We’ve put up the tree — late this year — and wrapped all the gifts. Yesterday
I ordered more firewood and I’ve got a haircut in the books before the weekend. I finally pulled the carcass of the Thanksgiving turkey from my freezer and turned it into a thick, gnarly gumbo because the kids are home from college to eat it. I’m making practice batches of Christmas cookies and sourcing authentic Italian bread for the feasts to come. I’m wearing sweaters because I’m freezing, always.
It’s a lot more calm than usual around our house in this week before Christmas. We’ve no travel this year, no parties to attend. My partner has been stockpiling gifts since August, so there’s no last-minute shopping to do. I’m not cooking Christmas dinner this year; like I say, I just need to bring the bread. Last week we went to our very last holiday concert at the school, something we’ve been compelled to do every single year since 2005, when our oldest started
kindergarten.
Christmas is easier now, with grown kids and all these years of practice. But it’s harder, too.
My father died just after Christmas last year. This will be the first one in my entire life without him, though if I’m being real, he was pretty out of it last year and spent most of the day dozing in and out on the couch. I had a bit of an emotional breakdown last Christmas, at night, after everyone had gone home. Two weeks later he was gone.
Like Heraclitus’ river, you can’t celebrate the same Christmas twice. Sometimes it’s rainy; sometimes you’re far from home; sometimes you get all the presents you wanted; sometimes there are new babies; sometimes there are empty seats at the table. It’s the way of things, I know.
But Christmas feels a little heavier this year, even with the kids coming home, even with all the chores done and a load of firewood on order.
I’ve got the rest of the week to tap into that deep vein of Christmas joy I see everywhere around me. I will do my best.
1451 S. Elm-Eugene St. Box 24, Greensboro, NC 27406 Office: 336.681.0704
PUBLISHER/EXECUTIVE EDITOR
Brian Clarey brian@triad-city-beat.com
PUBLISHER EMERITUS
Allen Broach allen@triad-city-beat.com
OF COUNSEL
Jonathan Jones
EDITORIAL
MANAGING EDITOR
Sayaka Matsuoka sayaka@triad-city-beat.com
CHIEF CONTRIBUTORS
James Douglas james@triad-city-beat.com
ART ART DIRECTOR
Charlie Marion charlie@triad-city-beat.com SALES
KEY ACCOUNTS
Chris Rudd chris@triad-city-beat.com
AD MANAGER
Noah Kirby noah@triad-city-beat.com
Carolyn de Berry, John Cole, Owens Daniels, Luis H. Garay, Kaitlynn Havens, Jordan Howse, Matt Jones, Autumn Karen, Michaela Ratliff, Jen
Todd Turner
Tinsel Town @ Greensboro Cultural Center (GSO) 8 a.m.
Christmas Eve Eve Celebration @ Steel Hands Brewing (GSO) 12 p.m.
Photos with the Grinch @ Cooks Flea Market (W-S) 11 a.m.
Tinsel Town features 50 uniquely decorated Christmas trees purchased and decorated by local corporations, groups, non-profits and families. Stroll through and vote for your favorite tree where the top five winners receive a $500 donation in their name to the non-profit of their choice. Look for the TCB/IRC tree for bonus points Visit downtowngreensboro.org for more information.
Steel Hands Brewing is hosting a pre-Christmas Bash with BOGO on all pizzas, a special holiday shareboard and bowl games all day. Visit the event page on Facebook for more information.
Carolina Crossing Christmas Jam @ Radar Brewing Company (W-S) 8 p.m.
Carolina Crossing is back at Radar Brewing to play your favorite holiday jams just before Christmas arrives. Find more information on the event page on Facebook.
Cooks Flea Market will be open on Christmas Eve! Stop by for some last-minute holiday shopping and photos with The Grinch. Find more info on the Facebook event page
He’s been on the force for almost 20 years, but newly sworn-in Greensboro Police Chief John Thompson knows he’s different from his predecessors.
“Even though I’ve been in the organization a long time, I’m a little different from Chief [Brian] James,” Thompson said. “He grew up here and had a lot of family connections. I’m not from Greensboro or North Carolina. I grew up in California and bounced around a bit. I don’t have the history that Chief James had.”
Nor does he have the baggage accrued by former Police Chief Wayne Scott, who held the position from 2015-19. Even in demeanor Thompson appears to be different. Whereas James was quietly stern and even somber, Thompson seems more introspective, understated. Not as gregarious as Scott but not as serious as James, maybe a midpoint.
And that’s okay with Thompson, who said that, for him, becoming police chief wasn’t about the title. It was about the ability to enact change within the department.
“I don’t really have an agenda,” Thompson said. “It sounds funny when I say this, but I don’t have an ego. It wasn’t about the position, it was about making change. I feel like I can sit at the table with anybody.”
n Dec. 16 Thompson officially began his tenure as Greensboro’s police chief. The city chose Thompson after conducting a national search in the wake of James’ retirement in May 2022. James took over as UNC-Chapel Hill’s police chief in July. Interim Police Chief Teresa Biffle is set to retire soon, according to Thompson.
Prior to taking up the mantle, Thompson was an assistant chief and acted as the bureau commander of the patrol division. He joined the GPD in 2003 after beginning his career in law enforcement in 1998 with the Asheboro Police Department. During his time with GPD, Thompson has also worked in the planning and research division and resource management division.
Using his experience from all three departments, Thompson said his focus will be on finding creative solutions to policing that don’t always involve punitive measures.
said.
He mentioned his work creating the Homeless Assistance Resource Team a few years ago and talked about bolstering the co-response model as well. He even stated that he’d like to see non law enforcement responses to certain mental-health
‘An opportunity to be innovative’
“I think I have an opportunity to be innovative and change some of the ways that we’ve done things in our police department,” Thompson
I don’t really have an agenda.... I don’t have an ego. “
“
‘An opportunity to be innovative’
Greensboro’s new police chief, John Thompson, looks to increase alternatives to traditional policing
calls.
“We’re not trained mental-health professionals,” Thompson said. “But we were the only option.”
When it comes to the issue of homelessness, something that Thompson has worked on for years, he said he wants the department to move away from enforcement as much as possible. When asked about the new ordinances passed by city council this year, Thompson said that those kinds of decisions are out of his control.
“A lot of people blur the lines between police and legislative bodies,” he said. “Our job is enforcement, but what I want to make sure is when we do enforce, that we are not creating additional harm, but we’re providing help. Enforcement only if necessary; that’s been a shift in our organization.”
Thompson’s goal to move away from strictly enforcement to a more holistic approach to policing is in line with the ways that departments across the country are rethinking their roles in a post-George Floyd era. Thompson said he’s keenly aware of it, too.
“It’s going to be critical to meet with people in spaces and say that we’re at the table not just for superficial reasons,” he said.
n February, Thompson plans on having community meet-and-greet sessions and hopes to have them throughout his tenure.
In terms of practical applications of a post-George Floyd police department, Thompson said that he’s interested in looking at ways to curb violent crime down at the community level.
When asked if violent crime is as bad as has been repeatedly reported in recent years, Thompson said that the department saw a spike in 2020 and in 2021 with a record number of homicides in 2020. This year, in the violent crime categories — which include homicide, aggravated assault, simple assault and sexual assault — there has been a decrease and the numbers are returning to pre-pandemic levels. Still, the department has seen 41 homicides this year, and that’s 41 too many, Thompson said.
“We have an issue and we definitely need to tackle it,” he said.
Part of the solution lies in a $2 million grant that the department recently received that will go towards bolstering historically disenfranchised neighborhoods by pumping in resources like job training and education. Thompson also said that improving areas of the city where violent crime occurs can help deter it. That involves fixing streetlights and improving parks, but also taking into account tree
canopies in certain neighborhoods.
“These are all factors that are not just police or enforcement driven,” Thompson said. “It’s about what resources can we provide?”
Thompson is interested in include Cease Fire out of High Point that connects repeat offenders with resources to get them out of the cycle of violence.
Thompson said that he is aware of Cure Violence also, but that is something the city’s new office of community safety will be in charge of looking into.
But these programs need officers to head them, and that’s been an issue for the department. Like many other law enforcement agencies in the country, the Greensboro Police Department is facing a staffing crisis. According to Thompson there are currently 115 open positions and many of the leaders in the department, including Biffle, are retiring soon. He understands why enrollment is down, too.
“The public sentiment of our profession, specifically after the murder of George Floyd, and how the community feels about our profession is a factor,” he said.
The economy is such that those seeking jobs have the upper hand too.
“They have the bargaining chip,” Thompson said. “They could go someplace else and that makes it difficult to attract individuals.”
The department has looked at different incentives to recruit new employees like signing bonuses, additional time off and mental-health incentives.
“Anything is on the table at this point,” he said.
In addition to increasing staffing, Thompson’s other goal is to be accountable to the community.
“I don’t exist without the community,” he said.
It’s going to be difficult however, given the conflicting ideologies about policing that exist.
“I think where there may be a conflict is in the community and what different areas of the community want,” Thompson said. “I want to balance those expectations in the community…. Some people say they want to abolish the police department, and then you have others who, during the protests, said that everybody should have been locked up and we should have called in the military. I’m trying to strike a balance with the community and what’s best with the community.”
Still, even with these mounting challenges, Thompson said he’s happy to be here.
“What I learned as I moved up through the organization is that as you move up, you have more of an opportunity to have greater impact in the decisions you make, the policies you make, and connection with the community. Now I get the opportunity to really have influence and impact not just me, or the patrol division, but our organization as a whole and how they interact with the community.”
‘I
The turning of the calendar makes it 10 years that we have been talking about voter ID in the state of North Carolina. It was marked last week, near enough to its anniversary, with a state Supreme Court ruling declaring the voter ID requirement to be illegal because — duh — it seems designed specifically to disenfranchise Black voters. Which of course it was.
The first voter ID bill of the modern era came along in 2013, after the Republican majority had comfortably asserted itself in the General Assembly. It was passed immediately after the US Supreme Court struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, one that prohibited North Carolina, Mississippi and a handful of other states with histories of racist election laws from passing new ones without federal consent. And it never fully took effect because of all the lawsuits filed against it. It was struck down in 2016 by a federal threejudge panel, which found that, among other crimes, “[T]he General Assembly enacted legislation that restricted voting and registration in five different ways, all of which
disproportionately affected African Americans.”
Undeterred, the GA sought to enshrine voter ID into the state Constitution with a voter referendum, which passed in 2018. But the law the Republicans wrote again targeted African Americans, and so it went back to court where it has languished for four more years.
Friday’s opinion expressed the exact same themes that have been brought up in the past: that it inordinately targets Black voters, that the problem it purports to solve — voter fraud — barely exists and that voter ID would not prevent the cases that have been documented in NC.
“[G]iven the rarity of voter fraud in North Carolina,” Justice Anita Earls wrote in the opinion, “a less restrictive law could have been sufficient to deter voter fraud and promote voter confidence in elections had this goal been the law’s only actual purpose.”
Will this be the last time NC’s voter ID law will be adjudicated? Certainly not. GOP leaders say they have one in the works for the next session, which will take place after the state Supreme Court switches to a Republican majority.
Around and around we will go.
These bills have been designed specifically to disenfranchise Black voters.
513 S. Elm St. 336.265.8628GSO vivid-interiors.com
Life is too short to be ho hum. Live Vivid!
Vivid Interiors is an Interior Design shop with a retail store in Downtown Greensboro.
e offer full service residential and commercial design, where we help the client realize their home or business’s potential through their own lens but honed with a Vivid vision.
In addition to our design services, we offer furniture, lighting, local artwork, accessories and small gifts from all over the world. We also carry myriad lines of wall coverings and textiles and much more than our 1200 square-foot space can accommodate.
Whether you’re shopping for gifts for the holidays, or shopping for yourself or your home, we have a wide assortment of gifts and accessories for all budgets and tastes.
Vivid Interiors is open Monday-Friday from 10 am-5pm, with special extended Holiday hours on Saturdays.
304 S. Elm St. GSO 336.763.1919 scuppernongbooks.com
From vases and picture frames to tables and chairs to light bulbs and doors, it’s all at Habitat Greensboro’s ReStore. Come shop with us during our 12 Days of Deals this holiday season, Dec. 8 – 23, to find that unique gift or the perfect item to make your home holiday-ready!
Habitat Greensboro’s ReStore is not just a place where you can donate your gently used items and find a great deal on furniture, housewares, or building materials. It is a place where people
cuppernong Books opened on Dec. 21, 2013 and has been an essential part of the rebirth of downtown Greensboro ever since.
We are a general interest/literary bookstore featuring fiction and poetry along with a remarkable children’s section and a broad range of general interest titles.
Within the store is a café serving organic coffee and espresso, wine and beer sourced primarily from local small businesses. We also partner with Jerusalem Market for sandwiches, salads and more substantial fare.
Scuppernong Books also hosts hundreds of events a year, bringing in writers from around the world, the country and the state. In 2019, we hosted more than 250 writers, as well as theater, music, dance and
community conversation.
In 2017, Scuppernong Books was instrumental in the formation of the Greensboro Literary Organization, a separate non-profit organization which stages the annual Greensboro Bound Literary Festival, and brings authors into the Guilford County Schools through their Authors Engaging Students program.
In 2018, we formed Scuppernong Editions, an eclectic small press.
Scuppernong Books believes that independent bookstores have an important role to fill in a community.
We hope to live up to that responsibility with an openness to ideas, a respect for all the individuals that make up our Greensboro community, and a willingness to have fun doing so.
For 25 years the Pipe & Pint and has been the Triad’s home for premium cigars, fine wine, craft beer and accessories. With the finest se lection of cigars and wine you are sure to find the perfect gift for the discerning person in your life. Our experienced and knowledgeable staff can make the task of sorting through our luxury selection of goods a breeze. Choose from the best cigars across the world and wines from value to collectible.
Gift cards and gift baskets available and made to order.
2190 Lawndale Drive GSO habitatgreensboro.org The Pipe and Pint 3716 Spring Garden St. GSO 336.218.8610 Thepipeandpint.net
from all walks of life work together for a greater good; and a place that strengthens families and builds homes.
Every purchase from Habitat Greensboro’s ReStore helps build safe, stable, and affordable housing for families in Greensboro through Habitat Greensboro’s Homeownership Program.
For more information, please visit HabitatGreensboro.org.
Established in 1954, Clemmons Florist is Greensboro’s oldest family-owned florist. A fourthgeneration florist offering the finest flowers and plants available anywhere, we offer prompt delivery service to all of Greensboro and
most of Guilford County. Because customers are important to us, our professional staff is dedicated to providing you with the most prompt service and quality products obtainable. Hundreds of arrangements available for delivery or pick up online, or call directly for that extra special touch!
511 S. Elm St. GSO 336.370.1050 Areamod.com
AREA’s clean-lined, midcentury vibe has been waiting for you since owner Mark Hewett opened it in 2000. A native of Birmingham, England, Hewett studied industrial design and worked in London, Hong Kong and New York before he came to Greensboro 20 years ago, specializing in reproductions of midcentury furniture designs.
Hewett has a long relationship with High Point–based Younger Furniture. Customers can select from a wide range of designs and upholstery for the couches, chairs and headboards displayed in AREA, which are then custom-made and delivered to their homes, usually within six to eight weeks.
Most of the case goods — nonupholstered chairs, side and coffee tables, et cetera — are sourced from a Minneapolis-based company, which in turn sources from a manufacturer in Pennsylvania. So customers can feel good about supporting locally supplied and American-made products with the
attendant lower carbon footprint. “AREA is lifestyle furniture,” Hewett says. “We are bringing together appealing design, high quality construction and moderate pricing.”
Hewett wants to ensure that the furniture a customer has waited weeks to receive is in perfect condition, is exactly what was ordered, and is assembled and placed precisely as directed. On the one hand, it’s a smart business move to make sure this crucial last step in the process goes smoothly, especially since Hewett does not collect final balance until customer sign-off on delivery.
But mainly Hewett just wants the job done right. “People are happy when you bring in the couch or dining room set they’ve been waiting on,” Hewett says. “I want them to stay happy for years to come.”
Revolution Cycles was born almost 15 years ago out of frustration. We didn’t feel at home in any of the local bike shops. They were all great in their own way. But they weren’t what we were looking for, so we started something new. Add in some cool brands, great service, curated inventory, a hefty amount of suburban ennui and a little cheek... and voila.! Here we are.
We’re Greensboro’s Alternative Bike Shop. Alternative to box stores. Alternative to vanilla brands. Alternative to transportation. Ride styles. Lifestyles.
1907 Spring Garden St. GSO 336.852.3972
Boutique without being bougie, with everything from used to new. Gear for everything from daily commuting to bugging out of town for a month. We work on all bikes and accept everyone.
Why choose Revolution Cycles? It’s a great question, and probably best answered by a super sexy interpretive dance about class war, consumerism, devolution, and the fleeting triumph of love. But the short answer is “bikes.”
Also, we’re not a cult.
Located across from Spring Garden Bakery. Open Tues-Sat. Closed Sundays and Mondays.
by Sayaka Matsuoka
For a brief second the shutter expands, flooding the lens with light as it passes through the aperture. The near-instantaneous action reacts with the blank canvas of the film, imprinting an image of the world onto the sheet. It’s this capturing of a specific moment in time that captivated Jaffa Graves many years ago.
“Photography has consumed my life,” he says. “It’s all I think about.”
Graves is a local photography enthusiast who has been shooting in the Greensboro area for the last seven years. He runs a photography club and leads tours around the city for those interested in shooting scenes. His latest venture, however, involves the behind-the-scenes work of film photography.
When he’s not at his day job as a logistics manager or out shooting on his 35mm camera, Graves is tucked away in the back room of his home office. From the outside, it looks like an extra closet. But within, Graves tinkers with the centuries-old process of exteriorizing reality onto paper.
“There aren’t that many companies that develop film anymore,” Graves says. “There’s still one here called Dalmatian Labs, but there’s a void. I hear about people going to Charlotte or Carrboro or Chapel Hill to get their film developed. That’s why I got the idea to do the developing.”
For the last few years, Graves has converted one of the rooms in his home into a darkroom. He found a deal on an enlarger on Facebook marketplace and thought to himself, Why don’t I do this? Why don’t I offer this to people? And so, he began Greensboro Photo Co.
Growing up in Greensboro, Graves, like many others, took his rolls of film and disposable cameras to big box stores like Wal-Mart or pharmacies like Eckard that would ship them off to be developed. These days the options are slim, with many of the same stores no longer offering the service. In Greensboro, a few Walgreens stores still develop film but Graves thought that he could help fill the gap.
“I wanted to fill the void,” Graves says. “I love developing and I love the scanning process…. The interest is here. A lot of people have asked me about the services and what formats I do.”
Currently Graves says he can develop anything from 35mm to 4x5 film, black-and-white only.
He’s got a small box at Deep Roots Market where interested people can drop off their
rolls. For others who have disposable cameras or larger film, the best way to reach him is via email because he’s still trying to figure out the logistics of the business.
“It’s really only been maybe a month and a half,” Graves says. “The business here is to avoid mailing or driving to a different place. Even mailing seems unnecessary. I can meet people, I’m here.”
So far Graves has gotten a few rolls that he’s developed. And even if it’s not stuff he’s shot, it still feels exciting every time he starts developing.
“To shine this white paper with light and then this thing starts to appear like magic, I love that process,” he says.
Really, it’s the whole experience of shooting on film that Graves is enamored with.
“It’s a cliché thing in the film, but it’s about slowing down and having to focus because I know I have to be on point, it’s a fleeting moment,” Graves explains. “The slowdown is more about focusing on what you’re creating which is different than digital and having the immediate response that you have on the back of the camera.”
That’s because in film, the shot is singular. You can retake it, but that last shot has come and gone. There’s no editing in post production or Photoshop involved. Sure, there’s the finesse of how the image is developed, but there’s only so much you can change once the shutter clicks.
And Graves doesn’t have anything against digital photography. He has digital cameras and sometimes uses them for commissions, but his passion lies in film.
“When it comes to being artistic, for me, I love film,” he says. “Noth-
ing against digital, but something about a roll of film exposed by light is interesting to me. The way the photo renders is different than digital, it’s a different look.”
Part of Graves’ hope for the future is to not only develop other people’s film but to grow Greensboro Photo Co. to eventually have a community darkroom somewhere with an exhibition space and a storefront. Kind of like a hub for the local film community, he says.
“I’m as excited to do this for other people as I am to do this for myself,” Graves says. “This isn’t just about developing film; I want to have conversations about the film that people send me…. I don’t want to just be a business that pumps out rolls of film, I would love to have a back and forth about your film, more a community conversation.”
Learn more about Greensboro Photo Co. on Instagram @greensborophotoco. Email Graves to talk about film or get film developed at greensborophotoco@gmail.com. Drop off film rolls at Deep Roots Market.
Gale Melcher (she/they), TCB’s newest hire, will be the paper’s first City Beat reporter. The position is a nonprofit-funded position that will cover every city council meeting in both Greensboro and Winston-Salem. Because the position is funded by nonprofit dollars, her work will be free to share by other media outlets. Learn more about that by emailing Brian at brian@triad-city-beat.com.
Gale comes to TCB from Wilmington and we’re excited to have her! Here’s a little about Gale and why she got into journalism.
To reach Gale, email her at gale@triad-city-beat.com. She starts in January 2023!
AThe first journalists I ever met were my grandparents. They worked incredibly hard over the course of their careers, particularly my grandmother who served for several years as the editor of the newspaper they both worked for. She is one of the hardest-working people I have ever known, often working long hours (even over holidays and vacations) to ensure that the stories in her community were told. Their passion for this work ignited my desire to write, and it also showed me the importance of local news. Big or small, every story is born at the local level. I wholeheartedly believe that local news ties a community together.
When I decided to pursue journalism I knew that I wanted to work in local news, particularly in print journalism. I’ve always loved reading a physical copy of a newspaper, the cover catching your eye as you walk by, notifying you (without having to find the information through the internet) what exactly is going on locally. That’s so powerful, and I love the fact that the Triad City Beat is committed to making their critical reporting accessible in digital form as well as in print.
Picking up a newspaper is an opportunity to learn something new, and funnily enough that’s how I read about Triad City Beat for the first time; a few of my closest friends live in Greensboro and while I was visiting them back in July we stopped at a local bookstore that also distributed magazines and newspapers. On our way out I stopped to pick up a newspaper called the Triad City Beat. Several months later this position became available, I applied, and I’m so grateful to be part of this paper’s mission.
I had the pleasure of knowing a very gifted artist during my time in Raleigh and ended up writing a profile essay on her and her work over the summer right before she took her talents to Australia. I feel so grateful that I got to learn more about her and the meanings behind her paintings. At the end of the day, writing about people and having the privilege of hearing their stories is what I love the most. I also enjoy writing poetry and fiction; lately I’ve been piecing together a short story as a fun creative project.
Highlighting topics that challenge inequities will be one of my main goals in this role, and I’m especially looking forward to hearing about and writing on topics that may be discussed in future city council meetings such as policing, healthcare accessibility, and affordable housing.
The opportunity to immerse myself and learn is probably what excites me most about this role. I’m looking forward to connecting with people as I learn more about these cities and their stories every day. I feel so honored to have received this responsibility and cannot wait to give it my all in the new year.
BY CAROLYN DE BERRY
