TCB June 13, 2019 — The other Global Mart

Greensboro / Winston-Salem / High Point June 13-19, 2019 triad-city-beat.com

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THE OTHER GLOBAL MART PAGE 15

Li Ming’s flies below the radar Cannabis in NC? PAGE 13

On the Central Park 5 PAGE 12

Authoring Action PAGE 17

June 13-19, 2019

EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK

Revenge of the nerds I can hear them in the next room, their voices carrying over the frenetic clicks of video-game controllers: near gibberish about

by Brian Clarey the intricacies of fighting games and the button and joystick sequences employed to inflict the most damage, a short debate about pepperoni, Thor jokes, horse laughs and taunts.

Right now, my house has a serious infestation of nerds. And I ought to know: For a few months in the fifth grade, I carried my books to school in a briefcase.

Of course, it’s not the same thing.

Everybody’s a nerd these days. We’ve got pop stars, professional athletes and hot women on Instagram — the very antithesis of the nerd tribe — professing to be nerds. Nerddom itself has Balkanized into subsets: comic-book nerds, sports nerds, video-game nerds, cosplay nerds, theater nerds.

But I’m here to remind everybody that being a nerd used to mean one thing. And that one thing could get you shoved in a locker.

Nerds, as a phenomena, began in the 1950s, when it was a term roughly analogous to “square” or maybe “hoople.” In the 1960s and ’70s it began to be applied to bookish, awkward kids at elite universities.

And then it became sort of a catchphrase in the show “Happy Days,” and all bets were off.

I came into nerd-dom in a sort of Silver Age, when the Atari 2600 had just come out, comic books were starting to get really good and Dungeons & Dragons was still sort of new. But we suffered for these vices — and for Tolkien, “Star Trek,” the marching band, the Sherlock Holmes club at school — in wedgies and noogies and, yes, the occasional shove into a locker or, perhaps, the girls’ room.

But these nerds here in my house… these nerds don’t understand any of it.

And they don’t care. It’s the first week of summer vacation, they’ve got three TVs hooked up to three separate PlayStations and the call for more pizza has already been made.

And I suppose that’s the way it ought to be. If they had to worry about being nerds now, all those swirlies we took back in the day would have meant nothing.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

The wrongful convictions of Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Yusef Salaam, Antron McCray and Korey Wise resonate because the years taken away from them, not to mention the public humiliation and hampered ability to work and earn livelihoods, represent white supremacy writ large.

— Jordan from Citizen Green, page 12

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

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June 13-19, 2019

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June 13-19, 2019

CITY LIFE June 13-16, 2019

by Cason Ragland

THURSDAY June 13

Culture

Opinion

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Up Front

Summertime Social with Souljam @ Reynolda House Museum of American Art (W-S), 6 p.m.

Cider tasting with Botanist and Barrel @ Goofy Foot Taproom (HP), 6 p.m.

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Souljam, a funk and soul group, will put on a show at Reynolda House tonight. Much to TCB’s chagrin, Reynolda House will allow Chair People to attend this event. Food and alcohol will be available for purchase. Find out more information on Facebook.

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The Cedar Grove winery Botanist and Barrel will host an informative cider tasting in High Point. If you’re interested, you can learn about how different cider brewing processes change the carbonation, taste and ABV. There’s more to it than just smashing some apples, believe it or not. Check out the details of Facebook.

June 13-19, 2019

FRIDAY June 14

Forever Motown @ the Carolina Theatre (GSO), 8 p.m.

SATURDAY June 15

SUNDAY June 16

SPARK presents Me, My Brain & I @ Monstercade (WS), 2 p.m.

Up Front

Open Garden Day @ NC Cooperative Extension, Forsyth County Center (W-S), 10 a.m.

Learn tips and tricks from gardening experts at the Forsyth County Center NC Cooperative Extension this Saturday.

If it grows out of the ground, you’ll more than likely run across it during informative event. Discover more about the Open Garden Day on Facebook page.

Greensboro Against Trump @ Government Plaza (GSO), 12 p.m.

News

GC Cameron of the Spinners and Glenn Leonard of the Temptations will belt out Motown hits tomorrow evening.

Boogie down to the tunes of Marvin Gaye, the Four Tops, Smokey Robinson and more. You can find tickets on the Carolina Theatre’s website.

Sunset Summer SOULstice Event @ Yoga Mindset High Point (HP), 7 p.m.

Opinion

Me, My Brain & I is a play written by and for teenagers.

This coming-of-age story follows a young man named Eli and his adolescent struggles with family, friends and academics. You can find more info and see other showtimes on the Facebook page for the event.

Community Day 2019 @ Delta Arts Center (W-S), 4 p.m.

The Delta Arts center will put together a diverse array of activities and performances for its community day. DJ Juan Eckered will be on the ones and twos, a read-in will be hosted for kids and there’ll be a line dance! Registration is free at the event’s Eventbrite page.

Father’s Day Celebration on the Lawn @ Double Oaks Bed & Breakfast (GSO), 5 p.m.

Culture

In response to the MAGA Network’s planned demonstration, the Greensboro DSA along with the Working Class and Homeless Organization Alliance will put together a counter demonstration in the next few days. More information can be found on Facebook.

IndiaFest 2019 @ Center City Park (GSO), 12 p.m.

Shot in the Triad

The Second Glance Band will have a show at the Double Oaks Bed & Breakfast to honor Father’s Day. If your dad hasn’t fallen asleep watching sports by the time this celebration starts, he might enjoy something like this. Tickets can be purchased via the Double Oaks B&B website.

Puzzles

It’s the seventh year of Yoga Mindset High Point’s Summer SOULstice. While you’re saluting the sun, imitating man’s best friend in downward dog or pretending to be a baby in child pose, you can listen to music played by Tom Fogarty.

Infused water and fruit will be available to those who go.

Find out more via Facebook.

Sure, India could be a great place to visit, but the opposite side of the Earth is somewhat of an inconvenient location for most people in the Triad. That’s why the India Association of the Triad will put on IndiaFest 2019 this weekend.

You can enjoy authentic Indian cuisine, get a henna tattoo and play games right in downtown Greensboro. Check out the details on Facebook.

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June 13-19, 2019 Up Front

6 Tony nominees with Triad roots

by Brian Clarey 1. Camille A. Brown — UNCSA School of Dance, Class of 2001 Since leaving Winston-Salem for the Great White Way, Camille A. Brown has been decorated with awards and honors that include a Guggenheim fellowship, a Ford Foundation fellowship and four-time winner of the Princess Grace Award. She choreographed the Emmy Award-winning TV version of Jesus Christ Superstar last year, and the Tony Award-winning Once on This Island. This year she was nominated for Best Choreography for Choir Boy, though Sergio Trujillo’s work in Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations took the award.

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2. Paul Tazewell — UNCSA School of Design and Production, Class of 1986 Paul Tazewell is one of UNCSA’s most successful graduates — he gave the commencement speech last year — and has won six Tony Awards so far in his career, including one in 2016 Best Costume Design for Hamilton — yes, the Hamilton. He was nominated for costumes this year for Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations, but lost to legendary designer Bob Mackie, who made the costumes for The Cher Show.

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3. Rebecca Naomi Jones — UNCSA School of Drama, Class of 2003 Though Naomi Jones was not nominated for a Tony this year, she plays the lead role in the revival of Oklahoma!, which itself was up for eight Tonys and ended up winning two, one for Best Musical Revival and another for Best Featured Performer in a Musical for Ali Stroker, who became the first person in a wheelchair to win one.

4. Joseph Blakely Forbes — UNCG, Class of 1975 Scenic artist Joseph Blakely Forbes took home a noncompetitive Tony for Excellence in Theater Award after a career working on productions such as Cats, A Chorus Line and Annie, he founded Scenic Arts Studios, which has done scenery for more than 350 Broadway productions, including Book of Mormon, Kinky Boots, Hello Dolly, A Bronx Tale, School of Rock, Beetlejuice and Beautiful.

5. Beth Leavel — UNCG MFA program, Class of 1980 Beth Leavel won her first — and only — Tony in 2006, after 20 years working steadily on Broadway, for Best Featured Actress in a Musical, for her portrayal of Beatrice Stockwell in The Drowsy Chaperone. She was nominated again in 2011 for Best Leading Actress in a Musical in Baby, It’s You! and again this year in the same category for her role as Dee Dee Allen in The Prom, though she lost to Stephanie J. Block from The Cher Show.

Rosemary Harris at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival premiere of Spider-Man 3.

DAVID SHANKBONE

6. Rosemary Harris — Winston-Salem resident British stage legend Rosemary Harris has been nominated for nine Tony Awards, the first in 1966 as Best Lead Actress for The Lion in Winter, which she won. She has won an Emmy, for the 1974 show Notorious Woman, and a Golden Globe, for the 1978 miniseries Holocaust, and was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress for Tom & Viv. On Sunday, night she took home a Lifetime Achievement Tony after performing in more than 25 Broadway productions. But you might know her as Aunt May from the Spider-Man movies.

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an office cabinet at home.

Once he was classified as a resident alien, he came back to the US and bounced from city to city, job to job.

Throughout my childhood, he would drop hints and memories of places he had lived, jobs he had held. He tended bar in Boston for a while, he lived in Las Vegas and then in LA as a guide for Japanese tourists. He worked in a restaurant in Detroit before deciding the weather didn’t agree with him and then he SAYAKA Happy Father’s Day Papa. packed up and moved to New MATSUOKA York where he met my mom years later.

In the 26 years that I’ve known him, I’ve only known Tokumitsu Matsuoka as my dad. I didn’t know about his whole life before I came into the picture until about a year ago when I sat him down and he told me this story while sipping his usual whiskey and oolong tea concoction as I took notes.

Last summer, my parents closed the hibachi restaurant they had run for two decades and finally retired. He had been working for about 40 years straight.

This year when I asked him what he wanted for Father’s Day, he said he wasn’t sure and that he would let me know. He asked if he could bundle whatever gift he decided on with his birthday in September. I told him of course.

The thing is, he could bundle this holiday with countless birthdays and Christmases and it wouldn’t be enough. It wouldn’t be enough for me to say thank you for sticking it through even when he wanted to quit. It wouldn’t be enough for me to say thank you for giving me and my sister a life much easier than his own. But that’s what being a good parent is I guess. Doing all the things to give your kids a better life and asking nothing in return. We just got extremely lucky.

Happy Father’s Day Papa, thanks for everything.

Up Front

About a week ago, my parents returned from a short vacation to Canada and New York City. It was my mom’s first time in Quebec and my dad’s first time returning to the area in almost three decades. They were visiting an old friend of his, from the days when Dad was still an undocumented immigrant — before he was a father, before he had met my mom, before he came to call the US home.

He still has his original green card from those days.

It looks nothing like the kind of cards issued to immigrants today. The modern ones say something like “United States of America Permanent Resident.”

His reads: “Resident Alien.”

It’s flimsy, and the laminate is peeling off the edges. He looks so young he’s almost unrecognizable, but his signature at the bottom of the card remains the same. His fingerprint is fading.

My mom keeps telling my dad to get a new green card because the one he’s kept for decades gives them trouble when traveling overseas. It’s legit; it’s just rare — so old that it doesn’t even have an expiration date. He says he doesn’t want to get a new one.

And after giving it some thought, I get it.

The card isn’t just a weathering piece of cardstock wrapped in plastic. It’s a memento.

A valuable trinket of the life he’s lived until now. Of the years of running around and traveling, searching for stability before he met my mom and had me and my sister. It’s an homage to the struggles and triumphs he faced as a young man facing the unknown for the first time.

My dad came to the US at the age of 18 to visit his uncle in Buffalo, NY. He fell in love with the country as an impressionable, rebellious teen and decided that he would one day come back. After teaching himself English through textbooks, radio programs and countless play-throughs of his Eagles, Chicago and Simon and Garfunkel records, he returned four years later to Boston, a city where he knew just one person, a restaurant contact, and was put in charge as the manager of a Benihana because he fit the part. He once told me about his first shift there, just standing in the middle of the dining room smiling when a woman came up to ask him where the restroom was. He didn’t understand her.

Six months into the job, he was found by immigration officials and was told he had to leave the country. The management at Benihana sent him on a plane to Canada where he was immediately approached by more immigration officials who sent him right back. He eventually made it to his uncle in New York and slipped through the Canadian border posing as a tourist at Niagara falls. From there, he traveled back to Quebec and made friends with the man with whom he reunited just a week ago. He lived there for about six months before going back to Japan to obtain the green card he still keeps in

June 13-19, 2019

Father’s Day and the American Dream

by Sayaka Matsuoka

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June 13-19, 2019

NEWS

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City of Greensboro takes Agapions, Arco Realty to court

by Jordan Green The city of Greensboro plans to take the city’s most notorious landlord to court to collect about $700,000 in uncollected civil penalties and fines from housing code violations.

Deadbeat landlords owe the city of Greensboro about $1.3 million from uncollected civil penalties and fines accrued when the city condemns housing and orders repairs. Of that, about $700,000 — more than half — is owed by the Agapion family, Assistant City Manager Chris Wilson told a group of housing advocates on June 7.

Wilson reiterated a pledge made by Mayor Nancy Vaughan two weeks prior.

He said the city will take the Agapion family and other violators to court to collect the accumulated fines.

“Unfortunately, sometimes we the city are put in a position of having to enforce — that’s not what we want to do,” Wilson said, prompting two rounds of applause during the final session of a symposium on housing and health at UNCG on Friday. “We want to help. We want to put good housing on the market.

We don’t want to condemn. We don’t want to demolish. We don’t want to take.

But when you leave us no alternative, we are going to push back. And that’s what this first step does. And I hope it sends a strong signal to everyone else that’s on that list that chooses to ignore, or allows people to live in conditions that they would not want to live in themselves.”

Wilson said city officials are reasonably confident that they know all, or most of the various legal ownership entities that the family has set up to control the properties. Troy Powell, the city’s new enforcement manager, said, “There’s 46 pages of civil penalties. That’s a lot of properties.”

The Agapion family has earned a notorious reputation for renting substandard housing going back at least two decades, but they were thrust back in the spotlight in May 2018 when a fire originating at a kitchen stove in one of their units caused the deaths of five children from a Congolese refugee family.

During their panel discussion at UNCG on June 7, Wilson and Powell also discussed a current code-enforcement case involving one of the Agapion properties on the east side of Greensboro in which the landlord apparently accepted a deposit when the property was under city condemnation.

Assistant City Manager Chris Wilson (right), seen with Code Enforcement Manager Troy Powell, addresses housing advocates last week.

“They didn’t find that a tenant had moved in; what they did find is that they reported to us that they accepted a deposit,” Powell said. “And by the code, it does look like that violates the city policies. We’re kind of looking and working on that to see what other information we need to get a notice of violation issued because that’s something you should not do. If an officer says it’s an unsafe building, you don’t go around the officer and try to rent the building.”

Powell said if the officer assigned to the case is able to develop sufficient evidence, the owner could be charged with a misdemeanor.

Irene Agapion-Martinez, who was reached at Arco Realty — the company responsible for leasing the properties, declined to comment on behalf of the family.

“We are not at liberty to comment on this or anything else,” she said. “We don’t have anything concrete to comment on. Our legal team is working on it.”

The city’s uncollected civil penalties

for housing violations has nearly doubled since 2014: An investigation by Triad City Beat published in February 2015 pegged the amount of uncollected civil penalties at $700,000. Then, as now, the Agapions topped the list, with an outstanding debt of $346,775. At the time, the city was resistant to the idea of taking violators to court to collect. Then-Code Enforcement Manager Beth Benton told TCB that the city’s goal was to encourage property owners to comply, not to collect fees.

“It’s a good motivator,” she said, “and it’s given me a good leverage tool, too.”

Powell, the new code enforcement manager, said in addition to taking deadbeat landlords to court, the city is considering taking advantage of a new law that allows cities to petition a judge to put delinquent properties in receivership. Prior the adoption of the new law in October 2018, cities were able to issue an order for repair or demolition, make the repairs or demolition, and then place a tax lien on the property. Cities could then theoretically foreclose on the

JORDAN GREEN

lien and put the property back on the market.

“The way receivership goes, it activates after an ordinance is adopted for the demolition or repair of the property,” Powell said. “When the commission issues the order, at that time we can petition a superior court and request a receiver be assigned to the property.

Now, what happens when a superior court judge assigns a receiver to the property, then all the rent and income that comes into the owner of that property is now shifted to the receiver.

Under that statute, the owner of that property can no longer receive rent; they can no longer receive anything from the property because it has been temporarily assigned to the receiver.

“You tell an owner: ‘We’re about to petition a court for a receiver and you’re no longer going to get any rent on that property,’ we’re gonna get some more interest in upfitting that particular piece of property,” Powell added.

June 13-19, 2019 Up Front News

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June 13-19, 2019 Puzzles

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The struggle is real for businesses in downtown Winston-Salem

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The renovation of Business 40 has caused significant disruption for business owners south of the downtown Winston-Salem expressway.

One owner in particular, said she was forced to close her business because the construction made it difficult for her customers to find her.

“There’s a direct correlation between the lack of people who can get to my store and the store closing,” said Patti Hamlin, the owner of Repeat Offenders (pictured above). “I would still be open if the construction wasn’t going on.”

Hamlin’s store on South Liberty Street opened in 2015 and sold refurbished furniture and other antique goods.

Work on the road project, which has been in planning for about 10 years, began last November and is expected to be completed in summer 2020.

Hamlin said on Monday that the Business 40 construction directly impacted her store’s sales and forced her out of business this month. She said since the construction started, her sales have gone down by 80 percent. The store will be open for one final day this coming Saturday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. but then Hamlin said she will be taking the summer off to regroup and think about the store’s future.

“When the construction is over, it’ll be a nice place to be,” Hamlin said. “But I won’t be reopening down here. I just can’t wait that long.”

Across the street, Nikkie Pridgen, a manager at Willow’s Bistro, said sales have gone down about 30 percent since construction began, and the restaurant has been forced to lay off staff.

But loyal customers still show up.

“It’s slowed down business a little, but people are finding a way to get here,” she said.

— Sayaka Matsuoka

June 13-19, 2019 Up Front

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OPINION

The Central Park jogger case ripples across the decades

Ava DuVernay’s four-part Netflix series When They See Us, which tells the story of five black and brown teenagers falsely accused of brutally beating and raping a 28-year-old white woman, an investment banker, could not be more timely.

It’s not just the feedback loop of a gaudy local real estate developer named

by Jordan Green Donald Trump grasping at his 15 minutes of fame through the media stunt of taking out a full-page ad in the New York Times to call for the reinstatement of the death penalty and declaring on CNN’s “Larry King Live” that, “Maybe hate is what we need if we’re going to get something done.”

Reeling from de-industrialization and the crack epidemic, New York City was considered a poster child for urban crime and chaos in 1989. The notion of New York as dangerous and out of control helped created a clamor for aggressive policing and a prosecutorial complex intent on locking up as many people as possible, no matter how flimsy the evidence and damn the social costs.

New York served as a petri dish for a national obsession with crime that touched every American city and suburb and set the stage for an explosion of incarceration when President Clinton took office about four years later. The “wolfpack” described by the New York media in 1989 would be a familiar trope by 1996, when First Lady Hillary Clinton decried “super predators” and said, “We have to bring them to heel.”

DuVernay’s depiction of how police and prosecutors stitched together a case against five teenagers who barely even knew each other through coerced confessions hit me hard. In April 1989, when the rape and arrests took place, I was 14 years old, the same age as Kevin Richardson and Raymond Santana, the two youngest defendants.

As a white teenager growing up in Kentucky, I was, of course, protected from the predations suffered by black and brown boys at the hands of law enforcement and the court system. But the energy, style and music in the first episode of When They See Us captures a cultural moment that reached me across the chasm of the racial caste system and thousands of miles away. I vividly remember my dad taking me to see Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing at a cramped community room at Kentucky State University that year, and hearing Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power,” which accompanies the final riot scene in the movie, as an electrifying generational call to arms. That song also features in the early scenes of When They See Us. And the impossibly high-fade haircut worn by actor Ethan Harisse (portraying Yusef Salaam) summoned profiles of hip-hop artists that reached me through my subscription to Spin magazine. The style was cool and sharp, and it signaled defiance and intelligence to my impressionable self.

The railroading of Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Yusef Salaam, Antron McCray and Korey Wise is a story as old as white supremacy. A white investment banker is brutally raped amidst a social backdrop of black, working-class frustration pushing up against white wealth, and so black and brown young boys expressing the exuberance and rebelliousness of youth must pay a price.

As Salaam himself recognized in a recent interview with Town & Country magazine, the dynamic is not all that far removed from Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy who was murdered in Mississippi in 1955 for the alleged offense of whistling at a white woman — a crime for which the white men who perpetrated it were acquitted.

Trump stoked hatred of the Central Park 5 with a full-page ad in the NY Times.

COURTESY PHOTO

Making explicit the lynch-mob rhetoric, future presidential candidate Pat Buchanan wrote in 1989 that Wise should be “hanged in Central Park” while the other boys should be “stripped, horsewhipped, and sent to prison.”

New York City in the 1980s and early 1990s was a place bristling with a special kind of racial tension. Its sagas seemed larger than life. Months before the false confessions were elicited from the boys for the rape of Trisha Meili, Lou Reed’s New York album was released. A dubbed copy of it reached me in Kentucky, and a blistering song called “Hold On” dropped the names Eleanor Bumpurs and Michael Stewart — respectively a disabled, black woman and a black grafitti artist fatally killed by the police — and Bernard Goetz, a white man who shot four black teenagers in the subway. I remember hearing a report on NPR about a white mob that fatally beat Michael Griffith, a 23-year-old black man, in the Queens neighborhood of Howard Beach in December 1986. The murder of Yusuf Hawkins, a 16-year-old black boy, at the hands of a white mob in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bensonhurst in August 1989 and two years later, the Crown Heights riot, pitting the black and Orthodox Jewish communities against each other, also rippled through my consciousness.

The wrongful convictions of Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Yusef Salaam, Antron McCray and Korey Wise resonate because the years taken away from them, not to mention the public humiliation and hampered ability to work and earn livelihoods, represent white supremacy writ large. Under white supremacy, their dreams had to be ripped away to send the message that white hold the upper hand.

Will NC join the cannabis revolution?

by Clay Jones

Up Front News

claytoonz.com

Opinion Culture

Medical marijuana is legal in 33 states diagnosed by a neurologist for which and the District of Columbia. Ten of currently available treatment options those states allow for recreational marihave been ineffective.” juana, and the Illinois House just passed It’s not much, but right now it’s all a recreational marijuana bill set to go we’ve got. And at least the NC General into effect in 2020. New Jersey and Assembly has learned to differentiate New York are considering recreationalbetween hemp and cannabis… sort of. cannabis bills, and the Ohio legislature There’s an agricultural bill that’s makis seriously considering putting the issue ing its way through the chambers that up for voter referendum allows for more farmers in 2019. Arizona and to be licensed to grow Florida are not too far hemp, as long Where does North industrial behind. as they have no drug Carolina stand Where does North charges in the last 10 Carolina stand in the years. in the Cannabis Cannabis Revolution?

For hemp — which, Revolution?

Short answer: Somewe remind, is not an where near the back of intoxicant.

Short answer: the pack.

But together they may Cannabis bills have represent a proverbial Somewhere near been floated in the NC crack in the windshield. the back of the General Assembly for When North Caroa couple decades now, lina joins the Cannabis pack. but this session, one Revolution, it will bring — SB 168 — has made with it not only a fairly it through the Senate and now, after robust consumer market, but also an passing its first reading in the House, industrial-grade farming apparatus waits in committee to see if it will make along with a manufacturing and distriit through. bution powerhouse.

SB 168 concerns only cannabis Make no mistake: There are former extract, or CBD — less than 1 percent tobacco farmers all over the state who THC, which is the stuff that gets you are ready to go. RJR already has the fahigh — and allows it only in cases of: cilities in place to mass-produce a smok“intractable epilepsy… autism, multiple able product. And it’s unlikely anything sclerosis, Crohn’s disease, mitochoncould move forward without including drial disease, or a medical condition these interests in the plan.

Claytoonz

June 13-19, 2019

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June 13-19, 2019

by Sayaka Matsuoka

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One advantage Li Ming’s has over it’s larger cousin, Super G Mart, is the hot bar, offering traditional rice-andtwo plates of international cuisine.

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der eggplant — a different variety than its popular Italian cousof bright green kiwi and glistening strawberries beckon cusin — and almost melts in the mouth. The lightly sautéed green tomers to make room in already full stomachs. beans with garlic act as a palate cleanser to saltier choices like Customers can order whole cakes for birthdays or other the honey chicken or sweet and spicy pork. Crisp onions and celebrations from this section. Cute, Hello Kitty-esque characslices of winter melon add texture to the shrimp stir fry which ters are drawn or sculpted out of frosting and stare out from comes tossed in a Moo Goo Gai Pan-style sauce with a subtler behind the glass. flavor. Lightly curried chicken with Besides the hefty amount of food potatoes adds a different depth of customers get from the restaurant, flavor to the mix. The buffet also the other appeal of eating at Li Li Ming’s is located at 3703 W. Gate offers simple yet satisfying dishes Ming’s is the fact that customers City Blvd. in Greensboro and is open like its smoky roasted potatoes or can attempt to make what they’ve stir-fried Chinese greens to round had at home by buying the ingredieveryday starting at 9 a.m. out a meal. The variety and affordents in the grocery store just a few ability of the buffet gives customers yards away. the chance to keep coming back to Like Super G, Li Ming’s has a vartry a new plate every time. ied produce section with vegetables like Chinese chives, that Li Ming’s also boasts a beautifully crafted pastry and cake are at times fresher than those found at Super G. The store section that’s right next to the buffet, a perfect complement also has a seafood and meat section as well as a home-goods for after lunch or dinner. Savory buns with sausages and green area to stock up on items like cutlery or cushions. onions sit individually wrapped in plastic next to sweet red After almost a decade, it’s time that Li Ming’s gets the bean buns and cream puffs. In a nearby refrigerated display recognition it deserves. Plus, they say you shouldn’t shop while case, meticulously decorated sponge cakes topped with slices hungry — Li Ming’s has that problem solved.

Shot in the Triad

t’s kind of like the middle child — people forget it’s there.

Li Ming’s Global Mart in Greensboro on West Gate City Boulevard has been around since fall of 2012, but it’s continuously overshadowed by its popular older sibling, Super G Mart, despite the fact that it’s existed for almost a decade. Sure, Super G has become known as the go-to, one-stopshop for global foods in Greensboro and it’s a bit more conveniently located than Li Ming’s, but those who visit Li Ming’s will find that the offerings and the prices for products are about the same. Plus, the food is better.

That’s right, Li Ming’s has its own restaurant and bakery — which Super G Mart doesn’t have — and some (me) might argue that it’s better than whatever new, probably short-lived restaurant takes up residence inside Super G. At Li Ming’s, the food stall is located just past the entrance on the right-hand side. An Asian buffet with more than a dozen offerings is available to customers as a “two items plus rice” combo for fast-food prices or they can order a complete entrée from the menu board with options ranging from General Tso’s chicken to spicy salted prawns or a whole steamed fish. And it’s open every day the grocery operates, which is seven days a week.

At the buffet, plenty of meat, seafood and vegetable choices create hundreds of possibilities for a two-item plate. On a recent Sunday afternoon, customers line up at the counter to fill up before shopping and ticking items off their lists. The food counter only takes cash, so customers should make sure to bring some or they can take their ticket to the grocery registers to pay with a card and bring back the receipt to the counter to collect their food.

The ladies behind the counter don’t speak much English so customers will have to be patient as they order or ask questions about the food, but it will be worth it.

As mounds of short grain rice, savory meats and spicy vegetables are loaded onto a Styrofoam plate, the heft of the food weighs heavy in customers’ hands.

It’s enough to share between two people or spread across multiple meals.

The sautéed Chinese eggplant comes sweet, with just a hint of spice, and is cooked in a golden brown sauce. The soy-based gravy coats the chunks of ten-

June 13-19, 2019

CULTURE The other one: Li Ming’s has enough to rival Super G and then some

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June 13-19, 2019 Up Front News Opinion Culture Shot in the Triad Puzzles

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CULTURE Dunleath’s porchery holds a neighborhood festival

by Cason Ragland

I

n the eye of last weekend’s rainstorm, the historic Dunleath neighborhood came alive with the sound of banjos, mandolins and acoustic guitars. Kids scrambled to the nearest backyard with a playset while their parents and other couples strolled streets shaded by old trees. Some carried lawn chairs and red Solo cups filled with light beer. The humidity was in full force — it felt like walking through a giant cube of warm Jell-O, but nobody seemed to mind.

During the Dunleath Porchfest, hosted by the Dunleath Association last weekend, a total of 44 performances went on across 40 porches in the historic neighborhood. Lynne Leonard, Mebane Ham and Shawn Patch, the three Dunleath residents at the center of this festival, organized volunteers to put up arts-and-crafts booths where kids could make string instruments from paper plates, rubber bands and paint stirrers. They asked local eateries to set up shop at the center of the neighborhood and reached out to regional artists to put on sets. Attendees wandered the interweaving streets from lawn to lawn and finally ended up in Sternberger Park for the final concert.

Ham, who lives in a 100-year-old duplex in Dunleath, hosted some of the performances that took place during the annual event. Her stage was the stoop of her front door. Most of the onlookers crammed next to each other underneath the branches of the two small trees that grew in her front yard.

“Shawn had heard of [events similar to the Porchfest,]” Ham explained. “And our neighborhood’s name changed from Aycock to Dunleath, so we thought it’d be a good way to let people know about that.”

Ham said this was the first year that included performances by children. One of them, 8-year-old Finn Phoenix, played guitar and ukulele. Phoenix, like the other performers, had a small tip jar out in front of him and he plans to spend the money on a banjo. The final song of his performance, “Life at Lindley,” was a touching piece dedicated to Lindley Elementary School.

“Jump up out of the bed and hop on the bus,” sang Phoenix. “Rollin’ on Market street without a lot of fuss/ Destination: Lindley, where learning never ends/ The day is getting started — hello, all my friends.”

Daniel Ayers holds his set on Mebane Ham’s fromt porch during the annual Dunleath Porchfest, held in what was once known as Greensboro’s Aycock Historic District.

CASON RAGLAND

The crowd joined in with Phoenix, singing back the words realization. He then carried on with his comedic tune about during the chorus. After his show, the audience stayed largely meeting Jesus Christ in person and asking him, “Can’t you see put and waited for Daniel Ayers, a musician from Graham, we’re prayin’ sinker, line and hook?/ Y’know I love your movie, who would play next. Ham introduced him as a folk singer but I never read the book.” with a sense of Southern sarcasm.

The crowd laughed at the satirical jabs towards performaAyers wore Chuck Taylors, jeans and a short-sleeved, buttive Christians and gave a rousing applause at the end of the ton-up shirt. He performed a cover of “And the Band Played track. Ayers told audience members there are typically a few Waltzing Matilda,” an anti-war song by Eric Bogle about a people who leave when he performs this piece, but things veteran who watches his fellow soldiers march in a parade were different at Porchfest. from his front porch.

“The fact that nobody left during that one says a lot about Towards the end of the song, Ayers sang, “And I watch my [us],” Ayers said. old comrades, how proudly they Dunleath is large enough to march/ Reliving old dreams of accommodate this kind of festipast glory/ And the old men val and yet small enough to offer You can find out more about Dunleath at march slowly, all bent, stiff and a welcoming, grassroots atmosore/ The forgotten heroes from sphere. It brings artists from all dunleath.org a forgotten war/ And the young over the Piedmont together in a people ask, ‘What are they place where they can exchange marching for?’” ideas and create meaningful “Y’all stuck around for that one,” said Ayers after the connections.

6-minute ballad. “Let’s see about the next one, I’ll try not to Ayers and Phoenix held an impromptu jam session before offend…. I wrote this song after I graduated from college and either of them went on stage. came back to North Carolina. Have y’all seen the ‘Thank You, Ham mentioned that she loved seeing the two of them play Jesus’ signs? This song is about those.” together and that Ayers probably had some things to teach Ayers plucked out the beginning of the song before he asked Phoenix. However, it was the other way around. rhetorically, “How does this song start? It’s been a while since “He taught me a new chord I didn’t know,” said Ayers in an I sang it.” But after a few short moments his eyebrows lifted interview on Ham’s stoop after his show. It was F minor. above the rim of his Wayfarer sunglasses in a moment of

CULTURE Authoring Action celebrates 17 years of inspiring stories

June 13-19, 2019

by Savi Ettinger

M

Up Front News Opinion Culture

Kyrah Henderson, an Authoring Action mentor for two years, performs a spoken-word piece that takes a turn towards self-love, considered through the lens of mental health.

SAVI ETTINGER

Puzzles

the National At Risk Educator’s Network’s NAREN Conferof self-love to take care of that.” ence. Recently, the group provided text to go alongside local Samuel Allen’s voice reverberates through the room, his artwork on construction fences near the Bailey Power Plant in powerful thoughts on racism and history echoing through Winston-Salem. both floors of the shop during his spoken-word piece.

Twenty-year-old Princess Jackson sings a love song, her “I am not color-blind,” he intones. “Not hateful towards mint-green nails resting on the microphone. She entered your skin, just the history that’s behind it.”

Authoring Action as a 15-year-old student, but returned as a Allen participated as a teen author in three separate ensemmusic educator. Jackson believes the bles of Authoring Action as a high program fostered as much connectivschooler, and now faces his second ity as it did creativity. year as a mentor. Allen recounts atFind out more about Authoring “It’s not so surface-level,” she says. tending the NAREN Conference with “You have more of a sense of who you the group while still in high school.

Action at authoringaction.org. are and how authentic you are.”

“You can go from writer,” he says, Kyrah Henderson walks up to a “to author.” second microphone and the song The programs’ current authors turns into a duet. Her piece too focuses on love, but then takes stand next to their mentors, as many of the partygoers gather a turn towards self-love — a topic significant to the young in a semi-circle. They surround a cake that seems small under woman. As a 16-year-old in Authoring Action, Henderson the 17 candles jutting out of its top, lit one by one. They sing — worked in a program for mental health education and awarenot to some entity, but to each other, laughing as at least 10 ness in Reynolds High School. She has worked as a mentor in people try to blow out the candles.

Authoring Action for the past two years.

It is a birthday, after all.

“Mental health is really important,” she says. “It’s the best

Shot in the Triad

y name is Kyrah,” she says. “I’m a Leo. I’m 5-foot-2, and I dye my hair a lot.”

Kyrah Henderson sets her open palms at her sides as she delivers a spoken-word piece, while Princess Jackson croons the closing lines to one of her songs. The Liberty Arts Coffee House settles from bustling to silent as the duo perform.

“I’m human,” Henderson says, “And sometimes you just have to tell your truth.”

The two portrayed their works in the downtown Winston-Salem coffee shop, as they and others celebrated Authoring Action’s 17th birthday on June 9th..

Since its founding in 2002, Authoring Action has offered programs that center on self-expression and arts education.

The nonprofit delves into visual art, filmmaking, music and writing in many forms, through both a summer intensive course and an after-school program.

Co-founder and Artistic Director Nathan Ross Freeman sees arts and education as intrinsically entwined.

“I always work from the premise that to even separate those words is incredulous,” Freeman says.

Along the walls of both levels of the coffeehouse hang framed canvases from the organization’s teen participants. A broad image of a crane with its wings spread stretches out over the beverage coolers. A handprint with each line and fold intact stands out in warm hues against a dark-blue background. A splattering of saturated hues sits behind a neon pink female sign.

Freeman, along with Co-founder Lynn Rhoades and a team of staffers, has worked with the participants — which they dub “authors” — to encourage selfactualization through creative fields.

They focus on encouraging teenagers, especially those who may otherwise not have access to the arts, to build their own voices from their experiences.

“At that time in your life, you’re seeking some form of expression,” marketing and resource development leader Elise Wallace says. “I think Authoring Action turns that expression inward.”

During the nearly two decades since the founding of Authoring Action, its programs have earned the organization and its teenage members invitations to multiple conferences and colleges, including the Harvard School of Education and as a keynote presenter at

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June 13-19, 2019

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1 Success story focus, maybe 12 Catered to?

15 Stat that may figure into a walking itinerary 16 Bambi’s aunt (in the book) 17 She played Edith Bunker in 2019 18 Music game with a floor pad, for short 19 “48___” (Nick Nolte film) 20 Like the works of Sappho 22 Brazilian jiu-___ 26 Gregarious beginning?

27 Most down 33 “Passages” author Sheehy 34 Charlotte or Gabrielle, in Broadway’s ©2017 Jonesin’ Crosswords (editor@jonesincrosswords.com) “Cinderella” 35 Radius neighbor 36 Aunt, in Asuncion 37 First option 38 Is down with 39 Measuring cup marks, for short 41 Frilly underskirts 44 She played Romy 45 Conned person’s revelation 46 Intense loathing 48 “Starry Night” setting 49 Gavin of “The Love Boat” 52 Calendar divs.

Answers from last issue 54 Theta preceder 21 Marinara brand 55 State with the shortest motto (“Hope”) 22 “Hold on!”

61 “___ blu, dipinto di blu” (“Volare” alternate title) 23 Cowed 62 “Bake him away, toys” speaker 24 Dramatic performances, quaintly 63 Packers’ pts.

25 Maple syrup, essentially 64 Moldable, squishy material in some 28 Longstocking of kids’ books ASMR videos 29 Ait, e.g.

30 Les ___-Unis Down 31 ___ clear message to 32 Oregon, for one 1 Late comedian Kinison 40 TV lawyer Goodman 2 TV actor Longoria 42 It still holds up 3 The Once-___ (“The Lorax” narrator) 43 Boat propeller 4 Part of WTF? 47 Gardasil maker 5 Woven compositions?

50 “___ Mark!” (line from “The Room” in m 6 Petri dish substance mes) 7 P.D. investigators 51 “___ the Pigeon” (“Sesame Street” song) 8 Gen. Eisenhower’s WWII command 52 It’s perpendicular to the warp 9 “Rent” heroine 53 Fuzzy fruit 10 Final answer?

56 Kaitlin’s “It’s Always Sunny...” role 11 Roan answer 57 Some smartphones 12 NYC historical site where the Stamp Act 58 Turkish title Congress met 59 “The Sound of Music” extra 13 Finished like the 2019 Scripps National 60 Dentist’s deg.

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June 13-19, 2019

CROSSWORD ‘Themeless Plug’—another freestyle for you. SUDOKU

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