TCB May 25, 2016— Wiener Wars of Winston-Salem

Greensboro / Winston-Salem / High Point triad-city-beat.com May 25 – 31, 2016

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Trump’s useful idiots PAGE 14

The other bus riders PAGE 10

Knife fight!

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May 25 — 31, 2016

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UP FRONT 3 Editor’s Notebook 4 City Life 6 Commentariat 6 The List 7 Barometer 7 Unsolicited Endorsement

The food beat

24

by Brian Clarey

NEWS 8 The wild 13th 10 Paratransit paradox 12 Hunger on the menu

OPINION 14 Editorial: Politicians as working poor 14 Citizen Green: Useful idiots and Trump enablers 15 It Just Might Work: Recreation 15 Fresh Eyes: Breaking bread at Rich Fork

COVER 16 Weiner Wars of WinstonSalem

CULTURE

FUN & GAMES

SHOT IN THE TRIAD

20 Food: Blades of steel 21 Barstool: Rioja Wine Bar 22 Music: Boom Unit kicks brass 24 Art: Old friends reinvigorate older scripts

26 Rain or shine

28 South Edgeworth Street, Greensboro

GAMES 27 Jonesin’ Crossword

ALL SHE WROTE 30 Requiem

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

The Lucky Dogs of New Orleans’ French Quarter — sold on the street in giant, hot-dog-shaped carts and made famous in the novel Confederacy of Dunces — were even more famous among those of us who worked on Bourbon Street as the most disgusting of comestibles on that filthy street. I threw up immediately after consuming a Lucky Dog. Twice. And those weren’t the last ones I ate that summer.

— Brian Clarey, in the Cover, page 16

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CONTRIBUTORS

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ASSOCIATE EDITOR Eric Ginsburg

SALES EXECUTIVE Cheryl Green

EDITORIAL INTERN Joanna Rutter

SALES EXECUTIVE Korinna Sergent

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Cover photography by Alexandra Klein Suicide food at PB’s Take Out in Winston-Salem.

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It was a tough call to make: a perfect panna cotta with a ricotta base, some gastrique action and an ingenious ham cookie, or the Old World crumbcake, hard as a true shortbread, with ricotta cheesecake ice cream and hickory-smoked syrup.

I try not to rely too heavily on the desserts at Competition Dining dinners, but competing chefs noted years ago that a strong final course could undo lots of mistakes in the first two. And maybe because I was in dire need of a sugar rush, or maybe because I hadn’t had this kind of dining experience in a while, but just like all the other hooples I scored the desserts highest on my card.

I’ve been off the food beat for a couple years now, but I worked it from the beginning, when I started taking freelance assignments for the Gambit in New Orleans and parlayed that into a restaurant-critic gig for a new monthly called Where Y’At? It’s the most marketable skill in a feature-writer’s trick bag; food writers have survived the newspaper apocalypse when foreign bureaus, dedicated copy desks and film critics did not. Every publication — monthly, weekly, daily, whatever — has a food section, even the Wall Street Journal and High Times. At Triad City Beat, our food and drink coverage (helmed magnificently by Eric Ginsburg, who assumed the mantle when I stepped down) regularly outranks everything else we do, sometimes to our dismay.

But even when there’s a crazy election going on, people still gotta eat.

I loved the food beat because writing about food is writing about history, art, family, agriculture, business, chemistry, etiquette, personalities, trends, government… sometimes all in the same story.

It’s the most I loved it because of the marketable skill in opportunities it afforded — and sometimes still affords a feature-writer’s — me: sneak peaks at new trick bag. restaurants, access to special menu items, perks like my seat at Competition Dining on Monday.

Years ago I stood in the kitchen of Emeril’s shortly after it opened and watched Chef Emeril Lagasse preside from atop a folding chair over the meticulous breaking down of his kitchen, organized and precise as a military operation.

And just last week, I got to eat hot dogs for an entire day — see this week’s cover story, “Weiner wars of Winston-Salem,” beginning on page 16 for the result. In both cases, I felt pretty lucky just to be doing my job.

Nothing beats the food beat. The whole thing is dessert.

triad-city-beat.com

EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK

CONTENTS

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May 25 — 31, 2016

CITY LIFE May 25 – 31 ALL WEEKEND Volkswagen Pro Road Cycling Nationals @ downtown W-S America’s top professional road cyclists will descend on Winston-Salem this weekend to make a final push for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio. Individual time trials will be held Friday morning on Old U.S. 421; if you make it, keep an eye out for Olympic gold medalist Kristin Armstrong (no relation) who looks to repeat as the women’s pro National Champion, and Andrew Talansky, who won the 2015 men’s pro crown. On Saturday, the start/finish line for the 12-lap men’s road race will be located on West 4th Street at Popular Street. Look for Brevard native Matthew Busche, the defending champ. Visit usacycling.org/national-championships for a full list of race times.

The Tempest: A Modern Retelling @ Milton Rhodes Arts Center (W-S) What do Shakespeare, puppets and a significant conglomeration of UNCSA grads have to do with each other? Loads, in this inaugural play from the newly minted Rhinoleap Productions, which we review this week in our Culture section. In their debut, the wizard Prospero uses a tribal-inspired mask to cast spells on his magical servants Caliban and Ariel, both portrayed with inventive puppetry and blacklighting. It’s abridged, too, so it’s a perfect entry point for Bard newbies. More info and tickets via rhinoleap.com.

THURSDAY

Civil Rights Activism in Winston-Salem: School Integration @ New Winston Museum (W-S), 5:30 p.m.

After the Brown v. Board of Education decision, Gwendolyn Bailey was the first black student to attend RJ Reynolds High School in 1957, but her enrollment only marked the beginning of a rocky integration process. Featured guests include Norma Corley, one of three black students assigned to integrate the formerly all-white Easton Elementary in 1958; Daisy Chambers, the first black teacher at Clemmons Elementary in 1964; and Kenneth Simington, a student at Carver Elementary in 1970 and currently the assistant superintendent for instructional and student services with Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools. More info at newwinston.org.

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Say Yes Task Force info session @ Central Library (GSO), 6 p.m.

The Guilford crew of the Say Yes Initiative invites you to come out for an informational session on volunteering for a task force. (Other sessions take place throughout Guilford County on May 31, June 2 and June 7.) You’ll learn about Say Yes Guilford, its task forces, and other volunteer opportunities. The job of the task force includes reviewing school data, identifying issues related to student performance, and recommending changes for student success. If education issues get you fired up, there’s probably no better way to have an exponential impact than joining up with Say Yes. The information sessions serve as a precursor to formal half-day training sessions for task forces that will occur June 14, 16, 18 and 23 (locations and times TBA). Details at sayyesguilford.org.

by Joanna Rutter

WEDNESDAY Sushi with the city @ TunaZilla (GSO) 11:30 a.m.

To celebrate the opening of a new sushi joint downtown, Greensboro City Councilman Tony Wilkins invites you to join him and his colleagues Nancy Hoffman and Justin Outling, along with assistant city managers David Parrish and Chris Wilson, for a casual sushi lunch. Wilkins says y’all can talk “politics or food or whatever.”

Order “Tony’s Lunch” for a discount. Aim your questions at his post on the Greater Greensboro Politics Facebook group.

Mental Health: Navigating Educational Systems @ Greensboro Historical Museum (GSO), 5 p.m.

If you’re at all curious about the intersection of education and mental health, this wealth of local expertise packs out a program worth your while. Panelists include Dr. Alex Tabori, Guilford County Schools’ director of psychological services; teacher and Human Relations Commissioner David Wils, and Black Women Empowered founder and Human Relations Commissioner Jackie King. This is the second in a four-part series designed to raise awareness about mental health, and connect families with resources available in the Triad. Food will be provided. Visit the Facebook event page for details.

FRIDAY

Kamara Thomas & The Night Drivers and Sarah Shook & the Disarmers @ the Amtrak station (HP), 6 p.m.

Two lady-fronted bands borrowing from the nomenclature of Joan Jett & The Heartbreakers? A thousand times yes. Kamara Thomas brings “cosmic Americana” while Sarah Shook is more country (but with a punk soul). Experience the glorious mashup for free with a hat tip to Ignite High Point and City Project; visit their Facebook pages for details.

SATURDAY

Spraygrounds grand opening @ Barber and Keeley parks (GSO), 11 a.m.

Completing Greensboro’s urban summer perfection, the spraygrounds at Barber Park and Keeley Park are opening on Saturday. These free water playgrounds could totally change your cool-off parenting strategy for the whole summer. Coincidentally the city pools open today, too. Maybe make it a splashy double-header? Check out www.gsoparksandrec.org for more details.

triad-city-beat.com

Brilliant Bakery: Worker Co-op Interest Meeting @ Urban Grinders (GSO), 2 p.m.

If you knead an excuse to get your doughy self out of your kitchen and into the mixing bowl with other like-minded chefs, can you survive the puns in this sentence to bake it to this meeting? If yes, here: this is an interest meeting to talk about creating a worker co-op bakery in Greensboro. Topics discussed will be the nature of a worker co-op, its benefits and risks. They’ll hold another meeting after this to talk detailed logistics. Bakers, donut miss this. (Sorry.) See Brilliant Bakery on Facebook for details.

for more info and to buy tickets online go to $10 per person 16 and under are free

Cringe-Con Freak Prom @ the Garage (W-S), 10 p.m.

Freaks, dweebies, stoners, tweakers, riff raff, boobs and gang bangers are all cordially invited to dance to fundraise for Cringe-Con’s third iteration of weirdness. Special guests Life Stinks (join a crazy DJ rave with “all the Reanimator all-stars.” There will be a dance contest, a raffle, and limbo, so stretch beforehand. Find the event on Facebook for info.

SUNDAY Hugs Heal of the Triad @ Center City Park (GSO), 12:30 p.m.

Sunday 12:30 center city Sometimes all you need is a hug from a well-intentioned stranger, am I right? Local organization I Rock My Curves the Best says they are proud to be a strong voice in the community spreading joy, peace, hope, love and meeting the needs of those who are less fortunate. In this instance, they mean the Un-Hugged. Grab your grumpiest friends and a non-perishable donation and head over to help them meet their goal of hugging 500 people and feeding 300.

To volunteer to be a hugger, sign up at irockmycurvesthebest.com.

EVENTS

Thursday, May 26 @ 8pm

Open Mic Night

Friday, May 27 @ 8pm

Bambino & the Kids, w/ Giant Red Panda Saturday, May 28 @ 8pm

Jonny Alright & the Hot Rod Mamas, w/ Wolfie Calhoun and Matty Sheets Monday, May 30 @ 6pm

Mystery Movie Monday Tuesday, May 31 @ 7pm

Brian Tyndall & Friends

602 S Elam Ave • Greensboro

(336) 698-3888

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May 25 — 31, 2016 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture

Stairwells to heaven

When Patrick [Lui] was a student at (now U)NCSA, the guitar students had master class Monday afternoons in Gray Building, where at the time both School of Music studios and Academic Program offices and classrooms were located [“Unsolicited Endorsement: The Weaver Academy Stairwell Sessions”; by Brian Clarey; May 18, 2016]. Gray is a lovely old building, Grimsley-esque, with thick walls, high ceilings, big windows and generous three-floor staircases. Before Monday master classes and other afternoons as well, guitar students would warm up or practice in the stairwells, which had incredible acoustic quality. Those of us working away in the academic offices looked forward to hearing the mellow music our students made just for us each week.

Patrick knows stairwells! Your children are in good hands.

Share this note with him? Thanks, Brian.

Noel Kirby-Ith, via email

The truth about Reynolda

I thought your piece about Reynolda was truthful yet full of grace [“Citizen Green: Correcting Reynolda’s whitewash”;

by Jordan Green; May 18, 2016]. I have a keen interest in any step toward racial reconciliation here in the Triad. I believe Winston-Salem Mayor Allen Joines is as good as they come in this same goal. Thanks again for your truthful yet graceful approach to this part of our Triad history.

Parker Watson, via email

All She Wrote

Shot in the Triad

Games

Fun & Games

Downsizing higher ed

6

I think the NCGA’s plan is to starve them of funds (similar to the public schools plan), then drop these universities from the UNC system, and turn them into community colleges [“Editorial: Drowning UNC in a bathtub”; May 18, 2016].

Terry L, via triad-city-beat.com

Boozing blind

Yes, the power of suggestion is very strong! [“Barstool: Top vs. Tito’s, Round II”; by Eric Ginsburg; May 18, 2016] Next time, get yourself a helper to give you an actual blind tasting.

And adding another taster or two to check your perceptions would add validity, too.

Sara Farnsworth, via triad-city-beat.com

What copying says about trustworthiness

How can this guy think he could lead us when he’s just copying someone else and can’t even manage his own employees? [“Coker campaign admits to plagiarizing Hillary for America”;

by Jordan Green; May 20, 2016] It looks like he copied his logo from Pepsi as some poor “Coke”r joke or something. This is why we can’t trust politicians anymore. He needs to drop out now, because there’s no way he wins an election like that.

Bob Johnson, via triad-city-beat.com

6 big things I’ve learned as a TCB intern

by Joanna Rutter 1. When I love something this much, the rest of life falls into place I’ve been interning with Triad City Beat since January, and as I head into my final month and we start looking for the next recruit, I’ve been reflecting on how much this spring has changed me. One beautiful surprise is how after stepping away from a job to jump off of the crazy cliff that is a part-time unpaid internship with a small newspaper, things took care of themselves, such as other part-time jobs magically lining up so I could eat. Because I wanted this gig so badly, I adjusted the rest as best as I could to make space for it.

internship I’m proudest of.

4. To be well liked by all, do not become a journalist (too late) Transitioning from the marketing world into journalism has taken some adjusting, primarily in how my job is to inform and not convince. I’m a naturally passionate person that can end up selling tickets for the play I’m reviewing if I’m not careful. The theater has someone they pay to do that. My job is to provide an accurate assessment for readers.

2. The Triad is beautiful and expansive Before this internship, I was a Greensboro resident.

Now, if or when I move and people ask me where I just came from, I’ll tell them I lived in the Triad. As a journalist I’ve seen pieces of Winston-Salem and High Point I never knew existed, and I’m sure I echo my editors’ wonder that so much of it is still unexplored and untapped.

5. Record everything, double-check everything, assume nothing Mistakes happen, especially when you’re the intern and a rookie reporter to boot. I’ve learned no matter how good my notes are, I can’t completely trust them or my memory. I’m just not that good. So I got a recording app and back up every voice file, and ask better follow-up questions. It’s self-preservation, sure, but more importantly it can protect the reputation of the paper and that of the person I interview.

3. Who I am at 3:24 a.m. alone at my laptop is the real me After pushing past initial waves of distraction and exhaustion, I usually hit a wall the night before deadlines, where no one is watching me, where I could close my computer and go to sleep, or push through and do justice to the artist I’m writing about.

The choice to keep writing and to do it well is hard each time, but those private and lonely moments with the LED glow of my screen are the moments of this

6. The payoff is worth the struggle This job is very hard. To do it for no pay was part of the deal, but often serves as a way to understand just how much writing drives me and how much I believe in this paper. I’ll think of this spring as a costly but worthwhile genetic test, finding out what I’m truly made of, and what I’m meant to do. For that and the countless other lessons, I’m forever grateful to you, dear readers, for making this paper exist and believing in it with me.

Write for Triad City Beat Now accepting intern applications for July – December 2016 Send a resume and cover letter to eric@triad-city-beat.com by June 10. College grads, women, trans folks and people of color strongly encouraged to apply.

80 70

50

30 20

43%

the Lucky 13th

9%

5th District

19%

I have no clue

29%

6th District

All She Wrote

10

Shot in the Triad

40

Games

60

Fun & Games

90

Culture

New question: Best local bookstore in the Triad?

Vote at triad-city-beat.com and we’ll publish the results next week!

Kudos to Emily Anthes and the New Yorker for bringing the Glossary of Happiness, also known as the Positive Lexicography Project, to our attention.

In short: There’s a long list of untranslatable happy words, compiled by word-nerd Tim Lomas, that lives on the internet for all of our benefit.

I read the whole thing, which is considerably easier than consuming the dictionary but just about as dorky. It’s full of things like an Arabic verb that means “to sit together in conversation at sunset / in the evening,” or an Inuit noun that means “anticipation one feels when waiting for someone and keeps checking if they’re arriving.” When you read a couple definitions like that, it’s easy to be sucked in, and then you find a term so fantastic that your time is more than justified. Words like “utepils,” which is Norwegian for “a beer that is enjoyed outside (particularly on the first hot day of the year),” or “schnapsidee,” which is German for “a daft/ridiculous plan thought up while drunk (generally used pejoratively).”

There are more food terms — a Dutch one that means “to relax satiated between courses or after a meal,” or a Georgian word for “eating past the point of satiety due to sheer enjoyment” as well as super mushy ones. Consider “mamihlapinatapei,” which is Yagán for “a look between people that expresses unspoken but mutual desire” or “cafune,” a Portuguese word meaning “the act/gesture of tenderly running one’s fingers through a loved one’s hair.”

I wish many of them existed in my native tongue, including a Portuguese word for “artful disentanglement (e.g. from trouble),” a Japanese noun for “freedom from habit, escape from the routine and conventional” or a Kivila term for “a truth that everyone knows but no-one talks about.” The world would probably be a better place with more “fargin” — that’s Yiddish for “ungrudging and overt (expressed) pride and happiness at other’s successes” as well as “arangiarsi” — Italian for “the ability to ‘make do’ or ‘get by.’”

A few terms celebrate collective spirit or unity, including “bayanihan” in Tagalong, while others are incredibly moody, such as a Japanese word for “the bittersweetness of a brief, fading moment of transcendent beauty” or “chrysalism,” which allegedly means “the amniotic tranquility of being indoors during a thunderstorm.”

I (somewhat foolishly) didn’t expect to see any English words on the list, and though a few greats are on there, I’d never come across any before. Have you ever seen the word “grok” or “lutilica” used? They apparently mean “to understand so thoroughly that observer becomes part of the observed” and “the part of your identity that doesn’t fit into categories” respectively.

There are a whole heap of words on Lomas’ list that I’d like an English counterpart for — and a few that already made the jump including bon vivant and nirvana — but maybe first I should put these newfangled English terms to use.

Cover Story

Readers: Not surprisingly, more readers selected “the Lucky 13th” than anything else (43 percent) — not surprising because the majority of the Triad’s residents live in the 13th district. The district includes High Point and most of Greensboro, while the 5th District blankets Forsyth County (just 9 percent in our poll). That’s less than the number that said “I have no clue” (19 percent), which apparently Ginsburg should’ve selected. Meanwhile, 29 percent selected the 6th District, which includes much of Guilford County.

by Eric Ginsburg

Opinion

Jordan Green: Back in the 13th, baby! When I first moved to Greensboro in 2004, I landed in the old 13th Congressional District, a Democratic gerrymander that was drawn by Brad Miller for Brad Miller. Despite the questionable provenance of the district, it more or less suited me to be represented by a liberal, urbane Democrat from Raleigh. I wasn’t too thrilled to be moved into the 6th District in 2011 because neither the folksy conservatism of Howard Coble nor his angry tea party successor have ever

Eric Ginsburg: Greetings from the Lucky 13th! Like majority of people living in the Triad’s three cities, I fall in the 13th District. I have to admit though, for some reason I believed I lived in the new 6th until my map-loving, political wonk colleague Jordan Green pointed out that I was probably mistaken. (I looked it up by Googling “NC voter lookup” and confirmed his claim.) We’re all lucky to have him around.

The Glossary of Happiness

News

Brian Clarey: When I moved into my northeast Greensboro home in 2002, we were in the 13th Congressional District, held down by Democrat Rep. Brad Miller — remember him? When the GOP took over the legislature in 2011, they drew us into the 12th District — then represented by Mel Watt — in a move to purge the Congressional delegation and state legislature of white Democrats. Now I’m in the 6th District, which was taken over by Rep. Mark Walker after decades of representation by Howard Coble.

I finally nailed all this down this morning.

been my style. The new 13th is, ironically, the result of the federal courts striking down a racial gerrymander, and although the district is drawn to favor a Republican, it feels like a local Democrat might have at least an outside shot.

Up Front

With a specially called primary election coming up on June 7 — which will include three Congressional district races in TCB’s coverage area as well as a state supreme court race and a do-over for the South Ward of Winston-Salem City Council — we wanted to ask if our readers knew which Congressional district they live in now that the map has been redrawn.

triad-city-beat.com

What’s your new Congressional district?

7

May 25 — 31, 2016 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Fun & Games Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

8

NEWS

Pragmatism, leadership, experience joust in congressional primary

by Jordan Green

Five Democrats are competing for their party’s nomination in the newly drawn 13th Congressional District in the June 7 special election.

The new 13th Congressional District has attracted a varied collection of Democratic candidates looking to flip a seat created with a Republican lawmaker in mind.

The new district was created in February, when the federal courts rejected the old map as a racial gerrymander and forced the Republican-controlled General Assembly to go back to the drawing board. The 13th District covers two thirds of Greensboro and 95 percent of High Point, and stretches west to Statesville. Guilford County comprises 44.4 percent of the district’s population, with the remainder living in Davidson, Davie, Iredell and part of Rowan counties.

Democrats hold the advantage in voter registration in the district, but voters tend to favor Republican candidates.

Republican Richard Burr carried the district in the US Senate race of 2004, and again in 2010, while Democrat Kay Hagan won the most votes in 2008. Voters in the district also supported Republicans John McCain and Pat McCrory for president and governor respectively, and Democrat Roy Cooper for attorney general in 2008, a watershed year for Democrats.

It’s no surprise that the Democratic candidates are mostly clustered at the more urbanized eastern end of the district. With a special election rapidly approaching on June 7 to determine the party nominee, five candidates aggressively touted their unique qualities and sometimes took shots or attempted to co-opt each other’s platforms during a candidate forum in Greensboro that was hosted by the Guilford County Young Democrats on May 18.

Bruce Davis, a former Guilford County Commissioner, is the only candidate with experience in public office.

He ran unsuccessfully for Congress in the 6th District in 2014 and then for the same seat again earlier this year before

Maizie Ferguson, who recently lost her bid for commissioner of labor, makes her case for the 13th Congressional District.

JORDAN GREEN

for US Senate earlier this year. As with the map was redrawn. Davis has earned Ferguson, Griffin is repurposing the endorsements from High Point Mayor message from his previous campaign in Bill Bencini, Greensboro Mayor Pro the quest for a different seat.

Tem Yvonne Johnson and High Point Adam Coker, a Greensboro resident University President Nido Qubein. with a background in construction, Bob Isner, a Greensboro developtrucking and nonprofits, is making his er who is responsible for signature first run for public office on an aggresdowntown Greensboro projects such sively liberal platform of addressing as Southside, Deep Roots Market, climate change and reforming criminal CityView Apartments and Union justice, along with other Square campus, is issues. Coker received making his first run for Early voting for the endorsement of the public office. the special June 7 Replacements Limited Mazie Ferguson, primary begins on PAC, which advocates a lawyer and pastor for the LGBTQ comwith roots in the civil Thursday and runs munity. rights movement, ran through June 4. Visit Isner, who has the unsuccessfully for state backing of former US Labor Commissioner myguilford.com/ earlier this year. She Senator Kay Hagan, elections/ for times touts himself as “a has a long history of and locations. moderate, pragmatic activism in Greensboro, voice.” Referencing his including service on background in engithe complaint review neering during the Young Democrats committee of the city’s human relations candidate forum, he said, “I’m not a commission. politician; I’m a problem solver.”

Kevin Griffin, a Durham resident, Ferguson talked about engaging in owns a staffing agency. (Under state law, civil disobedience and going to jail in members of Congress are not required the 1960s as part of “the struggle to to live in the district where they live.) make this a great nation.” She said, Griffin was an unsuccessful candidate

“These are the times that try men’s souls…. We need a strong, bold person who’s willing to stand up, not say, ‘Yes sir, yes sir.’”

Griffin said his primary objective, should he be elected, would be “putting people to work.” As the owner of a staffing agency, he said, “That’s what I do for a living.”

Without mentioning Isner by name, Davis attempted to blunt his opponent’s appeal by challenging the notion that lack of political experience is a virtue.

“I’m tired of people talking down about politics,” Davis said. “We need to fix politics. Once you run for office you become a politician.

“Would you let a doctor practice medicine that hasn’t studied, that hasn’t honed their craft?” he continued. “I think you want someone with experience.”

Isner, in turn, used his professional background to compare himself favorably with Davis. Referencing an argument made by Davis that the inner city needs investment to attract grocery stores and other businesses, Isner said, “I’m a pro-growth Democrat. I’ve worked with government where government provides the environment to make business successful. Bruce talks about the other side of the tracks. Southside was the other side of the tracks.

CityView Apartments was the other side of the tracks. Union Square Campus is the other side of the tracks.”

On the matter of climate change, the candidates agreed that addressing global warming through limiting carbon emissions is important, but there were some differences of opinion on whether the goal set by the Paris Climate Agreement to limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures is adequate.

“I don’t think there is any speed that is too fast,” Griffin said. “The US has a great opportunity to exert its leadership by setting the pace and getting everyone else to come along.”

Davis proposed a more cautious approach.

“I’m not sure going any faster would

too high for some areas of the country.

He said he supports an increase, but there needs to be debate to figure out a reasonable federal “wage floor,” and then the new, higher minimum wage should be indexed to the cost of living.

Davis said he supports raising the minimum wage first to $12 and then to $15.

“You have to give employers time to adjust,” he said. “Twelve dollars is not enough, but I understand when employers say, ‘If you go up to $15, I’ll have to shut my doors.’

“The more people making a livable wage, the less people you’ll have using food stamps, the less assistance — all the things the Republicans say they want,” Davis added. “It’s almost magical.”

Correction

A May 18, article, “In police shooting video, little clarity,” accidentally said Lewis Pitts believed the shooting death to be “preventative” instead of “preventable.” We regret the error.

Up Front News

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Games

employs these people. We have used these people to keep wages down. We need to find a way for these people to have legal status.”

Coker said undocumented immigrants should be allowed to form unions to protect themselves against exploitation. He also said, “We have to go after companies that are hiring illegals, and hold them to a higher standard.”

Without mentioning Coker by name, Davis corrected his terminology. “Undocumented immigrants,” he said, “not illegals.”

During a wide-ranging discussion of food stamps and other benefits that poor people rely on to make ends meet, Ferguson said, “I support a $15-an-hour minimum wage. I will work for it.”

She added that the federal minimum wage should be indexed to the cost of living and automatically increased to keep pace with inflation.

Coker said he agrees with Ferguson.

“As an entrepreneur and small business owner I have always felt guilty if I paid anyone anything less than $15 an hour,” he said.

The other three candidates did not broach the subject during the forum, but afterwards said they all support some increase, while differing on how much and how to get there.

Isner said he has some concerns with raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour across the country, considering the variation in the cost of living between high-cost states like California and more affordable places like North Carolina.

“I am in favor of increasing the minimum wage,” he said. “To what level, I don’t know.”

Griffin, who serves on the steering committee of the Durham Living Wage Project, also said $15 per hour might be

triad-city-beat.com

do any justice in our country and other countries with jobs,” he said.

Griffin challenged Davis on his commitment to addressing climate change.

“I take a little issue with Bruce,” he said. “He wanted to go 2 percent on the environment. No, you go as fast as you can. As my father said, ‘If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.’”

In response to a question about Social Security, the candidates broadly agreed that the program needs to be preserved.

Coker called out Isner on a statement he made during an interview on WXII 12 indicating that he would be willing to raise the age of eligibility for Social Security.

“Only tea party people talk about raising the age of Social Security,” Coker charged.

Isner responded that the quote was taken out of context, adding that he said in the interview that raising the age of eligibility is only one option, along with increasing contributions or expanding the economy so more people are paying into the system. Later, after the forum, he clarified by saying, “Right now I’m opposed to [raising the eligibility age], but if it’s part of a comprehensive plan for reform I would re-consider it. There is going to be a funding gap.”

The candidates also unanimously opposed deporting teenagers and breaking apart families, but on other aspects of immigration policy they diverged.

Griffin said he favors “an extensive guest worker program so we can learn who all these people are, and tax them.”

While expressing the view that “we’re all immigrants” — a sentiment unanimously embraced among the candidates — Isner reflected, “The construction business, especially the housing business,

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May 25 — 31, 2016 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Fun & Games Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

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Winston-Salem transit system rapped for ADA violations

by Jordan Green

The city of Winston-Salem is undertaking an overhaul of its transit service for disabled riders, including investment in new buses and additional drivers, along with a possible fare hike, in response to a federal review that found multiple violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The door of Tonya Wilson’s modest-sized ranch house on Windy Hill Drive on the northeastern outskirts of Winston-Salem was cracked open on a recent Friday afternoon so she could hear the paratransit bus when it arrived.

Winston-Salem Transit Authority’s paratransit service, known as TransAID, is required to arrive within 15 minutes either before or after the scheduled pick-up time, thanks to an extensive compliance review issued by the Federal Transit Administration in February. The review found 16 violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act, including faulting WSTA’s 40-minute pickup window.

“FTA considers pickup windows longer than 30 minutes in total to be excessive, because they require riders to wait an unreasonably long time for service,” the review said.

Wilson, who became visually impaired nearly two decades ago because of complications from Type 1 diabetes, had requested a pickup at 2 p.m. to visit Hanes Mall. The bus arrived at 1:47, so Wilson locked her door and set out across the yard towards the bus parked at the curb. Stepping onto the bus, she paid her 50-cent fare. After a pleasant exchange of greetings, the driver informed Wilson that they would be heading to Kernersville to pick up another passenger who was going to the mall.

“Is that an add-on?” Wilson asked.

“No, she was scheduled,” the driver replied. Wilson took the news in stride.

Even with the detour to the eastern end of the county, the bus deposited the passengers at the food court entrance of the mall a hour and seven minutes after Wilson’s pickup. She estimated that a ride on the fixed-route bus system would take about an hour.

The Americans with Disabilities Act requires any public agency that operates a fixed-route transportation system for the general public to also maintain a

complementary paratransit system for people who are unable because of a disability to use the fixed-route system.

The Federal Transit Administration is responsible for ensuring compliance with the law.

Among the most significant deficiencies uncovered through an eight-month review, a team of federal investigators found that Trans-AID riders experience a substantial number of untimely pickups, the transit agency does not have enough telephone capacity to answer calls promptly during service hours, and the city of Winston-Salem does not have adequate requirements in place for monitoring service to ensure that the service is in compliance with federal law.

The report attributed the problem of untimely pickups to an aging fleet, with all but eight of the agency’s 33 short buses logging upwards of 200,000 miles.

When federal investigators visited last August, they found only 20 vehicles in operation — five short of the 25 typically needed each day.

“If it’s a 10:30 appointment, I tell them it’s 10:15,” Wilson said. “I despise being late. It makes my blood pressure boil.” A couple weeks ago Wilson said she almost missed a doctor’s appointment to have some lab work done because her driver was forced to juggle too many rides.

“Many doctor’s offices will allow you to be five, 10, 15 minutes late,” Wilson said, “but it depends on how slammed they are.”

While riders contend with the stress of making appointments on time, if they fail to show up for a scheduled ride or cancel at the door, they can be temporarily suspended. In February, the Federal Transit Administration ordered WSTA to “immediately cease all suspensions under its existing no-show policy and reinstate service to those under suspension.” The feds also ordered the local transit agency to come up with a new policy that takes into consideration the frequency of the rider’s use of the system, excuse cancellations that are beyond the rider’s control, and ensure its data is accurately compiled.

Earlier this month, while acknowledging the deficiencies identified by the

Tonya Wilson pulled out her fare card as she boarded the Trans-AID bus at Hanes Mall on a recent Friday.

federal government, local transportation officials gave a favorable report on the paratransit system to members of the public works committee of Winston-Salem City Council, which is chaired by Councilman Dan Besse.

Robert Garcia, chairman of WSTA’s board of directors, expressed confidence in staff, including General Manager Art Barnes. “They have our full support, and I want to let everyone know that when items of this nature come to our our board, which are quite frequent — public comment, public concern — we take them very, very seriously on the board,” he said. “We address them with Mr. Barnes and with the staff, and I have to say that they are very attentive, and nothing gets put on the backburner.”

Transportation Director Toneq’ McCullough said the number of trips provided by Trans-AID has increased significantly since 2011 relative to the budget for the program.

“If you asked a Fortune 500 company, that would be a true envy to them to have that much productivity,” she said, adding that city council faces a choice between increasing funding for the program, controlling growth, or a combination of the two.

Trans-AID compares favorably on

JORDAN GREEN

affordability to its counterparts across the state, according to a staff presentation. With a fare of 50 cents, Winston-Salem’s system is the cheapest in North Carolina, while Wilmington’s $4 fare comes in at the highest. Greensboro’s SCAT service charges $1.50. And Trans-AID waives the fee for riders who are on Medicaid. In an interview on Monday, Barnes estimated that more than 90 percent of riders don’t pay the fare.

McCullough described Trans-AID as “basically a free service for most of your riders” during the public works committee meeting earlier this month.

“Because it’s free and because the population that we serve — we have a lot of our aging community who are now qualified for Medicaid also, then there’s no deterrent for using the service for the trips that you don’t truly need,” she said. “And when you look at the cost of Trans-AID as compared to fixed route, I think it’s around $5 for fixed route and $20 for Trans-AID, it’s a huge cost comparison, so there has to be some measures to consider to deter some of the riders.”

Claire Stone — an advocate who advises Community Advocates for Transportation Services, or CATS, in Winston-Salem, along with similar rider

Opinion Cover Story

home from Hanes Mall, the driver informed her that he had to pick up some people at Industries For the Blind. Yet the bus motored past the facility, and continued on to a residential neighborhood near North Forsyth High School to drop off another rider at her home.

Despite Wilson’s home being only seven minutes away, the driver doubled back to Industries For the Blind, explaining, “We’re doing some shuffling around.”

The bus arrived at Industries For the Blind and waited for six minutes before the driver radioed back to headquarters to find out the status of the pickup. He had canceled. The dispatcher instructed the driver to go to a different location to make a new pickup, and then return to Industries For the Blind at 5:15.

“I still have Tonya Wilson,” the driver reminded the dispatcher.

“We have to follow our lineup, so they know everything is covered,” he explained to his passenger, after receiving permission to take her home. “This guy I went to pick up, he canceled. He either canceled or got on a different bus.

I didn’t hear his name when they called out the cancelations.”

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of operating the system, as opposed to the violations identified by the Federal Transit Administration.

“It’s clear that we need to consider an overhaul of our Trans-AID system,” Besse said. “We have an unsustainable growth rate in demand. We need additional information. We need to make use of our rider community’s input.

We need to make use of our board of directors, and your time and expertise to help advise us on this. It’s clearly a consensus of this committee that we want to undertake a process of a systematic evaluation of everything, from what services are provided to whom in what geographic area, what participation in cost [we expect] from riders, and how we translate that into the best quality service.”

Trips on the Trans-AID bus rarely go exactly as planned, with drivers listening intently to a nearly constant stream of chatter on their radios, looking for an opening to relay some vital piece of information to the dispatcher and waiting in turn for instructions.

When Tonya Wilson boarded the Trans-AID bus at 3:45 p.m. to return

Up Front

specialist. WSTA is proposing eight new positions, including six drivers, a Americans with Disabilities Act certification specialist and a customer service representative, at an estimated cost of $326,658. The expenditures must be approved as part of the city’s budget process.

WSTA has already signed a contract with a vendor for the mobile data terminal, Barnes said, adding that the new system could be up and running in six months.

“It gives real-time information for the dispatcher and the driver,” he said.

“The dispatcher will be able to tell the location of each vehicle by looking at their display on the desktop. It will provide a means of accurate data with respect to our online performance, abbreviated communications to drivers instead of verbal communications. You can play back any travel via vehicle — you can go back to any part of the day and see where they are. The driver will be able to see updates to their manifest so they can adjust more quickly.”

Council members’ discussion focused almost exclusively on the cost

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groups in Greensboro and High Point — took umbrage at the discussion in the committee meeting.

“Don’t sit in a group of legislators and talk about how to get people to ride less,” she said. “It’s illegal and it’s immoral. You can think it, but you can’t say it.”

Stone said multiple complaints about violations that went unaddressed by WSTA led to the federal review.

“I couldn’t write to the FTA today with any valid complaint about [Greensboro Transit Authority],” she said.

“They’re in compliance; WSTA’s not.

If [Greensboro starts] slipping, we’ll hit them with complaints, too.”

To address excessive trip times, WSTA has committed to hiring additional drivers, buying new vehicles and implementing a mobile data terminal, replacing the written manifests currently used by drivers.

Barnes said WSTA has budgeted for eight new buses, with the federal government picking up 80 percent of the cost. The local agency has also budgeted for six or seven new drivers, a customer service representative and a certification

Culture Fun & Games Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

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May 25 — 31, 2016 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Fun & Games Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

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NC A&T upstages at global food security meeting

by Eric Ginsburg

Less than a week after graduation at NC A&T University, hundreds of people streamed onto campus for a multi-day meeting about food insecurity in developing countries.

Professor Manuel Reyes distinguished himself immediately from the lectern by resorting to humor. From the front of the room at the Alumni-Foundation Event Center at NC A&T University in Greensboro, Reyes pulled up a PowerPoint slide declaring his love for his wife Lorna. Sitting a few rows back, he asked her to stand as attendees chuckled and applauded before Reyes moved onto his next subject: his 16-year-old son, seated next to his wife. And then his older son, for whom he tried to play matchmaker in absentia, and then his sisters, and then his 100-year-old mother.

By now the couple hundred attendees relaxed a little in their suits, and raptly tuned into Reyes’ excited but nervous exultations from the stage. Only about an hour had passed on the final day of the Board for International Food & Agricultural Development, or BIFAD meeting on May 20, and Reyes’ delivery jolted more people to attention than the coffee provided in the back of the room.

After advertising his desire for his older son to produce a grandchild and completing the family slideshow, the A&T professor pivoted to a subject he appeared just as passionate about: the importance of marrying preservation and saving resources with food production. In the pursuit of increased global food production and agricultural output, Reyes vociferously preached against the dangers of ignoring ecological impact.

Reyes, a professor in the natural resources & environmental design department, fervently explained that he’s seen rainforests in country after country clear-cut to make way for food production, pointing to Del Monte growing pineapples in the Philippines in particular. There’s irreversible soil loss, he said before rattling off a long list of countries including Cambodia, Honduras and Tanzania where the trend persists.

“Grow not save, rainforest cut!” Reyes repeated in each scenario, as if reciting a mantra about environmental degrada-

tion at the hands of agriculture.

The practice is fundamentally unsustainable and hurts the land and people, Reyes said. He added that the alternative is a more environmentally sound, holistic approach that he refers to as “save and grow” where growing methods form a symbiotic relationship with the ecosystem rather than a largescale approach that looks more like a slash-and-burn model.

“We have no choice now,” he said.

“Save and grow is inseparable. Just like me and Lorna.”

Reyes brought as much energy to the stage as a singer for a punk band while relying on the humor of a late-night host and the tools of personalities like Oprah to engage his audience, instructing people to look under their seats for the Del Monte cans he’d placed there to illustrate his point.

Reyes’ impassioned presentation came as part of a panel of three A&T professors, just one of several discussions at the BIFAD meeting last week.

The board, which consists of food-policy advisors and members of academia including A&T Chancellor Harold Martin, advises USAID “on agriculture and higher education issues pertinent to food insecurity in developing countries,” according to an invitation for the board meeting.

Reyes presented first on the panel, entitled “NC A&T Leadership in International Agricultural Innovation,” accompanied by his colleagues Anthony Yeboah and Osei Yeboah from the agribusiness, applied economics and agriscience education department and the Leonard C. Cooper Jr. International Trade Center at A&T respectively.

After focusing on the benefits of “save & grow” focused on soil preservation and more sustainable farming practices, Reyes switched to talking about the need to protect and “grow” marginalized people as well, highlighting university projects and Aggies across the world. Reyes plugged forward despite running over his time, calling on audience members to stand for recognition including the only black farmer in Montgomery County, to whom Reyes turned over the floor briefly for a

Meeting attendees inspect a can of Del Monte pineapples that professor Manuel Reyes placed under their seats.

testimonial.

In a question-and-answer session with board members including Chancellor Martin after the panel members’ presentations, board members said they appreciated Reyes’ point about disappearing rainforests in particular.

Board member Pamela Anderson, the director general emeritus of the International Potato Center, acknowledged that while many people may welcome more ecologically friendly approaches to food production, she said that by and large, more data on effectiveness is necessary to scale up projects such as Reyes’ research. Reyes said he’d be happy to provide specifics that had been collected in Cambodia since 2004 in particular, adding that there is evidence that “save and grow” leads to increased yield through its more conservationist approach while preventing erosion.

Other aspects of the multi-day conference may not have been as spirited as Reyes’ pleading if not somewhat goofy declarations; executives from Agricultural Biotech, Syngenta, SoBran BioScience and Perdue Farms Specialty Crops anchored the following panel, focused on sustainable agricultural technology development. Earlier that morning, USAID’s chief scientist for the Bureau of Food Security provided a brief update on Feed the Future, the

ERIC GINSBURG

federal government’s global hunger and food security initiative which partners with universities around the country including NC A&T and NC State to combat global hunger.

But while other portions of the meeting may not have been as riveting as Reyes’ calls to action, they were no less interesting or consequential, particularly professor Osei Yeboah’s warnings about the shortcomings of funding or conducting anti-hunger research in a silo or not considering other essential factors such as affordability in the battle for food security.

“You can do the research, and you have no one to take it to the farmers,” Yeboah cautioned.

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May 25 — 31, 2016 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Fun & Games Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

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OPINION EDITORIAL

Politicians as the working poor Over the years, we’ve interviewed dozens, if not hundreds, of elected officials and candidates for office.

Very rarely do any of us come away from these encounters thinking, Wow! What an exceptional human being! How fortunate we are to have this person representing our interests.

Maybe it’s because we pay them so little — in North Carolina, even the speaker of the state House and president of the Senate pull in just $38,151 apiece, with another $17K or so in thrown in for expenses. Regular members of the legislature make about $14,000 a year in salary. That’s not even teacher-assistant money.

Makes you wonder how some of these guys can afford all those nice suits.

The only one who’s up in the six figures is the governor, who will make about $142,000 this year — which still pales in comparison to his paycheck as a Duke Energy executive.

On the surface, it seems just: Those involved in the affairs of the state shouldn’t be getting rich off of it.

But apply a little real-world math to the situation and a different reality emerges.

Working in the state legislature pretty much requires a second source of income, usually covered by a law practice, a farm or business or sweetheart position in some big company — or, in some cases, a personal fortune.

That’s problematic because from the outset of the process, only people who can afford to take the job are able to run for most statewide offices, rendering ineligible most of the people who live here.

And even those who hold down jobs cannot be very effective at them while the legislature is in session, which is more than half of the year.

It’s a plight similar to that of the big-time NCAA student-athlete, who must at least keep up the pretense of going to class and taking exams while still managing to excel on the field or the court, all the while without financial compensation.

And we all know how well that works out.

One possible solution is to pay our state legislators a living wage, but ironically, the phrase itself is anathema to the party in power right now. One might think they’d be more sympathetic to the working poor, since they know firsthand how little their meager governmental salaries can buy.

But most of them — on both sides of the aisle — can afford not to think about it.

CITIZEN GREEN

Useful idiots and other Trump enablers

Donald Trump will be the next president of the United States of America if current conditions hold.

Yes, the polling mostly shows Hillary Clinton defeating Trump, but they don’t capture the profound ambivalence and

by Jordan Green fatigue on the Democratic side or the deep well of racial anxiety and resentment among white, working-class voters who conceal their true feelings from pollsters because they recognize it’s not acceptable in polite society to support the kinds of positions their candidate takes.

And despite the much vaunted GOP crackup, it’s pretty clear at this point that the Republicans will dutifully get in line to support their nominee. It’s certainly extraordinary for the Republican House speaker to withhold his endorsement to the presumptive Republican nominee, but Paul Ryan has consistently characterized his closeddoor meeting with Trump as an effort to hash out differences with the ultimate goal of unifying the party. The rapprochement between Trump and Fox News is already underway, Megyn Kelly’s recent make-nice interview with the candidate signaling the network’s interest in retaining its role as right-wing propaganda machine, at risk of being eclipsed by the Donald’s celebrity media juggernaut.

Smarter, more eloquent people than I have ably laid out how Trump’s arrival on the political scene in early 21st Century America so uncannily mirrors that of Adolf Hitler in 1930s Germany. The cult of celebrity surrounding Trump, the flurry of brazen lies — custom-made, as Adam Gopnik notes in his spot-on May 20 piece in the New Yorker, for the Twitter age of quick-hit social media — the scapegoating of minorities to inflame and mobilize a political base, the ridicule of the weak and the gleeful willingness to commit war crimes all portend a rupture in the fabric of civilization.

Gopnik deserves to be quoted at length for his incisive exposition of the crisis at hand: “One can argue about whether to call him a fascist or an authoritarian populist or a grotesque joke in a nightmare shared between Philip K. Dick and Tom Wolfe, but under any label Trump is a declared enemy of the liberal constitutional order of the United States — the order that has made it, in fact, the great and plural country that it already is. He announces his enmity to America by word and action every day. It is articulated in his insistence on the rightness of torture and the acceptable murder of noncombatants. It is self-evident in the threats he makes daily to destroy his political enemies, made only worse by the frivolity and transience of the tone of those threats. He makes his enmity to American values clear when he suggests the presidency

holds absolute power, through which he will be able to end opposition — whether by questioning the ownership of newspapers or talking about changing libel laws or threatening to take away FCC licenses.”

Our country is sleepwalking into a catastrophe from which we will not easily recover — one that will make George W. Bush’s Iraq misadventure seem like child’s play. That the dire consequences of a Trump presidency are so evident while much of the population continues to regard his candidacy with blithe amusement is maddening beyond belief.

The familiarity of Trump’s profile in megalomania is matched in the contours of popular acquiescence echoing down from the ’30s. Again quoting Gopnik, the shock of Hitler’s rise “was tempered by acceptance. It depended on conservatives pretending he wasn’t so bad compared with the communists, while at the same time the militant left decided that their real enemies were the moderate leftists, who were really indistinguishable from the Nazis. The radical progressives decided that there was no difference between the democratic left and the totalitarian right and that an implosion of institutions was exactly the most thrilling thing imaginable.”

The comments from the assorted anarchists, libertarians and independent progressives on my Facebook page when I posted a status update about this might well have been a bad impression of their 1930s predecessors.

“I fail to see where Hillary is any different,” wrote one.

Another said, “Each election it gets harder for the ‘Invisible Hand’ behind the two-party system to continue to fool the 99 percent of us and control the election process,” while urging a write-in vote for Bernie Sanders.

My friend,David McLean said it best: “When President Trump reduces rights of minorities to sue for discrimination, erodes the Civil Rights Act of 1964, privatizes Social Security, makes abortion illegal, allows insurance companies to cancel medical policies for being sick, deports Mexican immigrants, increases police authority, officially alienates American Muslims or any other action he himself has suggested, the Hillary Reserve this ad for haters can at least take pride in having ‘kept it real.’”

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Recreation

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more ironically, how bizarre that a mode of transportation that has the potential to deliver so much green benefit when properly used should take on the profile of a menace when arrogantly pursued as entertainment in a pristine ecological context.

While a metaphorical breaking of bread at the Rich Fork may be far-fetched, there is a genuine business context for appreciating what is at stake. As host of the International Home Furnishings Market, High Point is justifiably proud of its heritage as a furniture capital of the world. That history owes much to human ingenuity and enterprise, but how foolish and short-sighted of us to not bow to the true resource of the market — trees. To avoid turning the massive and humanly engineered complex in downtown High Point into a symbol of hubris, we would be well intentioned to balance all that steel, glass, and concrete with the preservation of a symbol of equal power and might. There is such a symbol just a short bike ride from downtown.

Opinion

Test pH balance, allergies, hormones Balance diet, lifestyle and emotions Create a personalized health and nutrition plan

The tension between conservationists and mountain bikers over access to the Rich Fork Preserve in north High Point continues

by Stephen McCollum to generate heat.

Toward a fair solution we could imagine a fare venture. Both sides of the table could be seated at a new restaurant, the Rich Fork. Proceeds from the menu featuring locally sourced food — for vegetarians and carnivores — would be split evenly with half supporting the original intention for the preserve (foot traffic only) and half aiding the cyclists toward finding a less fragile site to spin their wheels.

If both groups could staff the Rich Fork, working side by side in search of a common goal, they would learn that while all food is capable of providing some nourishment, not all foods taste well together — even when served under the same management. Translation: While the Rich Fork Preserve may be capable of providing some satisfaction for everyone’s taste, it is likely to be more savory following a specific recipe.

Remember the dictum, “Think global, act local”? One reason humans haven’t been able to come to grips with the threat of climate change is because, well, we’ve been thinking and behaving as humans. Too many of us act locally, all too often at the expense of the global good. It’s natural in our culture for one person’s freely styled self-interest to trump another’s. While we may be able to agree that something harmful is happening to the planet, no one likes the idea that they could be an accessory to the fact until or unless others ’fess up also. And even when a viable alternative appears — in the case of climate, renewable energy — it’s harder than it seems to ease off the gas and believe the battery can do the work.

Mountain bikes in the Rich Fork Preserve are analogous to too much fossil fuel emissions for planet Earth. It’s not that cars are evil; it’s just that along with all the other sources of greenhouse gases, they have been too much for too long. It’s not that bicycles per se are evil; it’s just that both practically and symbolically they are too much for this place and this time.

Practically they do not honor the principles by which the Rich Fork Preserve came to be an urban oasis. And symbolically, or perhaps

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Take charge of your mind, body and spirit

Breaking bread at a place called Rich Fork

Up Front

I could really use a break.

I don’t want to sleep or rest. I just want to do something that stimulates my imagination and restores my equilibrium. Something unrelated to the objectives of career advancement, feeding a small business, sustaining the financial stability of my household or the weekly grind of assignments. I want to burrow into an engrossing book about American history. I want to work out the guitar solo of Ry Cooder’s version of “Dark End of the Street.” I want to go to a concert purely for enjoyment and leave my notebook and camera at home. I want to take my little girl to that sprayground grand opening at Barber Park on Saturday [see City Life on page 4]. I want to go to the beach with my family.

I’d like to do something creative with my yard, but the enterprise and the material — terraces, steps and pathways fashioned out of limestone collected from Kentucky creeks — are not really practical in an urban North Carolina setting.

I’d like to go for a run like the kind I did in the spring of 2008, when I just took off at an easy pace and pushed myself to go further than I had the time before, to venture into new neighborhoods and commercial districts. Which was really just a way to relive a time when I was a kid and my aunt and uncle’s VW bus broke down in West Virginia. We stayed at a motel for about a week while the bus was being repaired, and every evening one of the adults would walk with me on a logging road that went up the mountain where there were blackberries, each time venturing a little further than the last.

I thought about all this when my wife dropped off some pho at the office for my lunch. When she had suggested pho before I left for work in the morning to combat a mild illness, I thought it sounded like a good idea, but figured it was an unaffordable luxury given my spare food budget. Whether the meal Brian Clarey calls “Indochine penicillin” cured me or not I don’t know, but it definitely had a therapeutic effect.

Piling the rice noodles and bean sprouts (no basil or cilantro, for reasons I don’t understand) into the steaming broth, then experimenting to find the ideal balance of chili paste and hoisin sauce, and then digging down into the plastic container to find the chewy morsels of chicken provided an involved experience beyond the utilitarian exercise of ingesting a deli sandwich. Especially considering that my wife paid for the meal, it was well worth it.

So yeah, I’m slowly coming to the realization that it’s high time for a break. And the longer I resist it, the more my productivity will suffer. But that’s not the point: We need to cut loose and cultivate an enjoyment of life for its own sake.

FRESH EYES

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IT JUST MIGHT WORK

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May 25 — 31, 2016 Cover Story

by Brian Clarey

The smell hit me as soon as I pulled the first trash bag, and with it came a flood of memories.

There’s a particular aroma to the garbage at a hot dog joint: a pronounced mustard base with an accent of vinegar, undertones of wet bread and subtle notes of hot dog water.

It’s different, in its way, from the detritus of burger joints — which always smells like ketchup and onions — and bars, where sour beer and cigarettes (back before they were forced to go smoke free) always packed the hardest olfactory punch when I was making the garbage run.

And to me, as I volunteered on the last night at Skippy’s Hot Dogs on Fourth Street in Winston-Salem, it smelled like the past.

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After Skippy’s Hot Dogs closed down on Fourth Street, I went in search of a new dog. PB’s scored well due to the flavorful jacket of char on the dog, applied from a seasoned grilltop.

BRIAN CLAREY

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Cover Story

May 25 — 31, 2016

had hot dogs too, cooked on one of those roller burners that kept them rotating under a hot light. They were, by and large, inedible even by shopping-mall standards, even when slathered in red onion sauce, which is Option B for hot dogs in the New York metro area.

My next job was a step up, at Charlie’s Snack Bar & Deli, where a menu of burgers and sandwiches was bolstered by our bestseller: Hebrew National kosher franks, born and bred in New York City and still my own personal standard. A hot dog aficionado named Lou worked the grill six days a week, running the same sort of roll that Rothman used at his place to lay in the perfect char. Lou spoke mostly Greek, but he managed to get his point across when he was yelling and gesturing at me. The only time he smiled at me was when he would slide me a couple hot dogs for my shift meal, a smile that had everything to do with his pride of workmanship and nothing to do with me.

I’ll admit I was a pretty terrible busboy at 16. Thirty years later, working the floor on the last night at Skippy’s, I felt I had gotten much better at it.

18

Kermit’s Hot Dog House is an old-school fast-food joint that picks up where McDonald’s leaves off.

BRIAN CLAREY

Like most Americans, I’ve been eating hot dogs my whole life. In the days before concession food became more sophisticated, they were everywhere: ballparks, movie theaters, shopping malls, airports, fairgrounds, festivals, on street corners in just about every downtown in the country, and blackening in the corner of the grill at every backyard cookout.

Even my wife, who has been vegetarian since she was 8 years old, ate canned hot dogs made from soy when she was a kid.

Frank. Weenie. Red hot. Tubesteak. Footlong. Street meat. Coney. Durger.

In New York City they top ’em with spicy mustard and sauerkraut. In Chicago they get mustard, relish, onion, peppers, tomato, celery salt and a pickle wedge. Kansas City Dogs come with kraut and Swiss cheese while in Arizona the meat wears a bacon jacket and Seattle serves ’em with cream cheese and grilled onion.

The local version of “all the way” — chili, slaw, mustard and raw onion — has its own place among these regional giants.

But the best hot dog in the Triad — and maybe even the best I’ve ever had — was at Skippy’s, and you can’t get ’em anymore.

dog. He used the good ones — all beef, baby — even in his base-level menu items and nestled them along with their condiments in pretzel rolls made from a secret recipe acquired from a Pennsylvania pretzel maestro.

He worked his grill with surgical precision: a handful of dogs thawing on the back right while he slowly rotated two rows, conveyor style, on the left until each took on a toasty char. No compromises.

When he announced that he had brain cancer and closed his shop late last month, members of the city’s restaurant community stepped up, opening and running the shop for a week and sending the proceeds to Rothman, who is undergoing treatment in Pennsylvania.

Through labor and donations, they raised more than $100,000 in eight days.

I volunteered because I’ve admired Rothman for years, ever since I “discovered” the place in 2005. Even when I was on the food beat, it was rare to meet a chef who cared so deeply about the ingredients, the process. And after enjoying so many Chicago dogs and hand-cut fries in the place, I figured I owed him at least that much.

I took my shift on the last night. After restocking napkins and filling ketchups, I pulled my first trashcan, and that’s when that pungent smell took me back.

The saga of Mike Rothman and Skippy’s Hot Dogs will go down in the annals of Winston-Salem culinary history.

Rothman ran his shop on Fourth Street like a majordomo in service to his chosen medium: the humble hot

I worked in a couple hot-dog joints in the mall when I was a teenager. The first was at a set of kiosks known collectively as “Snack Shack,” where we trucked in frozen and reheated pretzels, Italian ices, soft drinks and knish. We

Except in extreme circumstances I don’t eat hot dogs in Greensboro — the Gate City is more of a burger town anyway, and I’ve gotten to the point in my life where I’d pay a dollar not to eat one of those nasty bombs from Yum Yums.

I should say that I find red hot dogs — a grotesquely dyed variation on the form prevalent in the South and Midwest — to be an aberration. Nothing in nature wears that color save for the hindquarters of certain species of baboon. Because the hot dog is sort of a down-market item anyway — it’s pretty much all lips and buttholes, isn’t it? —it seems offensive to give it such an artificially cheery veneer. And sometimes, when you bite into one of those red dogs, the inside of it is dishwater gray.

But Winston-Salem is a hot dog town, with a history of establishments that go way further back than Mike’s little outpost on Fourth Street. And I’m slightly ashamed to say that until Skippy’s shut down, I had never been to any of them.

JS Pulliam’s barbecue shack hunkers down on a hillside out by the Reynolds Airport. It’s a 100-year-old structure of convenience with a menu consisting of nothing but chopped barbecue, hot dogs and chips, and a short counter to lean on while you eat.

Of the iconic Winston-Salem hot dog joints, Pulliam’s is perhaps the most revered both for its longevity and its authenticity — it’s been open and more or less unchanged since 1910, which predates even “The Andy Griffith Show,” and its vintage-ness has a certain cachet among the thoughtful, bearded and tattooed set.

I pulled in, ordered a quick two all the way with chili, mustard and slaw, and brought them, wrapped in napkins and a brown paper bag, to eat in my car.

sold on the street in giant, hot-dog-shaped carts and made famous in the novel Confederacy of Dunces — were even more famous among those of us who worked on Bourbon Street as the most disgusting of comestibles on that filthy street. I threw up immediately after consuming a Lucky Dog. Twice. And those weren’t the last ones I ate that summer.

Even the best hot dogs are made from scrap meat — just a couple clicks above offal — and the worst, according to the FDA’s Defect Levels Handbook, have an acceptable amount of mammalian excreta to them.

It wasn’t always like this. When I was a kid my grandfather used to buy hot dogs straight from his German butcher, who made them from the same recipe he used for bologna. I remember my grandfather used to eat them cold from the refrigerator, and so did I. But at this time in the North Carolina Piedmont Triad, there is no such thing as an artisan hot dog.

Given its status as the ultimate cheap cut of meat, one might wonder why hot dogs never made it big in the fast-food world, where low-grade tacos, burgers, burritos, sandwiches and various incarnations of fried chicken have stuffed gullets since the Golden Age of the 1950s, when Col. Harlan Sanders and Ray Kroc started a culinary revolution based on speed and affordability.

With the realization of that glaring hole in The internet offers lots of reasons for this — the local marketplace, I decided to pull one bun-size storage issues, shelf life, preparation more invasive action in the Weiner Wars of methods — but the consensus seems to be that Winston-Salem, pointing my car west towards Kroc, who took McDonald’s from a small, local PB’s Takeout, an old-school lunch counter with hamburger chain into an international brand enough emphasis on hot dogs that an anthrothat led the industry for decades, thought they pomorphic frankfurter is painted on the white were disgusting. stucco outside the building.

From his 1977 autobiography Grinding it Out: PB’s harkens back to the era before the The Making of McDonald’s: hyper-commercialization of cheap and fast “[T]here’s damned good reason we should eats, before the vertically aligned supply chain, never have hot dogs. There’s no telling what’s Happy Meals and indoor playgrounds homoginside a hot dog’s skin.” enized the industry.

But Kermit’s Hot Dog House, a small, It’s a little like a Dairy Queen, without the independent fast-food storefront in the advertising and signature menu items, and Waughtown area of the city, came of age on upon entry I was heartened to see the grill man a timeline parallel to the one established by maneuvering hot dogs the color of actual meat BRIAN CLAREY JS Pulliam’s fielded a strong contender, based mostly the big chains, which in 1966, the year Kermit’s on an ancient griddle, blackened by time. on the toasted, buttered bun. opened, were just beginning to swallow national Foregoing tradition — and because I had I found them barely edible. The dog itself was more pink market share. McDonald’s had just launched its eaten more than three hot dogs that day — I than red, a basic grocery-store number, pale and shiny first national advertising campaign when Kermit Williams ordered just a single dog, served up all the way in a small, with too much artificial smoke flavor. I suspect they may built his carhop on Southern staples like biscuit breakfast, red basket atop a sheet of wax paper. have even been turkey dogs, which are only acceptable at rudimentary sandwiches and “All American” hot dogs that I poked inside the bun to see the delightful charred skin, children’s birthday parties. tied in with the place’s patriotic décor. noted that the bun itself had been buttered and toasted. I And though hot dog lovers all over the Camel City “All the way” at Kermit’s means chili, slaw, mustard and took a third of it in the first bite and leaned back to chew. swear by them, after years of Mike’s dogs, Kermit’s came onion, and that’s how my server slid them to me at my It was remarkable: the well-cooked dog interplayed with up short for me. booth by the window, along with a chocolate milkshake the toasted bun; the chili was no mere sludge but had that I ordered because I hate myself. actual heat and meat going on, working with the cool slaw The dogs came less than two minutes after I put in the nicely. order— in contrast, dogs at Skippy’s could sometimes It was nothing like the dogs I was raised on, nor did it Here’s the thing about hot dogs: They’re supposed to take 20 minutes — wrapped in signature wax paper, the bear much resemblance to the ones I grew to rely on at be kind of gross, the sort of thing a cartoon hobo would fanciest thing about the entire meal.

Skippy’s. But man, it sure was tasty. And now that Mike cook on a stick over an open flame or a competitive eater And maybe it’s because I had already eaten a couRothman has hung up his spatula, it maybe the best bet stuffs into his mouth two at a time. ple hot dogs that day, or maybe it was because of my in town.

The Lucky Dogs of New Orleans’ French Quarter— snobbery or the giant milkshake I had just slammed, but

triad-city-beat.com

Alas, Pulliam’s uses red hot dogs with just a light grilling to them and none of that crispy bark that sets in after just the right amount of time on the grill. The chili was fabulous, though, as was the hyper-chopped slaw spooned on top. And the bun — buttered and toasted crisp — stepped in to add texture to the bite.

All in all, not a bad dog, with bonus points for the bun. When Pulliam’s opens its new location at Sixth and Trade streets in downtown Winston-Salem — no date yet set, but it’s been in the works for a year— I plan to put it in my lunchtime loop.

19

May 25 — 31, 2016 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Fun & Games Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

20

CULTURE Glory at a raucous Knife Fight

by Eric Ginsburg

M

oments after grabbing a couple handfuls of mushrooms while the Top Gun anthem “Danger Zone” kept time, Travis Myers and Roland Trask disappeared into the back of the kitchen.

Their host had already started the clock, and a cheering throng of onlookers standing on their toes and craning their necks as they applauded only added to the intensity.

Myers and Trask — friends and professional chefs — could feel the pressure. Myers later admitted that he’d been “a nervous wreck” in his car earlier on the way to the showdown, and when he returned to the front visible kitchen area he set to work at a breakneck, almost frantic pace.

But while the “Knife Fight” on Monday night — the second such battle at Mission Pizza Napoletana in downtown Winston-Salem — gave Willow’s Bistro chef Myers a chance to compete for the adoration of dozens present and a modest prize, Roland Trask may have had more to prove. As the executive chef for Novant Health Forsyth Medical Center, Trask toils in relative obscurity compared to Myers, a well known Winston-Salem chef with a respectable cadre of Instagram followers.

Mission Pizza owner Peyton Smith, the broad-shouldered idea man and maestro behind the evening, spelled it out in his opening remarks. Before explaining that both chefs would be given an hour to plate three courses, each using a surprise ingredient, Smith introduced the men beside him.

“Believe it or not, [Trask] is an executive chef… but he can actually cook,” Smith quipped. “We’re not going to pick on him for being a corporate punk.”

Calling for “a rowdy, fun time,” Smith continued with his tone as he encouraged people to offer verbal support, criticism or even to throw rotten tomatoes as the chefs competed in the open kitchen that takes up about a third of Mission Pizza’s central room.

A vinyl-spinning DJ cued up “Danger Zone” over by the bar around the time Smith revealed the secret ingredient — mushrooms, ranging from rich to mild and covering five varieties including crimini, shiitake, maitake, oyster and portabella. Meanwhile, two judges — myself and Eric Swaim of Hoots brewery, which provided the beer for the evening — and three guest judges selected at random took up residence at the long bar directly in front of the open kitchen.

The hour moved quickly on our side of the counter as friends and strangers leaned on our backs, gawking while Myers steeped shiitakes in Hoots’ mild beer and Trask chanced the high heat of Smith’s signature wood-fired oven for a flatbread. Friends finagled bites from judges — they’d already been served some delicious meatballs and pasta, but Trask and Myers couldn’t be expected to plate for more than the five judges — and leaned over shoulders to snap photos, regularly calling out questions such as, “Is that polen-

Chef Roland Trask’s second course featured the evening’s best mushroom.

ERIC GINSBURG

ta?” and “What are you doing to those mushrooms?”

Myers stacked a whole garden full of vegetables in front of him before taking over most of the stovetop space with risotto and polenta. Trask moved more slowly, and the judge’s from their vantage point down the bar occasionally stood to better observe him at work. Despite Myers’ more rapid movements, Trask plated and served a dish first, arguably the best of the evening.

Trask took a major risk in using the pizzeria’s oven, but it paid off magnificently, aided by a knockout goat-cheese spread with garlic, shallots, capers and a white-wine reduction acting as a pillow for chewy, roasted oyster mushrooms and a sprig of asparagus down the center. Myers’ first dish – a colorful crudité of shaved carrots, asparagus, broccolini buds, pickled red onion, whole-grain mustard and extra virgin olive oil/balsamic – may have been more visually compelling, but it minimized the presence of the shiitake mushroom. It excelled instead with its pairing with the shiitake-steeped beer Myers paired it with. Swaim and another guest judge — a server at Spring House — could tell the difference in the beer, particularly because someone brought them a taste of the unmodified mild beer, but without the comparison it proved somewhat difficult to tell.

It didn’t matter much, though; we’d seen Myers tossing it all into a French press a foot away from us, and the experience of seeing it — and all the other components to each dish — come together made up half the fun of it.

Still, the judges concurred later that Trask held the upper hand after the first round.

As we finished Myers’ appetizer, he pulled together his second course, a savory risotto with oyster mushroom, asparagus, olive oil and cracked pepper. An instant crowd pleaser, the risotto nestled into our hearts and delighted our senses. Myers had thrown down

the gauntlet, and as we polished off the dish, Smith announced that a mere 13 minutes remained.

Trask pushed out his next two in succession, a cous cous with a spicy shrimp-broth reduction, sautéed shrimp, an IPA jus, crispy shiitake with rainbow Swiss chard, a sprinkling of cilantro chiffonade and lime zest followed by coconut porter soaked lady fingers topped with marscarpone, balsamic and olive oil, wood-roasted strawberries and mint.

Myers sidestepped dessert, offering us a goat-cheese polenta, sautéed crimini mushroom, Swiss chard and fennel fronds and a spicy chorizo cream, though he routed Trask in the second round despite the crispy shiitake being the best tasting mushroom of the night.

In the din and excitement of the final moments of the Knife Fight, I felt ready to give the title to Trask. I admit to pulling for him, to an extent, considering him the underdog; his first course reinforced my inclination. I gave him high marks for using the wood-fired oven, for the execution of the goat cheese and its complementing ingredients and for his ability to pull off the dessert.

But in the heat and noise of the moment, I didn’t realize that Trask had failed to work mushrooms into his final course, mistakenly thinking that the soaked lady fingers at the bottom of the bowl somehow utilized the surprise ingredient. You could chalk it up to the time crunch, but Myers is the one who stretched the time limit. I didn’t realize until the evening ended what had occurred, but it ended up not changing the outcome; the judges, whose ranks also included a nurse and part-time caterer from Boston and one of Trask’s colleagues, favored Myers.

Myers deserves the prize, but both deserve accolades for their creativity, quick-wittedness and satisfying output. And just as much — if not more — of the credit belongs to Smith, who created an environment that Myers referred to as more fun and competitive than larger scale competitions he’s joined. The Knife Fights are the ground floor of the city’s culinary rebirth, and Myers said it best when he added tiredly after being declared the victor: “Peyton [Smith]’s killing it with this idea right here.”

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Fun & Games Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

Wine is intimidating. This I know, Rioja is not, of course, set up to cater only to rubes and even after almost two years of newbs. That wouldn’t be enough to keep the doors open there writing about booze every week for more than a decade. Instead the wine bar, restaurant and taking a whole class just about and bottle shop found a way to remain inviting to all comthe science of wine. It’s easy for the ers, which appears to be no small feat in this rather esoteric experience of walking into a wine industry. bar to feel like showing up to school After dabbling with the wine tasting nights, the Wednesday and being given a pop quiz or being night special is a natural step up — building your own flight,

by Eric Ginsburg called on when you haven’t done the an offer that comes with gourmet cheese. Or if you’re already reading. You might be able to fake it committed and embedded in wine culture, Rioja’s wine club through, but really you’re just as lost as I might be a better home for you. am when I see part of a cricket match.

When Hailey and I showed up, most Visit Rioja Wine Bar at 1603-D If only there were a low-key, nonjudgseats were taken, but the layout premental space that felt comfortable and vented the bar from feeling too crowded Battleground Ave. (GSO) or at accommodating enough that a wine until we squeezed between the bar and riojawinebar.com. novice could come without their guard a table on our way to the register to up. close out. We stayed in our seats by the Actually there is, in an unassuming commercial strip along front window the rest of the time, waited on by the owner and Greensboro’s Battleground Avenue, wedged between chains visited briefly by a wine distribution rep. But I’d recommend including Starbucks and Penn Station along the edge of soslipping into seats in the back; from there, the room would called Midtown. Rioja, a deep yet cozy wine bar staffed by the feel cozier and it’d be easier to ignore people coming in and owner, is that place. out the front door.

Show up on a Thursday evening between 6 and 8 to find the For a date, try nabbing seats at the far end of the bar. To place packed, and order the wine-tasting option — five sammeet a couple friends, you might get lucky and land the couch ples for just $5. It’s an affordable entry point, the offerings change weekly and the almost impossibly sweet proprietor will come around to your table and describe each wine, served independently like courses to a meal.

Last week he poured three reds, a white and a rose, all imminently palatable and also available for purchase by the bottle. I leaned towards the chardonnay from Healdsburg Ranches in California’s Russian River Valley while my friend Hailey preferred the cabernet from Aviary in Napa, but after each cheers and initial sip we agreed that we enjoyed all five.

Hailey had been here before, drawn to the deep orange walls that feel almost like a warm blanket and appreciating that Rioja also offers food, and at an affordable price. I very quickly came to agree with her, especially once our manchego and chorizo charcuterie board ERIC GINSBURG Start at Rioja’s affordable Thursday night wine tastings. arrived (though you could also order a Panini or Italian meatballs if that’s more your style).

It isn’t that there aren’t friendly faces at other wine purveyup front. Big groups can fit too, if you arrive early enough, as ors in the Triad — I’ve found a few, and Carolina’s Vineyards & one did before we arrived shortly after 6 p.m. last week.

Hops in Winston-Salem deserves particular recognition. But I guess what I’m saying is, you don’t really have a good if you’re the type who needs an extra nudge to step through excuse not to give Rioja a shot. Even if you’ve decided you hate the door of a wine bar, Rioja’s Thursday special is the gateway wine — which is certainly a rather ridiculous stance to take — drug you’re looking for. I can’t imagine a lower threshold for this wine bar sells beer, too. learning about and trying new wine.

triad-city-beat.com

Rioja Wine Bar

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21

May 25 — 31, 2016 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Fun & Games Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

22

CULTURE Young band kicks out the brass to inaugurate train station concerts

by Jordan Green

T

he best ticket on a Friday evening in downtown High Point is undoubtedly the free, weekly party hosted by City Project at the Amtrak station known as the Ignite High Point Whistle Stop Concert Series.

Boom Unit Brass Band, which kicked off the season on May 20, had the task of energizing a small but enthusiastic crowd — those who were willing to brave the light mist and occasional spitting rain. On the upside, there was free curbside parking on Main Street, with capacity to spare, less than half a block from the venue. Those who turned out quickly discovered the upper deck of the station was amply sheltered, the Zeko’s Pizzeria & Grill food truck parked nearby on the street, wine and beer available for purchase, and the band hot.

Like an Episcopal church service, a good brass band provides a sensory feast of pageantry, with the possible exception of incense. As an instrumental unit designed to project without electronic amplification — and thus a precursor to R&B and rock and roll — brass bands hold the advantage of mobility over their plugged-in counterparts, or even an emcee tethered to turntables or production unit. And face it, those Sousaphones towering overhead like oversized puppets make an impression that even the most charismatic guitar slinger would be hard pressed to match.

Boom Unit Brass Band made a respectable entrance during their High Point debut, with the musicians processing across the walk bridge that traverses the recessed train track as they performed the band’s signature intro, written by Sousaphone player Jeremy Boomhower (his real name!) and saxophonist Brannon Bollinger — who arrange all the band’s material — as drummer Gary Mitchell laid down an unstoppable beat as the only fixed-location player.

Boom Unit, which is raising money through a GoFundMe campaign to pay for its first album, might not turn many heads in a second line through a New Orleans housing project, but in North Carolina their music is nothing short of irresistible.

Urging the audience to check out the band’s YouTube page, Bollinger said, “It should be pretty easy to find because there aren’t a lot of brass bands around.”

Empire Strikes Brass, from Asheville (who played last year’s Ignite High Point Whistle Stop Concert Series) might be Boom Unit’s only competition across the state. Empire is a couple paces ahead, with augmentation from a guitarist and keyboardist that allows their sound to morph into conventional funk, a DJ unit, and a resume that includes sit-in work with Warren Haynes and Yo Mama’s Big Fat Booty Band, among others.

But Boom Unit might be the only proper brass band in the Triangle. There’s certainly room for both bands to hold down at separate ends of the state and evangelize the hinterlands between. Boom Unit’s playing still shows the rough edges of a young band working out

An elderly couple dominated the dancefloor during Boom Unit Brass Band’s performance during the inaugural Ignite High Point Whistle Stop concert of the season.

the kinks, but its stylistically diverse repertoire demonstrates the reach expected of a contemporary brass band. The format may be old school, but the social role of a brass band requires the musicians to be able to entertainment audiences of all age groups.

The band ably performed standards like “Cissy Strut” and “Bourbon Street Parade.” The latter song, the second in the set, inspired an elderly couple to demonstrate some elaborate swing dancing moves, including a creaky straddle, a worm-like wiggle on the floor and one in which the lady came to rest sitting on the gentleman’s bended knee at the end of the number. The couple dominated the dance area, with the exception of the occasional soul train line, enhancing the delight of the younger members of the audience for the duration of the concert.

The band’s more contemporary repertoire included covers of the Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams,” entertaining passengers waiting on the platform below for the Charlotte-bound Carolinian train; a muscular reading of Pharrell Williams’ “Happy”; a workout of Mark Ronson’s “Uptown Funk” that dialed back the Morris Day & the Time reference of the original to a sound more akin to War in the early ’70s. Boom Unit’s cover of the early ’90s alt-rock classic “Say It Ain’t So” by Weezer was a clear crowd favorite.

“Down to the River to Pray,” popularized by Alison

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Krauss in the Coen brothers 2000 film O Brother Where Art Thou, proved to be a counterintuitive traditional, pairing nicely with “Li’l Liza Jane,” a song with boisterous call-and-response vocals that has found a home in both the bluegrass and traditional jazz worlds, while becoming a standard of New Orleans brass band music.

The band further hacked notions of nostalgia and cultural relevancy with an early ’90s-era hip hop medley that ranged from Digital Underground to Digable

Pick of the Week You’ll toss around and call my name The Hankerin’ @ Doodad Farm (GSO), Sunday, 4 p.m.

With the help of some of North Carolina’s best musicians, Doodad Farm is dedicating a spring Sunday afternoon to Hank Williams, one of America’s most influential songwriters, and celebrating the rich musical community in the Triad. All proceeds will go to Voices Together, a Durham-based nonprofit that uses music therapy to help individuals with mental disabilities. Featured names include Sam Frazier, Nancy Middleton and Al Simmons, but the list is long, so go read the rest of the names on the event’s Facebook page. Rain date is June 4. PS: There will be horseback rides.

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Planets, with various members spitting rhymes and the musicians running through a catalogue of hooks.

“Some of the young people are like, ‘What is this?’” Bollinger quipped.

“Google it. Some of the old people are wondering, too.”

Tucked into their stylistically vast and chronologically long song bag, Boom Unit played two originals that are strong enough to hold their own with staples of the genre, including Bollinger’s baroque-sounding “Workin’ Blues” and Boomhower’s appropriately named “Second Line Ska,” with an overt nod to the James Brown/James Bond-inspired instrumental “Sock It to ’Em JB.” Most people are familiar with the Specials’ version, but the smart money says Rex Garvin & the Mighty Cravers originated the tune.

During the final number — a cover of Rebirth Brass Band’s “You Move Ya Lose” — the musicians filed off stage one by one, forming a circle in the middle of the audience, and at the band’s request the sound system went off so they could finish out acoustically.

From whence it came, the music returns.

Culture Fun & Games Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

23

May 25 — 31, 2016 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Fun & Games Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

24

CULTURE Old friends reinvigorate older scripts

by Joanna Rutter

F

or class reunions at most other colleges, people tailgate at a homecoming game, firing up some brats on a grill and swapping old stories.

UNC School of the Arts alumni would rather reinvent Shakespeare.

In its inaugural performance of The Tempest: A Modern Retelling, Rhinoleap Productions reunites collegiate acting amigos now scattered primarily around New York City, forming a company of mostly UNCSA graduates whose aim is the experimental reinterpretation of classical and contemporary theatrical works.

For a school locally thought of to be a launching pad for the talented into a diaspora, it’s both heartwarming and obvious that to recombine those scattered talents outside of school would equal success. Its debut revealed that their reunion is nothing short of magical.

At a recent preview at the Milton Rhodes Arts Center, though a small audience of 20 barely populated the spacious theater, the cast’s high energy propelled the evening forward. Disposing of traditional doublets and the play’s likely multiple-hour-long run time, director Patrick Philip Osteen (Class of 2011) instead JOANNA RUTTER In Rhinoleap’s reinterpretation of The Tempest, from left: Ari Itkin, Chesley Polk, Andrew Wells Ryder and Jacobi Howard wander the island while Alex Hoeffler serenades with original music. served up a Tempest-lite in 90 minutes, using puppetry and original music to abridge the original play without pero’s moody rule of the island. and shadow puppetry to transition between scenes or shaving off any of the story’s strength or character.

The character, usually interpreted as a “goodly” to quickly mime what takes pages of verse in the script Some of the script had also been updated with modern magician compared to his island nemesis, Sycorax, to tell. language, but it flowed seamlessly. is widely believed to be a representation of the Bard One such scene at the very end of the play spoke to Widely rumored to be Shakespeare’s last original himself; Alex Hoeffler injected gravitas, a slight melanincredible directing by Osteen. play, The Tempest is a curious choice for Rhinoleap’s choly undertone, and a touch of crazy eyes to his take After a whole play’s length of teasing Ariel with debut, as one of the few Shakespearian works that on the wizard. freedom, in the original script, Prospero grants him his happens in real time instead of over several days or Unnecessary semi-English accent notwithstanding, freedom almost as an afterthought in a stage aside years. The written-in urgency was strengthened by the Hoeffler’s flawless mastery of the tricky script proved right before the epilogue. Rhinoleap’s interpretation actors’ unified high level of energy — a sign of strong a verbal anchor for the play, as he serves as both narinstead used blacklighting to illuminate the spirit’s cast collaboration and effective directing. rator and master of the plot. It’s slightly unfair, given form pressed up against a long stretch of shimmering One of Rhinoleap’s other companywide strengths that Prospero gets all the best lines (“We are such white cloth, as if trapped in air itself, as Prospero’s that sets it apart from other myriad small-budgeted stuff/ As dreams are made on, and our little life/ Is huge glowing mask representing his magic releases funky Shakespeare spinoffs is the rounded with a sleep”) but Hoeffler him at last from his servitude. members’ mastery of movement. earned the right to deliver them.

Sequences like that are what make modern retellTo make the magic of an island The Tempest runs at the Adam Levinthal’s take on Prosings of old plays truly thrilling. It will be exciting to see ruled by a powerful magician Milton Rhodes Arts (W-S) pero’s other servant, the tortured what Rhinoleap reinvents next. believable requires unwavering from Thursday through and mean-hearted Caliban, is a commitment to the story’s reality. successful marriage of his natural Moments between the wizard May 29, and at the Crown Pick of the Week and some next-level pupProspero magically controlling and at Carolina Theatre (GSO) talent pet design by Aaron Haskell and directing his spirit servant Ariel are Gutenberg’s guru June 2-5. Get tickets at AchesonWalsh Studios in New York remarkably convincing.

12x12 Salon Series: Bill Fick @ SECCA (W-S), Tuesday, City. rhinoleap.com.

Remarkable, because the spirit of 6 p.m.

To play the monster, Levinthal Ariel was portrayed as a soccer ballFollowing Mijoo Kim’s haunting photography crouched low to the ground within sized globe on a dowel with a sheet in SECCA’s local artist spotlight pop-up gallery a nasty-looking shroud of burlap and weeds, holding a draped over it, with a few stray glue-gun hairs trailing is the brash, cartoonish punk screen printing of beaky, feathered mask in his right hand, which glowed in its wake. At first, the idea of accepting this floating Durham’s Bill Fick. The printmaker will install a live eerily under blacklighting. Though a relatively scary ghost-on-a-stick, manipulated and voiced with musical screen-printing operation at the Southeastern Cencharacter, he is absolutely pitiful; even a row of kids in lyricism by the delightful Patrick Nolin, required a reter for Contemporary Art for the artist’s salon; the the audience couldn’t help but laugh when Levinthal ality adjustment, but Nolin’s dedication to his puppet full-surround print installation will change over time manipulated Caliban’s “head” to jerk and hiss in a eventually made this easy. and public participation at his two print demonstrafailed attempt of a threat.

His choice to depict the trapped spirit as cheerfully tions is welcome to become part of the show. Come The set design by Scott Nicholson used blacklighting acquiescing added some much-needed levity to Prosin your painting garb. Visit secca.org for info.

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FUN & GAMES

A

blond preteen’s teeth literally chattered, her hair saturated with rainwater.

“I’m freezing

by Anthony Harrison my balls off,” she said.

Her tanned younger brother, inner tube around his waist, lost patience and declared sulkily, “I’m going to the car.”

“See that?” a burly ginger man continued, pointing to a wall of solid gray to the northwest. “That’s what it looked like 20 minutes before what rolled through.”

I thought, I was on the road 20 minutes before, and that looks like child’s play compared to what we just saw.

Slide the City had advertised that its May 21 Greensboro event would continue regardless of weather.

“Remember,” the Facebook event stated, “the more water the more fun!

We slide rain or shine!”

Some background: Slide the City hauls a 1,000-foot slip-and-slide to cities across the country and lets people glide down it on inner tubes.

The video on the enterprise’s website features beeping EDM, food trucks, babes goofing in bikinis and numerous GoPro videos showing ecstatic grins as the camera operator shoots down the green-and-blue slide, all under brilliantly sunny skies. It seems kickass.

I’d long prepared for this day, but as it drew closer and closer, TCB Editor-in-Chief Brian Clarey — prognosticator of prognosticators — grew increasingly skeptical.

“They’re charging 45 bucks for three slides?” he’d scoff. “That’s more than a day pass at Wet ’N Wild.”

He remembers Slide the City attempted to bring the apparent world-record length slip-and-slide to town twice before, and both times, low ticket sales had led to cancellations.

I knew the forecast called for rain, but after a gloomy morning, the sun broke through in the early afternoon. I decided to make for northbound Freeman Mill Road at about 3:30 p.m., leaving a few hours for me to slide to my journalistic heart’s content.

But thunder clapped the moment

Rain or shine

after I shut my car door — an aggressive, boisterous peal. I’d heard what the thunder said, and it wasn’t, “Shantih shantih shantih.” It was more like Thor himself issuing a warning.

Worried by the dark cumulonimbus rapidly approaching my location, I half-jogged past food trucks and merch vendors to the check-in table near the tail of the slide, a few dozen yards south of McGee Street. I talked to four different volunteers, all more senior than the other, before I got a media pass.

Just then, the rain arrived.

A light drizzle. Some bigger drops.

Then you could hear it coming: a sheet of water bearing down.

The monsoon roared in with alarming urgency, hastened by strong northwest winds. The sliders who’d had their fill scattered like roaches, dashing for their cars, for their homes, for any available shelter.

For awhile I stood drenched in the downpour thinking, Just my damn luck, before darting for a space under a vendor’s tent as the rain became still worse. Maybe 20 souls huddled under the tiny black tent, which would’ve flown away with powerful gusts if it hadn’t been held down by those along the edges. The downhill slope of Freeman Mill Road became a river, saucer-sized splashes of rain splatting against the current like salmon running upstream for the spawn.

“Why don’t they let us slide down that?” someone yelled over the precipitation pounding the tent like timpani, pointing at the rapids along the curb.

A cameraman from WFMY News2, striped button-down shirt and goldenrod tie soaked, interviewed children.

“Does the rain make it better or worse?” he asked.

“Worse,” said one kid.

“Can you say it in your own words?”

He turned to one, a girl in pink of about nine named Olivia, and asked, “Was it worth it?”

“No,” Olivia replied, sheepish.

Eventually, the storm trudged on to pillage other regions. We left the safety of the tents. The question came from many lips: “Can we slide again?”

I asked the blond woman who’d finally authorized my pass if Slide the City would recommence.

“If it lightningings again, we’re shut-

ting it down,” she said. “We don’t know.

Just hang tight.”

Rumors flitted about. They’ll re-inflate the slip-and-slide in about six minutes, 10 minutes. Then the consensus that became a catchphrase: 30 minutes after the last lightning.

The burly man had all the answers.

“Right now, the generator cables are under two, three feet of water,” he told a family of four. “Electricity and water don’t mix.”

Surely, the rain came again. No thunder and lightning, but the vendors had left; all volunteers, corporate reps and hopeful stragglers huddled under the larger check-in tent.

Eventually, the woman I’d spoken with began saying to the white-shirted volunteers, “All right, pack up the shirts.

We’re done.”

Two Greensboro women, Novia and Anslei, approached her.

“What are we supposed to do next?”

Novia asked.

“Go on the Slide the City website,” the blond woman said. “Email them at

Pick of the Week Bike Month finale Volkswagen Professional Roads Championship @ Downtown (W-S), Saturday, 9:30 a.m.

May is National Bike Month, and this final send-off is a doozy.

Cyclist will transform downtown Winston-Salem into a roads course on Saturday. Women’s 2015 pro champion and 2016 Olympian Megan Guarnier leads the women’s heat, and Brevard native Matthew Busche will defend his Stars-and-Stripes jersey against the men’s field. For more info, visit usacycling.org. info@slidethecity.com.”

“What if you didn’t get ticket insurance?” Anslei asked.

“Corporate’s aware of the situation,” the blond replied. “Just explain what happened, and you’ll either receive a rain check for the Raleigh event in three weeks or get your money back.”

Novia gave me a ride to my car as the rain continued.

Yet by the time I returned home around six, golden sunlight shone through the clouds.

‘Plays With Words’ you can’t avoid the drama.

by Matt Jones Across

Down

Cover Story Culture

Business school subject Convene in Fancy salad green They can mean “yes” Hereditary helix University of Nebraska campus site “Watch out for flying golf balls!”

Afrocentric clothing line since 1992 Behave like a bear “What’s good for ___ ...”

Marketing rep’s product package Aspires to greatness Starter starter?

“Little” car in a 1964 hit First name of a Fighting Irish legend Jean jacket material “Wet/dry” buy

Opinion

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 15 18 22 24 27

28 Jane who divorced Reagan 29 ‘98 Apple 30 Last word of a Ricky Martin hit 33 Chew like a beaver 34 San ___ (Italian Riviera city) 35 “___ Buddies” (Tom Hanks sitcom) 37 Like bartered things 38 Inquisition targets 39 Tailor’s goal 40 AOL competitor, once 44 Where Moscow Mules may be served 47 “Mutiny on the Bounty” island 48 Nike competitor 49 Difficult questions 51 Microscope piece 52 Air Force student 53 Boston Bruins Hall of Famer Bobby 56 Grub 57 IRS agent, for short 58 0, in Spain 59 Emperor that hasn’t been around for 99 years 62 Enumeration shortcut

News

55 With 61-Across, Williams play about living quarters on a tram?

59 “___ American Life” 60 Canadian singer/songwriter ___ Naked 61 See 55-Across 63 Honolulu hangable 64 The Care Bear ___ 65 13th-century Mongol invader 66 “C’___ la vie!”

67 Tissue issue 68 Drummer Peter of Kiss

Up Front

1 Alter, as text 6 Does in, slangily 10 Org. that enforces liquid regulations 13 Carpenter’s joint 14 Pouty expressions 16 “Bali ___” 17 Ibsen play with unintelligible dialogue?

19 Shade thrower?

20 “And that’s the way ___” 21 Chekhov play about the empty spaces in wine barrels?

23 Cleveland cager, for short 24 Classic 1950 film noir 25 First-year class, slangily 26 “Family Feud” host Harvey 28 Geek blogger Wheaton 31 Golfer Isao ___ 32 Group with pitchforks and torches 36 Captain Hansen of “Deadliest Catch” 37 O’Neill play about a brand-new theater?

41 “Oedipus ___” 42 “California Dreamin’” singer 43 Speedy breed of steed, for short 45 Prevailed 46 Like some IPAs 50 T-shirt store freebie, maybe 52 Dot-___ boom 54 “Much ___ About Nothing”

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GAMES

Fun & Games

Answers from previous publication.

Games Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

©2016 Jonesin’ Crosswords (editor@jonesincrosswords.com)

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ALL SHE WROTE Requiem for a Tarheel

E

uropean Acquaintance: So, Nicole, where are you from?

Me: Um. I’m currently between countries.

European: No. I know you are American, but are you from North Carolina?

by Nicole Crews Me: I’m amongst the Tarheels whose intentions are good, dear lord, please don’t let us be misunderstood.

When I was 18 and living in Europe I used to lie and tell people I was Canadian. It was the 1980s and an incredibly embarrassing time to be an American. Ronny Ray Guns was in office and the dollar was so unstable I used Swiss Francs as exchangeable currency under the advisement of European friends.

This was much to my advantage at least twice when Banco Central in Madrid mistook them for French Francs and I was rich — for about an hour or so anyway.

That’s about the time a kind yet bossy Spanish banker appeared at my apartment in Arguelles with copies of the exchange and the amendment paperwork. He was accompanied by an armed guard. Franco may have been dead for a decade or so, but the bully mentality of authority still reared its ugly head — both inside and outside of the corrida. I forked over my wad of pesetas and feigned “stupid American.”

I got no arguments there.

This was as close as I’ve ever come to international monetary fraud — and as close as I’d ever want to get to the Guardia Civil — but it did bring to a head a nagging question: Why was an American girl claiming to be a Canadian (at least socially) and using Swiss currency?

It’s like I said — being American in America was bad enough, but having to defend myself in a foreign country in a foreign tongue was even worse. The rest of the world saw America as a soaring hard-on of nuclear proportions and a cultural wasteland responsible pri-

marily for egregious misuse of the shoulder pad and ozone violations associated largely with aspirational hairstyles from MTV. As for money, we were the Gordon Gecko Generation — a place where greed is good and “Dynasty” is destiny. We were invincible — at least to ourselves.

The stock market crash of 1987 solidified my move to travel and deal in safe-atthe-time monetary units, I just had to do the math for Spanish bankers from time to time. This came much to my mother’s amusement who liked to remind me that for years I thought she was referring to her stockbroker as her “stalk broker,” but her being so thin, I just assumed that a bespoke seller of celery was not out of the question.

Socially in Madrid I eventually came clean with folks and admitted to being an American but then, of course, they wanted to know more. Ugh. Admitting you’re from North Carolina during Jesse Helms’ reign was just another layer of international embarrassment so I decided to go regional and just say I’m from the South. The immediate response I would get would be, “¡Ah! Ho-tay Air-ay!” I truly had no idea what these lisping Madrilenos were saying about the first 200 times until their Castillian accents revealed that that they were referencing the television show “Dallas” and that they were actually saying “JR.” My guess is that US geography — much like Swiss to French Franc conversion — was not their strong point

and that, in their libro, Texas was the South.

I guess that it’s no real shocker that almost 30 years later I’m still experiencing the same geographical identity crisis. Only in this hand, Trump trumps Reagan in the international deck of embarrassment and the Old North State is still playing the Victorian card game Old Maid — and losing badly with Pat McCrory holding all the cards. Culturally we reside in Kardashistan with “Real Housewives” as our matriarchal ideals and Bachelorettes as our ingenues.

So this time, I’m not relying on geographical games of chance. I’ve decided to tell people I’m from the future and to be very careful that history doesn’t repeat itself once again.

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