The community hasn’t panicked. They didn’t close the schools.” While some of Siegel’s comments during his February visit were critical of how the school district handled keeping parents informed, he never said the district should close the school. He said recently that the only thing that could possibly have given parents that impression were comments he made that state and federal standards are politicized by industry pressure, which makes it difficult to assess acceptable risk. Hanes Lowrance was by no means unique in Winston-Salem in being exposed to legacy industrial contamination. Carter G. Woodson School, a charter school founded by a former member of the Black Panther Party that predominantly serves low-income black and Latino students, discovered concentrations of PCE and another chemical, trichloroethylene, known as TCE, that
FILE PHOTO
exceeded screening levels set by the NC Department of Environment and Natural Resources, or DENR, in May 2013. The school is located in southeast Winston-Salem, an area with a similar socioeconomic demographic and industrial background as the neighborhood surrounding Hanes Lowrance. Carter G. Woodson School hired Mid-Atlantic Associates to conduct indoor air quality tests. After similar problems came to light at Hanes Lowrance Middle School, Winston-Salem/ Forsyth County Schools hired the same firm to conduct indoor air quality tests there. In November 2013, administration at Carter G. Woodson School sent out letters to parents informing them of the potential environmental hazards and the school’s efforts to remediate the problem. There was no panic, public outcry or threats by parents to pull their children out of school. In January 2014, results came back showing no exceedences of indoor air levels of PCE and TCE. Elevated levels of PCE have also been found at a decommissioned gas station identified as an inactive hazardous site
Cover Collaborative:
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This week’s cover artist Evan McIntyre
Evan McIntyre is a Florida-born, North Carolina-residing illustrator (and UNCG graduate!). He grew up replicating his favorite video game and comic book characters and since hasn’t changed much. He draws silly objects such as serious animals, 20-sided dies, fictional helmet races, stills from his favorite movie scenes, monster-stylizedwording, and the most silly of all: wedding invitation portraits.
Up Front News
When not drawing, he can be found in front of a large television with his wife and three animals playing fantasy sneaking games or watching anime and horror movies. Or, he’s throwing around coffee and pies at Scratch in downtown Durham, NC.
Opinion Cover Story
He would love to draw for you!
The Colors of healing a Solo Art Exhibit by Hollis Gabriel
Culture
October 16th – October 31st Opening Reception Friday, October 16th 6–9pm
Shot in the Triad
2105-A W. Cornwallis Drive • Greensboro
All She Wrote
Please contact him at navemac@gmail.com, or through the many participating social media outlets via his website: www.ebrownm.com
Games
Known for her beautiful and mesmerizing mylar mobiles, Hollis Gabriel recently began her journey into painting on canvas as a way of easing her grief after the recent death of her son Connor. Filled with vivid and vibrant colors, texture and motion, these new works represent the tears shed and the continuation of life. THE COLORS OF HEALING have allowed Hollis to begin her journey towards peace.
Good Sport
by DENR that is less than a quarter mile from a complex in East Winston housing Kennedy High School, Carter High School and the Career Center. When the owner of the gas station said his company was not responsible for the contamination, a DENR official told Triad City Beat last spring that the agency dropped the case. Winston-Salem/ Forsyth County Schools Chief of Staff Theo Helm said at the time that the district was unaware that PCE had been identified at the site. When indoor air quality test results came back for Hanes Lowrance Middle School a couple weeks after school’s closure, like Carter G. Woodson, they showed that the air was safe for students and faculty. Siegel met with school board member Elisabeth Motsinger, a Democrat who represents the district at large, during a recent visit to North Carolina to attend a wedding. Motsinger was one of two board members who voted against the closure of Hanes Lowrance. Siegel asked Motsinger why she thought the decision was made. “Her judgment is that it was racial,” Siegel said. “There were some people who triggered the outrage because they didn’t want their kids going to school in that neighborhood. Being from California, I’m inclined to believe the worst about the South, but it seems plausible to me.” Acknowledging the sensitivity of race, Motsinger said the dynamics of having a magnet program that attracts students from more affluent families on the same campus with a predominantly black neighborhood school shaped the public discourse. “It is areas where people of color live and where poor people live that are the areas of contamination,” she said. “So you go into the quote ‘pure’ suburbs, and you won’t find these problems. I think on a deeply felt level that’s what the parents of the [highly academically gifted] program at Hanes Lowrance discovered. It was the first time they had come face to face with the understanding that an environmental issue was going to affect their children. It was terrifying for them — understandably. Their reaction is: Let’s get away from here. And there’s nowhere to run.”
Mon.–Fri. 9:30am–5:30pm & Sat. 10am–4pm
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October 14 — 20, 2015
A fight for the grassroots in District 2 council race
by Eric Ginsburg
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Councilman Jamal Fox is proud of what he says he’s been able to accomplish in less than two years in office.
Greensboro City Council’s youngest member faces a grassroots challenger who says he hasn’t done enough to listen to his constituents and address dire needs. Thessa Pickett didn’t want to run for city council. At least not yet. Pickett, an advocate and community organizer who runs her own consulting company, had considered running for Greensboro City Council in four years. “The community approached me,” she said, explaining that she met people through her involvement in Black Lives Matter and other grassroots initiatives that asked her to run. Her opponent in the District 2 race, 27-year-old incumbent Jamal Fox, hasn’t made the bold statements necessary when community members have raised African-American issues before council, she charged. The city hasn’t made enough progress on the issues that matter most to the residents of the majority black District 2, Pickett said, including food deserts, transportation and economic development. And the positive changes council has made can’t only be credited to the goodwill and leadership of city council, she said — Pickett argued those changes arose because grassroots community groups organized around various causes and council responded.
ERIC GINSBURG
But those are some of the very issues that one-term incumbent Jamal Fox prides himself for contributing to or spearheading. Take food deserts and food insecurity. When he first ran two years ago, Fox said he pushed for a fresh-food retail initiative, but it hit a wall once he took office. Yet in less than two years, he’s helped push a citywide fresh-food access plan, and the plan includes the retail component he originally advocated, so it’s come full circle, he said. Council has changed zoning to allow more vacant lots to be used for gardening, and he championed a community food task force with key leaders from across the city, Fox said. There is still a great need, Fox said, but he is proud of how much he’s been able to accomplish in less than two years. Pickett said that it isn’t enough, and that people she talks to in District 2 agree. “His presence is lacking and a lot of people have come to me and said he hasn’t been present,” she said, referring to community meetings and neighborhood organizations. Fox’s narrative of his leadership contradicts hers. He encouraged neighborhood organi-
ERIC GINSBURG Challenger Thessa Pickett says Fox is disconnected from neighborhood organizations and the city hasn’t done enough on key issues.
zations to attend each other’s meetings from time to time so that various parts of the district can better understand each other’s issues and ideally come together to address common challenges. Fox would like to see that happen frequently enough that neighborhoods are networked sufficiently for the district to speak with one voice. Pickett grew up in Greensboro off and on but has lived here consistently for the last 14 years, most of that in the majority-minority areas of District 1 and 2, she said. She came to the Gate City with her mother who was fleeing domestic violence, and subsequently experienced homelessness and tenuous housing situations. That later spurred her to work actively with the chronically homeless; she used to work as a case manager for the Housing First team at the Servant Center. Pickett has served on various boards and committees, including the YWCA and the city’s subcommittee for the Commission on the Status of Women, among others. More recently, she’s joined the organizing efforts of the Queer People of Color Collective and Black Lives Matter, and is part of blogger Billy Jones’ Bessemer Aquaponics Committee, she said. There are several issues close to Pick-
ett’s heart, but she emphasizes that she would take her direction as a council member from the grassroots. It’s about the people, Pickett said, and not her. That’s part of the reason why she reversed her position on a state law that would’ve redistricted the Greensboro City Council. Before she planned to run she supported it because she believed it would increase minority representation, Pickett said, but after hearing from her would-be constituents and deciding to run for office, Pickett sublimated her own stance. Both candidates talk about deep needs of their neighbors, but Fox isn’t reluctant to jump out with an idea of his own. He’d like to consider combining recreation centers and libraries into larger complexes to save money, and coordinate with the county to put police substations, fire stations and EMS together. And in his office at the Melvin Municipal Office Building, he has maps of plans for engineering an entertainment and retail complex at Reedy Fork Parkway and Summit Avenue. Fox envisions a bowling alley, Cheesecake Factory and Starbucks as potential tenants, and said the area might even be able to support a hotel. He’s actively working towards those cost saving and economic development
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by the police department, she said, and council should be doing everything it can to prevent the planned closure of the Bessemer Curb Market, which will create a dire need for food access. District 2 needs more temp agencies — too many residents struggle with transportation from the district to employment agencies across the city, she said. Council could also improve the racial disparity in who receives city contracts, do more to attract jobs that don’t require highly educated workers or should support appropriate training programs so that new jobs are filled by unemployed locals. Many of the problems facing District 2 residents overlap, she said, such as jobs, crime, homelessness and health disparities. Even if she isn’t elected, Pickett said, she’ll be active in fighting to improve conditions. “Ultimately I would like to create a holistic community that cares for every person,” she said, “and then to see that supported by a council that cares, deeply. It’s going to take more than just me.”
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concepts, Fox said, as well as pushing various other initiatives. Among them: Supporting a minimum wage increase for city employees as part of a larger effort to increase household income that will incorporate an ex-offenders job-training program and a job fair. Fox is also concerned about homeless veterans — an issue that hits close to home considering his mother is a veteran and his brother just returned from a tour in Afghanistan, he said — and he recently talked with someone from the VA about how the city can help address the crisis. Fox said people are happy with his leadership, but the unconverted will be convinced once things like sidewalk construction that is scheduled for this month kicks off and the redevelopment of Revolution Mill advances. “Are you not better off than you were two years ago?” he asked. To Pickett, the answer is a resounding “no.” While she will take her lead from grassroots activists and community members, Pickett still offered several issues that concern her. The city needs to do more to address racial profiling
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October 14 — 20, 2015 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Good Sport Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote
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HIGH POINT JOURNAL
Big events like furniture market often a magnet for sex trafficking by Jordan Green
A temporary explosion in High Point’s population during the furniture market drives an increased demand for sex services, advocates say, and they want visitors to understand that prostitution is not necessarily a victimless crime. Beginning Saturday and running through Oct. 22, an estimated 75,000 people will flock to High Point from around the world to buy, sell and market furniture, accessories and design services. The twice-annual market is the largest furnishings industry trade show in the world. A 2013 study by the Duke Center on Globalization, Governance & Competitiveness found that the furniture market generates $5.4 billion in economic activity in the 75-mile radius around High Point — a figure equivalent to 1.3 percent of the total gross state product of North Carolina. While the jobs, receipts by hotels, opportunities for catering companies and laundry services, and tax revenue for local governments are invaluable, there’s a dark side to any temporary population boom: an increased demand for commercial sex services that often, unbeknownst to the buyer, can involve coercive employment practices. “The statistics show that any time there is a large gathering of people and they are traveling to another place for a convention, or for the Super Bowl, victims of sex trafficking are usually brought in,” Sandra Johnson said. Johnson is the executive director of Triad Ladder of Hope, a faith-based organization dedicated to eradicating human trafficking. “You have men coming in by themselves — and men are not the only ones who buy sex; women do, too,” Johnson said. “People are out of town and they’re looking for a good time, and they’re there for entertainment. I don’t know if they feel like they’re more free to do stuff that they wouldn’t normally do.” Data on sex trafficking related to the furniture market and even anecdotal information is hard to come by, but it’s clear that there is some level of sex work
associated with the market, said Rachel Parker, the anti-human trafficking program manager at World Relief High Point. She and a colleague attended the furniture market a couple years ago and talked to participants to get an understanding of how prostitution comes into play. “Most of my understanding is that escort services are provided at parties, and hookups happen at those parties,” she said. “You have business people coming from all over the world. If you’re coming to wheel and deal with a lot of money, and a lot of alcohol is available, then that’s something that’s available, too.” The High Point Market Authority is the official sponsor and organizer of the market, and International Market Centers, the largest showroom operator, also declined to comment for this story. As a demand driver for commercial sex services, the furniture market is no different than other large-scale events in the Triad, such as the ACC men’s basketball tournament or mega-selling concerts. “In other areas of the Triad, you’ll see some of the hotels hopping with young girls,” Parker said. Triad Ladder of Hope coordinates a year-round effort to distribute soap to hotels along interstate highways. A slip of paper with a hotline that victims of sex trafficking can call for help is placed on the back of each bar, Johnson said, adding that some hotels agree to take the soap and others don’t. Officers with the Greensboro Police Department receive training to identify victims of sex trafficking, spokesperson Susan Danielsen said. The Greensboro Police Department’s jurisdiction includes the Interstate 40 corridor near Piedmont Triad International Airport, where a number of hotels that house visitors to the furniture market are located. Patrol officers or members of the vice section are often the first to come in contact with those involved in human trafficking, whether they might be victims or perpetrators. Considering that human trafficking is a federal crime,
People buying sex might assume that it’s consensual, but that’s not always the case.
officers typically refer the cases to the US Department of Homeland Security. “We always have more officers when these large-scale events are in town,” Danielsen said. “We know that additional people in our area, especially if they’re here for a short period of time, have a potential to bring crime. It’s not just sex crimes; it’s also drugs. It’s understandable that there is the potential for these types of crimes to be on the increase because you have more people.” Calls to the High Point Police Department and Guilford County Sheriff’s Office were not returned for this story. Parker said many buyers believe that commercially transacted sex is consensual. Sometimes it is, but not always. “If they’re under the age of 18, they’re understood to be a human trafficking victim,” Parker said. “The human brain doesn’t fully develop until age 25.” Anyone under 18 is too young to post a listing on Backpage, a website that provides a forum for adult services listings, and too young to qualify for a credit card or sign a contract for a
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phone. Young sex workers also typically rely on adult drivers for transportation to locations where they meet clients for liaisons, Parker said. “You think this might be a great opportunity, but that person [the pimp] has a weapon,” Parker said. “There’s a network that includes a driver. You might be on good terms with everybody. You joke, ‘I wouldn’t mess with that person,’ but you know that if you cross him you might get beat up. You know that you have limited resources.” Among the signs of human trafficking exhibited by victims are having few or no personal possessions, lack of familiarity with surroundings and a fearful or anxious disposition, according to the anti-human trafficking organization Polaris. “Helping our population understand the different pieces of coercion and how this could be perpetrated in our community and looking for ways to prevent it — that’s the biggest piece,” Parker said.
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OPINION EDITORIAL
Hypoc-Raleigh There’s an old adage in journalism popularized by the late Alexander Cockburn that comes to mind as we unravel new legislation coming out of Raleigh. “Never believe anything until it has been officially denied.” The corollary to this principle is that when an elected official cites a specific reason for doing something, that specific reason is usually untrue. Remember, the wave of GOP representatives that gave the Republicans both houses — and, not incidentally, many of the legacy Democrats who survived the assault — came in on a promise of smaller government, lower taxes and a strengthening of the middle class. Since 2010, North Carolina’s General Assembly has positioned itself at odds with the federal government on things like healthcare, gun control and voting rights, asserting our state’s right to a degree of sovereignty. But this same majority, without a trace of self-awareness, has also usurped the city of Asheville’s authority over its own water supply, and the ability of Charlotte to control the airport within its city limits. They took a swipe at Greensboro’s municipal elections, too, which has yet to play out. On lower taxes, the prevailing party did, indeed, drop both personal and corporate income taxes in 2013 — our personal income tax rate of 5.75 percent, which will be lowered further to 5.49 percent by 2017, is below that of South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Louisiana; slightly more than Mississippi and Alabama and quite a bit higher than Florida and Texas, which have no personal income tax. But the drop in revenue is corrected in this year’s budget, much of it on the back of the Department of Motor Vehicles, which has seen across-the-board fee increases of 20-30 percent. The rest comes from sales taxes, which remain between 6.75 and 7.5 percent across the state, though enough exemptions have been lifted to increase sales tax revenue by $160 million — most of which will go to rural counties in a redistribution of wealth that doesn’t seem to bother any of the Republicans who voted for it. Most offensive of all to those of us able to recognize hypocrisy is the lip service given to the middle class, a popular notion these last 10 years or so when it comes time to gather votes but not so much in actual practice. A proper progressive tax system demands more from those who have more — that’s why we use percentages. But by slashing those percentages and replacing them with flat fees, we push our revenue streams off balance. While a two-income household earning $100,000 a year with a single child might not even notice the $5 increase in the learner’s permit fee, it might be a dealbreaker for a single-parent household at the poverty threshold with several teenagers in residence. That makes it a regressive tax system, which further erodes the purchasing power of the middle class while benefiting those firmly ensconced in the protected vale of wealth. But no one in office will tell you that, unless they don’t really mean it.
CITIZEN GREEN
Government that is not here to help The wage and hour bureau at the North Carolina Labor Department in Raleigh has long followed simple process when workers complain that their employers failed to pay by Jordan Green them for hours worked. Investigators make a phone call to get the employer’s side of the story, and if necessary send a follow-up letter. When the employer fails to respond or goes out of business, the investigator typically closes the case and informs the stiffed worker that they can pursue a civil claim through the courts. The News & Observer confirmed this pattern in an investigation published on Sunday. The newspaper reported that the Labor Department, under the leadership of Commissioner Cherie Berry, “has rarely pushed uncooperative companies to settle debts to their employees.” The newspaper reviewed reports from almost 50 cases in fiscal year 2014 that, they said, “resulted in little or no money for workers.” “If a company owner pleaded poverty or refused to pay, state investigators nearly always gave up,” the newspaper reported. “If the employer simply ignored them, the department closed the case.” Mental health agencies, home healthcare companies and group homes, whose employees are some of the lowest paid in the state, accounted for more unresolved wage payment cases than any other single industry in the state last year, according to the News & Observer investigation. Employees who turn to the Labor Department for help collecting back wages rarely have enough money to hire a lawyer in the first place. Imagine their frustration when they wait weeks, even months, for the Labor Department to carry out a fruitless investigation, only to be told that they’re welcome to take their former employers to court. Workers who have been left to fend for themselves by the wage and hour bureau have often lost their apartments and had to turn to family members for support, while the state agency doesn’t bother to investigate whether deadbeat employers have other assets. For example, the News & Observer reported that Reaching Your Goals, a Raleigh-based company that cares for children with mental impairments, owed workers $11,800. Through local tax records the newspaper established that the couple that operated Reaching Your Goals owned
a $910,000 house in Raleigh. But state investigators never bothered to knock on the door to try to track down the owners, much less take legal action to liquidate the asset to pay the workers. Another employer sought by investigators was vacationing in the Bahamas while his former employees were scrambling to pick up the pieces of their lives. It doesn’t have to be this way. State law gives the Labor Department the authority to take deadbeat employers to court to collect payments, but the agency rarely, if ever, does that. “The department’s marching orders for wage and hour investigators are clearly spelled out in a manual,” the News & Observer reported. “Don’t bother looking for assets belonging to companies that have shut down.” Whatever the Labor Department’s excuse for not pursuing deadbeats, the mechanism for collecting debts is hardly quantum physics and is frequently used by other state agencies. For example, the couple that owned Reaching Your Goals not only failed to pay its workers, but also failed to pay the state more than $500,000 in unemployment and payroll taxes. The state Department of Revenue and Division of Employment placed liens against them, and the state will get its money when they foreclose on the couple’s $910,000 house. Unfortunately, the workers won’t get their cut. In Kentucky, a state hardly known as a paragon of progressive government, when an employer refuses to pay up, labor officials file a lien against the company’s assets, according to the News & Observer. The state of Tennessee fined companies almost $70,000 for breaking wage laws last year. And the state of Arkansas assigned lawyers to pursue claims against employers who flout wage and hour laws in 77 different cases. The outrageous irony is that in many cases deadbeat employers in the mental health, home healthcare and group home fields are enriching themselves through Medicaid payments, making their livelihoods on the taxpayer dime while they rip off workers. To compound the injury, the Labor Department also operates through taxpayer funds, paid in part by the very workers that they fail to protect. The uselessness of the wage and hour bureau in collecting unpaid wages unfortunately reinforces a common refrain among the Republicans who run state government that goes back to the presidency of their hero, Ronald Reagan: Government is the problem, not the solution. When Berry won her post as state labor commis-
employers, even when they run afoul of laws she is obliged to enforce.” It’s fair to ask whether the agency’s seemingly willful failure to collect unpaid wages is by design. You can’t be accused of incompetency if you don’t even try.
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sioner in 2000, she was the only Republican elected to the council of state. She had a full decade under her belt before her party took control of the legislature in 2010 and then the governor’s mansion in 2012. Berry’s run for office was motivated by aggravation over a Labor Department safety inspection at her spark plug factory in Catawba County, according to the News & Observer. “She describes regulations as often unnecessary and nearly always cumbersome. She has styled her department to work in concert with
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FRESH EYES
IT JUST MIGHT WORK
Tool shares and libraries by Jordan Green When my wife and I bought our house in Greensboro’s Lindley Park neighborhood in May, there was already a good assortment of tools and supplies in the garage — loppers, rakes, brooms, and clear yard-waste bags. The previous owners evidently knew how to capture the imagination of a couple looking to pour some sweat equity into a magical if neglected yard. One thing we didn’t have was a ladder so we could access the roof to clean the gutters and scrape off the piles of rotting leaves collecting in the valleys. Triad City Beat Editor-in-Chief Brian Clarey came through for us. Thanks, Brian. Some tools that are relatively inexpensive and frequently needed — shovels, for instance — are worth acquiring. Others, like table saws, which may get used two or three times a year, might not be a good investment. Weeks into my tenure as a newly minted homeowner I was wishing there was a neighborhood tool share, or tool library. This idea has graduated from “might work” to vetted and in practice. A quick scan of the internet reveals that there are active tool libraries in Berkeley Calif., the West Philly neighborhood of Philadelphia and the north side of Portland, Ore. Considering start-up costs and the required inventory for a tool library to function effectively, citywide programs would probably make sense for each of our Triad cities. Andrew Young, a local community worker, has said that a tool share is exactly what the Montagnard community needs, particularly for growing food. At a more basic and localized level, a neighborhood tool share can function as a formalized arrangement among neighbors to loan each other tools. Members could list their tools and contact information on a Facebook page or email listserv, and then contact each directly to exchange tools. A tool library takes the concept
a step further. Unlike a tool share, a library requires some start-up money to purchase inventory, volunteer hours to staff the project and space — donated or leased — to house the collection. A lot of tools are also acquired through donations. And unlike a neighborhood tool share, overhead costs for a tool library generally require some kind of membership fee to remain sustainable. A tool share or tool library is different than a makerspace, which tends to stock higher-end equipment like 3D printers and laser engravers and requires members to use the tools on site. The concept has even received the tacit endorsement of the National Association of Realtors: An article posted on the association’s website houselogic.com argues, “The benefits are not just economic: Pooling tools is good for the environment (fewer tools manufactured means less waste down the road), it’s a great way to get to know your neighbors, and it’s helpful to anyone who wants to keep up their property without spending a lot of money for tools.” As with any cooperative, there’s an economic cost. In this case, tool manufacturers and home improvement stores stand to lose. Considering that the US economy is currently structured to funnel the vast majority of corporate profits to the ultra-wealthy while workers remain undercompensated and disposable, this seems like an acceptable trade-off. If homeowners with limited income can hold on to some of their money and improve their properties by putting on a new roof or weatherizing their houses, that improves home values for the entire neighborhood. The accretion of such small investments can significantly stabilize struggling neighborhoods and help homeowners build modest wealth. Speaking of which, does anyone have a heavy tamper I can borrow to compact the dirt in my driveway before I lay down a bed of gravel?
Into the unknown On family-vacations my mother would line us up by some monument that she had read about in her tourist book and snap away until no by Daniel Wirtheim one was blinking. In those moments of excruciating stillness I planned my reactionary-adventuring years. My high school friends and I became the adventurers I imagined we would, the type of people who didn’t give a damn about collecting memories or eating real food — we let the chips fall where they may. We would pack sleeping bags, cans of food and CDs in a car and as my mom waved from the front door we would turn up the Velvet Underground, waving suburbia goodbye as we set our sites on the vast unknown. And when we finally arrived starving at our hostel or campsite, we would silently thank my mom for slipping ziplocked snacks into our canvas bags. In film and literature “adventure” is a word typically reserved for backpacking and often bearded young people who give up well paying office jobs to fling themselves into the unknown. But as I realized in Portland, Ore., the thrill of the unknown is meaningless without the ones we know. My mother bought her airline ticket for Portland six months in advance. It was her first time going to see my brother who’s lived there for 10 years, and she wanted me to come. I knew it wouldn’t be the kind of adventure I had come to associate with Portland, the kind that usually involved magic mushrooms and naked bike rides. But I would do all I could to ensure that when we got there my mother would find herself in the greatest adventure she never knew she wanted. These days my brother, who once sculpted a pile of televisions in his front yard as a protest against mass media, is married and has a legitimate business. His idea of adventure has changed, too. Upon arriving he suggested we drive his minivan to the coast. But it was only an errand run. We drove my sister in-law Taylor to her high school reunion in a small fishing town called Newport, Ore. A tourist brochure showed the side of Newport that travel companies want us to see, a quaint fishing village — one might even call it charming. What Newport had going for it was the surrounding
area, which was supposed to be some of the most scenic of the entire Oregon coast — Richard Donner filmed The Goonies nearby. But when we got to the docks there were only fish smells and gray, flabby people. Our hotel room was mid-priced, the kind with an underlying chemical smell and dull abstract paintings that might be covering up holes in the wall. The three of us tuned into a James Bond marathon while Taylor drank with her high school friends. We laid on the bed surrounded by crumpled fast-food containers, our eyes focused on the television where James Bond was blowing up some building in Venice. My mother fell asleep while my brother and I lay on the other bed. There’s a 15-year age difference between us. He remembers our father and I don’t. Our father had adventured away before I was born and now no one really knows where he is. We could talk about our father’s absence but it feels better this way, us together, sitting on the precipice of the unknown while James Bond saves the day in a crisp, white shirt. What I really wanted out of travel was to become someone whose personality rests in ambiguity, someone who always knows the perfect reaction to any situation. But adventuring doesn’t happen like that, at least for anyone who’s not James Bond. We wait around for near-death experiences or a meeting with the divine to put our priorities into focus but we’re deaf to the voices of those who love us. My father was so fixated on finding meaning in the unknown that I never once saw his face. Adventure without love is aimless wandering. Just imagine the kind of narrative flaw The Odyssey would have if Odysseus had no desire to return to Penelope. The three of us spent our last days together back in Portland. We walked through the city while the professionals were at work and the eccentrics wandered the streets. I pointed out great photo opportunities for my mother: a toothless man selling bottles of water, children playing beneath a statue of Roosevelt — photos that encapsulate both human suffering and the struggle to become more than our mortal shells. She doesn’t share an appreciation for that search of elation in the unknown, but she is here with us. She’s here along with her goldfish and pretzels. And when she turns to take a picture of me I smile, and give her the photo that I know she really wants.
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October 14 — 20, 2015 Cover Story
written by Eric Ginsburg illustrations by Evan McIntyre
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There’s a regional component to the Triad market, of course — MillerCoors announced it would close its massive plant in Eden, Four Saints opened in Asheboro, Red Oak chugs along in Whitsett and Burlington Beer Works declared its impending birth all in the last year. But we’re an urban publication, focused by necessity on the Triad’s three cities, even though there are some utterly fantastic breweries around this great state. And when it comes to beer, there are so many new brews coming out regularly in these three urban centers that it would be a full-time gig to try a pint of every last one. The Triad’s eight head brewers — polled about their fa-
vorite “beers from peers” in this issue — hardly have time to try anyone else’s creations. As Calder Preyer, father to a 18-month-old and the head beer-maker at Preyer Brewing in Greensboro, put it: “A trip to Winston-Salem sounds almost like an exotic adventure at this point.” Everyone else agreed, lamenting that they hadn’t tried anything yet from this brewery or that. Maybe you, too, can hardly keep up with all the permutations of the Triad’s beer scene over the last year. Or maybe you’re on top of it all, but are thirsty for more insights. Either way, we’ve got your back.
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The local beer culture is a swiftly moving target. So fast that, between the first and second drafts of the 2015 Beer Issue, we discovered plans for a new brewery and had to adjust. Since the beginning of 2015, Triad City Beat has broken news about four Triad breweries underway, at least one in each city. That includes news about the latest, Joymongers Brewing in Greensboro, on Sunday. Three years ago, nobody would’ve seen a point in an annual beer issue; that’s how rapidly new breweries stormed Winston-Salem, and then Greensboro, adding to the longstanding trifecta of Foothills, Natty Greene’s and Liberty.
FOOTHILLS
Foothills, the second-largest North Carolina brewery, will expand into Georgia come 2016. The brewery is already operating at 90 percent of capacity, a little too close to full for comfort, so its adding four 400-barrel tanks to expand its capacity, head brewer TL Adkisson said. Before then, Foothills will release its Frostbite Black IPA at the beginning of November, followed by its Moravian Porter. And the November and December IPAs of the Month, the last in a 24-month series, are on the way, as are more beers in the brewery’s Footmen series that allows brewers to experiment. House favorite: “We did a maplewood-aged sauvignon blanc version of our Jade IPA,” Adkisson said. “That was my personal favorite that we’ve done this year. I’ve always been a fan of our Jade…. but this was a lot of fun to do.” Using honeycombs from the same region of New Zealand as the sauvignon blanc accentuated the aromas, tartness and acidity of the beer, Adkisson said, making it a fun beer to brew and drink, he said. TCB: Foothills lets its brewers experiment, which is how we end up with an IPA of the Month as well as special releases in the Footmen Series. The Imperial Smoked Cherry Porter, a Footmen beer, was the best of the bunch in the last year, at least that I had the privilege of trying. Expert opinion: Several head brewers named Foothills’ Jade IPA first when asked about their favorite locally made beer. “I’m not an enormous American IPA fan, but that one’s fantastic,” Pig Pounder head brewer Sam Rose said. And Dave McClure and Derek Meyn, head brewers at Hoots and Small Batch respectively, both name-dropped the Torch Pilsner. Head brewers at other outfits love Foothills’ Jade IPA. Foothills head brewer TL Adkisson prefers the maplewood-aged sauvignon blac version of the Jade.
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October 14 — 20, 2015 Cover Story
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SMALL BATCH
As the year starts pulling to an end, Small Batch Beer Co. is growing, but true to its name, not a whole lot. The brewery is expanding from a one-barrel system to three, which should keep it from running out of beers as quickly. The brewery will grow from eight taps to 12, probably in the first week of November, head brewer Derek Meyn said. Small Batch already serves food — maybe the best of any Triad brewery — and the owners are opening an adjoining burger joint next door before the year is over. Small Batch always offers something new — there’s a “brilliant red” saison beer with hibiscus and kombucha coming soon. There’s a pumpkin-ginger American pale ale, a chocolate pumpkin-spice imperial porter and Meyn — who joined Small Batch five months ago after
HOOTS
working at Natty Greene’s — said people can likely look forward to some high-gravity Belgian brews and Russian imperial stouts as well. House favorite: “Probably right now my favorite is our Thai basil cucumber saison,” said Meyn, who gets the Thai basil from his garden, adding that the current batch will be the last one for a while. “I just think it’s a great combination, I think it’s a wonderful beer.” He also named the Percolator, calling it “fantastic.” TCB: What a good year for Small Batch. The brewery released Taku Rakau and the White Walker White IPA, respectively my favorite local pale ale and IPA of 2015 (though the Gibb’s pale is a close second and admittedly I’m not as IPA-crazy as the rest of the nation). Honor-
able mention goes to the Double Shot Percolator, the only coffee-flavored thing I’ve ever liked, and Cuckoo for Coconut, an American imperial/double stout with coconut flavoring. Expert opinion: Calder Preyer at Preyer Brewing and Dave McClure at Hoots agreed — the Mr. Lemon Man IPA at Small Batch is a standout. That’s not surprising, considering that if Small Batch had a flagship beer, this would be it. The hoppy lemon beer has been with the brewery all along, but Small Batch has been forced to change the name, twice. So if you had the Limonhead IPA and remember liking it, fret not: this is the same beer. Preyer also gave a shout out to the Percolator.
Hoots Beer Co. just turned two, but the bar didn’t start brewing its own beer until June 2014. Located inside the West End Mill Works near the Porch Cantina and Sutler’s Spirit distillery (which is now open for tours), Hoots has started hosting movie nights, karaoke and other events. It may be the hippest of the Triad breweries, and that’s not a bad thing: It feels authentic and full of character. The brewery focuses on sessionable beers — beers that won’t knock you on your ass. Head brewer Dave McClure says they’re working to increase capacity in small ways, but most of the changes here are visible on tap. A new Common Harvest beer just came out, a California common-style brew similar to Anchor Steam with ale and lager characteristics, he said. And Hoots is toying with the idea of a fourth beer in its Zinzendorf series, possibly an imperial stout, he said. House favorite: “Common Harvest is CAROLYN DE BERRY Hoots just turned two. It recently released a new beer, Common Harvest, that is head brewer Dave one of my favorites right now because it is McClure’s favorite. new,” McClure said. “It’s one of those beers that people don’t know what to think of it warmer months. Honestly, everything Hoots releases check out Hoots despite the brewery’s strong distribubut they’ve been drinking it and they respond really well is very solid, and its Wheel Bite Wheat is my favorite tion in bars across the Triad. So we called in reinforceto it.” McClure puts their dark and pale mild beers in wheat in the Triad. ments: Small Batch co-owner Ryan Blain really enjoys second place personally; that’s just his style of beer. Plus, Expert opinion: Remember (above) when Calder the 100 Days Porter. “It’s really roasty but not super as he points out, it’s one of Hoots’ cheapest. Preyer said that a trip to Winston-Salem would feel like heavy,” he said, adding that it “sticks to the standards TCB: Despite my affinity for the Watchnight, a bock- an exotic vacation? He isn’t alone among brewers, and on what a good porter should be” and is a “good winter style beer, my favorite Hoots beer of the year has been even those in Winston haven’t had much chance to warmer.” the Zinzendorf saison, a beautiful piece of work for the
High Point’s lone brewery — for now — recently started selling kegs to a few bottle shops and bars around the Triad, including Gate City Growlers and 1618 Wine Lounge in Greensboro, Juggheads and City Beverage in Winston-Salem and Brewer’s Kettle in High Point and Kernersville. But they appear on draft intermittently, and it’s easier to grab a pint on site. Located next to High Point University and with a second location in Myrtle Beach, Liberty is also a steakhouse and local institution. The brewery is a one-man show, run by Todd Isbell who also teaches brewing at Rockingham Community College. Soon he’ll put out dryhopped and sour versions of his recently released farmhouse saison (see below) as well as Amber Waves, a hoppy American ale. House favorite: Isbell alternates favorites between his dryhopped Keller beer and his IPA. “I like the Keller because it has the cleanness of my lager and it has a higher hop profile but since it’s just under 5 percent alcohol, you get a really nice flavor profile with lower alcohol, and you can actually drink quite a few of them,” he said. TCB: Liberty released a limited-run saison in September that wasn’t as spicy as some, making it more sessionable, or accessible to those trying to get into the style. And the flagship beer here is my favorite lager, I believe. Expert opinion: Derek Meyn, the head brewer at Small Batch who used to work at Natty Greene’s, couldn’t choose his favorite beer at Liberty, saying he really enjoys the Patriot Porter and the IPA.
PREYER You wouldn’t know from walking into the taproom that Preyer Brewing is the newest of the Triad’s breweries, but it is. After it opened this past spring, alongside the new Crafted: the Art of Street Food, Preyer drew in a steady crowd for its Red Shed IPA and wheat beer with real strawberries, among others. Easily the most comfortable brewery in the Triad, the family business feels almost like a mountain retreat center. For the month of October, Preyer is running different beers through a machine called a Randall, adding candy flavors like Reese’s Cup or Sour Patch Kids to its beers on weekends. Head brewer Calder Preyer is working on a super hoppy, West Coast-style IPA now that will be out in a few weeks, and there’s another on the way: the St. PetersGourd Russian imperial pumpkin stout. The brewery is planning a family-friendly Halloween day party, and around the same time, Preyer will begin filling 32-ounce carryout cans similar to a growler with
no refill or required deposit. House favorite: The latest batch of the Red IPA is Calder Preyer’s favorite. It’s the best they’ve made, he said, after changing up the hops and tweaking the process. Best of all, it’s already on tap. TCB: I can’t wait to try Preyer’s planned Thai-basil lemon-ginger gose beer. But until then, I’ll be drinking the Red Shed IPA, a bitter beer with more than 8 percent ABV, but mostly I’m eager to see what the future holds for the Triad’s youngest operating brewery. Expert opinion: Sam Rose at Pig Pounder and John Priest at Gibb’s Hundred agree — Preyer’s Lunsford Robust Porter excels. “It nails the style for a robust porter,” Priest said. Scott Christoffel, over at Natty Greene’s, prefers the rye pale ale here, calling it “really refreshing.”
Calder Preyer’s favorite beer (of his own) is the Red Shed Red IPA. The brewery is starting to offer 32-ounce to-go cans at the end of this month.
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LIBERTY
ERIC GINSBURG
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October 14 — 20, 2015 Cover Story
PIG POUNDER
Developer and owner Marty Kotis is a self-described perfectionist, and it shows in Pig Pounder. Never before have I smelled a brewery so clean, or seen one so pink. The taproom offers courtesy bags of hot popcorn and will deliver food orders from Kotis’ Burger Warfare and Marshall Free House across the street at no charge. In 2015, Pig Pounder released an experimental Russian Kvass beer with real orange juice — the PigMosa — designed to taste like a mimosa. Kotis will expand Pig Pounder into the building next door, putting in a small restaurant, retail space, additional brewery production space and a bourbon-barrel tasting room. The type of restaurant hasn’t been determined; it depends what Kotis puts at his downtown beer garden, he said. The expansion may include a rooftop terrace, he said, but will include large garage doors (like Preyer and eventually, Joymongers in town) and will hopefully open in late spring. House favorite: Head brewer Sam
Rose favors the PigMosa, calling it “kind of a perfect summer seasonal.” It’s based on an old Russian homebrew involving old rye bread, water and yeast, he said. “I liked doing a style that was a little out of the ordinary as far as recognition and representation in the US and also a unique beer in terms of how it’s made,” he added. TCB: The Hoofenweizen hefeweizen. Hefeweiss beers are my go-to session choice (that is, when I’m planning to have several pints), and locally I’d choose this one or the Hefe Vice at Small Batch. Honorable mention goes to the Extra Special Pig, an ESB bitter beer that is one of Pig Pounder’s staples. Expert opinion: John Priest of Gibb’s Hundred prefers Pig Pounder’s barrel-aged Snout Stout, a spin on the brewery’s year-round milk stout beer, calling it “very good.” Calder Preyer of —well duh — Preyer Brewing enjoys the Plain Pig, an ordinary bitter beer, also known as a classic English pub ale.
GIBB’S HUNDRED
Happy first birthday! Gibb’s Hundred turns one year old this month, and there’s plenty to celebrate. Let’s start with the fact that Gibb’s Hundred just won gold at the Great American Beer Festival — one of only two breweries in the state to do so — for its magnificent ESB. Gibb’s toasts its anniversary this Saturday with a party and two new beers: Squaring the Circle barleywine made especially for the occasion, and Last Leaf Brown Ale, another newbie. The brewery in the South End of downtown Greensboro plans to can or bottle two or three of its beers in 2016, including its pale ale and possibly the ESB and Berliner Weisse. House favorite: Priest’s gold medal isn’t his favorite — that would be his sour Whirligig Imperial Berliner Weisse. “It’s just a really tart, citrusy, bright, easy-drinking beer that’s really refreshing to me,” he said. “I love basically having a mixed fermentation.” Gibb’s just knocked out a small first
batch and put a much bigger one on tap last week. Priest hopes it becomes one of the brewery’s core-brand beers. TCB: Gibb’s consistently releases excellent beers, though my favorite in 2015 is probably the Date Night, a Belgian strong dark ale that I really wish was still on tap. Gibb’s consistently impresses, especially with the Whirligig Imperial Berliner Weisse, a decision I swear I wrote before hearing Priest’s opinion. Oh, and the Waterloo Wheat Belgian Tripel. Expert opinion: Head brewers were all over the map on Gibb’s, suggesting a prevailing high quality. TL Adkisson at Foothills is impressed by the Guilty Party ESB, especially considering the brewery’s age, and when Dave McClure of Hoots sees it, he gets it. Todd Isbell at Liberty prefers the Blind Man’s Holiday pale ale (as does Calder Preyer) and Medley of Moods American pale wheat, while Scott Christoffel at Natty’s and Sam Rose at Pig Pounder each made a unique choice.
Class of 2016
Joymongers Brewing (GSO)
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We just found out that former Natty Greene’s brewer Mike Rollinson and apartment developer Jim Jones plan to open Joymongers in downtown Greensboro right by Preyer Brewing Co. Triad City Beat broke the news on Sunday, and you can read more on our website.
Mansfield Brewing (GSO)
At the end of March, TCB broke the news that Bill Tyndall intends to open Mansfield Brewing on Oakland Street near the Blind Tiger in Greensboro. There is no date set for a target opening, and Tyndall couldn’t be reached for comment.
XII Tribes Brewing (HP)
Things are moving slowly for XII Tribes, which announced plans to open High Point’s second brewery a while ago. In the meantime, XII Tribes is teaching a homebrewing class at Hudson’s Hill in Greensboro on Oct. 24.
Brown Truck Brewing (HP)
TCB broke the story in January that Brown Truck would open in High Point’s Uptowne neighborhood. They’re hoping to open soon, maybe any day now, but co-owner Britt Lytle couldn’t be reached for comment.
Wise Man Brewing (W-S)
Wise Man initially planned to open in Greensboro — a story broken by TCB — but in July, TCB broke the news (noticing a trend yet?) that Wise Man would locate at the northern edge of downtown Winston-Salem instead. Renovations are already underway on the building next to Ziggy’s, owner Sam Victory said, and the plan is to open in late spring 2016.
To say 2015 was a big year for Greensboro’s longest-standing brewery would be an understatement. Natty Greene’s publicly considered relocating to somewhere like Charlotte, and a decision still hasn’t been reached for the new, larger brewing facility. Natty’s closed its Raleigh brewpub and restaurant this year as part of its consolidation plans, and announced its Guilford Golden will no longer be a core beer, to be replaced by the Mt. Mitchell IPA. But Natty Greene’s isn’t shrinking — quite the opposite. A $700,000 expansion adding tanks and other enhancements this year bought Natty’s some time to make the jump to a new venue and helped efficiency, head brewer Scott Christoffel said. Locals who still think of Natty Greene’s as a couple of beers and a downtown restaurant are embarrassingly out of the loop, as frequent interesting releases at the Bunker by the Greensboro Coliseum demonstrated the brewery’s versatility and relevance this year. Natty’s will release its seasonal holiday beer, the Red Nose winter ale with ginger, sweet orange peel
and cinnamon, this week. House favorite: “I really like our Belgian-style Lambic Gueuze called Hitchpost,” Christoffel said. “It’s aged at least 18 months.” He also loves the new Mt. Mitchell IPA, which Natty Greene’s worked on for about two years already, because it’s a “beautiful IPA” that “breaks the mold a little bit” and uses 100 percent Eureka hops from Germany. TCB: The Jackfruit Sour. A bright, tart beer that looked like a mimosa, made with jackfruit from Super G Mart in town. Honorable mention goes to the Cerveza del Sur, Natty’s Southern Pale with added cilantro, jalapeño, lime and taco seasoning. Not your mama’s Natty Greene’s. Unfortunately I haven’t tried the Hitchpost yet. Expert opinion: Derek Meyn, who’s at Small Batch, loves the company’s Full Moon Strong Ale, which he said is basically an IPA. He should know — he used to work there. Meanwhile, John Priest of Gibb’s Hundred cast his ballot for anything in Natty Greene’s sour profile, and Calder Preyer recommends the new Thicket red IPA.
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CULTURE Conferencing with the meat elite (and some NKOTB) by Eric Ginsburg
ointing to a wrinkle in the armpit of the pork shoulder, Tyler Cook explained to his dozen or so butchery trainees where to cut. Standing at the front of the room wearing what looked like chainmail under his white apron and a holster with four butcher’s knives at his left hip, Cook demonstrated the method on the shoulder in front of him. “You don’t want to be parallel, you want to dig in so this cut is muscle-y,” he said. “So score all the way around, and then cut all the way to the bone…. If you’re at the joint, you went a little too far down.” At six tables, pairs facing him tried to replicate the technique. Almost half of them were women, and for many in the group it was their first time doing anything like this. For Sarah Campbell, who stood in the second row with a glove on her left hand and a large knife in her right, Cook’s seminar on Monday gave her a chance to see the other side of pork production. She lives with her fiancé on her family’s land, Celestial Roots Farm outside of Washington, DC and raises pigs, among other things. Campbell wanted to experience the processing part of the industry, in part because it would help her better explain her product to potential buyers. Cook’s workshop, held as part of the NC Choices Carolina Meat Conference on Monday in Winston-Salem, provided Campbell with the easiest opportunity. ERIC GINSBURG Sarah Campbell watches as her impromptu butchery partner tries to follow teacher Tyler Cook’s instructions during a seminar at the Carolina Meat Conference. With the help of a scholarship aimed at entry-level female butchers like herself, Campbell was able to atto the main conference event, and only attended by a — who runs the small Pine Trough Branch Farm with tend the statewide conference even though she hasn’t select few. But in several ways, it reflected the larger her husband about 20 minutes outside of Greensboro lived around here since she graduated from Guilford statewide conference around it. and sells their product at farmers markets in GreensCollege five years ago. Campbell, for example, was far from the only boro and Winston-Salem — chatted with Campbell Cook, a butcher at Foothills Deli & Butchery in person who traveled from out of state for the event. nearby about the kinds of pigs each raised, noting that Asheville, circled around to the various tables to check A processing equipment manufacturer from upstate Cook was using one of her pigs for the demo. on Campbell and the other students, helping when New York sat next to a Greensboro-based duck farmer Not long into the conversation someone cut in to needed and providing additional insight. during the Monday night keynote address, and on her introduce himself; he’s in the States from South Africa “You have your cut in the right spot,” he said to one other side, a man who flew in from California because as part of a three-week agricultural exchange, he said, pair struggling to find the joint. “You have to start here “North Carolina’s got it going on” when it comes to and this conference is part of the deal. and work your way down.” agriculture in general and raising animals for dairy and That’s the thing about the Carolina Meat Conference As another team found the place they were looking meat in particular. — just when you think you have it pegged, the breadth fo, he said, “And that horribly disgusting sound means Cindy Flowers — the duck farmer — and Campbell of its scope will surprise you. you’re doing it right.” represent a cohort of those in attendance: younger, At a third table, he helped one woman slide the knife college educated and in some into position and she remarked: Pick of the Week cases, holding down another job. “So I was down too low.” Learn more at Flowers, the marketing manFriend opportunity “Yes you were too close to the Renaissance Community Co-op owners meeting picnic and not close enough to carolinameatconference.com. ager at Deep Roots Market in Greensboro, and Campbell, who (GSO), Saturday the shank,” he said. commutes to a job in DC at the The Renaissance Community Co-op has finally Cook’s workshop took place National Farmers Union, were among hundreds of atmade it. They’ll be breaking ground in the next few in a side room at the Millennium Center, hidden past tendees with an assortment of reasons for being there. days, and plan to open in 2016. The RCC plans on all of the conference display tables and at the oppoEducators. Family farmers. Attorneys. Marketers. providing affordable food and jobs to the communisite end of the facility from workshops where people Restaurateurs. Meat packers. Authors. ty. Become a member, connect with other members discussed everything from recipes for feed rations to They took turns marveling as Cook demonstrated his and enjoy fresh food. The event starts soil samples and grazing techniques. The hands-on butchery techniques in a pop-up demonstration near at 6:30 p.m. Find more information at butchery lessons — covering rabbit earlier that mornthe beer stand before dinner Monday. Hillary Kimmel renaissancecoop.com ing and lamb the following day — were a parallel track
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CULTURE Judy Barnes plays the soul music of opera by Jordan Green
he three core members are quick to acknowledge the confusion that arises when you call your band Judy Barnes and your frontwoman is named Jodi Burns. There’s no debating that the group is built around Burns, a singer-songwriter and pianist with a finely tuned sensibility for reaching the emotional core of her material. It’s also no surprise that Judy Barnes’ music has an undeniable rock-opera quality: Burns holds a masters in opera from the AJ Fletcher Opera Institute of the UNC School of the Arts in Winston-Salem. But the circumstances that set the stage for Burns to come together with backup vocalist Alexis Siebert and drummer/arranger Tim Nolan go back a ways. Nolan became friends with Alexis’ brother, Andy, and she would often be in the far back seat of the car showing off vocal tricks when her dad picked the teenage boys up from punk shows in downtown Winston-Salem. Both of Alexis’ parents are trained opera singers, and her dad Glenn teaches voice at the School of the Arts. And Glenn Siebert would come to be a mentor to Burns when she moved to Winston-Salem from Ohio to study opera. Nolan and Burns met in 2009. A musical partnership and romantic relationship ensued almost immediately. Burns asked Nolan to listen to some songs she had written, and he loved them. “We used to hang out in her apartment making music ’til 3 in the morning, driving the neighbors crazy,” Nolan recalled last week as he sat on the patio at Hoots Roller Bar, where he works. “I was on a huge ’70s music kick at the time — stuff like Todd Rundgren. I came from a background playing in rock-and-roll bands.” Originally, Burns envisioned a conventional ensemble based on guitar, piano and drums, but as time went on she decided she wanted vocal layering to be at the forefront. The band has had a couple guitarists and bass players — Philip Pledger of Estrangers and Scott Brandenburg are the band’s current guitarist and bassist — but Burns, Nolan and Siebert form the core of the group. Burns and Nolan recruited Siebert in late 2012 when they heard her singing karaoke at Single Brothers, and noticed that she could hit the low notes that are more of a stretch for Burns. Jody Barnes has attracted a devoted following in the tight-knit Winston-Salem music scene and have played well-received shows in Greensboro and Raleigh. Their melodic sound, with Burns’ voice and piano at the center vaguely suggesting middle-class parlor music of the 1920s, is fleshed out by gently swinging instrumentation. It’s utterly unlike anything else, even in the local indie-rock scene, where many of their friends make music with angular contours, angsty vocals and sonic dissonance. “The typical reaction when we start playing is for people to freeze in place, mouths open not sure what
T
SHOWING HER CARDS: Alexis Siebert, Jodi Burns and Tim Nolan (l-r) of Judy Barnes play opera-inspired rock and roll that is openly emotional.
they think, but they’re pretty sure they like it,” Burns said. They plan to start recording an album in about six weeks. Nolan said they’ll probably stream it online, in the hopes they can find an investor to pay for a pressing. Five years might seem like a long time to wait before getting around to recording the first full-length album, but it’s not unheard of for Burns and Nolan to keep working a song for two years before they’re ready to bring it to the band and perform it. “We’ve come into our own in the last six months to the point where we can make the record that we all want to hear,” Burns said. What connects Judy Burns’ music to opera is the vulnerability and direct access to an emotional core. “I experience more frequently than I would like a pretty intense sadness,” Burns said. “It’s usually in these moments that I find these melodies. It’s quiet moments where I’m sitting at the piano that the ideas come. It’s hard to experience that alone. Music is a way of connecting.” Nolan’s role as an arranger is more organic than formal. “We’ll be watching a movie, and one of us will say out of the blue: ‘What if we had a descending melody
JORDAN GREEN
here in this song?’” he said. “We’ll jump up and go write it down, and then we’ll go back to the movie.” Some ideas translate better than others when they take them to the band. “For someone who is classically trained, I don’t have much of a musical vocabulary,” Burns said. “On this song we do called ‘A Mountain,’ I was telling the guitar player: ‘You’ve got to play like you’re a prince and you flew to the moon and watched the earth explode. And now you’re wondering what you’re going to do.’ And he’s like, ‘What?’” Burns has been known to make listeners weep, both
Pick of the Week The Fox and the sound Foxture EP Release @ the Garage (W-S), Saturday The mathy-ambient Winston-Salem band Foxture is releasing a new EP at the Garage. Their last album, Circles, is a swooning mix of pop-ambience and complex guitar rhythms. Check out their new sound along with 1970s Film Stock, Spirits and the Melchizedek Children and Vel Indica. The show starts at 9 p.m. Find more information at the-garage.ws
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as an opera singer and as frontwoman for Judy Barnes. A friend of Nolan’s told him at a bar: “Man, I saw you guys play this one song and I saw this guy crying. Then I started crying.” The guy she had seen crying was Alexis’ brother, Andy, who was back home for a visit from New York. Nolan said he knows that classical opera is just as important to Burns as Judy Barnes — if not more — because coming off the high of an opera performance she feels depressed for three weeks, but she’s only depressed for three days after a Judy Barnes show. Nolan recalled one of Burns’ opera performances when he looked over at Glenn Siebert, and both had tears streaming down their faces. “Papa Siebs,” Alexis Siebert said affectionately as Nolan recounted the experience. The elder Siebert also approves of Burns’ foray into rock-opera. Burns recalled how Siebert came up to her after one of Judy Barnes’ gigs and wagged his finger in her face. “You’re doing the right thing,” he said.
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CULTURE Bureaucratic systems prevail at South Asian Film Festival by Daniel Wirtheim
hat looks like an internment camp, with tightly spaced bunkers, white walls and blue roofs, spreads across the screen as Puran Bhatt looks like he might weep. He’s a lifelong member of the Kathputli Colony, which has agreed to live in the transitional camps for two years until they can find new homes but Bhatt knows it will be longer. Tomorrow We Disappear is the 2015 documentary exploring the forced relocation of the Kathpulti Colony from their homes in a New Delhi slum into transitional camps miles away. It’s an effort to catalog the destruction of a once-praised artist colony and one of the eight films screened in the first annual South Asian Film Festival at A/perture Cinema in Winston-Salem. Most of the films hailed from India but also included a couple of Pakistani films and a documentary on Malala Yousafzai, the youngest-ever Nobel Prize laureate, which will runs through Thursday. Sukhada Gokhale, along with A/perture Cinema owner Lawren Desai, curated the festival. Gokhale is a filmmaker and educator from India who lives in Winston-Salem. Starting the annual South Asian Film Festival was her way of bridging the filmmakers she knows in India and an American audience. The well-attended festival took place on Oct. 9-11. Gokhale wanted to make the festival inclusive with a film for children, Kaphal: Wild Berries. There was also a series of short films exploring various themes in India and Pakistan, including the Pakistani peace movement, an outsider becoming a regular at an Indian café, and a 13-year-old dealing with her parent’s divorce. But the last two feature films of the festival, which included Tomorrow We Disappear, showed how repressive India’s bureaucracy can be. “We can just watch a short video on it, but I think it’s more meaningful when we have to sit for an hour and a half and feel it,” Gokhale said. We see the pre-transitional-camp Kathpulti Colony through the eyes of Bhatt, a nationally recognized puppeteer. The people of the Kathpulti Colony live in an array of colorful shacks separate from the progressive inner New Delhi. The urban population sees the colony as a group of slum-dwellers. But Bhatt presents Kathpulti as an artist community that overcomes poverty with rich storytelling and spirited performances. Close-ups show the astounded look on children’s faces as fire breathers shoot flames, others pound drums; the general sense is that there’s never a moment without some type of performance happening in Kathpulti’s narrow alleyways. But the vibrant paint that adorns Kathpulti is fading. The children are dirty and the police are becoming increasingly strict on street performers. Developers want to build a skyscraper in its place and they have full support from the city. In some ways, it’s the classic tale of gentrification. The developers arrive with clipboards, suits and ties
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Tomorrow We Disappear follows an artist community pushed out of their homes and into transitional housing.
and before anyone can digest what’s actually happening the city’s ordinance comes and the transitional camps are built. There’s no official destination for the Kathpulti Colony, and morale is fading with the loss of their homes. Tomorrow We Disappear shows that as in any major country, India’s bureaucracy can cause irreparable harm. That was a recurring theme at the South Asian Film Festival. Court, the 2014 Indian courtroom drama and India’s official 2015 selection for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards, also screened at the festival to a full theater. Court offers a more intimate look at the judicial process in India. It follows the case of an aging folk singer charged with abetting suicide by influencing the death of a sewer cleaner through his lyrics. Court channels the quirky courtroom moments that most of the genre overlooks. Attorneys have papers falling out of their folders, courtroom speech is redundant and overly clarified, and no one is exceptionally articulate. At one point, a judge asks what a group of 20 or so people are doing standing in the back of the courtroom and an officer replies that they were sitting in the handicap car of a train. The judge fines them 500 rupees each and orders them to leave. The legal system is revealed as ineffective and run by ludicrous figures who impose their own conservative bias on the artist’s criminal cases. Court gives the impression that the Indian judicial system depends on extortions from poor citizens and deliberately targets subversive artists, similar to what the Kathpulti com-
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munity faces in Tomorrow We Disappear. In the end, the accused folk singer is acquitted but soon after is arrested for no apparent reason other than being a general nuisance to the political system. Court shows how the judicial system is a labyrinth. Nothing really makes any sense and once the hungry eyes of the law are set on a victim, the fate of the prey is virtually sealed. As he sits in the new transit camp, the colony that Bhatt once loved is being demolished and he’s presented a government contract agreeing to the demolition of the Kathpulti houses and their subsequent movement to transitional camps. He’s not the jovial puppeteer from the beginning of Tomorrow We Disappear; he’s a man chased by the cold-blooded beast that is the state. He lights a cigarette, takes a painful moment and puts ink to paper.
Pick of the Week Sporty spice Annual Extravaganza @ Elsewhere Art Museum (GSO), Saturday There’s going to be food by Table 16 and other “tailgating delights” at this sports-themed fundraiser. Quilla, Make Light and Elemeno are playing and the party’s not over until 2 a.m. In the past, Elsewhere fundraisers have been extravagant, filling all three floors of the museum with sights and sounds. The event starts at 8 p.m. Visit goelsewhere.org for more information.
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GOOD SPORT Miss Livingston, I presume igh Point University’s feet 2 inches. scrambled back, but their hopes were short-lived, and first-year middle But she’s got the chops to back up her size. the Panthers won the set with seven points of padding. blocker Molly LivingAt Sun Prairie High School, Livingston garnered firstAnd to think — this was apparently an off night for ston waited patiently behind team all-conference and second-team all-state in her Livingston. the volleyball net during the senior season in 2014, honors capped by her addition to “For her, consistency wise, it was a low-hitting night Oct. 9 match against the Radthe national tournament team the same year. at .250,” Oliver said. ford University Highlanders. She could have gone to any number of schools, but Hitting averages work similarly to the baseball staLike all great hunters, she she chose HPU. tistic: Kills minus errors divided by attempts. by Anthony Harrison knew there was no need to “It was like the old cliché — as soon as you step on “Molly averages .450 and records double-digit kills,” rush until the opportunity campus, you’re home — and as soon as I talked to the Oliver added. “She wasn’t quite on. But that’s the sign arose. She simply waited at her position behind the coaches, I knew HPU was the place for me,” Livingston of a good player and a good team.” net, holding up three fingers with her right hand. Black said. “It’s everything I ever dreamed and more.” Surely, the night couldn’t have been won on Livingtape accented her index digit. She took a moment to laugh at herself. ston’s efforts alone. Even when the Radford players, decked out in bright “I know, I’m such a dork,” she smiled. Sophomore middle blocker Camryn Freiberg tallied crimson, served and scurried into defensive formation, She may be a gentle giant, but that charm trans15 kills, floating from the corners gracefully as a butLivingston stood stock still. Her hands crawled up forms into ferocity on the volleyball court. terfly before smashing the ball with sniper-like accuraalong the net like a spider slowly creeping towards its Livingston’s influence with the Panthers that night cy into empty spots in the Radford defense. prey. Her eyes followed the floating white ball, sharply, was undeniable. Her enthusiastic presence pumped And senior libero Annemarie Chin recorded 26 digs, intently. up her team; it seemed like, when she would leave the adding to her top-five national average for digs per set. And then, when the ball returned, she snapped into court, the Panthers floundered a bit. But the night of Oct. 9 was Livingston’s tour de action. But when she came back, force. She blocked. She spiked. it was like adding one of the “She’s earned her playing time,” Oliver said. “It The High Point Panthers next take She killed. Four Elements. Fire might be doesn’t matter if you’re a freshman or a senior; if you Livingston seemingly doma good candidate, considerexecute, you’ll be on the court.” on the Winthrop University Eagles inated the whole match, but ing her blazing red hair and Livingston will likely spend plenty of time on the in High Point University’s Millis remained modest about her ferocious performance. court for the next few years. Center on Friday at 7 p.m. HPU will accomplishment. Her shining moments came And she’ll be waiting for her next kill. also host the Big South volleyball “We all had to come out in the third set. Pick of the Week hard and focused,” LivingHigh Point had already setournament beginning Nov. 19. ston said after the game. “I cured a decent 10-5 lead over Screw you, cancer! For more upcoming matches, visit knew me and Jordan [Hefner, the Highlanders by the time Strike Out Cancer Baseball Tournament @ Guilford highpointpanthers.com. freshman middle blocker] Livingston stepped to the line College/Ed Price Park (GSO/HP), Saturday and had to step up. We’re always to serve. Sunday pushing each other, and we She then led the Panthers South Iredell High School sophomore Jay have to step out of our comfort zones to get the wins on a raging tear, beginning with a net-nicking ace. Sadoff has organized a baseball tournament we need.” It was the first of three she’d record during the set; with help from the Vs. Cancer Foundation. High They’re racking up the wins now. she’d score five by the end of the night. school players will play in a two-day event occurLivingston came to the Triad from Sun Prairie, Wis., She fired up the rest of the team, too, not giving the ring at the Guilford College baseball field and Ed a suburb of Madison. (“We have wonderful cheese Radford players any chances, letting them fall from Price Park in High Point. All proceeds will benefit curds,” she quipped.) their own errors and making efficient kills. the Vs. Cancer Foundation. The games start at In the Midwest, volleyball reigns right up there with The score stood at 18-5 before the Livingston-led run 8:30 a.m. both days. For more information, visit basketball and football as the sports of choice. came to an end off an attack error by High Point. strikeoutcancerclassic.weebly.com. “There’s a huge culture of grassroots, young volleyWhen the coach subbed Livingston out, Radford ball players,” High Point head coach Jason Oliver said. “It’s a hotbed for kids 12 to 18 playing volleyball. That’s what they do.” Livingston started playing volleyball in sixth grade, but also played softball and basketball. “I started club in eighth grade, and since then, volleyball’s been my No. 1 thing,” Livingston said. “We’re all giants [in my Frank Slate Brooks family], and so basketball’s a big thing, ary’s Broker/Realtor® so it was kind of a surprise to them. They 336.708.0479 cell Gourmet Diner asked, ‘Are you sure?’ But they’ve been 336.274.1717 office really supportive.” frankslate.brooks@trm.info Livingston definitely impressed phys1401 Sunset Dr., Suite 100 Greensboro, NC 27408 ically. With the exception of one teamtrm.info mate, she towers over many of them at 6
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‘Order in the Food Court!’ all rise, then be seated at a table by Matt Jones
55 Self-serve dessert, slangily 57 Long ride around town? 58 Greek salad ingredient 59 In a weak way 60 “___, meeny, miney, moe ...” 61 Got better, maybe 62 Measured by the teaspoonful 63 Lead-in to “boy!” or “girl!” 64 Old stories
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1 Covered area leading to a doorway 2 Love, to Dean Martin 3 Complain pettily 4 Latter half of a donut chain 5 Columnist Herb who coined the word “beatnik” 6 Gymnast Korbut 7 HBO drama set in Utah 8 Shellfish soup 9 Covers a lot of ground? 10 Colored eye area 11 With “The,” film with Will Arnett as Batman 12 “Be My Yoko ___” (Barenaked Ladies single) 13 Coal or pine product 21 Behind on bills 22 Big container of coffee 26 Duel blades 27 Hair holders
29 Nutritionist’s stat 30 Ending for super or inter 31 “Carmina Burana” composer Orff 32 Agrees (with) 33 Humane Society transactions 34 Neither masc. nor fem. 35 Acceleration measure 36 “For heaven’s ___!” 37 “Lord of the Rings” beast 38 “A pox on you!” 40 Reducing 42 Fizzle out 43 Iggy of pop charts 45 Christopher of “Back to the Future” 47 Organ meats 48 San ___ 49 Garden store buy 50 Elms provide it 52 TV marine Gomer 53 Group led by Master Splinter, initially 54 Georgetown athlete 55 DVD remote button 56 “The Serpent and the Rope” novelist Raja
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1 Get a move on? 5 Baseball Hall of Famer Ty 9 Episode 1 title, frequently 14 Actor Sharif or Epps 15 Et ___ (and others, in Latin) 16 Entertainment venue 17 Act like a nomad 18 Pound cake ingredients 19 Hardiness 20 Stealing cheese from the taqueria? 23 “Twister” star Hunt 24 Belonging to you and me 25 Hewlett-Packard CEO Whitman 28 Compelled 31 Handle hardship 32 The main character of “Blindspot,” at first 35 Courtroom mallet 36 With 37-Across, additional order in the court? 37 See 36-Across 39 On the subject of 40 Cal Ripken’s team 41 Detained 42 Club attendee, maybe 44 NYC winter hrs. 45 Judy Garland’s eldest daughter 46 Musical endings 51 Why this writer’s silent on forgetting malt vinegar?
Answers from previous publication.
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There’s a little something for everyone at the grand opening of a Field & Stream store.
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Tickets at 336.725.7101 PiedmontOpera.org Sung in Italian with English supertitles.
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Nicole (back) reports on High Point Market for USA Today.
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’ve been skulking around point is that new technology will not necessarily replace old High Point Market pre-opentechnology, but it will date it. By definition. Eventually it will ing events and parties, and replace it. But it’s like people who had black-and-white TVs I have to say that the only thing that when color came out. They eventually decided whether or not got loaded was my bag of swag. Even the new technology was worth the investment.” my camera was spared the visual And that brings us back to High Point, where the square hangover. footage of furniture spaces alone is enough to Laugh if you will, but turn to tech instead of hoofing it. The market by Nicole Crews it’s a recurring theme is still written about for sure, but it’s tweeted, I love the mess of in my life. Whether Instagrammed, Facebooked and pinned long large families, the before most stories are filed — so photograon a work junket or vacation, I’m usually the snap-happiest kid in the room — and the photos life-editing that phers and the snap-happy are kept on a short are usually of… well, rooms. I don’t know why I leash, especially before the doors officially open living with dogs have this compulsion to photo-document living on Saturday. So whether you are a design hound spaces. Maybe it’s because my mother was a like me, a buyer, an exhibitor or just curious requires. furniture and interior designer or maybe it’s just about what happens in High Point — know that because the way we live — or aspire to live — is it’s a lot like Vegas. interesting to me. What happens there stays there. At least All I know is that while attending the Thai Cooking School at until social media tells the story. the Oriental Hotel in Bangkok I shot at least six rolls (yes, this was the pre-digital era) of the school itself — with few food shots in between. The newly opened and adjacent lotus flower-laden spa was the subject of at least three independent rolls that clicked off as effluviently as the Chao Phraya River on whose bank it resides. When I was in college and studying at Universidad Complutense in Madrid, I did a photo essay on multi-generational living that was comprised largely of living and dining rooms of Madrilenos. Like many, I often equate how we live with levels of sophistication, regionality and life priorities. I love the mess of large families, the life-editing that living with dogs requires. I love the intellectual bric a brac of worldly thinkers, the tidy femininity of Southern ladies, the chaos and clink of dudes. Yep, I’m an egalitarian voyeur when it comes to rooms with or without a view. Maybe it’s just a visual thing that opens a whole new world of storytelling. Many editors and writers like me originated as creatures of the black-and-white page — word nerds who like to let the reader’s imagination do the illustrating. It worked. It still does, but in midst of the information age it can be limiting. In today’s digital world of multimedia information sources where online, print and video merge, attention span is truncated and images hit harder and faster than the time it takes to write about it a scene. The four-wall prison of the typewritten page has been Shawshanked. It’s like Steve Jobs said: “The overall SCOTT CROWDER
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