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Greensboro / Winston-Salem / High Point triad-city-beat.com August 19 – 25, 2015

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Bluesology at the Arts Based School PAGE 16

Dan Besse vs. the developers PAGE 9

Luv-in spoonful PAGE 20

A win for Anthony PAGE 28

August 19 — 25, 2015

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triad-city-beat.com

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August 19 — 25, 2015

1451 S. Elm-Eugene St. Greensboro, NC 27406 Office: 336-256-9320

CONTENTS 28

Business

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

Editorial

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

Art

Art Director Jorge Maturino jorge@triad-city-beat.com

Sales

Director of Advertising and Sales Dick Gray dick@triad-city-beat.com Sales Executive Alex Klein alex@triad-city-beat.com Sales Executive Lamar Gibson lamar@triad-city-beat.com Sales Executive Cheryl Green cheryl@triad-city-beat.com

Contributors Carolyn de Berry Nicole Crews Anthony Harrison Matt Jones

UP FRONT

MUSIC

4 Editor’s Notebook 5 City Life 6 Commentariat 6 The List 6 Barometer 7 Unsolicited Endorsement 7 Triad power Ranking 8 Heard

22 Backyard music

NEWS

GOOD SPORT

9 Dan vs the developers 10 Digital disaster 12 HPJ: Save the chickens

GAMES

OPINION

13 13 14 14

Editorial: Skip through the election Citizen Green: As good as his Bond IJMW: Alternative orientation Fresh Eyes: Liquid networks

COVER 16 B luesology at the Arts Based School

FOOD 20 Luv Luv delivers 21 Barstool: Drinking tips for college kids

Cover Artwork

by Benjamin Maturino

TCB IN A FLASH DAILY @ triad-city-beat.com 4

First copy is free, all additional copies are $1.00. ©2015 Beat Media Inc.

ART 24 Behind the lens

STAGE & SCREEN 26 Designs on the designer 28 Street ball

29 Jonesin’ Crossword

SHOT IN THE TRIAD 30 Reynolda Village, Winston-Salem

ALL SHE WROTE 31 Apartment therapy

EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK

A Tiger by the tale

by Brian Clarey

So it’s settled, then, is it?

The fallen hero Tiger Woods, barring some freak accident or alarming development, is coming to Greensboro to play in his first-ever Wyndham Championship.

And as can be expected, the hooples are just abuzz about it.

More seasoned sports fans will argue — and they love to argue — that an appearance by the mediocre pro he has become is hardly big news. That Tiger’s best years are way back on the front 9 and that he’ll be lucky to duff his way onto the seniors tour. That it’s been almost 20 years since he first won the Masters, and that he’s not even in the Top 100 anymore.

And they’re right that, certainly, an inordinate amount of attention will be paid to the No. 187 player in FedEx Cup standings by the provincials at the tournament.

But still… it could happen.

Golf is a solitary game, and after the mechanics of the swing are mastered, very much a mental exercise. There’s a math in golf — distances, angles, speed, friction — as well as muscle memory. Once a golfer lands on the green, the game becomes psychological.

The Donald Ross course at Sedgefield Country Club has been torn apart by young and old pros alike. I was there in 2008 when Carl Pettersson took the grande dame for 9 under par, finishing the weekend at -21. And there have been a lot of big weekends on this course since then. If Tiger could shake his personal issues and back problems, reach deep and find that disciplined and brilliant player we once knew him to be, he could destroy Sedgefield.

And that’s why we’ll watch. For the first couple There’s always the possibility that days, anyway. the guy will show up and give us a Odds are pretty glimpse of the greatness that was. slim that Tiger takes Sedgefield — though he could probably use that $5 million purse these days. Victory for a golfer in Woods’ position would be making the cut on Friday and playing through the weekend. Even a win wouldn’t get him into the playoffs, so there’s not all that much on the line. But there’s always the possibility that the guy will show up and give us a glimpse of the greatness that was.

A good showing here would give him a strong finish to the season, and maybe ignite some of the spark that built his name.

And it would give the hooples a real show to see Tiger Woods wearing red on Sunday as they trailed him around the course at Sedgefield.

The Wyndham Championship @ Sedgefield Country Club (GSO) The Wyndham PGA Tournament returns to the Donald Ross course at Sedgefield, this time with Tiger Woods, who has never really needed to play it before. Will he destroy it, or will he even make the cut? It’s all happening beginning Thursday. Find out more at wyndhamchampionship.com.

WEDNESDAY

Ne-Hi and the Kneads @ the Crown (GSO) Ne-Hi brings rock from Chicago to the aerie above the Carolina Theatre, with support from local fellas the Kneads. See carolinatheatre.com for more.

triad-city-beat.com

WEEKEND

CITY LIFE August 19 – 25 THURSDAY City Market @ the Railyard (GSO) Skool is the theme for this month’s installation of the City Market, with music from the American songbook, Elsewhere’s parklet, a UNCG drumline and, of course, food trucks, beer, fellowship and vending. Action starts at 6 p.m., and the website is gsocitymarket.com.

Rituals: An Evening of Dance @ Milton Rhodes Center for the Arts (W-S) Music from Bach, dance from Wake Forest and App State faculty, and new work by local composer Eric Schwartz highlight this Carolina Summer Music Festival event. See carolinasumermusicfestival.org for details.

FRIDAY Up @ Reynolda House (W-S) Cinema Under the Stars features Pixar’s beautiful little picture that begins with a love story and ends with a million balloons. Showtime is at dusk.

SATURDAY

Military History Day @ Old Salem Museums & Gardens (W-S) Soldiers in military dress going back to the French and Indian War, weapons demos, old clocks and a lesson in hardtack begins at 9:30 a.m. See oldsalem.org for more.

Mipso @ the Garage (W-S) The new album from Chapel Hill’s Mipso, Old Time Reverie, gets the debut treatment at the Garage.

HopFest @ Market and Davie streets (GSO) It’s an old-fashioned beer party with new-fangled beers, live music, food trucks, art and fellowship with a purpose — besides drinking beer, that is. See createyourcity.com for the full story.

Gate City Cypher @ Shiners (GSO) Tha Ruger, Phillie Phresh, Stitchy C, Illpo and the rest of the gang bring it hard to Shiner’s in the latest from the Gate Coty Cypher crew. They’re on Facebook.

Rock show @ Kohinoor Palace (GSO) Kohinoor Palace was once known as the Flatiron, but the new place is picking up the threads of the local music scene with this event featuring Colin Cutler, the Billyfolks, Sanders Davis, Wildebeest and American Thieves. Pay at the door.

Vaudeville After Dark: Video Games @ Jackie’s Place (HP) Video games are sexy. That’s the impetus behind Vaudeville After Dark’s newest show, running on Washington Street in High Point. Check the Facebook page for details.

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August 19 — 25, 2015

Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Food Music Art Stage & Screen

by Chris Nafekh Whiplashed I believe that we met on the Witness for Peace trip to Mexico which I look back on as very worthwhile and a great group of people.

I compliment you on your analysis of Judge Schroeder’s opinion [“Citizen Green: The inartful sheriff, or judicial whiplash”; by Jordan Green; Aug. 12, 2015]. It didn’t occur to him that there is a code of omerta in law enforcement. In fact, when it occurred to the county that some things were getting out, they began looking for a mole.

I attended the trial for four days. The sheriff was caught making untrue statements such as that they never set up checkpoints on Sunday. One witness whom the judge deemed credible said Sunday was indeed the day she was stopped at a checkpoint while the female deputy, whom the witness knew by name, testified she was never there.

The judge set a high hurdle for the DOJ. Ben Ansbacher, Burlington Pieces of history I was honored to find memorable items belonging to Mrs. Angelou! [“Belongings: Select items from the Maya Angelou estate”; by Eric Ginsburg; Aug. 12, 2015] I haven’t decided what I intend to do with them or which museum I’ll send them to, but will surely be taking it to a resting place she would be proud of!

Maria Bailey, via triad-city-beat.com Success is his last name Great article about a great young man [“A High Point rapper shouts out the city’s poor neighborhoods; by Jordan Green; Aug. 12, 2015]. Hope only the best and success for him. Stay positive, young blood.

Brad Lilley, High Point

All She Wrote

Shot in the Triad

Games

Good Sport

5 ways to improve NC higher education

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1. Expand student representation The UNC Board of Governors represents more than 221,000 students across 17 campuses. A 34-member conglomerate of attorneys, businessmen and former legislators, the board manages the budget, programs and affairs of the UNC system.

Although the UNC system encompasses diverse institutions, almost the entire board is white; it’s not representative of the student body. There’s only one student board member, Zack King, who studies at NC State University. King joined the board as president of the UNC Association of Student Governments, a position he was democratically elected to by students. The lack of student and minority representation is unjust, and the only way to change it is through the legislature.

2. Quit cutting programs Earlier this year, the board voted to terminate a total of 46 programs including a number of arts programs at UNC School of the Arts in Winston-Salem.

The board of governors defunded UNC-Chapel Hill’s Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity despite prompt public outcry. On one hand, the board needs to balance the budget. On the other, NC State Chancellor Randy Woodson recently defended a new $15 million “boutique” athletics dormitory. Though Woodson insists it will be privately funded, shouldn’t the money go into tuition breaks or libraries? Why fund luxury housing for college athletes when the system is cutting crucial programs and facilities?

3. Treat athletes fairly This is a humble request: Hold athletes to the same academic standards as all other students. After a humiliating scandal at UNC-Chapel Hill in which professors and coaches gave athletes fraudulently high grades through fake classes — for 18 years straight

– it’s time for UNC to focus on academics and not athletics. The athletes involved in this incident didn’t receive a proper education. What many athletes do receive is a free ride, meanwhile less fortunate students labor through their classes and tuition payments. They may attract attention and revenue by playing ball, but universities should be judged by the quality of the education it provides, not the banners hanging from the rafters.

4. Make tuition affordable Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley speak the same language: Make education affordable. The board or governors raises tuition at UNCG regularly; it’s been done five times in the past six years. UNC-Chapel Hill charges over $33,000 for out of state tuition. In a perfect world (that is, Sweden) students wouldn’t pay tuition. Regardless of the means by which tuition is made cheaper, lower costs will ease the unreasonable debt students often graduate with; the state legislature has a few options to aid funding of higher education.

5. Raise funding Twenty percent of the UNC system’s budget is tax money. Raising corporate taxes and funding higher education could lower tuition, yet politicians campaign against tax increases. In Colorado, the state legislature legalized marijuana to regulate and tax as a commodity. All the tax dollars generated by pot production went directly into the high school system.

Now, the state’s drop-out and success rates are better than before legalization. North Carolina could emulate Colorado’s policy to fund either the high school or university. It’s easier said than done, but this should be considered a viable option. It worked well in Colorado, so why not here?

The Best High Schools Edition 3. Winston-Salem

US News & World Report issues an annual ranking of the best high schools in the nation. About 140 schools from North Carolina made the 2015 list of the almost 30,000 that were reviewed, and just 40 of them were ranked nationally. Though Winston-Salem has some fine high schools — Atkins Academy & Technology High and Carter G. Woodson School scored the best — none of them made the Top 40.

2. High Point

High Point gets the No. 2 slot with the Penn-Griffin School for the Arts, which was listed as the eighth best in the state and 240 in the national rankings. Its students are above average in college readiness, algebra and English, and the student-teacher ratio of 14:1 is enviable.

1. Greensboro

The Gate City topped this micro list on the strength of the Early College at Guilford, the 40th best high school in the country and second best in the state, and Weaver Academy, fourth best in the state and No. 100 in the country. No. 1 on the list is Raleigh Charter High School, and I suspect the only reason Guilford got bumped is because algebra is not part of the curriculum and because of a high student-teacher ratio of 24:1.

Cover Story Food Music Art Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

79% 11% 10%

Games

Unsure

Good Sport

Yes, defintely!

Stage & Screen

Eric Ginsburg: Forget the song — Dixie is generally used to refer to the portion of this country that formed the Confederate States of America. Based on some initial research it seems like the terms origins are a little obscure, but it is still enmeshed in Confederate history, even if we ignore the song. Is changing the name the most important battle flag to pick up? No way. But are you seriously telling me there aren’t better things

New question: With the Wyndham in Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Open coming up, we want to know if you prefer tennis or golf. Vote at triad-city-beat.com!

Opinion

Jordan Green: I’m actually unsure. I vaguely associate the song with the despised Confederacy, but I’ve also heard that its roots are not directly tied to the Southern secession movement. I don’t trust that what I’ve heard about the song is not distorted by mythology. I don’t know the song’s history of cultural and ideological associations, although a bewitching version

by Bob Dylan makes me wonder whether it needs to be reclaimed from the bigots. I’m simply too ignorant on this topic to take an informed position. I’m glad that Triad City Beat has raised the question for debate, even though Councilman James Taylor formally ended “his effort to consider proposing a name change” in a city-issued press release on Aug. 12. I’d love to see someone present credible and rigorously sourced research on the history of this song so that Winston-Salem residents could have an informed understanding of whether the name of an important annual event reflects the values of the community.

Readers: Commenters on a link to this week’s Barometer in the Smitty’s Notes E-Community in Winston-Salem Facebook group pretty unanimously said no. We’re only counting actual votes on our website, which still overwhelmingly favored “No, absolutely not!” with 79 percent of the vote and strong turnout. Just 11 percent said “Yes, definitely!” while 10 percent were unsure.

It’s not a scientific poll, but it’s still telling.

News

CHERYL GREEN

Brian Clarey: It’s important to understand a couple things here. For one, regardless of its etymology, the term “Dixie” doesn’t mean the same thing to everybody. For some it reminds them of their old racist grandma who used to say the craziest things about life in the Old South. For other Americans, the connotations are somewhat less fuzzy. Also, the Dixie Classic Fair is not a private entity. It’s held on city-owned property, which means that some of the very people for whom the word represents a brand of domestic terrorism are forced to pay for it. I’m not saying we go around erasing the word from our history, Orwell style. But yeah, it’s time to change the name.

we could honor? Come on.

Up Front

Growing up in rural Kentucky, my friends and I had access to acres of creeks and woodlands for play. We swam in the deep pools, of course, but we also waded, learning the textures of different rock formations, sand and mud. We caught crawdads and minnows, not to mention the occasional and inadvertent garter snake and leech. The highlight might have been building dams with rocks, wood and mud, providing a lesson in the relative strength of various building materials and dynamics of hydrological pressure.

My 2-year-old daughter, an urban dweller, won’t have that luxury unless I install the artificial stream of my fantasies in the backyard. The vast majority of children, growing up in cities and suburbs, will likely never get the chance to wade in a natural creek.

So the idea of natural playscapes — a playground of rocks and wood, as opposed to plastic and steel — struck me as ingenious when my mom told me about it. Our family spent a recent weekend at her place in Champaign, Ill. so we could visit my sister and her two kids, who flew from Oregon to meet us. On the second day of our visit, we made a short drive out to Homer Lake expressly so that our daughter, Amy Bell, could play with her 4-year-old cousin in some natural water. There were logs to balance on and rocks to climb over, but the artificial stream was the clear attraction.

Dozens of children in bathing suits flocked to the stream, with parents either watching from boulders on the bank or spotting them from behind.

Although there were small waterfalls to climb, our kid was content to pick a spot and plop down in the water. She became preoccupied with picking up small rocks and flinging them — luckily not in anyone’s direction — or dropping them in a plastic tub. She really got into the experience, and her mother and I would periodically have to lift her out of the stream when she lowered her head and started lapping up the water. We were also highly entertained by watching her splash in a conga-playing motion with her hands.

Amy Bell’s cousin was a little more prepared to take advantage of the full experience, and I entertained her by dropping chunks of wood and leaves upstream so she could try to catch them as they darted past in the quick-moving current.

There were no snakes or even jagged pieces of rock to make the experience remotely dangerous. For these girls in the midst of discovering their natural surroundings and their bond with each other, it would be hard to imagine anything more exciting.

After Winston-Salem City Councilman James Taylor (yes, that’s his real name) made a comment about considering a name change for the Dixie Classic Fair, we asked our readers and editors what they thought of the proposition.

No, absolutely not!

by Jordan Green

Urban dwellers experience the wonders of nature.

triad-city-beat.com

Rename the Dixie Classic Fair?

Natural playscapes

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August 19 — 25, 2015

Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Food Music Art Stage & Screen Good Sport Games Shot in the Triad

HEARD

Ch-ch-changes

“If you’re doing a play, you have to do rich research. If you’re doing Shakespeare’s Henry V, you have to study the history of who was Henry V? What was the fabric used for clothing in his day. What kind of dye did they use? Did they have to import the dyes for clothing in the royal court? What minerals were used to make the dye? And it’s Shakespeare, so you’re talking about language. Already, you have science, language arts and history. It’s authentic learning. You’re driven towards a goal you care about.”

— Mary Siebert, arts director for the Arts Based School, in the Cover, page 19

“They believe they can do better financially with a plan that includes a retail component. They can’t get the retail without a rezoning. That’s the thing that gives me leverage. If I can get sufficient concessions from them on affordability and historic preservation, then I would withdraw my objections to the retail. If I can get a deal like that, then I’ll take it as the best deal I can get. If I can’t then I’ll go down fighting.”

— Winston-Salem City Councilman Dan Besse on his fight to save Ardmore Terrace Apartments, page 9

A planned Family Dollar store has generated significant opposition in Winston-Salem’s Washington Park neighborhood.

He frequents the lively Parisian nightclubs — which could by themselves warrant an award for stage design — surrounded by his models and peering through a cloud of smoke and thick-rimmed glasses with the coiled sex power of a jungle cat.

— Daniel Wirtheim, on French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent, page 26

Wouldn’t it be great if we as a community, as a city, as a people could somehow cultivate the interactions that lead up to these big ideas? Maybe we can. Steven Johnson goes on to explain what he dubs “liquid networks.” To set the stage, imagine each of us, and our brains and ideas, as a molecule bouncing around. In a solid, we would be too locked in to really get much exchange going. Imagine the classic office space filled with people who are all just sitting and working, together and yet totally alone. The solid, the cube, the cubicle.

— Sam Bridges, in Fresh Eyes, page 14

Take charge of your mind, body and spirit Test pH balance, allergies, hormones Balance diet, lifestyle and emotions Create a personalized health and nutrition plan

“He could’ve killed me. I was on his property; it could’ve happened.

Of course the man is like, ‘What are you doing on my property?’ and I said, ‘Oh, I was admiring your flag.’”

All She Wrote

— Endia Beal, interim director at WSSU’s Diggs Gallery, page 24

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DICK GRAY

Both choosing your mate and choosing your sofa are easier said than done, I know, and the latter is especially difficult for the male species who, for the most part, at least until “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” thought a recliner, a ball-cap collection and street signage was décor.

— Nicole Crews, in All She Wrote, page 31

(336) 456-4743

jillclarey3@gmail.com www.thenaturalpathwithjillclarey.com

Councilman in chess match with high-powered developer

by Jordan Green

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

Earline Nichols has lived at Ardmore Terrace Apartments near Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem for 35 years — ever since she suffered a massive stroke at the age of 52.

She has broken her hip a couple times, along with her right ankle, so that she requires a walker to get around. On top of that, her mind is steadily deteriorating. Her daughter, Sheila Billings, who lives nearby in the Ardmore neighborhood and acts as her mother’s sole caregiver, said she had to unplug her mother’s stove because she is so absent minded. Nichols gets at least one hot meal a day from Meals on Wheels.

Waiting at the door and letting the volunteer in is a daily ritual.

Nichols’ rent is $508, which is a deal.

After rent, the rest of her $900 monthly income goes towards medicine, grocerJORDAN GREEN ies and utilities.

Dan Besse, who represents the Southwest Ward on Winston-Salem City Council, has vowed to fight a developer’s plans to knock down the Ardmore Terrace and Cloverdale apartments, where he currently lives.

On. Aug. 7, Billings received some devastating news through a flier left Besse, who represents the Southwest of the apartment complex also includes nonstarter” as far as he was concerned. outside her mother’s door by city Ward on city council, by coincidence young families and working professionBesse said the developer, Robin Team Councilman Dan Besse: The building’s and circumstance is a victim of the als. of Carolina Investment Properties in owners would be tearing down the impending dislocation himself. In the “The rent for one bedroom is in Lexington, told him that if he blocked Ardmore Terrace and midst of a divorce, he the $500s and for two bedrooms is in the rezoning, they would drop the retail Cloverdale apartment moved into the Clothe $600s,” Besse said. “It’s located in component and simply proceed with the Winston-Salem City complexes — with verdale Apartments in an area that is safe, and is in walking plan to build new residential units — an Councilman Dan Besse roughly 350 units 2011, with the expecdistance of retail jobs and the hospital. option that would sidestep the requirehosts a meeting at distributed through tation that it would be It’s the kind of affordable-living enviment for a rezoning. about 90 buildings a short stay during a ronment that is becoming increasingly Besse said he asked the developer Miller Park Communi— and erecting a transitional period of scarce in our city.” and representatives of the ownership ty Center on Aug. 24 to new, mixed-use dehis life. But he found Besse said an architect hired for the group if they would give him time to try hear input from resivelopment with retail that he really liked project approached him in January and to come up with an alternative plan to dents of the Ardmore and housing. the apartments, which outlined the proposed redevelopment. preserve at least some of the housing.

Terrace and Cloverdale are within short “I really, really hate Besse was opposed from the outset. The Ardmore is on a national registry of to leave,” Nichols told apartments on the prowalking distance of apartment complex is the largest conhistoric neighborhoods and the aparther daughter. Her Thruway Shopping centration of affordable housing in his ments were built between 1947 and posal to demolish the mother’s clarity made Center, Whole Foods district, he said, and while he generally 1952, Besse said. If he’s able to identify apartments and build an impression on and Harris Teeter, supports mixed-use development, this is grants for historic preservation, he said new housing on the site. and ended up staying Billings. one area of the city that doesn’t lack for he thinks he might be able to present “For her to rememlonger than he had retail. the developer and ownership group with ber that, when she can’t even remember initially planned.

At a later meeting with the archia financially attractive alternative. what she ate 15 minutes ago,” she said, Along with elderly neighbors like tect and the ownership group, Besse “They believe they can do better “it’s really sad.”

Nichols, the racially diverse population said he told them the proposal was “ a financially with a plan that includes a

Up Front

A city councilman finds himself embroiled in a redevelopment proposal that he says would wipe out about 350 units of affordable housing in a walkable area of Winston-Salem near Baptist Hospital and Thruway Shopping Center.

triad-city-beat.com

NEWS

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August 19 — 25, 2015 Up Front

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

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retail component,” Besse said. “They can’t get the retail without a rezoning. That’s the thing that gives me leverage. If I can get sufficient concessions from them on affordability and historic preservation, then I would withdraw my objections to the retail. If I can get a deal like that, then I’ll take it as the best deal I can get.

If I can’t then I’ll go down fighting.”

During the most recent meeting on Aug. 4, Besse said the developers told him they were filing their plan with the city, with an eye towards having it ready for review by the planning board in September. When he learned that the developers were filing the plan, Besse said he felt obligated to inform his fellow tenants and constituents.

Representatives of the ownership team and the developer could not be reached for this story.

Besse said he has already given notice to the apartment management that he plans to move out at the end of September, when his lease is up, to avoid any conflict of interest in the matter.

The demolition of the West Side Apartments following a 2012 rezoning by city council left an impression on members of city council, Besse said. About 75 tenants, many of them elderly, poor, sick and disabled, were displaced to make room for the luxury Edge Flats apartments across Business 40 from Baptist Hospital.

“A number of us on council feel badly there wasn’t another way we could help those residents out,” Besse said. “We consider that a lesson learned.”

As a result, the council prodded staff to develop a new workforce affordable housing program.

While characterizing the program as “ambitious” and “comprehensive,” Besse added, “We’re talking about drips and drops — single digits of affordable housing. The loss in one blow that our community would absorb just beggars everything that we are talking about putting together.”

He cited the first project to come forward under the proposed workforce affordable housing program — renovation of the Pepper Building in downtown.

“That example makes clear when we’re talking about investing in creating six affordable units just how huge a loss the elimination of 350 units would be for the community,” Besse said.

The councilman said that it’s only a minor hassle for him to move. He has savings and owns a car, after all. For many of his neighbors though, facing the loss of their housing “is a full-blown crisis.” Most of the decision-makers — developers and city planning staff — “don’t have the life experience of living long-term in an apartment where they don’t have a vehicle, and walking and public transportation is their only way to get around,” Besse said.

Sheila Billings said she understands that everyone wants to make money, but she is asking for a little compassion towards the community’s elderly residents.

“My mother is really decrepit,” she said. “I pray every day God will call her home before she has to move because this will be so disruptive. When I heard the news, I said, ‘Oh Lord, this is as bad as it could be.’”

by Eric Ginsburg

The only tangible measurement of a $30,000 campaign to promote Greensboro is a set of disappointing and “terrible” numbers indicating web traffic to a new digital marketing site.

Up Front

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

When the city of Greensboro, economic development group Action Greensboro and the Greensboro Area Convention & Visitors Bureau teamed up on a joint marketing campaign in Delta Sky magazine’s June 2015 issue, they knew most of the results would be intangible.

The goal from the outset was to get in front of millions of readers across the country as well as internationally, and to promote Greensboro with ads and paid editorial content to attract individuals and businesses to relocate to — or at the very least, visit — the city. But the only metric, other than anecdotes, that can be used to judge the monthlong ad’s success is traffic to a new marketing website.

A two-page ad, featuring locals smiling at the Woolworth’s lunch counter at the International Civil Rights Center & Museum downtown, directed readers to a new website — thisisgreensboro.com — that could provide additional information on Greensboro and accurately track readership.

During the entire month of June, thisisgreensboro.com received a total of 1,668 page views from just 562 users.

The ad was supposed to reach an estimated 5.5 million Delta Sky readers.

And the majority of those users likely weren’t Delta Sky readers; 54 percent of the June page views came from people in Greensboro, particularly in the first few days of the month after media stories on the ad buy in Triad City Beat and on a few local TV stations, city spokesperson Donnie Turlington said.

Turlington, who worked on the ad campaign and whose team created the website, isn’t impressed.

“I’m disappointed overall in the number of pageviews, but at the same time when you’re just doing an ad in a magazine and you’re counting on folks to go to a website based on that ad, you have to temper your expectations,” he said.

More than half the views originated

in Greensboro even though the goal of the ad was to reach a national or international audience. Charlotte ranked second with 3.9 percent of the views.

Atlanta, with just over 2 percent, accounted for the next largest amount of views, trailed slightly by Winston-Salem and High Point.

“We wanted this ad to spread the message beyond our borders,” Turlington said, adding that it achieved that but “maybe not on the scale we wanted to.”

The bounce rate — a number that meaThe website attracted a mere 562 users during the campaign in June, and 54 percent of COURTESY IMAGE sures whether readers the 1,668 June page views came from people in Greensboro despite the campaign’s international scope. click to a second page once they are on the the bottom of a two-page ad spread, as test markets, Turlington said. The website — of 52.4 percent is “terrias part of a several page section in the total spending for both efforts will be ble,” Turlington said. Users spent an magazine celebrating Greensboro. But under $40,000, with half of the money average of two minutes on the website, other than individual anecdotes about coming from the city and half from according to web analytic data provided people seeing the section of Delta Sky, the CVB. Fall ads in print publications

by Wildfire, the Winston-Salem-based there are no other hard numbers by like Business North Carolina and Business advertising agency that handles the which to judge the $30,000 campaign’s Journals for other cities in the state may website. success. be part of the equation too, he said.

Amy Scott, director of marketing for A contest to win free Delta tickets The three organizations are still the visitors bureau, said the site stats to Greensboro for the National Folk figuring out how to align their different “weren’t anything spectacular.”

Festival in September drew more than missions and where they can collabo“I know that the numbers aren’t 600 applicants, only one or two of rate, Scott said, and another intangible really terrific but we did nothing else to which were from North Carolina, Scott outcome of the Delta Sky effort is the drive traffic to the site other than Delta said. But it is unclear how many people increased working relationship between Sky,” she said. “My goal was always to accessed the contest through thisisthem. focus outside of Guilford County, really greensboro.com — the three partnering Thompson said it “moves the needle outside of the state, so the Delta Sky [ad] organizations, Delta Sky and Visit NC all in terms of working together,” provided was really perfect for me.” promoted it on their websites, too. more cohesive messaging and was “cerCecelia Thompson, the executive Scott, Turlington and Thompson tainly a great opportunity to showcase director of Action Greensboro, emagree that the ad buy and the website what’s going on in Greensboro.” And phasized that traffic to the website was can only be successful if carried out while Action Greensboro will continue never the main thrust of the advertising in conjunction with a broader, unified to collaborate, it is also continuing with buy, describing it as a secondary benefit. effort to market the city. There are efforts to market the city by contracting “I don’t think that we should base the already plans for a Facebook ad camwith RLF Communications to spread success on those numbers because that paign aimed at promoting the website to “good news about Greensboro.” The was listed once in an ad,” she said. “We locals, who Turlington said are best polatest component: a welcome packet invested in the number of readers and sitioned to push it out and “tell or story for journalists flooding the Wyndham riders of Delta. We never had a large as more a part of a whole.” Later, the golf tournament highlighting what is expectation of people going to thisisads would flip and predominantly target new in town and providing restaurant greensboro.com. We didn’t spend that people outside the city’s borders. recommendations so that the city takes money to promote that website.”

The group is also planning ad buys advantage of the influx of outsiders.

The website was only listed once, at on Pandora in Raleigh and Charlotte

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Website promoting Greensboro flops in first month

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August 19 — 25, 2015 Up Front

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12

HIGH POINT JOURNAL

Food-justice activists want city to lift restrictions on urban ag

by Jordan Green

A farmer and a food-justice advocate are prodding the city of High Point to relax regulations against urban agriculture to allow more residents to raise food for themselves and their neighbors.

Slowly but surely the city of High Point is loosening restrictions on urban agriculture as the city comes to grips with the reality of increasing food hardship and cultural shifts from consumerism to self-sufficiency.

Elected officials and staff are reviewing city code and ordinances, and discussing potential changes about everything from allowing the slaughter of chickens to relaxing the density requirements for livestock raised on urban lots. A citizen working-group received a favorable hearing from the city’s prosperity & livability committee on Aug. 12. Headed by Councilman Jason Ewing, the committee directed staff to work with the citizens to develop a proposed set of text amendments that would ultimately come before city council for consideration.

“The biggest thing is the legal sale of eggs,” said Ross Lackey, who operates Kapuka Farms on the east side of the city. “In the High Point ordinance it’s illegal to sell eggs. I don’t think anyone in the city has a problem with changing that. It’s straightforward that we need to change it. I’ve got lots of chickens. I’m trying to establish production of freerange eggs. It’s hard to start a business when you keep running up against restrictions.”

Lackey is a member of the urban-agriculture working group of the Greater High Point Food Alliance, which brought the recommendations to the city.

The Aug. 12 meeting also included a discussion about potentially lifting the prohibition against slaughtering chickens on privately-owned residential lots in the city in order to allow people to eat the food they’ve raised.

“The prosperity & livability committee was very receptive and asked us to work with staff,” said Carl Vierling, the executive director of the food alliance and a member of the urban-ag working

group. “I think the city of High Point is open to ideas. And that’s a great thing.”

Ewing said he found most of the working group’s requests and recommendations to be “valid.” The city already loosened restrictions on chickens and beekeeping a year ago, he said, but he thinks further changes might be warranted.

The urban-ag working group is proposing to change the maximum density of fowl, including chickens, ducks and quail and reducing setback requirements for livestock. The group notes that the city of Winston-Salem requires livestock to be kept 25 feet from the property line, while the distance varies from 25 to 50 feet in Greensboro depending on the size of the lot. High Point’s development ordinance requires a 200-foot setback when livestock is the principal use, but only 100 feet when the animals are kept on the property where someone lives.

Ewing also expressed a willingness to consider a change that would make it easier to breed chickens. The city ordinance current prohibits keeping roosters.

“I think that’s going to come up,” Ewing said. “If someone is going to have eggs, they’re going to need to have roosters and chickens.”

On other items brought to the city by the working group, Ewing said the requested activity was actually already allowed under city ordinances.

“Over the years we’d been talking to the planning department, we had a little storage building on our farm and we asked the city if it was legal, and they said, ‘No,’” Lackey said. “We thought we needed to change the ordinance.

Now we’re being told yes, that it is legal.

That’s good if some clarity is coming from it.”

Vierling and Lackey both project an upbeat attitude about the process of working with the city to amend city code and ordinances to allow more people to raise produce and livestock to feed themselves, but Lackey is slightly more wary, having been singed by local regulations in previous run-ins with the city.

“I just want people to be able to grow food or livestock to feed themselves,” Lackey said. “If someone has a goat or a chicken and they’re good at [animal husbandry], and they say, ‘I can make a little bit of money at this,’ they should be able to do it.

We’re not trying to get one over. We just want people to be able to feed JORDAN GREEN Ralph Soviero (left) and Ross Lackey cleared a lot for a community garden on Sunday. themselves and their neighborpig actually comes from. If we’re not hood. We want it to be legal from top to allowed to raise pigs in High Point, then bottom.” we shouldn’t be allowed to buy pork in A year ago, Lackey ran afoul of city Harris Teeter.” regulations by setting up a farm stand Another frustration cited by Lackey is on Saturdays to sell his produce in the the creaking speed of the city bureauparking lot of his father’s business, cracy when it comes to authorizing new which is located on a heavily traveled initiatives. street with good visibility. After wran“We’ve been working on English gling with the city to try to find an Road with West End Ministries; we’re accommodation, he eventually decided turning this [city-owned] lot into a comhe would be better off selling directly to munity garden,” Lackey said. “We’ve consumers and to restaurants. been waiting on the city for six months “It’s probably an aesthetic problem to to get the lease. We missed the growing the people in charge; that’s not the look season. Right now we’re clearing it.” they want,” Lackey said. “We’re in the Taking a cue from urban planner same situation as Detroit — we have no Andres Duany, who visited the city in industry and jobs here. We have a huge 2013 and proposed a regulatory “pink city that’s vacant. We’ve got to take zone” to promote entrepreneurial incusome risks. The people with power and bation, Lackey wants High Point to lift resources are so risk averse.” restrictions to allow urban agriculture The change Lackey is seeking is not to thrive. only legal, but also cultural.

“There are 350 properties out there “It would be wonderful if pigs were that the city owns,” he said. “They’re legal — we could sell to local restaupaying someone to take care of them, rants,” he said. “I want to connect the or they’re just growing up. You start 20 dots. It’s not okay to outlaw the growing farms; so what if 75 percent fail? You’d of pigs [in the city] and push it off to still have three or four more farms than eastern North Carolina, where they you did before. Having a lot of lawyers pollute the rivers. If there are any probinvolved, that works in the corporate lems we can deal with them together. world, but on a small scale it doesn’t To me, it’s about breaking down the work. It takes too much energy to do the disconnect with food. We celebrate stuff that isn’t growing food. Growing Kepley’s BBQ and Carter Brothers, food should be the hardest part. Buildbut we’re not thinking about where the ing gardens should be the hardest part.”

EDITORIAL

Skip through the elections

Remembering Julian Bond

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

the gifts of being able to think through problems from many perspectives. He was an excellent communicator. He was the communications director for SNCC. He was very keen on developing organizations.”

As a student at Morehouse University in Atlanta and the son of distinguished educator, Bond was inspired by the sit-ins at Woolworth’s in Greensboro in 1960.

As Bond told Hall and institute founder Sue Thrasher in a 1975 interview for Southern Exposure, “When the Greensboro sit-ins happened in early 1960, that was it. It wasn’t that much of a conscious decision of what to do. Greensboro became the model, almost a blueprint. You didn’t say, ‘Why did they go to Woolworths?’ You thought, ‘Gee, we got one right here.’”

Hall recalled that Bond’s activism intersected with Greensboro again in 1980, in a way that reflected the civil rights leader’s willingness to take unpopular stands for what he thought was right. After the institute released a report on the 1979 Greensboro Massacre Hall and Bond traveled to Washington, DC to hold a press conference and then to Greensboro to meet with local clergy.

“Our conclusion with the revelation of the Klan informant being in the middle of the whole thing was that the fundamental right of free speech and ability to demonstrate was violated,” Hall said. “Folks were there to demonstrate and they weren’t protected, and in fact they were assaulted with the knowledge of the police. You may not agree with the [Communist Workers Party’s] message. Still, that’s a fundamental issue of your police department that has to be addressed. That’s something that we kept saying even though we had issues with the CWP. “It showed Julian wasn’t afraid to step out and be different from even others in the Civil Rights Movement or others in the black intelligentsia,” Hall continued. “He moved in a lot of different worlds and had the confidence to speak out if he believed something was right or wrong.”

Bond’s radicalism was belied by the refined mannerisms he inherited as the scion of a distinguished family of educators, which projected the veneer of moderation.

“People would say, ‘I thought you were the moderate one,’” Hall recalled. “He said, ‘I’m the principled one.’ He was a great man.”

Although I never had the opportunity to meet Julian Bond, one small part of his monumental legacy has profoundly enriched me. I know that’s true for many others as well. I’m grateful for his life.

News

It feels today as though a piece of history has slipped past us.

One of the great icons of the Civil Rights Movement, Julian Bond, died on Aug. 15 at the age of 75. Among the

by Jordan Green many milestones of Bond’s career, he served as chairman of the NAACP. He launched an independent newspaper, registered thousands of voters with fellow Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee leader John Lewis and became the first African American elected to the Georgia House of Representatives since Reconstruction; his white colleagues refused to seat him because of his opposition to the Vietnam War. A politician, intellectual and movement tactician, part of his legacy was setting up organizations to carry out the day-to-day work of long-term social change.

One of those is the Institute for Southern Studies, a think-tank conceived in 1970 as a research arm of the progressive movement, where I learned the basics of investigative reporting as an intern in 1997.

Bond provided an essential link from the Civil Rights Movement of the ’60s to the institute, which publishes “Facing South” and has recently provided essential research exposing retail magnate Art Pope’s extensive role in shaping the conservative takeover of North Carolina state government.

Bob Hall, who served as editor of the institute’s magazine, Southern Exposure, for 25 years, told me that Julian Bond advised the institute’s founders at its inception and served as president of its board of directors for two decades. Horace Mann Bond, Julian’s father, was an incorporator. Hall is now the executive director of Democracy North Carolina, an election watchdog group that exposed the corruption of former Democratic NC House Speaker Jim Black and played a key role in raising awareness about Republican efforts to restrict access to the polls.

“Coming out of the ’60s, there was a sense of wanting to look at the South beyond the arena of black vs. white and civil rights,” Hall told me. “There was also a military-industrial complex, the labor movement, the women’s movement that was growing, a gay and lesbian movement beginning, and a number of other ways to look at the South, as well as realizing that the Civil Rights Movement had deeper roots, not just to the ’50s, but going back to the ’30s and even to the 1890s. Julian was an intellectual, as well as an organizer and a politician. He combined

Up Front

Has anyone else noticed that thing that happens every other year in Greensboro at just about this time?

This has nothing to do with earlier sunsets and the return of school buses to our city streets, and everything to do with the looming city council election, as well as the opportunity it presents.

Last week Greensboro City Council approved another $250,000 to the International Civil Rights Center & Museum, the final installment of a $1.5 million loan from taxpayers that the museum board said it needed to put the facility on solid footing.

It passed with some debate — councilmembers Mike Barber, Justin Outling and Tony Wilkins pointed out that the museum had already breached its contract with the city, rendering it void — but when all the hot air settled the $250,000 was tacitly approved without a vote.

Not saying it was the wrong move, but it sparked a bit of institutional memory.

It brings to mind another episode in 2013, a couple months before the last city council election, when a group of private investors at the last minute attempted to insert themselves into years-long efforts to bring a grocery store to the Renaissance Shopping Center. They asked for a $2 million forgivable loan, which was quickly approved by a 5-4 council vote even as staffers from the Renaissance Community Co-op group spoke against the deal at that same meeting. The pact eventually collapsed, after two councilmembers later said they felt “threatened” by the man who brokered it, intimating that he had influence over the coming election.

The common thread here is former Guilford County commissioner Skip Alston, who currently holds no office and supposedly resigned from the museum’s board in 2013, though he gave an interview with Fox 8 as a spokesperson for the museum in February.

And the pattern of high-dollar Skip Alston-related business before council seems to go back even further.

The $1.5 million loan council agreed to originated in late summer 2013, a few months after the co-op deal went bust, just after Alston resigned from the museum’s board as a move toward appeasement.

But there was another $1.5 million loan before this one, approved in August 2007, just before that city council election.

In October 2009, the Ole Asheboro Neighborhood Association asked council to accept $40 million in federal recovery bonds. By the time the vote took place in December, well after the election, Alston emerged as the real estate broker for the group.

The only lull in the pattern is 2011, but even that makes sense: That year Alston was still chair of the Guilford County Commission, and that summer he was fighting a redistricting that eventually tilted the commission to a Republican majority.

He eventually left the county commission, seeming to prefer a more favorable playing field for his capers.

CITIZEN GREEN

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OPINION

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August 19 — 25, 2015 Up Front News

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IT JUST MIGHT WORK

Alternative college orientation The idea hit me a couple dozen comments deep on a Facebook thread discussing, among other things, the disconnect between Winston-Salem music venues and local college students. The problem isn’t unique to Winston, nor is it moored to the music scene in particular.

There’s something inherently inward-facby Eric Ginsburg ing about college campuses, these self-contained quasi-intentional communities. And part of the solution for that, as I’ve proposed in this column before, is more cross-campus learning opportunities that also connect college kids with the cities around them.

“Picture an urban-planning class with UNCG geography students and Bennett College political-science majors crafting ideas for how to encourage affordable housing in Greensboro,” I wrote last September.

“What if UNCSA kids and WSSU metal-design students created a public-art project together?”

A complementary idea, and one that It could be a would require much less bureaucratic approval or planning, would be an alterself-guided native orientation. Get ’em right when tour, with a they arrive in town, and reinforce it later with experiential learning opportunities. map of openIt could initially take the form of an house events. unofficial orientation guide, a physical document highlighting important items of interest. The Field Guide being produced by Winston-Salem design group Airtype offers elements of that. I’d like to think that every issue of this paper, which is available on our college campuses, does as well.

Students at Guilford College, twice in the last decade or so, put out a “disorientation guide” for new students offering a less glossy introduction than the school’s first-year experience lab.

But none of that really goes far enough. What if, in addition to the other avenues for engaging students with the broader community, there were actual events in each Triad city’s downtown during the first week of college each year? I’m talking about something much broader than the Get Down!Town college street party Greensboro held back when I was a student here, but whatever happened to that anyway?

It could be set up like a self-guided walking tour, with distributed maps indicating entities participating in an open house of sorts. Or maybe the alternative orientation would look more like a touristy bus with a conductor pointing out stops over a microphone. I rode one such bus in Barcelona both as a way to learn about the city and for transit, because it let you hop off at any stop and then circled back for you later.

Maybe the concept calls for a more commercial approach, with businesses agreeing to a weeklong discount for college kids.

Eventually colleges could be convinced to participate, with RAs handing out guides and informing their charges about the alternative, citywide orientation. But however the idea takes shape, it will require a unified effort, one that could be organized by a group like the Downtown Winston-Salem Partnership or Opportunity Greensboro. Or hell, an enterprising college student with enough time for an independent study to mull it all over.

FRESH EYES

Little things and liquid networks Saying, “It is what it is” is a cop-out.

Things don’t just happen. People work for them; they dig in.

They assess, pivot, respond and reinvent. They campaign

by Sam Bridges for what they wish to see, and champion the ideas that illustrate their points.

But more importantly, they connect with others. They bounce ideas, and share plans.

If you want something, you have to make yourself available to the world, to new connections; you have to make yourself vulnerable to new ideas.

An idea from Steven Johnson’s book Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation has been ricocheting around in my head since I read it; There are a lot of similarities between social networks and the neural networks of an individual brain. Ideas aren’t so much single things as they are specific patterns or combinations of connections, and they come into being over time, even if we aren’t consciously aware of it. If you’ve spent much time with children, you’ve seen it happen. “Cat!” might mean any animal, or anything that’s soft, or even anything they want to know if it’s okay for them to touch. They recognize significance first, and then over time accumulate specific meaning and context. Kids teach us just how good we are as pattern-recognition machines.

Social movements are the same, of course.

They don’t just pop spontaneously into being.

They take many individual connections to build up, to coalesce. Triad City Beat dedicates a good number of column inches to all the new craft breweries opening, so let’s use that as an example. Obviously, there was no single sudden epiphany, that maybe today’s beer could be more than Budweiser. It built up over time, even here in the Triad. People had lots of individual conversations about different projects in the works locally and nationally, their personal preferences, viability of business models and so on.

Only after a whole lot of loose connections were made did anything identifiable as an idea for a new brewery start to exist.

The little things add up.

Wouldn’t it be great if we as a community, as a city, as a people could somehow cultivate the interactions that lead up to these big ideas?

Maybe we can. Steven Johnson goes on to explain what he dubs “liquid networks.” To set the stage, imagine each of us, and our brains and ideas, as a molecule bouncing around. In

a solid, we would be too locked in to really get much exchange going. Imagine the classic office space filled with people who are all just sitting and working, together and yet totally alone. The solid, the cube, the cubicle.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have gasses. In this scenario, there’s just too much energy flying around. The chaos of it all tears apart any developing structure before most people would ever recognize it as something meaningful. Imagine the old college house party, exploding with attention-deficit indulgence. It takes five minutes just to explain to your friend that you’re going to grab a drink, only to have them dance away nodding with not even the slightest idea of what you were trying to communicate.

Both of these things are extremes, but you get the idea. This is a spectrum, and there’s probably a sweet spot we could aim to hit. Imagine now that the perfect state of social exchange is a liquid, where we move about relatively unimpeded, but still with a bit of self-affirming cohesion. The social example here might be something like a high-functioning cocktail party, the kind where you introduce your bartender buddy to an old friend who is now an ethnobotanist or whatever. Or the classic example: a really good surprise conversation at the coffee shop.

This all sounds nice, sure, but is it actionable?

What could any of us actually do? Actually, Triad City Beat editor Eric Ginsburg is already setting a nice example with his piece about “people who should talk” a couple of months ago. This does two things that are key: increases the likelihood (and probably the sheer number) of novel exchanges, and sets up new potential for social cohesion — that is, people like the new stuff they’re talking about, and they keep talking about it.

Another great thing about this kind of thinking is that it’s invitational. There are small things that any of us can do to help liquefy our own networks. Share the article that made you think of someone, or better yet, invite that person for coffee. Bring a friend. It’s not a bad way to spend a few minutes, and you’ll get the +1 of warm fuzziness for knowing you’ve increased the overall intellectual output of your community by uniting small exchanges into more mean meaningful patterns. That’s a high-functioning warm fuzzy, I dare say.

Sam Bridges is an independent graphic designer and art director who has a very goofy laugh and lives in Greensboro. Visit sfbridges.com to see his work or start a conversation.

PHOTO BY CALEB SMALLWOOD

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Trainspotting

Up Front News

Opinion Cover Story Food

Two local kids watch a sunset from the top of a train car in Greensboro.

Music

August 28 | Dr. Strangelove (1964)

Games

September 4 | Rushmore (1998)

Good Sport

August 21 | Up (2009)

Stage & Screen

August 14 | Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)

Art

CINEMA UNDER THE STARS

Gates open at 7:30 p.m., films shown at 8:30 p.m. Beer and wine are available for purchase and picnicking is welcomed. In case of rain, films are shown in the auditorium. Co-presented by the School of Filmmaking at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.

Shot in the Triad

$5/person; $20/car; RAH Passholders free

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Bluesology during teacher train

by Jordan Green

The arts are in our DNA in North Carolina, with a long list of painters, performers, writers and musicians from the Old North State going back centuries. Here in the Triad, we’ve woven the arts into our economic development plans, our city budgets and, in the case of Winston-Salem, our city’s identity.

We start them young here, with arts-based curricula beginning in elementary school and becoming more sophisticated as the students develop. They range from public magnet schools and charters to highly selective programs on college campuses.

Arts education integrates elements of history, language, movement, culture, math and science. It instills discipline — for without discipline there would be no art — and feeds self-esteem.

It involves creativity, innovation, problem-solving — all traits that can be in short supply around here.

But art’s main purpose is to bring more beauty and thought into the world. In that way the Triad is way ahead of the game Today the kids troop into the Arts Based School — from timid kindergarteners clinging to parents’ hands to self-absorbed eighth graders — for the first day of the new school year.

Like a play on opening night or new paintings freshly hung on a gallery wall, this is hardly the beginning; rather, it’s a culmination of several days of hard work and preparation by teachers and administrators at the public charter school on the north side of downtown Winston-Salem.

Nine grades of 12-bar blues Flip the calendar back nine days. At 8 o’clock on Monday morning the teachers and administrators gather in an assembly room in the middle-school annex. Like the school’s main facility, it’s a repurposed tobacco warehouse. Clutching coffee cups and pastries, the teachers listen to a trio of professional musicians performing the 12-bar blues.

“I got my mojo workin,’ I’m gonna try it out on you,” Diana Tuffin Eldridge sings, demonstrating with a staple from the classic blues progression.

Even at this early hour the teachers get into it, responding with cries of “Woo!” “All right!” and “Yay!” The singer asks her audience if they want to hear some improvisation, and indeed they do. With bassist Matt Kendrick and pianist John Mochnik riffing on the progression, Eldridge conjures a piece of lived experience, a tangible and eminently relatable vignette of everyday frustration and perseverance.

“I had to be there this morning,” she sings. “Oh, I dropped my coffee cup. Cracked my fingernail.

Cat scratched my stocking. But I’m here on the

scene.”

With the trio deconstructing the classic American art form of the blues, the teachers are starting to accumulate some tools in their instructional repertoire.

“You can do some call-and-response,” Kendrick suggests. “You could sing, ‘I went to the store,’ and the kids will come in with, ‘And bought some bread.’ Or, ‘I went to the store’ — ‘And bought some peanut butter.’ Kids get into that. They understand that. That’s my advice.”

It’s pretty clear what’s coming next, and despite varying levels of music ability, the teachers to a one are game to plunge into the exercise.

They’ll be grouped by grade level to write and perform their own 12-bar blues with subject matter relevant to their children.

“You could have the first grade blues because first graders are such and so,” Mary Siebert, the school’s arts director, explains. “You could have the seventh grade blues, and that’s a whole ’nother thing, you know?”

A professionally trained opera singer, Siebert drafts Principal Robin Hollis and Assistant Principal Paige Raper to help her sing “The Lost Kid Blues,” a composition that proves the idiom can be adapted to any subject.

The third verse prompts howls of laughter.

“The fact that they’re older, don’t make it okay,” they sing. “Because back in that library, they just might go all the way.”

And rounding back to the tonic note at the song’s conclusion, the trio invokes every educator’s ultimate nightmare: “I got the lost kid blues, and I

K-4 music teacher Peter Wilbur rehearses with the kindergarten teachers as part

t of a training exercise before the first day of classes at the Arts Based School in Winston-Salem.

JORDAN GREEN

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ning at the Arts Based School

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August 19 — 25, 2015

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18

just might make the evening news.”

Armed with handouts delineating the traits common to the age of their respective students, the teachers break into their grade-level groups for about 20 minutes.

In the fourth-grade group, descriptors of their student cohort as being preoccupied with fairness, prone to injury, and alert to adult imperfections get a reception of wry laughter. Together, they pluck out rhyming words that might give the lyrics the proper rhythm and cadence. “Pick” rhymes with “clique,” and “room” with “doom.” The latter word will be deployed to highlight the students’ flair for drama.

One by one, accompanied by K-4 music teacher Peter Wilbur on guitar, they perform their songs for each other. The teachers make up for the clumsy lyrics that can be expected for on-the-spot composition with flamboyant commitment to the material, and as an audience they respond to each other with high-spirited hilarity.

The kindergarten blues focuses on students falling out of their chairs or showing up at school without an extra pair of clothes. The third-grade group focuses on the dreaded state-mandated end-of-grade exams that determine whether students get promoted. They get lots of laughs when they sing, “I got the EOG blues, and at the end of the day my teacher really needs a beer.”

“The Fourth Grade Blues” includes a funny vignette about a teacher losing control of her class just before recess when she makes the mistake of saying, “Grab the balls.” The sixth-grade teachers tackle the subject of puberty, with references to raging hormones and sprouting chin hairs, while the seventh- and eight-grade teachers lampoon self-obsessed students unable to restrain themselves from taking selfies on their cell phones.

It’s a lot of fun, Wilbur reflects after the session, but it has a serious purpose — not

the least of which is teaching adults to lower their inhibitions so they can effectively engage children.

“They’re also modeling how we want to teach the kids,” he says. “They’ll take the risk to be silly and goofy. Look at Mary: She got up and sang in front of professional blues players. She had no fear.”

Everyone contributes something to the song When the Arts Based School opened in 2002, parents and arts leaders in Winston-Salem were becoming increasingly concerned about cuts to arts programs in public schools just as shifts in the global economy placed an increasing premium on workers with analytical and creative abilities. Successive waves of downsizing by once mighty local manufacturers like Reynolds American and Hanesbrands at the same time as knowledge-based industries have transformed the cities has only

Students at the Arts Based School helped design the metalwork in the windows at the middle school annex.

JORDAN GREEN

cemented the sense that the old paradigm is outmoded.

Taking a break from back-to-back meetings with six days to go before the first day of school, Siebert preaches an emergent conventional wisdom about artbased education.

“The traditional core curriculum probably developed out of what corporate America needed,” she says. “Children were being trained for employment. Arts weren’t considered a field for secure employment…. What I believe people are beginning to see is it’s more important to give a child a well-rounded education — not only to be gainfully employed, but also to be skilled innovators. The value of creativity is emerging as a component that’s been missing.”

Siebert gravitated into the orbit of the Arts Based School while it was still in the planning stages. A professional opera singer who worked on contract, her career required her to move from city to city with each new production. After she and her husband, who teaches at the UNC School of the Arts, had a child, Siebert decided to get off the road. Around that time, she started reading news articles about a group of people who were attempting to launch a public charter school focused on arts-based instruction. The founding of the school marked a time of fruitful synthesis between the arts establishment and education leadership. Peter Perret, then the conductor of the Winston-Salem Symphony, was studying the neurological benefits of the arts on brain development.

Jim Sanders, the executive director of the Sawtooth Center for Visual Art at the time, would be the school’s first principal.

Don Martin, the former superintendent of Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools and now a Forsyth County commissioner, embraced the school as an experimental pilot for arts-based instruction.

“Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools has been supportive of our charter school; that’s very unique,” Siebert says. “Don Martin was very supportive. He was interested in what we would find.”

Siebert brims with examples of how the arts can be used to promote learning, from memorization through singing to learning measurements by necessity to make costumes for theatrical productions.

“If you’re doing a play, you have to do rich research,” she says. “If you’re doing Shakespeare’s Henry V, you have to study

although the school doesn’t have access to local bond funds raised for building construction. As a nonprofit, the school is allowed to raise funds independently.

Siebert says that with the exception of a successful capital campaign to build the middle school, the school hasn’t really had time to do much fundraising.

And like other public schools, charters are required to teach to the state standard course of study. Choosing a site on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive was a deliberate decision, Siebert says, to make it convenient for parents on the predominantly African-American east side to drive their children to school.

“The school is demographically pretty similar to the city’s demographic — racially and financially,” she says. “Our parents are low-income, single parents and college professors.”

One of the key lessons revealed through the school’s 13-year history, Siebert says, is that effective arts-based instruction integrates arts and classroom teaching. She describes a third-grade geometry lesson involving students making shapes with a giant rubber band or pacing

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the history of who was Henry V? What was the fabric used for clothing in his day.

What kind of dye did they use? Did they have to import the dyes for clothing in the royal court? What minerals were used to make the dye? And it’s Shakespeare, so you’re talking about language. Already, you have science, language arts and history. It’s authentic learning. You’re driven towards a goal you care about.”

Although the school teaches arts so that children will have a discipline to practice, aptitude is not a criteria for eligibility.

Students are selected by lottery at the public charter school, which currently has an enrollment of 540, with a waiting list of 450.

“The arts are native languages to children,” Siebert says. “All children want to make art. They draw. They sing. They dance. They tell stories. If you remove that from their vocabulary when they’re 5, all that important groundwork will have gone to waste. Why would you want to do that?”

As a charter, the Arts Based School’s state funding is based on enrollment — just like any other public school,

Arts Director Mary Siebert displays bar graph illustrating the 12-bar blues progression.

off the floor to determine circumference.

The lesson would be less successful with either the dance teacher or the classroom teacher removed from the picture, Siebert says, adding that planning is essential.

Back at the training session, she reminds the teachers that their lesson plans are due on Fridays. She flashes a poster board with the 12-bar blues drawn in Magic

JORDAN GREEN

Marker as a bar graph.

“This is like your lesson plan,” Siebert says. “It doesn’t lay out exactly what’s going to happen in the classroom. You’re going to riff on it. Everyone in the band will contribute something to what the piece is going to become. Your task is to keep the song on track and get it from the beginning to the end.”

Other Triad art schools Academy at Lincoln (GSO) Lincoln, a middle school, pulls from honors students throughout the county for its advanced academic curriculum, and also offers a separate track for performing and visual arts.

Diggs-Latham Elementary (W-S) Arts and global studies make up the curriculum at Diggs-Latham, an elementary school with programs in visual art, choral music, dance, piano, music composition, band, orchestra and theater arts.

drama, chorus, handbells, world drumming and speed stacking.

the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum. Dance, drama, music, art and band are part of the curriculum.

NC Governor’s School at Salem College (W-S) The Governor’s School, open to high-achieving high school students across the state for 51 years, has its western campus at Salem College. Students spend the summer studying art, chorus, music, dance or theater, and integrate those concepts into the study of contemporary thought. Open only to rising seniors, students must first be nominated by a teacher or administrator, and then pass an audition to be accepted.

Penn-Griffin School for the Arts (HP) Located near the Washington Street community, Penn-Griffin takes grades 6-12 with programs in orchestra, band, chorus, classical guitar, piano, dance, theater and visual arts. Middle schoolers are selected by lottery, and high schoolers must audition for acceptance.

Mineral Springs (W-S) Mineral Springs Elementary utilizes the Renzulli Schoolwide Enrichment Model, developed in the 1970s for gifted students. It emphasizes broad-based, rigorous academics and enrichment, fosters development of the whole student and provides opportunities for the kids based on their interests and talents. The middle school program is an arts & leadership magnet, with programs in dance, drama, orchestra, chorus, band, piano and gymnastics.

Parkland Magnet High (W-S) Parkland’s theme of internationalism and the arts extends into its participation in the International Baccalaureate Programme. They offer visual arts, theater, dance and music, and students must choose a discipline in 9th grade. “Learners are polished in the arts to think critically, creating their own works based on studies of internationalism, history, criticism, interpretation judgment and finally experimentation,” the school’s website reads.

Morehead Elementary (GSO) This “expressive arts magnet” in the Guilford County school system has programs in art, drama, dance, music and a concentration in violin. Extracurriculars include

Parkview Elementary (HP) High Point’s expressive arts magnet benefits from Title 1 and Equity Plus, meaning that extra resources come in from the federal government to help students from

UNCSA early college (W-S) The country’s first public arts college has opened its doors to advanced high schoolers interested in studying dance, drama, music and visual arts since it got its state charter in 1963. Students live on campus and are integrated somewhat into college life. A rigorous interview and audition process whittles the class size down to about 200 students.

Weaver Academy (GSO) Weaver, in downtown Greensboro, is a high school with two academic tracks. One is a trade school focusing on technology. Arts students choose from dance, drama, guitar, music production, piano, strings, visual arts and vocal music. The honors school requires auditions for acceptance.

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August 19 — 25, 2015 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story

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

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Banquet

FOOD

by Chris Nafekh

Stovetop speedway Community Food Truck Festival @ Maple Springs United Methodist Church (W-S), Thursday Food-truck festivals make it into our calendars almost every week. Well, here’s another one, with free Mike & Mike’s Italian Ice for the first 100 visitors. It’s a market of meals on wheels, a community of car-driven dining, and motorized mass of curb-side munchies. For more information, visit maplesprings.org.

They come in pints!

Hopfest @ South Davie Street (GSO), Saturday Tickets to the Triad’s third annual craft beer festival are dwindling. A synthesis of urban art, music and local brews, Hopfest comes complete with its own Snapchat channel. The festival generates an evening’s worth of pitchers, pale ales and amusement. For more information, visit createyourcity.com.

Golden droplets National Honey Bee Day @ Guilford County Cooperative Extension Garden (GSO), Saturday Here, local honey sells in generous jars and has yet to become a rare commodity.

But honeybees are endangered due to colony collapse, a phenomenon scientists attribute to pesticides. While farmers hold tastings and share their knowledge of their buzzy-buddies, Syngenta educates attendees on pollination and safe pesticide use. For more information, visit Guilford. ces.ncsu.edu.

A grilled oyster with passion fruit and shaved macadamia acted as the first dish for the inaugural evening of this year’s Dr. Brownstone’s Sweet Summer Luv Luv Festival at Spring House in Winston-Salem.

ERIC GINSBURG

St. Louis, Miami chefs experiment in Winston-Salem

by Eric Ginsburg

and dumplings, quail with black summer Chicken truffle mousse, gnocchi, chive veloute and herb biscuit. Mojo criollo porkbelly congri with garlic, citrus, black beans, rice and bacon. Southern Comfort and peach popsicles with sunflower-seed brittle, goat-cheese fritters, quince jam, peaches and ginger gastrique.

Any of the specialty menu items, from any night of Spring House’s special-event dinner last week, are enough to make you lose your mind with jealousy. Especially the lineup presented by chef Kurtis Jantz of Trump International Beach Resort in Miami, which included the peach popsicles, octopus pinchos with torched jalapeño shrub, molasses-lacquered duck confit with red-velvet waffles and a dessert featuring sea corals, mango sea sponge, pistachio, chocolate veil, something called “yuzu” and an assortment of other flair.

The pictures that Winston-Salem

and Key lime. foodie extraordinaire Nikki Miller-Ka Pelly’s performance started the weekposted on her Instagram (@niksnacks) long event kind of like a caffeine addict of Dr. Brownstone’s Sweet Summer Luv without the morning coffee — an hour Luv Festival will give you the worst case into the dinner on Aug. 11, only one of of FOMO. And the worst part is that all the evening’s five courses had appeared. the chefs rolled in from out of town, delivering one-off, multi-course meals Tasty as the light grilled oyster with passion fruit and shaved macadamia before returning from whence they was, anticipation of, and impatience for, came. the second dish loomed.

The five-day event, organized by Pelly promised a Spring House chef street corn dish, a and partner Tim trend that appeared Grandinetti and Find chef Tim Grandinetti now in its sixth at Spring House restaurant, almost as rapidly as vape pens, but year, draws on the 450 N. Spring St. (W-S), or his take proved chef’s network of at Quanto Basta one block to be nothing like talented friends that of other hip scattered around south. dish-slingers; Pelly the country. The turned the corn affair, at $69 a head, is one of the Triad’s most creative into a gazpacho with a slightly sour tinge thanks to yogurt, filled out with culinary events, allowing people like onion, cilantro and cotija, a hard cow’sChef Wil Pelly from Sugarfire Smokemilk cheese native to Mexico. house in St. Louis to attempt off-theWith the proverbial espresso shot, wall feats, like a pineapple upside-down the outdoor community-style event Key-lime flan with candied pineapple

mushroom-shallot-pea salad.

Later the servers would bring out a bison tenderloin with smoked brisket and potato croquette, among other flourishes.

It’s too much goodness to think about on an empty stomach, and overwhelming to look at any time, even after the fact on Miller-Ka’s photo feed.

But do so, regardless of whether you experienced it first hand, and you may find yourself urging host Tim Grandinetti to turn Luv Luv into more than an annual festival of food.

Opinion

8 drinking tips for college kids

All She Wrote

You’ve probably heard the mantra “Beer before liquor never been sicker, liquor before beer, you’re in the clear.”

That’s because it’s true. There are only a few rules to drinking — about driving and the ability to give consent in particular — and this is among the most important. That is, unless the thought of waking up in a bathtub covered in puke, or missing a party because you’re stuck in the bathroom holding your head, appeals to you.

Shot in the Triad

Parties with beer pong will quickly become an endangered species after

8. Liquor before beer

Games

6. Beer pong ends

ELYSE STOFFEL After college, drinking shifts to backyards and bars, and away from parties.

Good Sport

There’s a knife’s edge where you’re buzzed enough to feel relaxed but still maintain pretty solid control of your faculties. It’s an elusive target that can be briefly harnessed with careful buzz management through pacing, drinking water and eating

You had a terrible experience that one time you drank way too much tequila, and now you won’t touch the stuff. Or maybe you hate whiskey because you’ve only had something off the bottom shelf. Unless it’s too triggering, give whatever you’ve sworn off another chance. Likely you were the problem and not the drink, unless we’re talking about vermouth or Everclear, in which case you’re onto something.

And every once in a while, I still see the HEAT bus in Greensboro.

Students are notoriously bad at getting off campus, but if you made it to college night at Inferno, download Uber and use it. Greene Street Club even organizes buses. A DUI is never worth it, and judges have no patience for such a cheap and reckless decision.

Stage & Screen

3. Find the unicorn

5. Revisit

7. We have Uber

Art

When a large group of Wake Forest kids all seem to be from the same random town in Illinois, it’s pretty easy to notice a pattern. Older siblings are the best bet, and even those fakies are obvious to anyone who’s paying attention. If you’re of age, ask to see the pile of confiscated IDs at Bull’s Tavern — it replenishes itself quickly.

College is all about experimentation and growing as a person or something like that, right? Extend that to your drinking habits. If you always reach for cranberry and vodka, try a gin drink. If you regularly chug/ bong/eat beers, reconsider your sense of self worth and try to find a beer you actually enjoy. Check out a local brewery, winery or distillery. But don’t bother with the neon green, glow-in-the-dark, vodka-and-tequila liqueur known as Everglo. Or do, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Music

2. Your fake ID sucks

4. Try new stuff

graduation. I did receive an invite to a beer pong tournament with other adults in Raleigh this summer, and my best friend and I ran the table at a New Year’s party in Massachusetts last go ’round. But on the whole, beer pong will disappear from your life, along with other incredible games (like Stump — do people play that here?) so treasure it while you can.

Food

I arrived in the Triad as a college kid, and maybe you did, too. And maybe like me, you didn’t know jack about drinking. Back then you could catch me consuming trash like Andre or Woodchuck, though luckily I never put myself through an Ice House or Mad Dog 20/20 phase. I blame being young and cheap. But if you need to save on cash, find a bar like College Hill in Greensboro that sells dollar domestics twice a week. Or maybe the $1 Jell-O shots at Downtown Brody’s Bar in Winston-Salem are more your speed.

food, and generally avoiding shots.

Blacking out is for amateurs.

Cover Story

by Eric Ginsburg

1. We have dollar beer

News

the week kept rolling with chef Cassie Parsons of Harvest Moon Grill in Lincolnton, and Jantz’s mouthwatering menu.

Jeff Bannister, a South Carolina pitmaster, showed up with a lamb tartare and smoked roasted-loin as well as a house sausage with Sriracha-stuffed focaccia with garden basil aioli. The week culminated with chef Tim Recher of the Army Navy Country Club in Arlington, Va. on Aug. 15. Recher, who has won the American Culinary Federation’s Presidential Medal, started with the gnocchi and quail dish before moving on to a chilled English pea soup and seared sea bass with coriander and

Up Front

triple-threat dessert — featuring smoky and sweet flavors that played nicely off each other — Pelly undoubtedly finished strong; who knows what hare-brained brilliance he might’ve churned out had the evening kept rolling. But his moment in the spotlight, at least in Winston-Salem, would soon fade, eclipsed by four more nights of experimentation.

Don’t hold anything against Pelly; it usually takes a few tugs before the motor begins rumbling, and Grandinetti gave him the task of opening the week’s events on a Tuesday. About 40 people filled the large, round tables on Spring House’s lawn to partake that night, and

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lurched to life, followed by a shortened wait for the grilled chow-chow salad with cauliflower, carrot, peach and celery.

The pickled vegetables could’ve used a little more subtlety, a few attendees agreed, but the main fare would arrive before too long — the aforementioned pork belly congri.

Pelly wanted to pay homage to his grandmother who hailed from Havana, Cuba, he explained — congri refers to Cuban rice and black beans, and mojo criollo is a Creole garlic sauce associated with the island nation.

With the porkbelly congri and the

The author (center) was straight-edge COURTESY in high school when parties were still boring.

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August 19 — 25, 2015 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Food

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

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Setlist

MUSIC

by Jordan Green

Chicagoland meets the ’boro Ne-Hi and the Kneads @ the Crown (GSO), Wednesday Ne-Hi’s rough-hewn jangle pop harkens back to the heyday of the college underground in the late ’80s — that is, if you were tuned in left of the dial. Otherwise, their sound may as well be the future.

The middle-aged Kneads draw upon their own youth in the ’90s indie rock scene — sharing a sound with North Carolina standard-bearers Superchunk. The two bands make a good match, with out-oftowners Ne-Hi hailing from Chicago and the Kneads representing the Greensboro home court. Show starts at 9 p.m.

Of Athens, of course Of Montreal @ the Blind Tiger (GSO), Friday There aren’t a whole lot of indie-rock bands who can top Of Montreal — who are actually of Athens, Ga. — for sheer sensual groove, sexy funk and audacity; they’ve been known to perform with two bass players. Like the Flaming Lips, they’ve developed a deep and rich catalogue, with a style that mutates like amoeba more than evolves. Show starts at 9:30 p.m.

Three-quarters Guilford in Forsyth Mipso @ the Garage (W-S), Friday Although they were formed in Chapel Hill in 2010, three quarters of the avant-bluegrass quartet Mipso are a product of Guilford County: Fiddler Libby Rodenbough and bassist Wood Robinson grew up in Greensboro, and Joseph Terrell was raised in High Point. They’re celebrating a new album, a follow-up to 2013’s Dark Holler Pop, with wall-to-wall gigs scheduled up and down the East Coast and into the Midwest through the end of October.

Show starts at 9 p.m.

Power trios planet Planet of the Abts @ the Blind Tiger (GSO), Aug. 23 Matt Abts and Jorgen Carlsson, the rhythm section of Gov’t Mule, team up with Swedish guitarist T-Bone Anderson for this iteration, which tones down the soul and turns up the hard-rock angst.

The gritty and loud blues rock power trio Peoples Blues of Richmond opens. Show starts at 9 p.m.

Mark Dillon (left) and Doug Baker, who play traditional Piedmont music, took the opening set at the gazebo.

JORDAN GREEN

Backyard music: The Gazebo Concerts turn 5

by Jordan Green

in her motorized wheelchair, Teresa Staley occuSeated pied a station at the tee of a network of wooden ramps. The leg in front of her ran to an ornate, wooden gazebo decked with Christmas lights, while a length to her left ran to the house, and a section behind her dropped down to the driveway where her van was parked.

Staley lives with muscular dystrophy, and a paid caregiver would periodically lift her chin or arm to make her more comfortable throughout the evening.

As Doug Baker and Mark Dillon, a duo who specialize in traditional Piedmont music, checked their mics at dusk on Sunday, guests stopped to greet Staley before making their way to the backyard, where a dozen plastic lawn chairs were arranged in two rows.

This summer marks the fifth season

people to play in my backyard.’… I asked of Staley’s Gazebo Concert series at her my counselor: ‘Is that normal?’ She place in the Greensboro neighborhood said, ‘Absolutely. When someone dies of Lindley Park. Her mother was in deyou realize how short life is.’” clining health when she staged the first concert in 2010, and the series resolved Staley got up the nerve to ask Sam Frazier, a veteran Greensboro guitarist a challenge — instead of getting her with a unique style entourage loaded in that fuses jazz and the van for an outing, The final Gazebo Concert pop, to play in her Staley figured she of the 2015 summer seabackyard when she could bring the musison takes place on Sept. encountered him on cians and fans to her.

20. Email teresastaley56@ the sidewalk outAt first, the acts side the Green Bean were mostly friends, gmail.com for details. coffeehouse. Another but after Staley’s prominent bookmother died, she ing was Lowland Hum, a Greensboro suddenly became bolder and started husband-and-wife folk duo who have approaching musicians with whom she rocketed to national acclaim in the past had little previous contact.

“I was taking grief therapy,” Staley two years.

Laila Nur, a singer-songwriter whose recounted. “I’m a bit shy, although I’m material highlights LGBT empowerment not introverted. I said to my therapist, and other human rights issues, played ‘What happened to me? I started asking

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Opinion

Mamaroneck, NY after his death.

“Cries shatter the night, now he lays all alone,” Lowe sang. “He’s been out of sight, 3,000 miles from home.”

Jessica Pennell, who has previously performed both solo and in tandem with Matty Sheets at the Gazebo Concert series, gave a transfixing performance of her own in the final set of the evening. Rhythmically and melodically, some of songs carry an old country feel in the vein of classic female vocalists like Kitty Wells and Loretta Lynn, while others tend towards the spare quality of early Lucinda Williams or lean directly on the 12-bar blues. Lyrically, Pennell’s songs abound with vivid imagery and startling word play, as in the juxtaposition of losing one’s virginity and her mother to cancer in “Train of Ghosts.”

“Sorry all my songs are so depressing,” Pennell apologized.

A shy laugh slipped from within her, and she turned to towards Teresa Staley.

“How is it, over there in the VIP section?” she joked.

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All She Wrote

her first-ever concert at the gazebo.

Over the series’ five-year lifespan, the police have only showed up once to respond to a noise complaint — a double bill of Matty Sheets & Jessica Pennell with Megan Jean & the KFB. Artists often try out new material at the summer gazebo concerts and their winter complement of house shows in Staley’s living room. A house concert by Molly McGinn, a local songwriter with a soulful voice and a maverick sensibility, comes to mind. “She said, ‘I haven’t had a chance to play this one out,’” Staley recalled. “To me, that’s the perfect setting.”

On Sunday, Baker and Dillon, respectively a music teacher and a UNCG doctoral student, were in woodshedding mode, making their performing debut as a duo act and working out the kinks in some new material. Having previously played in a larger acoustic ensemble, they decided to pare down and had been practicing for three or four weeks, they said, with Baker on guitar and Dillon alternating between mandolin and lap steel.

Their set drew heavily on the American folk and blues songbook, with Baker supplying between-song color commentary. One of the more vivid of the duo’s performances was “Duncan and Brady,” a song about a trouble-seeking lawman who meets his demise at the end of barman’s pistol after interrupting an illegal game. The song is cut from the same badass lineage and St. Louis milieu as traditionals like “Stagolee” and “Frankie & Johnny.” They also performed one of Baker’s originals, a tender ballad about aging love with the plaintive line, “What is love supposed to look like now?”

Tony Low, a veteran power-pop artist and New York transplant, played old and new selections from a deep and spellbinding catalogue. Low’s voice was pitched almost to a falsetto in “Where Are You Now?” — an effervescent pop gem of 1986 vintage that owes a distinct debt to Big Star. Even performed with only an acoustic guitar for accompaniment, it was easy to imagine a Phil Spector-like wall of sound, with a kick drum and propulsive bass powering the song. But more recent material displayed the same pop songcraft enhanced by a more mature sense of lyricism. Case in point was “Adonis Fell,” which reflects on the actor Sal Mineo, who was murdered at the age of 37 in Los Angeles, and his mother, who continued to run a health-food store in

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August 19 — 25, 2015 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Food Music

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

24

Palette

ART

by Chris Nafekh

Sounds of creativity Artist talk @ Elsewhere (GSO), Thursday Resident artists at the living museum share their inspiration and creative process.

Anna Kohlweis from Vienna, Austria, works with multiple mediums including sound and light, words and music. Her illustrations indulge the torments of emotion, death and menstrual bleedings. Liew Niyomkarn’s art utilizes sound sculpture, visualization and psychoacoustics. Already, there are several questions to be asked.

For more information, visit goelsewhere. org.

Children of the kiln Dirty Fingernails Children’s Art Exhibition and Clash of the Potters @ the Center for Visual Arts (GSO), Friday The sweat and tears of anguished day-campers created all the pottery in this exhibit. Young Michelangelos toiled all summer for their first art showing to sell every piece of pottery. The event includes sweet treats, activities and a fashion show.

For more information, visit greensboroart. org.

Cutting the red ribbon Urban Grinders opening celebration @ Urban Grinders Art and Coffeehouse (GSO), Saturday The people at Urban Grinders worked months preceding this event while their location on Elm Street teased a new art house, record store and coffee shop. They boast an inclusive artistic atmosphere as they welcome citizens around the Triad on opening day. The celebration includes performances from local musicians, bodypainters and mural display. For more information, visit Urban Grinders on Facebook.

Taking risks: Endia Beal’s contemporary photography

by Chris Nafekh

man stands beside a colossal Confederate flag hung in the front yard of a North Carolina homestead.

It’s a photograph that captures the stigma of the American South and the debate between heritage and hate. It also earned Endia Beal, recently named the interim director at Diggs Gallery at Winston-Salem State University, acceptance into the Yale School of Art. “There was this large Confederate flag,” Beal recalled. “It was huge like the size of a wall. I’d never seen a flag that big in my life.”

Beal, who is black, retold the story during an artist talk at the Sawtooth School for Visual Art on Aug. 13, surrounded by students and patrons. She sat comfortably in the spotlight and flashed a kind smile, crimson curled hair tumbling over her shoulders.

“He could’ve killed me,” she continued. “I was on his property; it could’ve happened. Of course the man is like, ‘What are you doing on my property?’ and I said, ‘Oh, I was admiring your flag.’”

The crowd chuckled.

“So,” Beal continued, “he told me how the flag, for him, represented the South and didn’t necessarily represent racism. I told him we can agree to disagree.”

Endia Beal didn’t anticipate her career as a groundbreaking photographer.

It took time, tragedy and inspiration COURTESY PHOTO Self-portrait of Endia Beal, contemporary photographer and to set her on that path. As a child she interim director of Diggs Gallery at Winston-Salem State. never took art classes, but growing up on the south side of Winston-Salem ed and wrote for her lost love whose place at the wrong time.” galvanized her to narrate the stories of death not only catalyzed her artistry Beal left Winston-Salem to study marginalized citizens. but showed her the fine arts at UNC-Chapel Hill in 2008.

“When I was in light in which miShe started photographing her grandhigh school the first nority communities mother’s community in Durham’s south person I ever loved Diggs Gallery is located at are portrayed by the side, an area scarred by gang violence. was shot and killed,” 601 S. Martin Luther King media. Winston-SaFearless, Beal photographed anybody she said, referring to Jr. Drive (W-S). For more lem papers, accordwilling to have his or her picture taken. her friend and high ing to Beal, painted Her photography developed into a info, visit endiabeal.com. school sweetheart. her lover as a thug narration of Durham’s underprivileged “When that hapshot in the streets. population. pened everything “I knew him,” Beal said.

“He was an “That energy of being around people changed.” artist, he was a poet, he was a wonderwho’d never seen a camera or had an Beal turned towards art as a vehicle ful individual and he was in the wrong opportunity to show themselves in a for emotional expression. She illustrat-

A

The 2015-2016 school year inaugurates Beal’s career at the Diggs Gallery at Winston-Salem State. Her premiere exhibit, “Flawlessly Feminine” features photographs of the women who graced the cover of Jet magazine from 1950 to the 1990s. The exhibit is inspired by the director’s interest in educating students on the stories of contemporary photography.

“You see these women’s stories but you don’t know the trials and tribulations they experience,” Beal said. “And so, there’s a bio associated with each woman to learn her failures and not just her successes. You know that Chaka Khan dropped out of high school, right?

And Whoopi Goldberg was homeless and Halle Berry was homeless.”

The stories of these women are analogous to the trials Beal confronted in her youth. But Beal sees life in chapters — pages turn and time passes; she’s untiring in the pursuit of creation.

“We get to tell those stories to our students, especially our women and see that sometimes when you’re going through things it’s just a chapter, right?” she said. “And this too shall pass.”

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positive light, I fed off of it,” Beal said.

“It kept me going back… for me it’s about the relationships I had with my subjects.”

Over the course of her college career, Beal watched children in south-side Durham grow up. She keeps their photos tucked away now as personal memories. Around the same time, she traveled to Lexington to document the many faces of Southern racism. There she met Bud, the man standing beside his Confederate flag in her application photo to Yale. Soon after her application, she received an acceptance letter.

During her stint as an IT intern at Yale, Beal created “Can I Touch It?” It’s statement on women in the workplace and her most famous work. In the office, she heard whispers from her coworkers that the men around her fixated on her Afro. Beal told the men to pull her hair; they did, and she caught it all on camera. She fashioned a four-minute video — it’s sexual, it’s awkward, and it speaks mountains about gender norms in a male-dominated workplace.

Then Beal gave white women black hairdos she had worn and snapped a series of portraits.

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STAGE & SCREEN

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I’d fight William Shatner Fight Club @ A/perture Cinema (W-S), Friday and Saturday When insomniac Edward Norton meets a reckless, self-glorifying Brad Pitt, the two organize an underground fighting community that turns into something more menacing than a club. This psycho-thriller tells a story of subtle twists which, in context of the film’s ending, beckon a second watch. For more information, visit aperturecinema.com.

Come sail away Up! @ Reynolda House Museum of American Art (W-S), Friday This Pixar classic stars a talking dog, foreign beasts and two unlikely companions who journey in a helium-powered house in the sky. The story’s comedic, yet, saddening. The characters grapple with love, friendship and fulfilling lifelong dreams in the wake of old age. For more information, visit reynoldahouse.org.

One last performance Boulevard @ Geeksboro Coffeehouse Cinema (GSO), starting Friday Robin Williams, in the final dramatic role of his career, plays Nolan Mack, a family man whose closeted personality and secret second life unravels before his loved ones’ eyes. For more information, visit Geeksboro.com.

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Saint Laurent adds texture and theme to the life of the prolific designer of haute couture.

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Saint Laurent both alluring and infuriating

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a scene around the 90-minute mark in which There’s Yves Saint Laurent and his lover, Jacques, are volleying a pill between each other’s mouths as a dog convulses on the floor, the sound of heavy stroking on a leather sofa the only thing to break the excruciating silence.

It’s the point when Saint Laurent, the new biopic examining the life of prolific French designer Yves Saint Laurent, has become too much to bear.

Released to the United States in May, Saint Laurent is both exciting and tedious; a sexy, booze-driven ride with one of haute couture’s most enigmatic designers and an overdrawn sketch of his tortured mind.

It’s the second biopic on the famous designer, the other being Yves Saint Laurent which was also released in 2014 in France. Although Saint Laurent has much more to offer than the competing biopic, its runtime and lack of coher-

The wild nights never seem to get a ent sequencing makes it difficult to sit young Saint Laurent down as he’s soon through. But that’s not to say it lacks back at his well-organized desk, draftany merit as a great piece of drama.

The first hour or so of the film is what ing a new collection or saying something snarky to his aides. His presence moviegoers are looking for in a Saint is at times abrasive in the Saint Laurent Laurent biopic. Seventies art rock and music from the design house. His seamstresses cower Velvet Underground build a backdrop for as Saint Laurent Saint Laurent screens at steps in to expel nights of debauchGeeksboro Coffeehouse his genius in quick ery and tight leather Cinema in Greensboro on bursts. He abruptly suits. Played by the Wednesday and Thursday, rips the sleeves from devilishly handsome Gaspard Ulliel, Saint a dress to make it at noon and 7 p.m. more contemporary Laurent is never far and tells one of his from a cigarette and clients to let her hair down and put her glass of whiskey. He prowls the streets hands in her pockets, somehow transat night for male prostitutes. He freforming her into a bold and confident quents the lively Parisian nightclubs — lady. which could by themselves warrant an award for stage design — surrounded by It’s a world that only the most prominent fashionistas know, and what gives his models and peering through a cloud of smoke and thick-rimmed glasses Saint Laurent a kind of energy typically reserved for Rolling Stone cover stories. with the coiled sex power of a jungle But the filmmakers seemed to strugcat.

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A heritage of hate Cat on a Hot Tin Roof @ Triad Stage (GSO), starting Aug. 23 Presenting memories of the Old South, Tennessee William’s Pulitzer Prize winning play confronts greed, desire, death and depression on a cotton plantation thriving off slave labor. The story was adapted in a 1958 film, twice for television, and won several awards. For more information, visit triadstage.org.

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Late-night licentiousness Vaudeville After Dark Presents: A Night of Video Games: A Teasing Tantalizing Troupe @ Jackie’s Place (HP), Saturday An evening of indulgent temptation. Slow, sexy striptease of improvised burlesque and a stiff drink or two sways sensual souls of a bright eyed audience. A craft as old as time, burlesque brings that extra special something to High Point’s nightlife. For more information, visit Vaudeville after Dark on Facebook.

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Cats and caterpillars Alice in Wonderland Jr. @ Twin City Stage (W-S), Friday-Sunday Lewis Carroll’s classic literature adapted for children by children.

Tumbling down the rabbit hole, these young actors bring the intoxicating world of Wonderland to life for one weekend only. For more information, visit twincitystage.org.

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Not quite Paris Destinations: Friends of the Theatre’s Annual Cabaret @ High Point Theatre (HP), Friday and Saturday In this case “cabaret” doesn’t signify anything sexy. However, the theater offers music by the Vocal Chords who are, according to the Facebook event page, “the area’s favorite performers.”

Cabaret typically implies food and drink, two things the event information gives no mention of. For more information, visit highpointtheatre.com

Check us out on Facebook or give us a call to find out more about us.

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gle with compressing time. Although at times done with finesse — like a split-screen montage of Saint Laurent collections juxtaposed with newsreel from the ’70s — following the chapter dates can become a bit maddening.

There is no coherent sequence in Saint Laurent. This is especially true of the last 45 minutes or so, when the older Saint Laurent is interspersed with scenes from his younger self. To make following the story even more difficult, the designer begins using LSD, which inspires hallucinations.

Just when the art-house quality of Saint Laurent is loosing its charm, the designer’s final exhibit brings back to life some of the energy of the early Saint Laurent days.

It’s a high-stakes exhibition, one of Saint Laurent’s most famous. On the runway, a series of Moroccan-style gowns is split into multiple parts, paying homage to the Piet Mondrian paintings with which he was so deeply enamored, while operatic music reaches a crescendo. The effect is a feeling of jubilance, not only for the genius of Saint Laurent but for the last 45 minutes of cinematic nonsense.

The film constantly reinforces that Saint Laurent is a genius, but the intricacies that make him great are never fully explained. Instead, it’s about a hedonistic pill-guzzler who somehow keeps it together to blow the scarves and stilettoes off of the fashion industry.

Saint Laurent is an art film, a complex, beautiful and sometimes infuriating piece of work. It moves in delirious circles and leaves the viewer feeling, as the camera fades out on a smiling Saint Laurent that the joke is on them.

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August 19 — 25, 2015 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Food Music Art Stage & Screen

by Chris Nafekh

Hoppin’ good puns Grasshoppers Fall Kickoff Game @ NewBridge Bank Park (GSO), Wednesday Currently, the ’Hoppers hold last place for overall wins in the entire South Atlantic League with a whopping 73 losses compared to Greenville’s 58. The Greenville Drive employs Mike Meyers who holds the fifth-highest batting average in the League. But who ever bought a ticket to see the ’Hoppers win a game? It’s all about the beer and hot dogs. For more information, visit Greensboro Grasshoppers on Facebook or gsohoppers.com.

Stroke-pedal-sprint Second Annual High-Point Sprint Triathlon @ Oak Hollow Park (HP), Saturday The race, a synthesis of swimming, running and biking, begins at 8:30 a.m. with race-day registration opening at 7 a.m.

The route, just under 12 miles, travels down North Centennial then turns on Oakview.

Then competitors travel north up Johnson until they turn left on Sandy Ridge Road, wrapping around to the intersection at Ruskin and Johnson, then traveling back to the Oak Hollow Marina. For more information, visit triviumracing.com.

Doubles and singles 2015 Winston-Salem Open @ Wake Forest Tennis Complex (W-S), Saturday The crack of a racquet, the squeak of sneakers and the smell of a fresh can of balls, all on a midsummer afternoon.

Athletes from across the globe travel to Winston-Salem for this tournament, all of whom compete for prize of more than $500,000. The competition starts Saturday and continues through the week.

Visit winstonsalemopen.com for more information.

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And-one all-stars New hoops glistened under the midday sun.

“I can remember playing here as a kid and dreamby Anthony Harrison ing of goals like this,” spectator Mikey Spence said during halftime. “We used to have one-piece metal posts with wooden backboards, but Kenny [Slade, one of the event coordinators], came and installed this in the past year or two. It’s a positive thing, man.”

The first annual Five-Star All-Star Basketball Tournament, a community cookout and celebration of south Greensboro service work, couldn’t have asked for better conditions for an inauguration day — aside from maybe a drop in temperature.

“Weather said it’s supposed to be cool out here today, an’ it ain’t cool,” a large man in a straw trilby shouted from the shade of his umbrella.

Cicadas clicked and whirred a dizzying, droning chorus from their hiding spots among the longleaf pines, blending with the trap rhythms of A$AP Ferg’s “Shabba” and the thumping and thudding of basketballs. Blue and black vinyl matting, featuring the ESPN logo at midcourt, covered the typical asphalt at Hampton Park’s streetball court in Greensboro, and adjustable steel goals stood at either end of the court.

Cars lined both sides of Four Seasons Boulevard and the gravel drive running past the court, and the smoky smell of charred hot dogs wafted along on the summer air, emanating from tents set up underneath the nearby shade of pines. In a sunny stretch of grass before the court, kids played in and around a bouncy castle and passed a football around, pulling their best Cam Newton or Kelvin Benjamin impersonations.

Other kids dawdled about on the court out of the way of their role models.

“How old are you?” one potbellied toddler asked another during a break between games.

“Four!” the other shot back, competently dribbling a ball nearly half his

size, Cheetos dust staining his white tank top.

Neighborhood adults also helped out in other ways aside from participating as cooks, players and coaches.

Four referees officiated the game; during timeouts, they took potshots at the goal, whistles hanging from their necks.

One particular ref stood out, exemplifying the casual organization of the event’s character. He strolled across the court prior to tipoff in his black-andwhite striped shirt, decked out in brown aviators and puffing a Newport before his duties commenced.

Hampton Park’s two streetball teams, sporting either yellow or white jerseys, faced off in the first round of the tournament, deciding who would play their Spring Valley rivals. The yellow Hampton team pulled away with an early lead, confidently picking steals, smacking blocks, making fast breaks and capitalizing on second-chance opportunities afforded by hustling on offensive boards.

Their animated coach launched himself fully into the action, too.

“Y’all can’t be crossin’ through the key at the same time!” he shouted from the bench. “Y’all’re wastin’ each other’s energy, so you talk to Junior!”

When one yellow shirt hit a nice layup while fouled, rolling into the red clay dirt next to the court, the coach got really fired up.

“And one!” the coach screamed. “He got dirty for a reason!”

Amateur emcees spouted color commentary, poking fun at players they clearly knew.

“We’re gonna need a sub!” one shouted at a player launching an air ball.

Sometimes, players engaged in the rapport.

“You’d better make these free throws, or you won’t have any points during the game,” the commentator stated to a player as he stepped up to the line.

“What about the second half?” the offended player asked.

“Man, quit talkin’ to him and play ball!” a teammate yelled, half encouraging, half admonishing.

The player missed both of his free

throws, but the white shirts hustled on both ends of the court and kept it close.

Steve Bell, No. 31, served as their heart and soul.

Bell hit a last-second three at the end of the first half to bring the white team within four points of their intra-neighborhood rivals.

But the yellow team opened up after the half, establishing a nine-point lead, led partly by free-throw attempts.

Bell voiced his team’s frustrations.

“Don’t tell me how to play defense!” he yelled at an official after a questionable foul. “That’s like me tellin’ you how to ref!”

The white team soon rallied. Bell’s layup with 13:34 left tied the game at 40-40. The game remained back and forth up to the end, with the game locked at 52-52 and only two minutes left.

As with games at any level, the deciding factor wound up being free throws.

The white shirts’ de facto big man hit two crucial free throws to clinch his team’s first lead of the game with a minute and a half left in regulation.

After the yellow team slashed back with a layup, Jaeqwan Gunter hit a clutch three with 38 seconds left, solidifying the final score of 57-54.

“They didn’t show up. They didn’t show up,” the yellow team coach said after the game. “They ain’t got no hustle in the end.”

ANTHONY HARRISON Street ball allstars in Greensboro’s Hampton Park.

‘Free Kee’ another freestyle rife with words.

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1 Bit of dust 2 Flavoring for a French cordial 3 Gastropub supplies, maybe 4 Europe’s tallest active volcano 5 Sailor’s greeting 6 Oscar Wilde’s forte 7 “This American Life” radio host 8 Honest sort 9 Lingual bone that’s not attached to any other bone 10 Always, in music 11 Tentative offer 12 Junkyard dog’s warning 13 Chaotic mess 14 NAFTA part 21 Simpsons character that all members of metal band Okilly Dokilly look like 22 Take top billing 23 City SSE of Sacramento 24 “Author unknown” byline 25 It may be in a pinch 26 Machine at the gym 27 “V for Vendetta” actor Stephen 31 Line feeder 32 Peut-___ (maybe, in Marseilles) 33 Sound of an air leak 35 Venue for testing out new jokes, perhaps 36 Gamers’ D20s, e.g.

37 Blue Jays’ prov.

41 Capricious ©2015 Jonesin’ Crosswords (editor@jonesincrosswords.com) 42 Headquarters, for short 44 Like some communities 45 Maternally related 46 Sprayed via inhaler, perhaps 47 Letter after Oscar 48 Assortment behind the bartender Answers from last issue.

49 Succulent houseplant 50 Modem’s measurement unit 51 “___ possibility” 52 “Disco Duck” man Rick 55 End of the holidays?

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1 Birthday command 10 Letter between rho and tau 15 Time for a late lunch 16 Violinist Zimbalist or actor Zimbalist, Jr. 17 Comedian who once stated “I’m the luckiest unlucky person” 18 “___ hound dog lies a-sleepin’ ...” (folk song line) 19 Blue book composition 20 Grow in status, perhaps 22 Pre-calculator calculator 23 Game full of zapping 28 Grass wetter 29 Tethered 30 High poker cards 34 By all odds 38 Incan sun god 39 Disc jockeys, slangily 40 Cpl.’s underling 43 Metric measures of area 44 Finish up 47 Jodie Foster thriller with locked doors 48 Beyond gung-ho 53 Sharp as ___ 54 Whet 56 Peony part 57 Cartoonish cry while standing on a chair 58 She released the albums “19” and “21” 59 In the costume of

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Texas Lexus The beauty of boys in Texas as that they all know how to dance. Interior design is another story. They like their sofas and chairs big — like everything, and the more cow in the room the better. I’ve nearly pierced a new vaginal hole from sitting on awkward furniture adorned with horns during my tenure

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Carolina Cutie Whether from Charlotte or Charleston, this Southern boy likes his home to reflect the manly activities in which he participates or follows. If he’s into NASCAR you can bet there will be some racing remnants strewn on the living-room wall. If he’s a hunter, there is sure to be another set of eyes staring at you while you make out on the couch.

His furniture is either leather and the size of a Buick or mama’s boy handme-downs that add a disturbing pastel element to the mallard and plaid patois of the room.

The Virginia Gentleman There’s an old joke about FFV (First Families of Virginia) that goes, “He went to ‘the school,’ then he went to ‘the college,’ then he got married in ‘the church,’ then he went to work for ‘the firm,’ and then he went to ‘the bottle.’”

And it’s all true. Just ask his navy kneesocked mom if you have any doubts.

She’ll also tell you that he got ‘the furniture” — meaning a horsey set of antiques that Thomas Jefferson probably schtupped Sally Hemmings on.

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The topic of interior design is a touchy one — especially when your mother is a talented designer. You learn to say things to your friends like, “If you love it, it’s perfect,” and that’s the absolute truth because you should a) always surround yourself with the things you love, and b) if you know yourself and you are choosy then the things around you reflect you and they are perfect.

Sound like relationship advice? Well the same applies.

Both choosing your mate and choosing your sofa are easier said than done, I know, and the latter is especially difficult for the male species who, for the most part, at least until “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” thought a recliner, a ballcap collection and street signage was décor. That got me thinking about some of the boys I’ve known over the years, across this great nation and how

Pornlandia Pal This guy lives everywhere but evidence of his everyman perviness is in ever fiber of his being — and apartment.

He likes his toys and they veer from Star Wars figurines to anime collectables all the way to back-of-the store items.

He has an astonishing comic collection and probably a curated selection of vintage, modern and experimental porn if you get that far into his closet.

A breast man with mommy issues out the wazoo, I’d avoid sitting on any of his furniture for the sticky factor alone.

in the Lone Star State. And Remington himself would be sick of his own sculpture if he had to see so many knockoffs of it. If only their taste in furniture could be as simple and elegant as that Lone Star.

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Brooklyn Boy He comes with what appears to be a starter kit from the hipness protection program: ironic upholstery, bird art, mid-century modern bits and pieces and enough terrariums to start an ecodome.

His beard-maintenance products are crafted from the feces of field mice and smell like formaldahyde. His books veer from Bukowski to Eggers, Foer to the requisite David Foster Wallace, and his closet is reserved for flannel and beer making.

The New Yorker Comes with the requisite New Yorker magazine shower curtain, Oriental rug, Eames chair, tastefully worn sofa, one good painting and bookcase replete with a who’s who of the New York Times Book Review from at least two decades.

There is good white in the fridge, hallucinogenic mushrooms from at least a decade ago in the freezer, mediocre red on the counter and stinky old leather jackets and moldy trenches in the coat closet.

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they choose to live. So I give you a few regional delicacies of dyspeptic design distortion to chew on from the Eastern seaboard as far as Texas and column space will allow. They probably won’t help you find a boyfriend — or a sofa, but here goes.

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Mother: Why didn’t you date that cute boy in San Diego who was so crazy about you?

Me: Did you see his house?

It looked like

by Nicole Crews a Taco Bell. I wouldn’t have been surprised if a Sinaloan drug tunnel was beneath it.

Mother: Lindsay Lohan has a drug tunnel?

Me: Same difference.

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