TCB Jan. 11, 2018 — Show, don't tell by Triad City Beat

Greensboro / Winston-Salem / High Point Jan. 11 -17, 2018 triad-city-beat.com

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Daniel White's Photographic Journey PAGE 13

Grocery wars PAGE 8

Triadism and PTI PAGE 9

Meal ticket PAGE 10 & 11

EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK Jan. 11 - 17, 2018

Manuel Barrueco, back in town

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

My basement is filled with boxes and boxes of my old CDs. I still have all of them, but can’t get myself to sell them or get rid of them. I was used to tapes and CDs but the first time I listened to a record, my mind was blown. It was Def Leppard’s Pyromania. It really changed my life. - Underdog Records owner Jonathan Hodges, in Music, page 12

BUSINESS PUBLISHER/EXECUTIVE EDITOR Brian Clarey brian@triad-city-beat.com

ART ART DIRECTOR Robert Paquette robert@triad-city-beat.com

allen@triad-city-beat.com

SALES SALES EXECUTIVE Andrew Alzare

EDITORIAL MANAGING EDITOR Eric Ginsburg

andrew@triad-city-beat.com

SALES EXECUTIVE Cheryl Green

SENIOR EDITOR Jordan Green

CONTRIBUTORS

PUBLISHER EMERITUS Allen Broach

eric@triad-city-beat.com

jordan@triad-city-beat.com

1451 S. Elm-Eugene St. Box 24, Greensboro, NC 27406 Office: 336-256-9320 Cover Photo by Daniel White

cheryl@triad-city-beat.com

Lauren Barber, Carolyn de Berry Spencer KM Brown, Matt Jones

Barrueco himself found fame quickly When I ask after emigrating, placing in a competition world-renowned and performing at Carnegie Hall within classical guitarist a couple years. Before that, he says, he Manuel Barrueco came to Greensboro as a student with the the question, he Eastern Music Festival, in 1968 and 1969. goes silent for a His return on Jan. 20 to play with the minute. Greensboro Symphony Orchestra will be “Well, you know, by Brian Clarey his first time back. ahh…,” he says. His English is flawless; he’s “[The EMF] was a great experience for been speaking it since he emigrated from me,” he says. “I tried pancakes for the first Cuba in 1967. Yet he still had trouble findtime,” in the Guilford College cafeteria. “I ing the words. never had anything so sweet for breakI had just told him about my son, a clasfast.” sical guitarist Manuel Barrueco performs with the Since then, moving on Greensboro Symphony Orchestra on he’s brought to study it in Jan. 20 at Guilford College’s Dana classical college in the Auditorium at 8 p.m. For more info go guitar around fall, with an the world, eye on making to greensborosymphony.org or call the playing a career out box office at 336.335.5456 x224 with every of it. I want to prestigious know if he has orchestra any advice. and philharmonic in the country — Se“It’s a very difficult instrument,” he begins. attle, Philadelphia, Boston, Los Angeles, “Advice would be to obviously become as to name a few — and recorded Grammy good a guitarist as he can.” Award-winning classical albums with more than a dozen in his catalog. One, 2001’s Nylon & String was a collaboration with rock guitarists Al DiMeola, Steve Morse from Deep Purple and Andy Summers from the Police. “That was a lot of fun,” he remembers. “It was completely different for a classical guy. And it was great to walk around Venice Beach, California with Andy Summers of the Police.” He was lucky, he says. He was smart, he says, building a network of professionals from which he still draws opportunities — including Guilford College, where he will be playing Saturday night. And he was dedicated, he says. He still practices about four hours a day, and that’s real practice time that doesn’t include breaks. “To do four hours of practice takes six hours,” he says. And he wants me to tell my son one other thing: “We have to remember that to be good and to know how to make a career are two entirely different things,” he says. Manuel Barrueco

STEPHEN SPARTANA

triad-city-beat.com

Jan. 11 - 17, 2018

CITY LIFE Jan. 11 - 17 by Lauren Barber

THURSDAY

SATURDAY

Get Social! Saturdays @ Boxcar Bar+Arcade (GSO), 1 p.m.

News

Up Front

Rock, Paper, Scissors Tournament @ Gibb’s Hundred Brewing (GSO), 6 p.m.

Carolina Thunderbirds vs. Port Huron Prowlers @ Winston-Salem Fairgrounds & Annex, 7:30 p.m.

Battle a throng of opponents in the hopes of facing off with reigning champion Ryan Hovis. This classic style competition will not allow use of dynamite, lizard or Spock. Find the event on Facebook.

Party to live music from Andie L., Suzanne Stafford of rock band Sugar Meat and Laura Jane Vincent’s Whole Music Situation while enjoying a meal from a charity. All food donations go to the charity of the week and free game tokens with purchase of drink specials. Find the event on Facebook.

Culture

Opinion

Fun Home @ Winston-Salem Theatre Alliance (W-S), 8 p.m.

Artist talk & community dinner @ Elsewhere Museum (GSO), 5 p.m.

This Tony Award-winning musical centers on lesbian author Alison Bechdel, who struggles to write her own coming-of-age graphic autobiography. Travel through time with Alison as she reckons with her past from youth to college at Oberlin and into the present. Learn more at wstheatrealliance.org.

Winston-Salem’s professional hockey team takes on the Port Huron Prowlers. The matchup continues with a second game on Saturday at 6 p.m., after which free skate time is open to the public. Learn more at carolinathunderbirds.com. Exposure: Caribbean Experience @ Mill Entertainment Complex (GSO), 9 p.m.

The Pirate’s Jules @ Stephen D. Hyers Studio Theater (GSO), 12:30 p.m.

Puzzles

Shot in the Triad

FRIDAY

The Fringe Festival presents an interactive, family-friendly, live actor puppet show. The buccaneers inspire gratitude for the present moment, family and friends. Find the event on Facebook.

January’s artists-in-residence review past work and share details of their individual creative processes. Pre-register to share a buffet-style vegetarian meal with Elsewhere residents, staff and other community members. Find the event on Facebook. Live Action Turtles Parody Show @ RJ Reynolds Auditorium (W-S), 6 p.m.

HUMbl Media Svcs curates a party to celebrate international dance cultures. Admission includes a free dance lesson with Messina Dance Co. in the first hour followed by hours of open-floor dance to timba, kizomba, reggae, rueda de casino and dancehall music. Find the event on Facebook.

Actors dressed as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles perform a humorous, family-friendly show with an antibullying message. Ticket sales help the turtles visit ill children in hospitals and during home visits. Find the event on Facebook.

triad-city-beat.com

Gentleman’s Agreement @ Temple Emanuel (W-S), 7 p.m.

Heaven @ Monstercade (W-S), 9 p.m.

SUNDAY

The Barber of Seville @ UNCG Auditorium (GSO), 2 p.m. Up Front News Opinion

RiverRun International Film Festival brings Christopher Hart, whose father wrote the screenplay, and Foster Hirsch, a professor of film at Brooklyn College, to Temple Emanuel for a free RiverRun Retro screening, reception and discussion of this 1948 classic featuring Gregory Peck as a journalist who attempts to pose as a Jewish person in an effort to write an expose on anti-Semitism in New York City and an affluent Connecticut community.

Catch the dreamy sonic waves of Heaven, indie-pop-punk leanings of the Dead Bedrooms and local musician Carlos Bocanegra’s goth and dream-pop project, Vampiros. Find the event on Facebook.

Artists from the Metropolitan Opera join forces with Triad talent to bring audiences a rendition of Gioachino Rossini’s fun-hearted opera. The performance is sung in Italian with English supertitles. Learn more at greensboroopera.org.

Poetry Café @ Triad Stage UpStage Cabaret (GSO), 9 p.m. Spend an evening sipping on a drink with other poetry lovers during this open mic session that also features live R&B and neo soul. Learn more at josephusiii.com.

Puzzles

Winter Showcase @ High Point Theatre (HP), 7 p.m. The Greensboro Performing Arts’ ballet, tap and musical theater companies perform something for everyone from classical ballet, modern dance and tap dance to musical theatre. Learn more at highpointtheatre.com.

Shot in the Triad

Round out the weekend with some fun and feel the full force of a band behind you as you belt out your favorite tunes. Find the event on Facebook.

Culture

Live band karaoke @ Bull’s Tavern (W-S), 10 p.m.

Jan. 11 - 17, 2018

Rick Hall

When I was a kid, we didn’t have a choice. Everyone in my neighborhood played soccer. Everyone played baseball. Everyone knew how to catch a football, throw a Frisbee, grab a rebound and wrestle someone to the ground. Sports were integral to the adolescent pecking order, in the eyes of parents and teachers, and also in how we regarded ourselves. For boys, especially, proficiency in sports — or the lack thereof — was a key aspect to your reputation.

The life of Rick Hall, the Alabama R&B and country producer who died at the age of 85 on Jan. 2, stands as a testament that people often make culture against the grain of prevailing power structures. The fact cannot be denied: The Southern soul sound — a funky amalgam of soul, country and gospel — came out of Fame Studio in northern Alabama, a product of white session players and songwriters paired with black singers, just over 100 miles northwest of BirmingCOURTESY PHOTO Rick Hall ham, where Bull Connor was turning firehoses and police dogs on civil rights protesters at roughly the same time. The music created by Hall and his associates came to be identified with Muscle Shoals, a small town across the Tennessee River from Florence, where the studio was headquartered. The hits churned out of Rick Hall’s modest enterprise, beginning with Arthur Alexander’s “You Better Move On” — soon covered by the Rolling Stones — in 1961, weren’t political. While Gov. George Wallace was declaring, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” Hall and his talented stable of session players, songwriters and singers were largely ignoring rather than defying the Southern apartheid system. A young, white player named Duane Allman recorded guitar tracks for Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin at Hall’s studio. Franklin transformed from a struggling artist to the undisputed queen of soul when Atlantic Records sent her down to Fame in 1967 to record “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You).” Later, the complicated politics of liberal Alabama at the height of the civil rights movement would be captured by Lynyrd Skynrd, who recorded demos for their first album with session musicians cultivated by Rick Hall. “Sweet Home Alabama” made explicit reference to white liberal Alabamians’ embarrassment about Wallace with the line, “In Birmingham, they love the governor (boo boo boo),” and also paid tribute to the session musicians: “Now Muscle Shoals has got the Swampers.” The DriveBy Truckers, co-led by Patterson Hood (whose father, David, played bass in many of those legendary Muscle Shoals sessions), would later explore the troubled racial dichotomy of Skynyrd and Wallace in their 2001 album Southern Rock Opera. All of this rich and complicated history in many ways owes its genesis to the drive and vision of Rick Hall, a white man who overcame remarkable personal tragedy to fashion some of the most incredible popular music of the 20th Century. Having been abandoned by his mother at a young age, Hall later lost his wife and father within a two-week period while he was working at Reynolds Aluminum. Long afterwards, he would tell interviewers that he tried to drown his grief in alcohol, and then decided instead to throw himself into music and relentless hard work.

by Jordan Green

Opinion

News

Up Front

High school video game teams by Brian Clarey

Puzzles

Shot in the Triad

Culture

Billy Mitchell and Pac-Man

COURTESY PHOTO

My kids, who are both artsy and fartsy, don’t care about sports. At all. Not the watching of them, and not the participation in anything more strenuous than backyard badminton. They don’t even like sports video games, though they are into just about every other genre inside the form. And that’s how I got this idea. What if schools fielded video-game teams, like they do for basketball, field hockey, fencing and just about every other sport known to humanity? I pitched it to my kids, who immediately jumped on board, suggesting separate squads for first-person shooters like Call of Duty and Overwatch, solo combatants for fighting games like Injustice and Super Smash Bros. and a roster of head-to-head competitors for sports games like football and hockey. For the first time in, seriously, ever, my kids showed an interest in an after-school sport, envisioning matches against other high schools, county and statewide rankings, varsity letter jackets and… trophies. Turns out they already do this in cities across the country. For the last two years, Chicago’s Robert Morris University has hosted the High School Esports Invitational, an unofficial tournament pegged to teams from area high schools that crowns regional champions — though it is pegged to a single game: League of Legends. If that’s the deal here, my kids say they’re out.

Greensboro woman and son join suit against DC police by Jordan Green A Greensboro woman and her 10-year-old son, who was knocked over and pepper-sprayed during protests at President Trump’s inauguration in the nation’s capital, have signed on to a lawsuit against the Washington, DC police.

The Washington DC Metropolitan Police Department is accused of charging and tear-gassing protesters without provocation.

Opinion Culture Shot in the Triad Puzzles

the matter is under litigation but referred Triad City Beat to an earlier statement: “During the 58th presidential inauguration, there were thousands of individuals who exercised their constitutional right to peacefully assemble and speak out for their cause. Unfortunately, there was another group of individuals who chose to engage in criminal acts, destroying property and hurling projectiles, injuring at least six officers. Over 200 rioters were ultimately arrested for their criminal actions, and the bulk of them are pending prosecution after being indicted by a grand jury.” Frisbie-Fulton, who was not arrested or charged, also declined to comment for this story. She explained her decision to bring her son to the inauguration protest in her Medium article. “All of a mother’s breath revolves around keeping her child safe,” FrisbieFulton wrote. “If I had known the police would attack the crowd like that I never would have gone. But if we live in a time when we expect police to attack us, then we need to be having a very different conversation. We don’t need to talk about what we should or shouldn’t do; we need to talk about how we are going to change. “Protest is not just a protected liberty; it is essential to community life,” she continued. “For me, protest is a logical continuation of the everyday community change work that I engage in; for nearly 20 years, I have made my career working for anti-violence and anti-poverty nonprofits. Likewise, for parents, protest is a logical continuation of the values we teach our children (stand up to bullies, speak out, befriend the kid who has been treated unfairly).” More than 200 protesters were indicted on charges of rioting, property destruction and assault in federal court in April. In late December, a jury acquitted six defendants who faced the most serious felony charges. The federal indictment alleges that 200 individuals participating in a black bloc

News

Frisbie-Fulton said she picked up her son, who was by then sobbing, and looked for an escape route. Seeing that L Street to the west was clear except for a line of police officers, she said she asked if she could leave in that direction, but an officer rebuffed her by saying, “You shouldn’t have come here with your child.” Another officer tapped Frisbie-Fulton and told her to follow him, according to her account and the lawsuit, but they became separated. The pair then joined other protesters trying to flee as the police continued to use pepper spray on the crowd. Overcome by pepper spray, FrisbieFulton said she was unable to carry her son and another protester picked him up and carried him, until they eventually reached safety. “When we heard Gwen’s story we were quite moved by what had happened to her and thought it would be important to have her and her son as plaintiffs in the case to show the wantonness of the police conduct,” said Scott Michelman, the lead attorney in the case, which was originally filed in June 2017. “The fact that the police were so out of control that they would knock over and expose to pepper spray a 10-year-old child is remarkable.” The suit accuses the DC police of Fourth Amendment violations for excessive force, as well as assault and battery for knocking down AS. The suit also alleges Fourth Amendment violations for arresting freelance photojournalist Shay Horse and protester Elizabeth Lagesse without probable cause and First Amendment violations for arresting them for protected speech along with false arrest and false imprisonment. In addition, the suit accuses the police of negligence for detaining protesters without differentiating between those engaging in protected free speech and those committing unlawful acts, as well as for failing to give dispersal orders before deploying pepper spray. A spokesperson said the police could not comment on the allegations because

COURTESY PHOTO

Up Front

Gwen Frisbie-Fulton, a nonprofit administrator and writer who lives in Greensboro, and her son have joined a lawsuit filed by the ACLU of District of Columbia alleging wide-ranging constitutional violations by the DC Metropolitan Police Department during protests against President Trump’s 2016 inauguration. Frisbie-Fulton wrote in a Medium article explaining her decision to join the suit that her son, identified as AS, took a keen interest in the 2016 election and that his concerns about Trump, “rooted in his personal values of kindness and respect,” motivated her decision to take him to protest the inauguration. After protesting for a few hours, Frisbie-Fulton received a text in the early afternoon indicating that a friend from Greensboro had been detained by police at the corner of 12th and L streets, and they walked three blocks to check on the situation. The police were holding about 200 protesters through a detention tactic known as “kettling” that has been used periodically by the DC police to deal with large protests over the past 18 years, according to the lawsuit. Frisbie-Fulton said that AS boosted himself up on a street sign to wave at the friend trapped inside the kettle and chanted along with others: “Let them go!” The ACLU lawsuit alleges that at about 1:45 p.m., “suddenly and without warning or a dispersal order,” 11 police officers who are listed as defendants “began to pepperspray the people outside the kettle,” including Judah Ariel, a legal observer. “When the pepper-spraying began, there was no threat to public or officer safety, and none of the individuals in the crowd outside the kettle — including Mr. Ariel, Ms. Frisbie-Fulton and AS — was disobeying police orders,” the lawsuit states. Frisbie-Fulton said she told her son it was time to go, and he hopped down from the street sign and they hurried westward down L Street to get away from the intersection where the police were pepperspraying the crowd. The lawsuit alleges that without warning or provocation, a line of police officers rushed forward, and Officers Joseph Masci and Aulio Angulo knocked AS to the ground. Frisbie-Fulton wrote that she instinctively jumped on top of her son, rounding her back to create pocket to prevent him from being crushed.

— a protest tactic in which people dress in black with scarves and masks covering their faces — committed acts of violence and vandalism for a little over 30 minutes over the span of 16 blocks. Prosecutors argue that protesters charged the police line at 12th and L streets “in an attempt to avoid arrest by law enforcement.” The alleged offense took place at the location where police eventually kettled the protesters about two hours before Frisbie-Fulton and her son arrived. The ACLU lawsuit charges that police failed to distinguish between individuals who were peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights and those who were committing unlawful acts, and even attacked bystanders like Shay Horse, a photojournalist who has sold images to the Associated Press and Getty Images. The suit says that Horse was photographing demonstrators in hoods and masks who were breaking a storefront window and a police officer who was pepperspraying demonstrators when the same officer turned on Horse without warning and sprayed him. The suit alleges that the police chased Horse and several protesters into Franklin Square with pepper spray, flash-bang grenades, concussion grenades, stingballs, smoke flares and long-range acoustic devices — a device that emits “an excruciatingly loud tone.” The suit alleges that officers deployed pepper spray and stingballs — described as “explosive devices that release smoke, rubber pellets and a chemical irritant within a radius of approximately 50 feet” — against Horse and others, including co-plaintiff Elizabeth Lagesse, “without warning or a dispersal order, often in circumstances where the officers faced no threat to themselves or to public safety or disobedience of any commands they had given.” Far from trying to disperse the protesters, the ACLU suit alleges the police intentionally corralled them. “Because of defendants’ intentional and coordinated action in chasing individuals north on 14th Street NW, then east on L Street NW, while driving them on by using pepper spray, flash-bang grenades, concussion grenades and stingballs, and blocking their egress via alternative routes, the individuals who were trapped in the kettle at 12th and L streets NW were not there by virtue of having acted unlawfully but merely because they were present on particular downtown DC streets on the morning of January 20 and then tried to flee when police chased and assaulted them.”

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NEWS

Jan. 11 - 17, 2018 Up Front News Opinion Culture Shot in the Triad Puzzles

Winston-Salem considering $182,950 in incentives to grocery distributor by Jordan Green Incentives request from global grocery distributor would shift tax revenue from Greensboro and High Point to Winston-Salem, but the warehousing facility would draw out of the same labor market. Winston-Salem City Council will consider a $182,950 request for incentives from a global grocery supply firm to relocate its facilities from High Point and Greensboro to an industrial park in Winston-Salem’s Union Cross Road area, thanks to a unanimous recommendation on Monday from the council’s finance committee. Bunzl Distribution USA, a division of a global distribution firm headquartered in London, operates more than 100 warehouses serving the United States, Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean, according to the company’s website. The company supplies food packaging and cleaning products to food processors, supermarkets and convenience stores. The company told city officials it was evaluating options to consolidate operations in the Southeast, with expansion in the Triad vying with relocating operations to Richmond, Va. or Greenville, SC. In exchange for the relocation of warehousing facilities, the city would pay out incentives in an amount equal to 50 percent of the new property tax revenue generated by the project after the company after annual property taxes are paid — up to $182,950 over a five-year period. The payments would help defray the cost of constructing a new building in an industrial park off Union Cross Road, adjacent to the Herbalife facil-

ity. The company plans to invest $13.4 million in construction, equipment and machinery for the facility. The request comes before the full Winston-Salem City Council on Jan. 16. The company is also requesting an unspecified amount of incentives from Forsyth County. Technically, the deal relocates 66 jobs from Greensboro and High Point to Winston-Salem, but it’s unlikely to have much effect on employment, either as a net gain for Winston-Salem or a loss to its Guilford County neighbors. The warehouse currently used by Bunzl on Chimney Rock Road near Piedmont Triad International Airport is only 15 miles to the east of the proposed site on the southeastern fringe of WinstonSalem. And Bunzl’s second facility, located at the northern fringe of High Point near the Piedmont Triad Farmers Market, is only 11 miles away from the Union Cross Road location. In other words, the Greensboro and High Point facilities are likely already drawing some of their workforce from Winston-Salem, and the workers are likely to follow the jobs there. “The city of Winston-Salem does not go out and recruit from our other Triad cities — Greensboro and High Point — and we hope they’ll do the same for us,” Mayor Allen Joines said. “This company was going to have to move because they checked out Guilford and could not find another location. We have a kind of gentleman’s/lady’s agreement with those other cities.”

Bunzl leases a building in High Point (above) and lists a warehouse near the airport as its Greensboro location.

Loren Hill, president of the High Point Economic Development Corp., said the company did not approach the city with a request for incentives to expand in High Point, and the first he had heard about the deal was on Monday. The city of Greensboro appears to have not received a request for incentives from Bunzl, city spokesperson Jake Keys said. From an employment perspective, Hill confirmed that the relocation wouldn’t be a total loss. “The blow would be if we lost those jobs completely from the Triad,” he said. “If that’s not the case, then it’s not the end of the world, and High Point has another building to market to a prospective company.” Bunzl’s High Point facility is owned by Samet Corp. and is valued at $2.7 million. The owner paid $19,526 to Guilford County and $17,307 to the city of High Point in property taxes last year. The Pennsylvania real-estate investment company that currently leases warehouse space to Bunzl in Greensboro

JORDAN GREEN

paid $46,760 to Guilford County and $40,487 in property taxes last year. An analysis by Winston-Salem city staff acknowledges that “no new jobs are being created.” Financing for the incentives will come out of the city’s Economic Development Project Fund. Even with the wash in employment, the public policy justification listed for the project is “stimulation of the local economy through the creation of new jobs and investment.” From a government financing standpoint, the deal shifts local tax revenue from Greensboro and High Point to Winston-Salem. A recent development trends report issued by the city of Greensboro indicates that Greensboro’s tax base increased by 7.8 percent from 2010 to 2016, while High Point’s tax base remained flat and Winston-Salem’s tax base declined by 2.6 percent.

EDITORIAL

It’s the Triad whether we like it or not

Something even scarier than Trump — ourselves Señor, señor/ Can you tell me where we’re headin’?/ Is it Lincoln County Road or Armageddon? — Bob Dylan, “Señor (Tales of Yankee Power)”

News Opinion Culture Shot in the Triad Puzzles

much what we deserve. Trump has governed as a lord of chaos, and that’s exactly what at least some of his supporters bargained for. Many of the reactionary white voters who thrilled to the tune of “Make America Great Again” never expected Trump to deliver on his promise to bring back manufacturing, steel After one year of Trump, where and coal jobs. Their vote was a giant middle finger to elites by Jordan Green exactly are we headed? in the political class, the mainstream media, academia, Anyone looking for a governing philosophy or cohermainline Protestantism and reform Judaism, Silicon Valley ent policy program is courting insanity. Although some of and Wall Street. Mission accomplished. the specific facts of Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury: Inside If Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation winds the Trump White House have been contested, reporters up taking Trump down for obstruction of justice, many of assigned to the White House generally concur on the conTrump’s supporters will accept it passively, albeit with deepceptual framework: The president of the United States is an ening cynicism. A small group of far-right militia activists incurious man who not only doesn’t read but doesn’t listen has vowed to resort to arms against “domestic enemies” if to his advisors, and whose obsession with the media creates Trump gets impeached or indicted. White supremacists like a strange feedback loop where his courtiers leak stories David Duke, who view Trump as “the means, not the man,” to get his attention. The lurid passages of Wolff’s tell-all would probably be happy to see a domestic crisis precipireveal what we already knew: The intellect of the person tate a martial clampdown, with a figure like General John F. elected as commander in chief of the most powerful naKelly taking charge. tion on earth is a terrifying vacuum. There’s nothing there Even if we experience a Democratic tidal wave in the except the whims of a 71-year-old child whose exercise of 2018 midterms, we can’t count on a return to normalcy. power is a function of whatever momentary instinct strokes Regardless of who takes power, we have to stare into the his ego. heart of darkness that is us. The Donald Trump who was For Trump’s critics, the schadenfreude at the administraelected after speculating that Obama was born outside tion’s continuing calamities can only be brief and ultimately of America and calling Mexicans “rapists” is merely the unsatisfying. After Trump is deposed, there is Mike Pence, human vessel of the spiritual rot at our civic core. The and then Paul Ryan. And more importantly, making one United States as a country faces a difficult reckoning. We person the repository of evil and folly misses the point: can depose the president, but we won’t slay the dragon: US voters chose Trump over what was considered to be The fact is that the majority of us are desperately clinging the most qualified bench of Republican to white privilege; hypnotized by superstitions, candidates in decades, and then over conspiracy theories and fake news; consumed Hillary Clinton. by trifling media-entertainment feuds; and After one year They chose a transparently dishonmore interested in getting over on each other est New York real-estate developer and than working out a common good. of Trump, where reality TV star because the majority For those who see Trump drifting into exactly are we of Americans no longer believe that alignment with the Republican establishment, headed? government positively affects their lives. consider that the president’s break with Steve It’s not just the people on the right who Bannon is only a moment. A lot of things can surged into Trump’s camp; it’s the people change between now and Election Day. There on the left who didn’t vote because they see the system are a number of reasons to expect Trump to bring Bannon as rigged in favor of the rich and warped by institutional back into the fold. racism. In a plutocracy where gross economic inequality has Jeet Heer’s perceptive piece at the New Republic on Jan. corrupted the system, even what passes for progressivism 5 raises a question worth considering: “Trump’s electoral in electoral politics is hopelessly distorted by millions of victory demonstrated that there is a genuine appetite dollars in campaign cash and armies of lobbyists. among Republican voters for white nationalist policies that The end product is a politics that is little more than an promise economic redress and to restore the perceived loss orchestrated series of gestures. If it’s all for show, you may of racial status. Trump so far has only kept half the deal, by as well vote for the greatest showman of all. governing as the avatar of white resentment. That might As James Traub writes in the Dec. 19 issue of Foreign be enough to keep his fans loyal, but will it draw enough of Policy, “A decadent elite licenses degraded behavior, and them to the voting booths to overcome turnout from those a debased public chooses its worst leaders. Then our Nero whom he demonized?” panders to our worst attributes — and we reward him for doing so.” In other words, in a democracy we get pretty

Up Front

It happened so fast: One minute a story breaks across the Triad media about the possible renaming of Piedmont Triad International Airport. Within a few hours, the PTI Airport Authority announced a new name: Central North Carolina International Airport — CNCIA on second reference, we suppose. And we’re none too happy about it. First off — and we probably speak for Triad Stage, Triad Business Journal, the Piedmont Triad Partnership here — we need to make sure everybody is still doing the whole “Triad” thing, and not just because it’s in our names. True, not that much connective We need to make tissue has developed between sure everybody is Greensboro, still doing the whole Winston-Salem and High Point over the “Triad” thing, and years. There are not just because it’s reasons for that too in our name. lengthy to go into here. But the fact is that American cities of 300,000 don’t even move the needle, statistically speaking; they’re basically invisible. Now an urban regionlike the Triad, with a population of 1.6 million… now that’s a market, the 33rd largest in the country. And the people studying it — mostly marketing companies, behaviorists and others interested in large groups of humans — don’t care if people on the west side of the combined statistical area never go to the east side of it. To them, it doesn’t matter what we think. Like it or not, we are the Piedmont Triad, not to be confused with the Asian criminal enterprise of a similar name. Marketing was the primary reason given for the name change — people just didn’t know what the Piedmont Triad was, proponents argued. Central North Carolina is more geographically accurate, they said. But geez, North Carolina is 500 miles wide. North Carolina Central University is in Durham. Central Carolina Community College is in Sanford, between Greensboro and Fayetteville. The US District Court’s Middle District of North Carolina includes Durham and Orange counties in the east, Surry and Cabarrus in the west and Scotland in the south. If anything, the new name is more geographically vague than its predecessor. And it would seem that if we, as a region, want people to know what we call ourselves, a good way to teach them is to show it to them as soon as they land at the airport.

CITIZEN GREEN

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OPINION

Jan. 11 - 17, 2018 Up Front News Opinion Culture Shot in the Triad Puzzles

CULTURE City-subsidized restaurant delivers tasty and healthy soul food

by Lauren Barber

15-minute drive north of downtown Winston-Salem will take you out where Taste of the Triad, a family-style cafeteria, serves traditional Southern comfort cuisine in the Ogburn Station neighborhood. A colorful mural by Dwayne Howell depicting a lively community meal greeted my partner, Devon, and me to our right. To the left, a brief hallway leads to the cafeteria space, styled in the bland fashion of most public elementary schools (they’re working on it), but the Taste’s atmosphere lives in the seating spaces further back where myriad paintings by Triad artists hang on the walls. A mural by Amber Leverette in the furthest room nurtures a welcoming tone, the words “We are more alike, my friend, than we are unalike,” featured against the Winston-Salem skyline at sunset. Natural light spills through picture windows across from the mural in the large, rectangular space suitable for private events, but from about 6 to 7 p.m. on a Friday, we encountered only six or so other patrons and one gentleman ordered a meal to-go. Bernetta Oakes, also known by her maiden name Elaine Malone, spent four years gutting the building facing Old Walkertown Road, beginning in 2012 when she decided to breathe new life into what had been Bell Brothers, a highly popular “greasy spoon” in the ’80s and ’90s. In May, her niece Sabrina Wingo took the reins as operator. Born and raised in the Twin City, Wingo now lives in Detroit and visits Winston-Salem twice each month. Manager Paula Thomas holds down the fort between visits. The city has made a significant investment in the venture and there been controversy as to whether the business is viable and the project is a good investment of public funds. After North State Aviation, an aviation maintenance company, laid off more than 300 employees at Smith Reynolds Airport last March, far fewer customers populated the seats of Malone’s, instigating a shake-up in operations and a change of name. Irvin Williams, a private chef who runs Nola Catering and has appeared on Food Network shows like “Cutthroat Kitchen” and “Chopped,” stepped in as a volunteer mentor, training cooks for consistency with the new menu.

The cafeteria-style offerings at Taste of the Triad are a more affordable — and also more remote — version of the food at downtown favorites Sweet Potatoes and Mozelle’s.

LAUREN BARBER

of a regular customer from the other Carolina who repeatedly It seems inherently dishonest to call most soul food healthy, but compared to similar restaurants, the Taste is notably clean asked for the combination. Even if you don’t love cabbage as and relatively health conscious. Head Chef Steve Waddell, premuch as I do, it’s undeniable that the combo lends to a more viously part-owner of Simply Soul, doesn’t saturate his cooknuanced visual and textural experience. (Taste chefs boil the greens with smoked turkey, by the way.) ing with undue salt or sugar, allowing subtle flavors to hold Lightly-breaded whiting fish filets their own. The warmly-spiced yams, for instance, are enjoyable because of are perfectly fried upon order and the dish’s simplicity and remarkably take a little less time than the pork Visit Taste of the Triad at 4320 Old consistent texture. It’s exactly the or chicken (Taste offers a choice Walkertown Road and learn more between dark and light meat.) Devon type of side I want to warm my soul at tasteofthetriad.com. and I didn’t sample the pork, but in the winter months, and one that won’t cause a sugar crash later in the agreed that the breading is light and doesn’t leave you feeling greasy. day. The menu isn’t all Williams and If you’re not in the mood for someWaddell, though. The cafeteria’ combination of white cabbage thing fried, you can choose from a slew of other meat options and greens is dubbed the “South Carolina mix” in recognition like liver and onions, ribs, Salisbury steak and meatloaf. The

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A mural by Dwayne Howell depicting a lively communal meal greets visitors to Taste of the Triad.

or not the venture triumphs will largely rely on the practical matters of filling its long, red, leather booths and expanding the catering side of the business. As the likeness of Maya Angelou

watches over the front seating area with lines from her poem, “Still, I Rise” on the adjacent wall, maybe, from the dust of costly renovations and controversies, Taste of the Triad will rise.

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chicken salad is a lunchtime favorite. Chicken & dumplings aren’t easy on the eyes but certainly satisfy the palette, particularly for fans of chicken pot pie who are willing to go crustless. Coffee and sodas are available to wash it all down, but most customers request the lead cashier and waitress Shanieke’s “homemade” sweet tea. Among all that is sweet to eat, Devon and I only found room to try Ms. Rudy’s lemon meringue cake, which was a little dry but still fluffy and flavorful. I’m not an icing person, so it means something for me to endorse her bold, lemony rendering that bypassed the vulgar sweetness of most icings. Other desserts include sweet-potato pie, pecan pie, peach cobbler, banana pudding and pound cake. One day. Beside the kitchen’s restrained preparation, Taste is attractive because it’s considerably less expensive than downtown favorites Sweet Potatoes and Mozelle’s and, frankly, better quality than some of the other Triad soul-food joints we’ve visited. The restaurant will begin to experiment with breakfast on Jan. 20, and more evening events with DJs, poetry readings and opportunities to mix with featured artists, the latter in the hopes of drawing in a younger crowd. Regardless, Taste of the Triad is welcoming, wallet-friendly and — most importantly — authentic in its execution of traditional comfort foods. Whether

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CULTURE Underdog Records preserves a tactile experience of music

by Spencer KM Brown

t’s more than a romantic nostalgia, more than reliving those warm memories of flipping through your parents’ old record collection. For Jonathan Hodges, the love of music spins a little deeper. “The first record I remember buying on my own was Desensitized by Pitchshifter,” Hodges said, leaning against a counter filled with stacks of used records. “I saved up some money and when I put it on, it was just unreal. It sounded beautiful and it was mine.” Hodges owns Underdog records, one of the few independent record stores in the Triad, along with Earshot Records in Winston-Salem and Hippo Records in Greensboro. A brick-and-mortar store located on Burke Street in downtown Winston-Salem, Underdog opened its doors in 2013, bringing to life one of Hodges’ lifelong dreams. “I had been working for the Record Exchange for almost seven and a half years,” Hodges said. “I learned all about buying and how to run a store, but opening my place was still there in my head. I had all of my own ideas that I couldn’t use in a chain store and I knew that if I

didn’t try, I never would.” A love of music was instilled early on in Hodges’ life. Getting lost in his parents’ cassette collection as a kid led to cultivating his own tastes and preferences, ultimately guiding him to vinyl. “My basement is filled with boxes and boxes of my old CDs,” Hodges said, laughing. “I still have all of them, but can’t get myself to sell them or get rid of them. I was used to tapes and CDs but the first time I listened to a record, my mind was blown. It was Def Leppard’s Pyromania. It really changed my life.” While a palpable element of nostalgia remains in selling records in the digital era, it takes a step beyond this notion and becomes more of an act of regaining a command over your music. “I think vinyl is all about reclaiming ownership,” Hodges said. “When music was changing over to all digital, there was nothing left people to own. You don’t really own an mp3 file. I think people want to feel the record in their hands again.” The current resurgence of vinyl records has been attributed to an array of sources, from a hipster movement that resurfaced forgotten vintage goods, to music fans craving higher quality sound in their music, but whatever the cause, the result remained the same. The renaissance has led to record companies re-pressing albums from the ’60s and ’70s, and contemporary bands who now release their music on vinyl, providing a temporal conduit Playing Jan. 12-17 for music once again. SPENCER KM Underdog Records owner Jonathan Hodges outside his Star Trek Discovery 9 p.m. Sunday, January 14th Free Admission With Drink Purhcase! Out of this has also spurred the BROWN shop on Burke Street. need of what seemed a lost notion: that of leaving the house and going tinuously stocking and reshaping his inventory, never knowing to buy your music once again. The resurgence what trends might be on the rise. of vinyl reflects a longing for tactile experience, “Honestly, being a part of this community is what keeps for human interactions. While the dominance of businesses like mine alive,” he said. “The support of this city digital listening has increased, so has the yearnhas been amazing and I’m grateful to be able to keep going ing to sit in front of the how I am.” speakers poring over liner Having worked as an employee for notes as the music drifts a chain store, and now just into his Visit Underdog Records at 835 into the room. fifth year of owning his own store, “It’s an ever-shifting Burke St. (W-S) or the theunderHodges’ fidelity to vinyl and music landscape,” Hodges said. remains the key element to his busidogrecords.com. “There’s no way of telling ness. A savvy businessman, Hodges what will be popular has a solid business model that sets --OTHER EVENTS & SCREENINGS-tomorrow or a month him apart from his competitors. Board Game Night 7 p.m. Friday, Jan. 12th. More than 100 Games FREE TO PLAY from now. But by keeping things stocked and Expanding beyond the realm of becoming solely a niche record Sit n’ Stitch 6 p.m. Monday, Jan. 15th. Make Crafts TOGETHER! preserving them, it gives people a chance again. I store, Underdog Records has made attempts to maintain an Totally Rad Trivia 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 16th. $3 Buy-In! Up to Six Player Teams! get to watch firsthand what comes and goes: ’80s expansive stock, with something for anyone who comes in. records are huge right now; there’s a resurgence Super Smash Bros Melee Tournament “To me, it’s about salvaging what otherwise might be lost,” 5 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 16th $5 Venue Fee! $5 Entry Fee! of old jazz records now. It’s morphing constantly Hodges said. “It’s about protecting the music, about acquiring like a living thing.” Drink n’ Draw 6 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 17th anything and everything of value, not just monetary value, but Meet Our Community of Artists! All Skill Levels Welcome! For Hodges, and for many independent stores personal value, and rescuing it. There’s a duty I feel that I have like Underdog, the job is never quite done. Conto give the music back to the people, back to the fans. Not Beer! Wine! Amazing Coffee! stantly checking on pricing trends, going through some compressed, digital file, but music in its best form.” 2134 Lawndale Drive, Greensboro boxes and boxes of used records, Hodges is congeeksboro.com •

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itting in the library during reading underground creatives from time at Welborn Middle School tattoo artists to illustrain High Point, a younger Daniel tors and writers, as well as White flipped through pages nascent small businesses in of National Geographic and outdoorsy North Carolina. magazines, relishing the striking visuals “We give creatives a as post-hardcore band Enter Shikari’s platform to speak on their latest likely played in his mind’s ear. journey, their process and to A few weeks ago, 13 or so years later, explain what they want to White published 80 copies (no longer do,” White said. “Me and Jaavailable) of his first book of photocob saw the need for somegraphs, Frances, named for his paternal thing like that to happen… grandmother who is navigating the in Greensboro because there challenges of her husband’s worsening are so many talented people dementia. In one of the most stunhere and we know it’s hard ning portraits, his grandmother takes marketing yourself. We also a momentary break from marking up a see the importance of a book as she sits at what appears to be creative atmosphere around a white-clothed kitchen table, creating here and we’re trying to shadowy weightiness as she hunches make it a little better.” forward to give a rather frank look at White himself is an upsomeone across the room. and-coming artist, though, White took photos outside of school currently apprenticing with for years — his first portrait was of his Jon Black, a local freelance older sister Monitra —but began taking photographer who is teachthe form seriously in 2010 with enthusiing White the fundamentals astic support from his family. Four years of studio photography such later White earned a bachelor of science as setting up and testing in information technology from UNCG new equipment. The trainbut the closest he gets to tech these ing marks a divergence from days is his compact Fujifilm X-E1, always White’s mostly self-taught at the ready, and his Nikon D610 camcareer development and era, his plus-one at concerts. Informal his preference for candid hangouts turned into photoshoots with photoshoots in the street, friends, progressing into formal freelibraries and, of course, at lance work for frolicsome graduation concerts. and family photos. He never let go of his “I love doing shows befree-spirited approach, though. cause everything is spon“I think it’s best if you show your pertaneous,” he said. “I just sonality, and mine is definitely out there, went to a lot of punk and joking around,” White said. “I don’t want hardcore shows around here to be some kind of stiff thing. I want to and took my camera with DANIEL WHITE leave the session gaining a good friend if me one day, and I went from Live shot of the vocalist for “Bleed the Pigs” at Greene Street, circa 2015. I don’t know you already.” there.” To pay the bills, he works somewhat An adventurous nature the stage lights emanating from behind. unpredictable hours as a vehicle-conoften coaxes him out of town. In 2016, he fell in love with the His partiality to black-and-white photography over the dedition assessor at Carmex, where he people, art scene and cityscapes of Chicago and Detroit, visitlightful vibrancy of his many color photographs might surprise started during college in 2012, but finds ing those cities twice that year — first to see a friend, then The those first encounter White, assuming color might align more joy as part of a tight-knit web of young cityscapes stand out because he manages to capture Chicago closely with his energetic demeanor. artists in the in ways that demonstrate its differThere’s no denying that a playful air moves through much Triad, many of ences from other metropolises with of his work, especially his portraiture, but White compels with whom he interblack-and-white compositions of Learn more about Daniel White at mystery and the poignant moment of silence when finger views on Free tightly-squeezed cars and delivery presses the shutter button; in the half-breath of a friend in a danielwhitephoto.com. Pizza, a podcast trucks next to century-old skyscrapmoody woodland scene; in the splinter of a second a presumhe and recording ers still separated by frightening ably homeless person in the streets of Chicago locks eyes engineer Jacob close railways. with his camera; the moment the frontwoman of Bleed the Beeson launched His favorite musician to photoPigs thrashes her neck, propelling thick hot-pink braids flying in a room in Beeson’s house last Februgraph recently, though, was rapper Denzel Curry at Durham’s through the air of a dingy basement. ary. White is also head of photography Moogfest. From below, White captured Curry catching his for Amplifier, the podcast’s affiliated breath between verses, chin heightened upward and eyes digital magazine that aims to promote closed, looking as though he was reveling in the divine with

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CULTURE Photographer Daniel White rises on light and air

by Lauren Barber

Jan. 11 - 17, 2018

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