TCB Oct. 19, 2016 — The Accelerated Economy

Greensboro / Winston-Salem / High Point triad-city-beat.com October 19 – 25, 2016

FREE

The

Accelerated

economy Private investment and public money fuel a startup surge in the Triad PAGE 12

Judicial hopefuls PAGE 6

Trump town PAGES 5 and 10

Tequila hitmen PAGE 17

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Oct. 19 — 25, 2016

A fact-check for Fred

by Brian Clarey

UP FRONT 3 4 5 5 5

OPINION

Editor’s Notebook City Life The List Barometer Unsolicited Endorsement

NEWS 6 Guilford judicial candidates address racial disparities 8 Hotel-retail project turned down by planning board 9 Similar Democrats compete for school board

Editorial:Thoroughly disgusted voters will determine NC 10 Citizen Green: The Trump Nation’s Altamont 11 It Just Might Work: Name Aycock Middle for Willa Player

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18 19

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Music: Scrub Pine branches out Art: For the tweens, Terror is

relative

SPORTSBALL 20 Is the Panthers’ season over?

CROSSWORD

COVER

21 Jonesin’ Crossword

12 The open-source economy

SHOT IN THE TRIAD

CULTURE

22 Ellington Street, Greensboro

16 17

Food: Caleb Smallwood & Tessa Barstool: The hitmen of

Winston-Salem

QUOTE OF THE WEEK Our playbook, our principle is that startup ecosystems do not get energized until the local entrepreneurs put their shoulder to the wheel. You’ll hear quite a lot of talk from universities, the Greensboro Partnership and the Winston-Salem Chamber, which is really good. What really makes it go is when entrepreneurs pony up with time and money.

— Peter Marsh, cofounder of Flywheel Coworking, in the Cover, page 12

1451 S. Elm-Eugene St. Box 24, Greensboro, NC 27406 • Office: 336-256-9320 BUSINESS PUBLISHER/EXECUTIVE EDITOR Brian Clarey

ART ART DIRECTOR Jorge Maturino

PUBLISHER EMERITUS Allen Broach

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brian@triad-city-beat.com allen@triad-city-beat.com

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EDITORIAL MANAGING EDITOR Eric Ginsburg

SALES EXECUTIVE Lamar Gibson

SENIOR EDITOR Jordan Green

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eric@triad-city-beat.com

CONTRIBUTORS Carolyn de Berry Nicole Crews Stallone Frazier Anthony Harrison Matt Jones

Cover photography by Jordan Green

lamar@triad-city-beat.com

SALES EXECUTIVE Cheryl Green

jordan@triad-city-beat.com

EDITORIAL INTERN Naari Honor intern@triad-city-beat.com

TCB IN A FLASH DAILY @ triad-city-beat.com First copy is free, all additional copies are $1.00. ©2016 Beat Media Inc.

I got a call this week from a longtime reader, Fred, from whom I hadn’t heard in years.

Fred congenially disagrees with just about every position I take — he’s much nicer over the phone than he can be in comment threads — which is fine by me. You don’t have to agree with my politics to be my friend.

Fred took some issue with my cover story last week, “Looking for Edward R. Murrow,” which he called “nostalgic and fawning” in an email — read the whole thing at triad-citybeat.com.

He reasoned that no one had been able to produce anyone unjustly accused by Sen. Joe McCarthy during his reign of fear in the 1950s, and that one of them whom Murrow had defended, Laurence Duggan, had been confirmed as a Soviet spy during his time with the US State Department by documents released in the 1990s.

This is true. In fact, the Venona Files — declassified Soviet recordings from the 1940s made available after the empire’s fall — implicate Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, Alger Hiss, and perhaps hundreds of other Americans in an espionage ring that circled the globe during the Cold War years.

So McCarthy was right in that there were Soviet spies working within the US government, though everybody already knew that by the time the Rosenbergs were convicted of espionage in 1951. And there is almost no overlap between McCarthy’s lists of reds and those outed by Venona, There is almost no overlap which include atomic physicist between Sen. Joe McCarKlaus Fuchs thy’s list of reds and those — who leaked outed by the Venona Files. information on the Manhattan Project — but zero names from McCarthy’s first infamous list from the 1950 Wheeling speech. Historian John Earl Haynes has done the cross-referencing on an excellent page on his website.

And none of this has much to do with Murrow, I don’t think, because he exposed McCarthy’s tactics, and revealed them to be logical canards based on half-truths and outright falsehoods — his demonization of the ACLU comes to mind.

No doubt Fred will have himself a chuckle at my naïveté when he reads this column, and hopefully he’ll fire off another letter that will send me traipsing through deep Google searches. And once again, maybe he’ll alter my worldview just a bit.

I have no such illusions that I will change Fred’s mind about anything, though. The guy’s a rock.

triad-city-beat.com

EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK

CONTENTS

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Oct. 19 — 25, 2016

WEDNESDAY

CITY LIFE October 19 – 25

Debate watch party @ International Civil Rights Center & Museum (GSO), 7:30 p.m.

The debates have been a load of barnacles so far, so why not catch the last one and be the first on your social media feed to create a meme that will go viral in 0.2 seconds? Oh yeah, but these things are supposed to be informative right? It’s possible we might learn something in this last debate to help us chose a proper president.

THURSDAY

Drumline @ Bailey Park (W-S), 7 p.m.

Bailey Park hosts a viewing of the epic college band movie Drumline, with special commentary from Winston-Salem State University’s award-winning “Red Sea of Sound” marching band as they provide insight on what it takes to truly be the best. More information regarding the event can be found on baileyparkws.com.

FRIDAY

BBQ Boogie @ Creekside Lanes (W-S), 6 p.m.

The Special Olympics of Forsyth County welcomes in the weekend with a triple-B bash to include BBQ, bowling, boogying. Not a bad way to welcome in the weekend. For more information, check out cityofws.org.

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winstonsalemfestivalballet.org

Lake of Fire film premiere @ Community Theatre of Greensboro (GSO), 7 p.m.

The Butcharts, a Greensboro family, premiere their gothic masterpiece for your view pleasure.

Join director Les Butchart for a Q&A session after the viewing for your chance to ask all those probing questions you’ve been holding in. More information can be found on ctgso.org.

SATURDAY

Author book fest @ High Point Public Library (HP), 11 a.m.

The High Point Public library will host a smorgasbord of authors at their annual book festival including author Theresa Bennett-Wilkes, who wrote Anna May and the Preacher: A Collection of Short Stories. For more information, contact maxine.days@highpoointnc.gov or call 336.883.3671.

Open rehearsal & choreographer Q&A @ Van Dyke Performance Space (GSO), 1:30 p.m.

In preparation its performance at the NC Dance Festival on Nov. 12, the Van Dyke dance troupe holds an open rehearsal at the new performance space to showcase eclectic work inspired by the people and movement of the city. More information at danceproject.org.

SUNDAY

Declan playground grand opening @ 3299 Starmount Drive (GSO), 2:30 p.m.

Greensboro Parks and Recreation hosts the grand opening celebration for the Declan playground, built in partnership with the Friends of the Greensboro Parks and Recreation center in memory of Nicole and Rich Donoghue’s son, who died of a rare immune disorder. More

by Naari Honor

information about the playground can be found on declansfoundation.org.

Kaladesh @ Gaming Underground (HP), 3 p.m.

The wonderful guys at Gaming Underground are up to it again with another fun-filled night of intense gameplay. Wizards, the Gathering is calling. Are you intuitive enough to handle what the Magic being thrown down? More information can be found on Gaming Underground’s Facebook page.

Yoga, beer and burgers @ Food Freaks Beer Geeks (W-S), 11 a.m Dude: Yoga, booze and food. It doesn’t get in better. More information can be found on the Food Freaks Beer Geeks Facebook page.

MONDAY

Drumming clinic @ GTCC Center for Creative and Performing Arts (HP), Monday, 7 p.m.

Drumming prodigy Stephen Perkins shares his insight with all of you future noisemakers in this this intense rock-shop that any fellow headbanger could love. So stop dreaming about it and be about it and bring the band back together or just start a new one. More information can be found on panrocks.com or the Stephen Perkins Drumset Clinic Featuring Pan Rocks Facebook page.

GARY TAYLOR’S

DRACULA SCORE BY CHRIS HECKMAN

WINSTON-SALEM FORSYTH COUNTY

OCTOBER 20-22, 2016

PHOTO BY GARY TAYLOR PHOTOGRAPHY

Plenty of people are calling for Donald Trump to withdraw from the presidential contest after a recording of him bragging about sexual assaulting women surfaced. But what do you think?

No

Unsure/ maybe

7 political Halloween costumes 1. Variations on the candidates

2. Other candidates

This one makes itself: formless suit, pomade hairdo and a few strategic bloodstains, with allusions to the signs of the zodiac as clues.

4. Trump grope victim

Credit for this goes to Bill Maher, who suggested on “Real

6. A key demographic

This year’s presidential election may be settled by suburban moms in the Philadelphia area and North Carolina, and by a new type of North Carolinian identified as a “halfback” — Yankees who settle on retirement in the Old North State rather than Florida (see more on halfbacks in this week’s editorial, on page 10). These Carolina snowbirds can be portrayed by wearing shorts with knee socks and sandals, and maybe a New York Giants T-shirt with some gold jewelry. A tracksuit would work, too.

7. Ken Bone

You think you’re the only one who tracked down the Izod 3/4-zippered red sweater with the brocade texture after seeing it on Ken Bone when he asked a question during the town hall debate last week? Think again. It sold out in a day on amazon.com.

All She Wrote

3. Zodiac Killer Ted Cruz

Take your pick: Paula Jones, Gennifer Flowers, Monica Lewinski… the well actually runs pretty deep on this one if you include rumor and supposition in the search.

Shot in the Triad

Anyone can be Trump or Hillary. But it takes a real wonk to find the right hat and go as Rep. Alma Adams, or replicate the clean spikes of Rep. Mark Walker’s haircut. Gov. Pat McCrory’s look could be easily emulated with a little hair product, an open-collared shirt and non-aggressive glasses.

Or try a mash-up: state Rep. John Blust as a football coach, or state Sen. Trudy Wade as an Avon Lady.

5. A Clinton mistress

Crossword

Never before has a national election been so terrifying, so it’s a natural to want to channel some of the electorate angst into your Halloween costume. For the low-hanging fruit, go as Trump or Hillary, but for something a little more refined, give it a tweak: Zombie Hillary. Prep-school Trump. Bernie Sanders in a nightshirt. Whatever.

Time” this weekend that the effect could be achieved by gluing tiny, orange doll’s hands to your body.

Sportsball

By Brian Clarey

Culture

36%

6%

Sake is daunting to plenty of American drinkers, who are willing to steer towards beer, wine and liquor styles they’re more familiar with rather than gambling on a bottle of sake that they don’t truly understand. That’s why I wrote a guide to sake last year, outlining the different kinds and explaining how it really isn’t a rice wine, but something else entirely.

Now, let’s take it a step farther.

The best sake I’ve tried so far is Dovetail Sake’s Nakahama Junmai, a slightly dry drink that’s fruity and light despite packing 16 percent alcohol.

The only ingredients: rice, koji (a fungus used for fermentation), water and Japanese yeast. (For the sake connoisseurs out there: Nakahama Junmai is made with Yamada Nishiki rice at a milling rate of 60 percent. If nigori sake is more your style, Dovetail produces a Omori Nigori as well.)

The boozy spirit that lands somewhere between wine and smooth liquor in taste is named for Nakahama Manjiro, a 19th Century Japanese-American who taught ship-building and whaling, later becoming an advisor to the Japanese government. Manjiro lived in Massachusetts, and that’s where this small-batch sake is made, too.

Sake is increasingly being made in the United States, a sign of its rising popularity here. But Dovetail Sake’s products aren’t available for purchase yet outside of Massachusetts — I’m hoping that by raising its profile, we can increase demand enough that local stores will order it.

But if that’s too much effort or you don’t trust me, there are easier ways to step into the sake world. Check out the restaurant by the same name in High Point where several choices are available, hit up a grocery store like Deep Roots in Greensboro or try some at a Japanese restaurant.

Or, if you want to throw a little money around, you could hire Brad Russell of northcarolinasake. com to come teach a class on the beverage.

I jest — only partially — but the point is that sake is rising in popularity stateside, and I’m just trying to help you keep up. Start with Dovetail’s Nakahama Junmai if you can or try another junmai variety in the meantime, but at least give sake a shot.

Cover Story

YES

New question: Who is Cherie Berry? Show us your prowess at triad-city-beat.com.

by Eric Ginsburg

Opinion

58%

Readers: The majority of our readers who voted in this week’s Barometer agreed with Jordan Green, with “Yes” polling at 58 percent and “No” way down at 36. The remaining 6 percent of the electorate picked “Unsure/maybe.”

Reader Emily Stewart Baker wrote: “At this point I am more concerned about all the women who now have to continually hear him lie about sexually assaulting them than the possibility of him winning. The fact that he has the opportunity to continue gaslighting them from such an enormous platform is troubling.”

Dovetail’s Nakahama Junmai sake

News

Jordan Green: Yes. Donald Trump’s disgraceful treatment of women, people with disabilities and veterans, along with his xenophobic rhetoric about immigrants, Muslims and people of Mexican heritage demands that he withdraw from the race, for the good of the country and the Republican Party. While Mike Pence’s theocratic and anti-LGBT views are objectionable, at least his positions are authentic.

While Trump has already inflicted lasting damage not he country and his party, even at this late stage Pence would

Eric Ginsburg: No. I don’t really understand how that would work, it would probably only enflame and embolden the most rabid and violent core of his base, and if you actually show up and vote against the disgusting neo-fascist windbag in this election, he’ll lose North Carolina, and with it likely the election. Also to Jordan’s final point that Pence would have a better shot at winning is another reason I disagree with his stance.

Up Front

Brian Clarey: Trump? Drop out? No way, dude. As much as I loathe the guy — and my distaste for him has become so strong as to come across as a physical sensation of revulsion, like I’m going to barf — he serves a higher purpose.

He’s tearing down an outdated political party — or, at least, exacerbating its demise — while creating the greatest work of political theater I have ever personally witnessed. Plus, in the end, we will get to see the man live out his worst nightmare as one of the biggest losers in history.

have a better chance at winning the election than Trump.

triad-city-beat.com

Should Donald Trump withdraw?

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Oct. 19 — 25, 2016 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Sportsball Crossword Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

6

NEWS

Guilford County judicial candidates discuss racial disparities

by Jordan Green Triad City Beat asks candidates for district court judge in Guilford County to address how they would handle racial disparities in the justice system.

Recent incidents such as the police-involved shooting of Keith Lamont Scott in Charlotte and the abusive arrest of Dejuan Yourse in Greensboro, along with revelations about black men being disproportionately subjected to police stops and searches across the state, have thrust racial disparities in the justice system into the spotlight.

District court judges work on the front lines of the state judiciary, handling misdemeanor criminal charges; civil cases involving divorce, custody and child support, along with juvenile delinquency, neglect or abuse cases.

Almost 90 percent of the cases heard in North Carolina state courts come before district court judges. Considering the number of people directly affected by their decisions, Triad City Beat is examining how candidates for district court judge in Guilford County are addressing concerns about racial disparities.

Twelve out of 14 district court judge seats in Guilford County are up for election this year, with five of those being contested. One candidate is putting disparities in the justice system at the center of his campaign, while others are addressing the issue to one degree or another. All 12 races, including the seven that are uncontested will be on the ballot for all Guilford County voters.

Samet seat Mark Cummings, a Greensboro lawyer in private practice who is running for a seat left open with the impending retirement of Judge Jan Samet, has been drumming the theme at every opportunity, from candidate forums and his campaign website to face-to-face encounters with voters at local brewpubs.

“I believe that the disparity in the justice system is the civil rights issue of our time,” the candidate says on his website, pledging to “balance the scales.” Cummings’ platform goes beyond race, arguing that judges are obliged “to confront critical and complex issues of race and policing, sexual orientation and parenting, socio-economics, religious freedom and personal liberty.”

this story, Tyrey said he sees value in diversion programs in place in the Guilford County court system that are designed to prevent young people from being funneled into jail and prison, and to help people struggling with addiction or mental health challenges get help.

Angela Foster speaks during a candidate forum, while candidates Randle Jones, Miranda Reavis Reynolds and Bill Davis wait.

Cummings said the legal system disadvantages African Americans and poor people. He said district court judges hold a unique opportunity to weed out bias in the legal system because they act as finder of fact — a role typically held by juries in superior court.

“I get to choose who I believe,” he said. “Do I believe the officer’s account because he’s an officer or am I willing to dig deeper? The prevailing view is that the person who has the greatest interest in the case is the defendant. I challenge that. I think it’s 50-50 because there’s a financial incentive when you look at the federal money [available to police] for drug interdiction, when you look at the fact that many towns and municipalities fill budget gaps with money from fines, when you look at professional advancement; they, too, have a vested interest.”

Cummings said he would also address an imbalance against defendants by exercising his discretion as judge to reject plea offers.

“The judge cannot force a district attorney to withdraw a specific plea offer, cannot force the district attorney to dismiss a case,” Cummings said. “They can refuse to accept the plea offer and explain why hopefully in an attempt to persuade either side as to why they are not accepting the pleas to say, ‘This may be one you want to try a little harder

JORDAN GREEN

on.’”

He also said he would set bond at an appropriate level so it does not become a form of pre-trial detention for defendants who are poor and indigent, and can’t afford a lawyer much less make bail.

North Carolina is one of only two states that automatically classifies 16and 17-year-olds as adults for purposes of adjudication. As a result, these offenders are saddled with criminal records, and don’t necessarily receive education, treatment and other programs guaranteed under the juvenile system. Cummings said he supports raising the age of jurisdiction to 18.

Cummings’ opponent, Marc Tyrey, is also a lawyer in private practice, but has additional experience as a prosecutor in the Guilford County court system.

Tyrey said he’s aware that a significant segment of the population believes the justice system is affected by racial disparities while not going so far as to say he shares that view.

“We all need to take a look at that and see what the causes are for that perception,” he said in an interview with TCB. “I think community members have that perception, and we need to take it seriously and do what we can to address that issue for everybody.”

Like all candidates interviewed for

Kreider seat Bill Davis and Miranda Reynolds Reavis, who are vying for the seat currently held by Judge Jon Kreider, both currently work as public defenders. Kreider, who was appointed to fill a vacancy by Gov. Pat McCrory, was eliminated in the March 15 primary.

A 2015 study by UNC-Chapel Hill professor Frank R. Baumgartner found that black males are significantly more likely to be stopped and searched by police in Greensboro and other North Carolina cities despite being less likely to be found with contraband. Asked how she would address the issue of black males being disproportionately referred into the court system, Reavis instead emphasized diverting offenders away from the criminal justice system by addressing root causes.

“Someone who routinely comes in with drug issues, they need substance abuse treatment,” she said. “They do not need to be put in jail. I think that’s going to do a lot of good. I want to treat people holistically. If it’s mental health issues, if you can get people the treatment they need, that can keep them out of the criminal justice system.”

Reavis said she supports raising the age of jurisdiction to 18.

“If you’re 16, you’re still a child; your brain isn’t developed,” she said. “A child doesn’t act reasonably in most circumstances. I’m 100 percent for that.”

Davis said it’s important for judges examine their own biases and make sure they don’t infect their judgment on the bench, and also to be alert to evidence that defendants are being charged without probable cause.

He said he believes diversion programs are generally working well in the courts, adding that as a judge he

Opinion Cover Story

Sherrill seat David Sherrill, another McCrory appointee, is defending his seat against Lora Cubbage, who currently serves as an assistant attorney general in the state Department of Justice in Raleigh.

Sherrill said regardless of whether African Americans are disproportionately referred into the court system, a judge has the responsibility to treat all parties fairly.

“Neither side has an upper hand because he’s in a jumpsuit, old clothes or a blue uniform,” Sherrill said. “You have to look at what happened at the time and whether it’s proven. We know people can make mistakes. Police can make mistakes. We all know police have a tough job, and they have to make quick decisions. Sometimes right, sometimes wrong.”

Like other candidates, Cubbage emphasized that notwithstanding any potential racial disparities in how African Americans are charged, judges are obligated to treat each case on its own merits. “I think the obligation of a judge would be to look at each case on an individual basis,” she said. “If there is a way to adjudicate that case so there is not any active time or there is not any further injustice done, then I think that’s the obligation of the court to make sure that the injustice stops at the bench and doesn’t continue to be pushed.”

Cubbage said she “absolutely” supports raising the age of jurisdiction, but only for nonviolent crimes. Echoing Judge Foster’s comments, Cubbage said every person involved in the legal system from judges down to law enforcement officers could benefit from regular bias training.

News Culture Sportsball

Jones seat Randle Jones, a Stokesdale resident with extensive law-enforcement experience who was appointed to fill a vacancy by Gov. McCrory, is defending his seat against Tonia Cutchin, a public defender who lives in Greensboro.

If African Americans are being disproportionately referred into the criminal justice system because of disparities in police traffic stops and searches, Jones said the court’s role is to protect their rights. “While the court cannot have any control over who is stopped and when they’re stopped, we’re the great equalizer,” said Jones, whose legal experience ranges from serving as a commanding lieutenant in the Guilford County Sheriff’s Office to working as a public defender. “When an individual comes in we can address those charges and see whether the evidence is gathered legally, to see if the procedures used by law enforcement are constitutional.”

Jones declined to comment on whether he supports raising the age of jurisdiction, saying that he doesn’t think it’s appropriate for a sitting judge to do so. He added that having attended some of the special commission meetings, the public is “overwhelmingly in favor” of

the proposal.

“If that happens, I think you’re going to see a drastic increase in the number of cases in the teen court and the juvenile court,” Jones said. “They provide counseling and things that are not available in the adult court. I think that’s going to have an effect on the jail population, especially for the younger adults who are going into jail.”

Whether criminal defendants who came before her were African American or not, Cutchin said it’s important that judges closely review the evidence.

“There’s a burden of proof — probable cause” she said. “As a district court judge, you need to make sure you hold officers accountable.”

Cutchin said she supports raising the age of jurisdiction to 18.

Up Front

Foster seat Angela Foster, who was first elected to the district court bench in 2008, is defending her seat against John Stone, an assistant district attorney who has earned the endorsement of the Greensboro Police Officers Association.

Foster said she also supports changing the law so that 16- and 17-year-old offenders are adjudicated as juveniles.

The candidate noted that judges in North Carolina are required to undergo training on biases. “They say, ‘We all have biases; let’s try to identify yours, so you can be acutely aware of them while you’re making a decision,’” Foster said.

“I think it’s an excellent program. Let’s expand that beyond the judges so that defense attorneys and assistant district

attorneys take it, too. It made me look deeper inside myself. I think about that at least on a daily basis.”

Stone did not attend two candidate forums hosted by the League of Women Voters of the Piedmont Triad, and could not be reached for comment for this story.

triad-city-beat.com

would take a proactive stance. “There are some gaps that can occur,” he said.

“Sometimes someone comes into court and they don’t have a lawyer representing them. There’s no one advocating for them to steer them towards a program.

Having judges aware of those programs and say, ‘Hold up, can we look at this as an option if a defendant is about to plead guilty?’ Can we have a judge who says, ‘Can we steer them to a program so they don’t have a record to avoid a criminal penalty and even more so the stain of a criminal conviction?’”

Davis said he “strongly supports” a recommendation by a commission convened by state Supreme Court Chief Justice Mark Martin to raise the age of jurisdiction from 16 to 18, with the exception of serious felonies and traffic offenses.

Crossword All She Wrote

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No Cover $3 off all vodka drinks DJ Clash & Mister Bailey Every Thursday night

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Oct. 19 — 25, 2016 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Sportsball Crossword Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

8

Proposed hotel-retail project turned down by planning board

by Jordan Green

Concerns about affordable housing and traffic appear to sink proposed hotel complex at Peters Creek Parkway and Business 40.

A proposal to develop a dining, retail, office and residential complex anchored by an eight-story hotel at the intersection of Business 40 and Peters Creek Parkway hit a wall on Oct. 13 when the nine-member Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Planning Board unanimously rejected a rezoning request by a local developer.

The proposed West Salem Marketplace Plaza project would result in the demolition of an entire neighborhood housing an estimated 80 families on limited incomes. The vote came after the board was deluged with concerns from residents in the adjacent neighborhoods of the West End and Ardmore that the project would create traffic problems and aggravate the city’s worsening shortage of affordable housing.

“This is a major change that you all are asking to move from residential to general business,” said planning board member George Bryan, who lives in the West End neighborhood. “That’s about as radical as you can get.”

Lawson Newton, a lawyer representing developer Daniel Donathan, said he wished he could “submit the perfect plan, adding, “It’s just not out there.”

He said, “We want to uplift this area.

This is not what I call blighted property.

It’s property that could use an uplift.”

Bonne Crouse, the immediate past president of the Ardmore Neighborhood Association, directly addressed concerns about affordable housing in her comments during the rezoning hearing.

“The loss of affordable housing is a very big issue in Ardmore,” she said. “We’re already facing the loss of

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Developer Daniel Donathan (back) chats with Patti Ladd after his rezoning request was shot down by the planning board.

hundreds of units on Cloverdale Hill should that project proceed. Workforce housing, or whatever you want to call it, is an endangered species already in Ardmore. And that is our loss. Everyone in Ardmore values diversity.”

The boards of the Ardmore and West End neighborhood associations both passed resolutions formally opposing the rezoning. About 25 people from the two neighborhoods raised their hands to show their opposition during the hearing.

None of the speakers identified themselves as living in the area under consideration for demolition. John Merschel, a West End resident who canvassed the neighborhood, indicated that many residents did not appear to understand the implications of the rezoning request.

“As far as the residents that we talked to, yes, there are some residents that are transient in there, but there were several people that just didn’t have any idea where they would go if this went away,” he said. “Some of the ladies that we talked to were in there 15-years-plus.”

Nick Ladd, a child and adolescent psychiatry fellow at Baptist Hospital, was unable to attend the hearing, but made his opposition plain in a letter to city planner Gary Roberts.

“As a neighbor I have spoken to individuals on the impacted properties and found that people oppose this measure, fear what it will mean for them and their families and feel helpless to stop this change,” Ladd wrote on Sept. 24.

“Several people as recently as a week ago continued to believe that the zoning change was focused on renovations to I-40 rather than demolishing their

JORDAN GREEN

homes.”

Ladd said he fears that the only affordable housing the displaced residents would be able to find is east of Highway 52, adding, “Already this city faces a growing problem of economic and racial segregation which hurts not only those forced to move due to economic limitations but the city as a whole.”

Donathan and his team were already aware that displacement would be a concern, but his lawyer emphasized that many residents rent week to week or don’t stay long because they’re unable to keep up with rent.

“If you asked the owner of that property how many week-to-week folks he has and how many come in and stay a week or stay and month and they’re gone, those numbers are pretty substantial,” Newton said. “You may have a few long-term residents — and I think that there are some long-term residents. There is an impact there and I don’t know how to address that from a progress standpoint.”

Donathan has said previously that he was working on a plan for assisting the residents that he would present to the planning board, but his architect, Eric Morrison, admitted there were no specifics.

“We have had some of these discussions about where people would be,” Morrison said. “And that discussion has been whether or not we help them with relocation. I do know the owner of these properties has some other properties as well around in the area. There was some discussion about whether we could incorporate [them] into some of the living spaces that we’re planning on

providing now. That has been thought about. The actual solution has not come about yet.”

The potential for the proposed development to generate additional traffic has created particular concern for residents of the West End, which is connected to the site by a bridge that carries West Fourth Street across Business 40. Jo Ann Mount, a West End resident, said it’s already treacherous to back onto West Fourth Street and said a speeding car once veered off the road and plowed through her hedgerow.

Bryan added that longstanding concerns about motorists speeding through the neighborhood have prompted the city to undertake traffic calming efforts.

Ramey Kemp, a traffic engineer hired

by Donathan, argued that the increased traffic generated by the project would at most add five seconds to time it took residents to pull out of their driveways.

A study he completed for the developer assumes that only 20 percent of the traffic from the development will flow out through West Fourth Street, despite the fact that the residential street links to the popular Burke Street commercial area and, further beyond, to downtown’s Restaurant Row. He predicted 80 percent of the traffic would come out on Peters Creek Parkway. In order for the state Department of Transportation to sign off on the plan, the left-turn option would be discontinued where West Fourth Street spills onto Peters Creek Parkway at the Filly’s strip club, impeding travel in a northerly direction towards downtown.

“Most of the traffic is going to go up Peters Creek Parkway,” Ramey said.

“It’s gonna come out from the development, go south, down to the nearest U-turn and make a U-turn and go back north.”

Donathan conferred in the hallway with project planner Gary Moore after his request went down in defeat.

He said the call about whether to appeal the decision to city council will ultimately ride on the feedback he receives from his investment partners.

Councilman Dan Besse, whose ward encompasses the site, and Councilman Jeff MacIntosh, who represents the West End, have both said that they regard the project with skepticism.

“We’ll proceed if we can resolve some of the issues and get a plan that’s acceptable from the residents and the staff,” Donathan said.

Likeminded first-time candidates face each other in the District 7 race for Guilford County School Board, but priorities and experience delineate options for voters.

Culture Sportsball Crossword Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

Bettye Jenkins When Bettye Jenkins retired in July, she had 23 years of experience in Guilford County Schools under her belt, and eight more working in the education field, including for Thomasville City Schools. Jenkins, who received her bachelors and masters in social work from NC A&T, worked as a teacher’s assistant, school social worker and community service works coordinator for Guilford County Schools.

In addition to highlighting her resume, Jenkins’ campaign material emphasizes that she is a lifelong Democrat despite being listed as unaffiliated on the ballot.

Jenkins said she filed late because she wanted to secure her family’s support first, making sure her siblings could be there for her elderly mother should the need arise before committing to run for the time-consuming post. After talking with her family around Christmas 2015, Jenkins decided to file, she said.

Easily her biggest concern, Jenkins said the school board needs to do more to tackle the academic achievement gap “so all children can be successful.” If elected, she’d push for assessments and finding out from principals what they need, adding that the solution may vary by school. In some cases, ordering new books might be a priority while at other schools there may be a greater need to train parents and grandparents how to use tablets in order to help kids complete homework assignments, she said.

Cover Story

ished paying for his mother’s degree — Gladden said he financially supported his mother and sister’s schooling as they obtained graduate degrees, adding that his mom is now a teacher in Randolph County.

Opinion

Byron Gladden The 31-year old, who was born in Greensboro but raised in Randolph County, is arguably most well known for his activism, frequently speaking at community meetings on a plethora of subjects including, of course, the school system. In addition to founding a group called Greensboro Call to Action and participating in groups such as Black Lives Matter and the NAACP, Gladden received the endorsement of the proLGBT Replacements Limited PAC, the Simkins PAC and notably the Guilford Education Alliance, Gladden said.

Bettye Jenkins

Gladden, who works in the healthcare industry in High Point, said his top three issues are the long-term infrastructure improvement needs of the county’s schools, disproportionate suspensions of students of color and increasing wages for employees such as bus drivers. Guilford County Schools should consider more restorative justice approaches and address inconsistent enforcement with school suspensions, embracing policies that protect and nurture students of color in particular who are currently marginalized, Gladden said.

Like his opponent, Gladden stressed the need to address the racial achievement gap, dropout rate and school-toprison pipeline. He also emphasized his opposition to charter schools, which he said constitute “a systemic attack” on traditional public schools.

Gladden argued that he would bring a community-oriented approach to the school board, saying that he hasn’t waited to be elected to push for needed change, showing up at school board meetings and forums to raise questions pertaining to racial justice, among other issues. Gladden believes in “empowering people with information,” he said, adding that he would regularly engage with advocates, activists and school employees to better understand where stakeholders stood on various issues that come before the school board.

Acknowledging and commending his opponent’s long-term employment within the school system, Gladden characterized his decision to run as “intentional” and “not an afterthought,” pointing out Jenkins’ late filing for the seat.

Gladden, who has some college credit to his name, hopes to enroll at NC A&T University in 2018 to pursue a degree in education. He’s waiting until he’s fin-

News

Here’s a look at the two District 7 candidates, presented in alphabetical order by last name.

Byron Gladden

Up Front

Bettye Jenkins and Byron Gladden may be the most closely aligned candidates anywhere on Guilford County ballots this election, likely because they’re both members of the same political party.

Jenkins, a recently retired Guilford County Schools employee, filed to run for school board after the deadline, forcing her to collect more than 1,600 signatures in the district to appear on the ballot. Having exceeded the mark, Jenkins appears on the ballot as an unaffiliated candidate even though she describes herself as a lifelong Democrat.

Her opponent, activist Byron Gladden, is running as the Democrat in the race, and there is no Republican candidate.

District 7 looks like a lumpy blanket covering eastern Greensboro and stretching into parts of Guilford County, a majority-minority district that favors Democrats. The redrawn Guilford County School Board map takes effect with this election alongside several other changes to the board, including making races partisan and shrinking the number of positions. Jenkins or Gladden will join a body full of newcomers like them.

At least three of the other eight board members will be new, representing Districts 1, 3 and 6, where no incumbent is running. Only two incumbents — Democrat Deena Hayes-Greene and Republican Linda Welborn — face no challengers.

There are considerable obstacles, Jenkins said, including a lack of home access to internet for many students of color that makes it difficult to keep up with schoolwork.

Addressing the racial achievement gap would alleviate other issues too, Jenkins said, such as the dropout rate and attendance issues. Early intervention, especially around literacy, can be vitally important too, she said.

Jenkins also said that more could be done to engage parents, staying in more regular contact so that they aren’t only hearing from the school system if there is bad news to report. During her tenure, she participated in community events where school employees went out into neighborhoods with food to meet parents during a report-card pickup, and events like that are one way to increase parental involvement and build relationships, she said.

Jenkins said she has received endorsements from the Triad Central Labor Council, Greensboro Regional Realtors Association and the Guilford County Community PAC, in addition to several local elected officials.

triad-city-beat.com

Democrats with similar priorities compete for school board seat

by Eric Ginsburg

9

Oct. 19 — 25, 2016 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Sportsball Crossword Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

10

OPINION

EDITORIAL

Thoroughly disgusted voters will determine NC Early voting begins this week in North Carolina, which means if we’re going to do some handicapping, now is the time.

Even the most seasoned readers of the tea leaves are shrugging their shoulders at the Old North State, which falls into the must-win category for Donald Trump as the electoral map starts to settle. Trump’s message certainly has traction here — going by yard signs, bumper stickers and flags, anyway — and resonates even more soundly in the hinterlands of the state.

But in light of recent events, specifically the ones that involve talk of grabbing, a new category of voter seems to be emerging alongside the suburban moms and “halfbacks” — which are retired Yankee snowbirds who didn’t make it all the way down to Florida — that we’ve been told will determine the winners in North Carolina.

Call them the “thoroughly disgusted”: voters who for whatever reason are unable to cast their lot with Hillary Clinton, but who have become so disillusioned with Trump and the party that produced him that they can’t bring themselves to endorse his campaign either.

Faced with a choice between a woman whom 41 percent of North Carolina Trump supporters regard, literally, as “the devil” according to an August PPP poll, and the man who says he gropes women, smart money says the thoroughly disgusted voter will take the path of least resistance and just stay home.

And because the thoroughly disgusted ranks are filled almost exclusively with Republican voters, their absence will be felt all throughout the undercard. That means Gov. Pat McCrory would likely be toast against challenger and current Attorney General Roy Cooper, who, ironically, sometimes reminds us of a piece of toast.

It means Sen. Richard Burr, who Real Clear Politics put at +1.8 on Monday, could easily fall to Democrat challenger Deborah Ross. And it should trickle through the council of state races, none of which, according to the latest from PPP, are dominated by Republican candidates.

But even that poll dates back to September, and this election now has a point of demarcation: There are things that happened before we heard Trump say the P-word, and things that happened after.

And just as with that particular genital feature that Trump is so fond of describing, in the case of his bid for North Carolina, those votes aren’t going to grab themselves.

CITIZEN GREEN

The Trump Nation’s Altamont

The mild autumn weather, the grassy slope of the outdoor amphitheater, the anticipation for a rock-star headliner — they all gave Donald Trump’s Oct. 14 rally in Greensboro the feel of a small music festival.

It didn’t hurt at all that the

by Jordan Green campaign’s playlist, which never varies, heavily favors late ’60s and early ’70s classic rock, with no act better represented than the Rolling Stones.

The Stones’ swagger is undoubtedly an appealing part of the association, but given the cascade of revelations and allegations involving sexual misconduct by the candidate, the lascivious aspect of the music has become impossible to ignore. Maybe it’s time to retire “Let’s Spend the Night Together,” a song that was considered so risqué when it was released in 1967 that many radio stations refused to air it. Of course, when triage mode for a campaign involves urging the candidate to stop insulting women and veterans, no one should expect such a small matter of nuance and tone to top any staffer’s list of concerns.

Besides, the songs are part of a complete package that builds the audience’s adoration for their misunderstood antihero. The throbbing rhythm underneath Mick Jagger’s pleading vocal, “Don’t hang me up and don’t let me down/ We could have fun just foolin’ around,” seemed to buoy the middle-aged woman swaying on the grass while holding a “Make America Great Again” sign overhead as she danced with a young boy who might have been her grandchild.

Of course, a song like that is also a jab at a sense of prudish sexual propriety. It feels right for an audience that would squeal with delight when Trump mocked Jessica Leeds — the woman who accused him of grabbing her breasts and trying to put his hand up her skirt on an airplane — by saying, “When you looked at that horrible, horrible woman last night, you said, ‘I don’t think so.’”

Trump’s supporters appreciate the earthiness of their candidate, the fact that he doesn’t mask his appetites with phony sophistication. And yet it’s baffling that Trump continues to play to the passions of his dwindling hardcore base. Elections are won and lost at the margins. The lusty throngs packing the arenas to see him are already in his column. The audience he needs to reach are the reluctant independents who get their information through the television and other “mainstream” media that Trump regularly denounces as “corrupt.”

The multi-generational crowd reminded me of a rainbow gathering, and stylistically the comparison wasn’t too far off, considering the large cohort of people unostentatiously dressed in denim and faded working-folks attire, men with full beards and women with long hair tied back in utilitarian fashion. From the senior citizen wearing an oversized Uncle Sam hat to the dude sporting a biker-style full beard and shaved head while dressed in military fatigues with a T-shirt inscribed with the word “infidel,” they seemed bound together as a tribe of misfits hopelessly outnumbered by a hostile mainstream. There was the African-American man who chanted, “Blacks for Trump,” during the candidate’s litany of inner-city

woes and drew looks of appreciation from the mostly white crowd. There was the white man with short sandy hair wearing an American-flag collared shirt who made me think of a right-wing Hunter S. Thompson character — someone who believes deeply in America and yet feels alienated by the America he sees before him. Out of sorts with society, they’re finding community with each other and an imperfect candidate whose demand for loyalty is embodied in an early Stones song in the rotation that repeats the desperate entreaty: “You gotta tell me you’re coming back to me.”

When “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” came on, a youngish television reporter called up to his cameraman, “Is that ‘Brown Sugar’?” Fortunately, it wasn’t. There’s an undercurrent of misogyny and racism in much of the Stones’ catalogue, and nowhere is it more evident in the lead track from Sticky Fingers, which explicitly eroticizes racial oppression with the lyrics, “Gold Coast slave ship bound for cotton fields/ Sold in a market down in New Orleans/ Scarred old slaver knows he’s doin’ alright/ Hear him whip the women just around midnight/ Brown sugar, how come you taste so good/ Brown sugar, just like a young girl should.”

“You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” with its distinctive intro featuring church-choir vocals and gently strummed acoustic guitar, holds a special place in Trump’s musical pantheon. It’s not only part of the rotation, but plays the candidate out as he leaves the stage.

There must be some special significance. I somehow find it doubtful that it’s a subconscious admission that the candidate knows he’s going to lose this election.

I’d like to think instead that it’s a wink to his audience signaling that they shouldn’t really believe his magical promises to bring back their jobs and make America great again, that this is all a showbiz stunt playing suckers for great ratings.

You can’t always get what you want.

JORDAN GREEN

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Willa B. Player.

Never heard of her? That’s part of the reason it would be worth naming a school for her.

Player served as the president of Bennett College for a decade ending in 1966, after originally being hired to teach Latin and French at the historically black college. But it’s not just her educational career or its proximity to Aycock Middle that makes Player worth commemorating and celebrating. Consider this, from the Civil Rights Digital Library: “[In 1956], Player became the first female president of the college and the first African-American woman in the country to be named president of a four-year fully accredited liberal arts college,” a bio of Player on the site reads. “During the peak of [sit-in] demonstrations in Greensboro, when almost 40 percent of the Bennett student body was arrested and jailed, Player visited students daily and arranged for professors to hold class and administer exams for jailed students. She also arranged for Martin Luther King to speak when no other group in Greensboro was willing to host him.”

That’s in contrast to the stance other city leaders took at the time, which you can read more about in William Chafe’s seminal book Civilities & Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina and the Black Struggle for Freedom — a book that should be required reading in Guilford County Schools and that all of you should pick up immediately, by the way.

There are plenty of other figures worth considering, including Albion Tourgée or Edward R. Murrow (see Brian Clarey’s cover story for this publication last week for more on Murrow). But wouldn’t it be poetic justice to see Aycock’s name come down and to see a civil rights activist and educator — and a black woman, to boot — replace him?

That’s exactly the message we should be sending our children.

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Up Front

The Guilford County School Board voted earlier this year to rename Aycock Middle School — good for them, considering former North Carolina Gov. Charles B. Aycock’s status as a leading white supremacist figure — and soon they’ll start taking formal suggestions for his replacement.

The school system will gather feedback at Aycock Middle School on Oct. 18 at 7 p.m., but I’ve got a name to suggest for contention already.

triad-city-beat.com

PIZZERIA

IT JUST MIGHT WORK

11

Private investment and public money fuels a start-up surge in the Triad

by Jordan Green

Cover Story

Oct. 19 — 25, 2016

The accelerated economy

Dalton Grein, fund executive for Piedmont Angel Network, fields a question during a Q&A at HQ Greensboro with Timothy McLoughlin of Cofounders Capital (left), Lou Anne Flanders-Stec with the Greensboro Chamber’s Entrepreneur Connection and moderator Monica Doss.

12

Autumnal light sifted into the reclaimed industrial confines of HQ Greensboro, a co-working space in the city’s burgeoning South End district on recent Wednesday evening as Joel Bennett handed out nametags and directed guests to the back for pizza and beer before they heard presentations from investors.

A business consultant with a background in industrial design, Bennett is a principal at New City Ventures.

Founded by April Harris, a community and business development manager, New City Ventures is a prime mover in the hive of workshops, pitch events, competitions and mentoring programs that have animated the startup community in and around the city’s makerspace and two co-working spaces. The evening’s program offered a twist on the usual format of entrepreneurs pitching their

business models to investors with the apt title “Reverse the Pitch.”

As retired executives, graying academics and young entrepreneurs — about 70 in all — settled into folding chairs or huddled along the exposed brick walls, Monica Doss, also a principal at New City Ventures, laid out the presenters’ dual challenge of explaining how they work with startup founders while also attracting new members to build capital.

“They’re going to be speaking out of both sides of their mouth,” Doss said. “Not like investors don’t do that all the time. Just kidding.”

Timothy McLoughlin, a junior partner with the Carybased investment fund Cofounders Capital, went first.

“Thanks for welcoming me all the way from Cary, North

Carolina,” he said. “It was a pretty quick trip. We need to get over here more often.”

He explained that the $12 million seed fund typically finances the first round of investment in business-to-business software.

“We invest in local companies,” McLoughlin said. “The reason we invest in local companies is because we are incredibly hands-on, which we’ll talk about in a bit.” The funds’ investors — “high net worth individuals, formerly successful entrepreneurs, C-level executives in big companies” — bring not only cash but expertise to the table. The fund typically writes checks for $300,000 to $350,000 in exchange for 15 to 20 percent ownership in the companies, he said, acknowledging, “That’s a pretty big chunk of equity that we’re taking in the company.”

remained “mainly a buzzword” that wasn’t widely understood.

Today, according to a recent story by Tad Friend in the New Yorker, there are 160 start-up accelerators in the United States, and thousands more around the world.

Perhaps the most illustrious accelerator, San Francisco’s Y Combinator — which helped launch Airbnb — provides $1.7 million to its startups.

The lean start-up model immediately appealed to Bennett, for whom iterative processes were second nature thanks to his background as a designer. Among other jobs in his portfolio, Bennett created models for the Swedish home-appliance manufacturer Electrolux and designed a trade-show display for Tanger Outlets.

Like business incubators, start-up accelerators act as a kind of intervention by providing external support to allow new ventures to weather adversity and eventually become viable. Bennett made the case in an interview that accelerators are particularly suited to the rapidly innovative environment for tech companies.

“An accelerator has a specific start and end date,” he said. “There’s an injection of capital. An accelerator is an immersive process with specific benchmarks. You have to prove your hypothesis. You validate your assumption or not. If you can’t validate your assumption, you have to pivot. An incubator has a different duration of time; it’s a longer-term engagement. Both an accelerator and an incubator provide resources not easily available like mentors and service providers. Tech companies can accelerate — that is, grow very rapidly. That’s a new business model because of technology. That compressed timeframe — three months is all you need.”

Not all accelerators strictly adhere to the model, as Bennett acknowledged, and some don’t provide capital to their startups. In 2014, the Greensboro Partnership recruited Bennett to lead the Triad Startup Lab accelerator, whose graduates include Home State Apparel and the Artist Bloc, at the Collab co-working space. Bennett said the Triad Startup Lab, which ran four sessions from the summer of 2014 through the winter of 2016 and received public funding, was “not a true accelerator” because it didn’t provide investment capital to its participants.

Bennett’s design background shaped his mentorship of the startups under his tutelage.

“I know a little bit about engineering,” Bennett said. “I know a little bit about human factors and user-experience design. I owned this design firm for years in Greensboro that had clients like Volvo Trucks. These are skills that entrepreneurs need to start companies. Building websites — that’s something I can do. I can help entrepreneurs come up with a concept and illustrate it. I’m not the only one who believes that design adds value to companies.”

Urban Offsets also participated in a modified accelerator program, but in a roundabout fashion the experience helped them secure funding. As a “first-step accelerator,” Groundwork Labs in Durham doesn’t provide funding to startups, while offering programming free of charge to participants.

Urban Offsets applied for an NC Idea Grant in the fall of 2014, but didn’t initially make the cut, just before

landing a spot in the Groundwork Labs accelerator. Immediately after completing the program in the spring of 2015, founder and CEO Shawn Gagné applied again and secured the grant.

“It was critical; our success was directly determined by our participation in that program,” Gagné recalled. “I was by myself at that point with untested ideas. Although I knew what I wanted to do, I wasn’t sure how it would work.

Through the accelerator program I was able to scientifically test my theory, to iterate. Why isn’t this working the way I thought it would? What would work instead?

Accelerator programs will continually force a participant to test and re-test and learn from mistakes.”

The timeframe at Groundwork Labs was also more elastic than the traditional model.

“The official accelerator program I believe is eight weeks long,” Gagné said. “Like any good accelerator, if you’re making recognizable progress and showing coachable behavior you’re able to stay on. That’s why I was able to stay on through the spring of 2015.”

Through the accelerator, Gagné learned that his initial assumptions about the market were incorrect.

“One of the first assumptions we made was that sustainable for-profit companies would be the first ones purchasing our carbon offsets,” he said. “We interviewed Volvo and Burt’s Bees. We found there was a disconnect between what I thought they wanted — community-based offsets — and what they wanted. It didn’t matter as much to them where the offset came from. We had to pivot. We had to understand the marketplace a little better and find a way to serve it. All this stuff is self-learning.”

Gagné also came to realize that the voluntary market for carbon credits was different than the compliance-based market. “The standards in the voluntary [market] are very hard to work with on a small scale,” Gagné said. “We tried to use the California standards.

They’re untenable at a community level. They’re too expensive. There’s no way we could bring the community up to them.”

Urban Offsets wound up collaborating with Duke University’s Carbon Offset Initiative to develop a new standard, and tested it in Wilson, NC. While Joel Bennett was running the Triad Startup Lab in Greensboro, an entrepreneur named Peter Marsh cofounded Flywheel Coworking in Winston-Salem with Alicia Hardin and Brad Bennett (no relation to Joel) in 2014. The co-working space has signed up 130 member companies, including 80 tenants.

“We have created over 20 companies since we founded the co-working space in September 2014,” Marsh said. “A lot of those companies were founded by members, from the accelerated serendipity you get from the co-working space.”

Like HQ Greensboro, Flywheel hosts a seemingly endless stream of programmed events designed to push out information, promote collaboration and bring entrepreneurs, investors, designers and other members of the innovation economy into contact with each other.

“On any given month we’ll have around 400 people attending our curriculum — all designed to stimulate the

triad-city-beat.com

McLoughlin salted his presentation with references to deals Cofounders Capital has recently closed with North Carolina companies.

“One thing we are very, very excited about is Urban Offsets, which a lot of you know Urban Offsets, which is a local company out here,” he said, eliciting whoops and clapping from the audience in recognition of a tenant at HQ Greensboro.

“And that just closed Monday.”

Urban Offsets, which sells carbon credits to universities and then uses the funds to pay cities to plant trees that sequester carbon as part of an effort to limit climate change, recently completed its seed round of financing with Cofounders Capital, pumping $300,000 into the company and allowing it to make payroll for its six employees for the first time.

Like many startups that are quickly ramping up in the Triad, Urban Offsets’ young life has been markedly affected by a passage through an accelerator — a program that literally speeds up development by testing and modifying business models to achieve viability and quickly obtain financing that helps to overcome the substantial front-end costs needed to make a product and deliver it to market.

The process emerged, naturally, out of Silicon Valley, the region that leads the nation in tech innovation and wealth generation. It utilizes a method called the “lean startup” popularized by Steve Blank, a professor at Stanford University. Blank credits one of his students, Eric JORDAN GREEN Ries, with coining the term based on similarities in the Toyota production system known as “lean manufacturing” to an emerging schema of “iterative agile techniques.”

“Why the Lean Start-Up Changes Everything,” an article written by Blank for the Harvard Business Review in May 2013, outlined the process. The “lean start-up” method, Blank wrote, “favors experimentation over elaborate planning, customer feedback over intuition, and iterative design over traditional ‘big design up front’ development. Although the methodology is just a few years old, its concepts — such as ‘minimum viable product’ and ‘pivoting’ — have quickly taken root in the start-up world, and business schools have already begun adapting their curricula to teach them.”

At the time, Blank wrote that the lean start-up movement — based on “principles of failing fast and continually learning” — hadn’t “gone totally mainstream” and

13

Oct. 19 — 25, 2016 Cover Story

14

ecosystem,” Marsh said.

From the start, the goal of Flywheel was to launch an accelerator, and to raise capital to support the startups that went through the program.

Marsh said he and his cohorts at Flywheel hold the theory that “there are three essential ingredients for a start-up ecosystem.”

The first ingredient is possessing a multitude of ideas.

“Secondly,” Marsh said, “you need a very disciplined and structured method for helping entrepreneurs get from ideas to repeated revenue; that’s what accelerators are for.”

The third ingredient is capital investment. “The best accelerators are funded; that’s the fuel that makes them go,” Marsh said. “The investment accelerators attract the best of the best.”

Marsh and his partners at Flywheel leveraged their connections to raise capital for what would become the New Ventures Challenge Accelerator. Marsh is a vice president of the architectural firm Workplace Strategies and Brad Bennett is the cofounder and “chief firestarter” of the Wildfire marketing and advertising agency. Their track record of success with their respective companies gave them the credibility to ask for money, Marsh said.

“We went to not established wealth, which is who people usually go to,” Marsh said. “We went to the wealth creators who are developing wealth. We used some demographic tools to figure out who our potential demographic might be. We went to them and we got immediate traction, and they said, ‘We’ve been waiting for this.’

We were able to put together a fund in three months.”

Marsh said the partners at Flywheel assembled the fund through 200 one-on-one meetings over breakfasts, lunches and dinners, adding that they’ve created five sequential funds ranging from $350,000 to $500,000 per year that the New Ventures Investment Club plans to deploy through 2020 with the goal of creating 30 to 40 new companies.

“Our playbook, our principle, is that startup ecosystems do not get energized until the local entrepreneurs put their shoulder to the wheel,” Marsh said. “You’ll hear quite a lot of talk from universities, the Greensboro Partnership and the Winston-Salem Chamber, which is really good.

What really makes it go is when entrepreneurs pony up with time and money.”

Investors are motivated by a mix of altruism and profit motive, Marsh said, but it skews towards the former.

“I think this is 55 percent altruism and 45 percent profit motive,” he said. “If we do our job well and create a highly curated portfolio of startups, we expect there will be returns on a few of the startups. It’s not going to be huge.”

Marsh and his partners raised $355,000 for Flywheel’s inaugural accelerator, which ran from June through early September. They chose Joel Bennett to run the accelerator.

“The startup community is a very open force,” Marsh said. “All of the investors, all of the angel groups, all of the accelerators get to know each other and try to support each other. We roam around the state going to lots and lots of events. I first met Joel at a startup weekend event

Jonathan Woahn, CEO of Catalant, pitches to investors during the New Ventures Challenge Accelerator’s Demo Day at BioTech Place in Winston-Salem in early September.

I think three years ago. I admired his work, admired his passion and devotion to the startup community. He was running the Triad Startup Lab. At the time it was the only structured program around lean startup methods. And so we just felt like he was the top talent in the market, so we invited him to come over and manage our accelerator. He did a great job.”

Out of 230 applicants, five companies were chosen to participate in the New Ventures Challenge Accelerator.

With one dropping out, four companies ended up going through the program. Catalant, a Greensboro company that collects productivity metrics to help businesses improve employee performance, was a graduate of the Triad Startup Lab. Scout IoT, also based in Greensboro, is a data collection company that serves industrial clients.

Wilmington-based Petrics is developing a mobile app to help people manage care for their pets. And Leading Role in Winston-Salem is virtual-reality gaming company.

The companies competed for the first of three tranches of capital, but over the course of the program the funding was equalized so that each one received a total of $50,000 to support their growth.

The accelerator culminated in a Demo Day at BioTech Place, where the startup founders used PowerPoint presentations to pitch their businesses to investors. The Sept.

8 event drew luminaries like Mayor Allen Joines, Councilwoman Molly Leight and Wake Forest Innovation Quarter President Eric Tomlinson.

“I was talking to someone before Demo Day, and I tried to draw an analogy,” Joel Bennett recalled. “Have you ever seen the movie Code Black? I felt like I was running triage in an emergency room. I’ve got a group bleeding.

JORDAN GREEN

I’ve got someone crying over there. This one wants its mom. It’s time limited and deadline-driven. You’ve got to get it done. There’s this urgency. I really admire the courage of people who launch startups and I enjoy being around them.”

Mike Oder, a cofounder at Leading Role, said as much as anything else the accelerator was helpful in providing moral support.

“We can actually have a more vibrant, open culture,” he said. “It can help us succeed. If we’re all working together we can do better. Being a businessperson can be challenging. You need that support structure…. When you get down because things aren’t going the way you want them to, it’s hard to get the motivation to keep going.”

Before the accelerator had finished, Leading Role had a first-person shooter game called “Cyber Threat” on the market as a kind of test-run in advance of the more ambitious “Sherlock Holmes: A Scandal in Bohemia,” a narrative virtual-reality game the company hopes to release in mid-2017.

“We’ve had 1,200 sales so far,” Oder said. “It’s about $18,000 in revenue. “This is a very small market. The estimates are it’s going to grow dramatically. It’s never going to be easier than now to get in on this.”

The release of HTC Vive and Facebook’s Oculus Rift headsets earlier this year stand to double the market for virtual reality games, Oder said. PlayStation VR hit the market on Oct. 13, and Oder said his company will probably target the platform sometime next year.

While Peter Marsh was raising capital to support tech startups at Flywheel, Margaret Collins was laying the groundwork for a similar effort to assist creative ventures.

“They definitely need this help and this exposure to the business curriculum and the business expertise, and they’re not usually included,” said Collins, who started the non-profit Center for Creative Economy in Winston-Salem in 2011. “It’s not that they can’t apply to tech accelerators; they’re just not marketed to. This is a real niche to just go out and market to creative companies. They’re receptive to it, and they find real value because we deliver a program that caters to them.”

Collins founded the National Creative Economy Coalition, through which she met Alice Loy, the founder of Creative Startups in Albuquerque, NM. Collins traveled to Albuquerque to observe the culminating week of Creative Startups’ accelerator program. Chad Cheek, who owns the Elephant in the Room design-consulting firm in Winston-Salem, accompanied Collins and acted as a mentor for the accelerator. Cheek also serves on the board of directors of the Arts Council of Winston-Salem/Forsyth County, and he argued to his fellow board members that the council should provide financial support to help bring the Creative Startups accelerator to Winston-Salem. The Kenan Institute for the Arts, the city of Winston-Salem and Wake Forest Innovation Quarter eventually pitched in, along with an array of other funders.

Six of 10 companies selected to participate in the accelerator were from North Carolina, with the remaining startups coming from Chicago, Nashville, Atlanta and Mexico City. The eight-week program utilized a Stanford University curriculum customized for creative businesses, and brought in financial and marketing mentors from as far away as Singapore. The accelerator culminated in a competition that resulted in three of the companies split-

JORDAN GREEN

ting $50,000 in seed funding, including Chicago-based Embodied Labs, as well as the Feeling Friends and Muddy Creek Café & Music Hall, both located in Winston-Salem.

“Even when companies have different products and business models, it’s really helpful to have a group of people who are going through the same kind of challenges so you can bounce ideas off each other,” said Carrie Shaw, the CEO and medical illustrator for Embodied Labs. “It’s like being at the awkward middle school stage, so you can bounce all the basic questions like how you handle legal issues or customer acquisition instead of paying someone on your own like a lawyer or searching by yourself.”

The company, whose products provide health training by simulating experiences like vision impairment and hearing loss through virtual reality, was founded by four Winston-Salem natives, although it is now located in Chicago.

Shaw met future cofounder Ryan Lebar when they worked for a bat biologist at the Center for Design Innovation in Winston-Salem. Shaw’s graduate studies focused on biomedical visualization, and she chose the University of Illinois at Chicago because of its reputation for being tech centered. Her senior thesis on how to illustrate first-person patient experience led to the formation of the company.

“We brought Ryan on the team when we decided to integrate virtual reality into our prototyping,” Shaw recalled.

“None of us were planning to start a business. Over the year, we saw that we had created something innovative. I was set to get my PhD this fall, which I deferred to start this company.”

The $25,000 in prize money received by Embodied Labs will help the company cover operating costs during pre-production for its initial product line.

triad-city-beat.com

Brendan Younger, CEO of Scout IoT, pitches during Demo Day at BioTech Place.

“Coming in, our biggest goal was to get mentorship, and the next step was to take a lot of feedback,” Shaw said. During the last week of the program, known as the “deep dive,” Shaw said her company “almost had some blanks that we were hoping to fill. We did that through working with someone with a background in publishing.

We did something with an animation studio that we connected with through seasoned venture capitalists, or angel investors. Through them we were able to hone in on what we needed to address for our business.”

Karen Cuthrell, founder of the Feeling Friends, said she found the accelerator mainly useful as a conduit to financing.

“To raise capital, no one really understood what I’m doing,” she said. “I’m not a tech company, I’m not a biotech company. It gave us the opportunity to pitch in front of investors as a creative startup company. You know, ‘Sesame Street’ was turned down by all three networks. We’re like the ‘Sesame Street’ for the 21st Century. Social-emotional learning is trending. There’s so few products on the market right now; there’s a missing gap.”

Cuthrell got the idea for the Feeling Friends when her daughter was diagnosed with depression at the age of 6. She decided to create a line of characters with names like Lotta Love and Hattie the Hippo, with accompanying coloring books, musical CDs and e-books.

“Her psychologist said, ‘You’ve got to get her to talk about her feelings,” Cuthrell recalled. “It was the characters and the music that really helped her. We take the plush toy — Lotta Love sings about what love is. Hattie the Hippo sings about what makes you happy. Each one comes with a book so the children have a story that helps them understand how to handle that feeling.”

She’s spending the $15,000 she won in the competition as the second-place finisher on ordering prototypes for plush toys from Raleigh-based manufacturer Gann Memorials, and to develop an online community.

Cuthrell has ambitious plans for the Feeling Friends.

“I envision the Feeling Friends making Winston-Salem a destination,” Cuthrell said. “It would be a place where parents could have a great time with their children. It would bring revenue to Winston-Salem from hotel stays and provide jobs. Think of what the ‘American Girl’ series of books did for Wisconsin. I want to get a warehouse in Winston-Salem, and get a great place that people can come to that would revitalize the city. Think of what Oprah did with Harpo Studios. We have big plans. We’re going to work with the economic development officials in this city. There’s no reason we have to take this to another city.”

Sharing and transparency are the key factors in what Joel Bennett likes to call the “innovation economy” that help entrepreneurs like Cuthrell quickly access financing and launch their businesses.

“If you’re a community leader and you’re not thinking about creating a coworking space, a makerspace, incubator or accelerator, you need to be,” he said. “This isn’t an isolated incident. It’s happening all over the world. In this innovation economy, the sharing of knowledge is the vital piece.”

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Oct. 19 — 25, 2016 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Sportsball Crossword Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

16

CULTURE Caleb Smallwood’s inventiveness shines at Tessa Farm to Fork

by Eric Ginsburg

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farm-to-fork dining isn’t exactly aleb Smallwood doesn’t take the easy road. mainstream, especially here, it The 31-year-old executive chef at Tessa Farm certainly isn’t novel. There are to Fork is the kind of person who is unwilling to other creative chefs in the Triad just show up in class and be marked “present.” It who do both. would be a mistake to describe any commercial cookBut Smallwood should be ing gig as easy — it’s time-intensive, manual labor and ranked among them, and with generally pretty thankless and anonymous (especially him Tessa itself, the year-old around here), the kind of work that will grind down restaurant on Battleground your body and eat up your entire schedule. Yet SmallAvenue that is one of the last wood is the sort of head chef who pushes things a step stops on the thoroughfare before further. leaving Greensboro city limits.

It’s not just where he’s sourcing ingredients from, It’s good to see another restauemphasizing local whenever possible as part of a rant that prioritizes fresh, local growing local segment of the national farm-to-fork and seasonal fare succeeding, movement. That one’s sort of obvious, given the name especially one that’s putting of the northwest Greensboro restaurant he joined back forward interesting and tasty in February a few months after it opened. It’s also the food. Tessa is in sort of a weird energy imbued in Smallwood’s cooking. spot, tucked back from the road Take, for example, the chicken & waffles I ordered on the left as you leave town when I showed up recently for brunch. The name pretbehind an Elizabeth’s Pizza where ty much says it all, and while Dame’s does an incredible it would be easy to overlook. It’s job with the dish, offering a collage of choices for how far enough out of the central roeach component is prepared, most venues are content tation that the downtown crowd to churn out basic entrees with little to no inventive could miss it entirely, and its disflair. Smallwood, meanwhile, put forward a delicious tance from other like establishand memorable chicken confit — rare in its own right ments makes it less appealing for —and served it with poached watermelon, feta, peach a nice dinner out before grabbing habanero sauce and a touch of basil. drinks elsewhere.

It tasted so good that I didn’t even add maple syrup, That’s unfortunate, because not wanting to drown the chorus of flavors in sugar.

Tessa is open for dinner five days The BLT biscuit, also featured on the brunch menu, a week, with choices starred local porkbelly, including Sneads Ferry goat pimiento cheese, crab cakes with local roasted heirloom tomato Visit Tessa Farm to Fork greens, crispy cauliand local greens and at 3929 Battleground Ave. flower, marscapone, jam. Arby’s can pretend (GSO) or at tessagreensboro. golden beet marmaall it wants that it offers ERIC GINSBURG The chicken confit and waffles with watermelon and feta lade and a fried local a porkbelly sandwich — tasted so good that I didn’t want to spoil it with syrup. com. egg or local chimichthe commercials for the urri beef with cheesy thing make it look like ad with smoked local honey, nut crumble and chevre. wheat pasta and crispy shallots. And those are just glazed dog food — but it will never touch the kind of Given the location, which is far flung to some but some of the appetizers. elevated cuisine Smallwood is providing. convenient to the Lake Brandt area, it’s good that TesDinner at Tessa is an expensive affair; the cheapest Let’s not give undue credit; it’s easier to be creative sa holds a liquor license, plying its own signature cockentree currently listed online is the $27 fennel-crusted as a head chef, and that kind of culinary freedom is tails in addition to a sizeable wine list and more than a chicken confit, unless either of the two market price something most cooks only dream about. And while dozen in-state craft beers. The cooking of the longdishes end up dipping haired, tattooed Smallwood is reason enough to make below that watermark. the trek from anywhere in the Triad, and the drink list That’s the price of responshould be a worthwhile excuse to stick around.

Specials sibly sourced, thoughtful and delicious food that’s every day! presented like art, but if the price tag is too high, After 6pm Pick of the Week the lunch and brunch For Delivery: • Drinking the politics away menu rates are far more $ 49 Political gaming @ Foothill Brewing (W-S), Wednespalatable and in line Take Out day, 7 p.m. with the city’s average.

by Tony Common Cause NC teams up with Foothills Triad • OPEN Consider instead the $12 $ 49 brewing to bring you the best in political trivia, votlunch with heirloom grain EVERY DAY! ing basics and good ole brew. Now that’s the way risotto, traditional mireto pick a candidate. More information can be found poix, preserved lemon and facebook.com/slicespizzagreensboro • [336]378-1932 on the Foothills Brewing Drink local. Vote local. cayenne gastrique or the 401 Tate Street • Greensboro, NC 27403 Facebook page. $10 butternut squash sal-

2 cheese slices 3 • 2 special slices 4

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We’d spent part of the ride over All the names on the shortlist were joking about cocktail names, actunotable, including the relatively basic ally, after Sam uttered the phrase “Game of Thrones” themed cocktail the “Mary Poppins fever dream” for North Remembers, Orange Is the New some reason, and I riffed on it, sugBlack with Sutler’s gin and orange-mangesting it could utilize Fever Tree darin syrup added to a tangerine IPA ginger beer. Or we could put out and another named the Maltese Falcon something called “Wrasslin’ Juice,” with raspberry-lychee syrup added to a sure-fire seller, we agreed. orange vodka.

Anyone can come up with clever We turned the title of another cocknames for a cocktail list, though tail — Nantucket Red, featuring pear most venues don’t put in the vodka, elderflower liqueur, coconut effort. But not rum, strawberry just anyone can syrup and mosVisit Hutch & Harris at 424 put together cato float — into a nice, evenW. Fourth St. (W-S) or at a running joke for keeled drink, the night, and Sam hutchandharris.com. especially one almost ordered the that all of us Yoshi’s Island just for ERIC GINSBURG My buddy Sam likes cocktails instinctively wanted. The items at the name even though it relies on green that come with bacon, telling stories about Hutch & Harris made us chucktea and “gluten-free vodka.” shark fishing and wearing his hat backwards. le, which is a good sign after the When our friend Camilo showed up, restaurant’s crass, tastelessly he ordered the Sicario, too. It hardly ended up playing darts before college named 9/11 memorial menu. Looks like packed the heat or strength that the kids overran the joint. But I wanted this time they relied on a copy editor. name implied, but Sam and I liked the another yellow libation and the bacon I kept it cool after the second Sicario; balanced and tasty drink enough that that came with it, and that’s rarely the we were headed to the Whisky Box unwe both immediately re-upped after case. der Rec Billiards afterwards, where we finishing.

Up Front

I hadn’t planned to drink anything at Hutch & Harris, and certainly not back-to-back cocktails.

by Eric Ginsburg But when my friend Sam and I arrived at the downtown Winston-Salem restaurant to kick off a recent Saturday night outing, our eyes immediately gravitated to the first craft cocktail on Hutch & Harris’ drink list — the Sicario.

Maybe you speak enough Spanish to know the term, or maybe you just listened carefully enough while watching “Narcos” on Netflix, a show about Pablo Escobar and the drug war where characters regularly utter the term. But it wasn’t the name — which translates to ‘hitman’ — that attracted us to the drink. Blame that on the description, which lists poblano añejo tequila, cucumber, lime, apricot and a bacon garnish as ingredients.

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The hitmen of Winston-Salem

Culture Sportsball Crossword Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

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Oct. 19 — 25, 2016 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Sportsball Crossword Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

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CULTURE Scrub Pine, making history in their own time

By Naari Honor

T

here is a motto in the music industry that goes, “You have a lifetime to write your first album.”

Yet in a world where technology makes it possible to record and upload a complete album with a push of a button, what constitutes a lifetime can be relative.

Scrub Pine, a four-piece led by Thomas Dalholt based in Winston-Salem that has been performing publicly for less than a year, has chosen to take their time to ensure they deliver quality work to their audience.

“Thomas is very methodical about things,” Jesse Grace, guitarist for Scrub Pine said. “We played a good six months or so before we had our first show.”

Those who frequent the Garage and Test Pattern, or attended that Phuzz Phest earlier this year, may have run across the distinct country-rock band and noticed that the leader and guitarist, Thomas Dalholt, also plays electric guitar in Estrangers, a popular indie-rock band led by Philip Pledger.

Pledger can usually be found in the crowd in support of his friend and bandmate.

“It’s important for artists to be supportive of each other,” Pledger said. “The challenge is cracking the code of building music fans so the people at shows aren’t just musicians.”

Pledger laughed as he shared his discovery of a plethora of memes that discussed how the majority of the crowd at Monday-night shows are members of other bands.

Although the Winston-Salem music scene is known for its nurturing spirit, it’s still refreshing to see two intertwined bands offer support to one another without apparent envy.

Dalholt attributes some of his inspiration for Scrub Pine to his experience playing with Estrangers.

“Learning to play the electric guitar for Estrangers helped me to develop a new way of thinking about music in some regards,” Dalholt said. “I was able to translate that and be able to use it to write new music for myself. A lot of the stuff I have been doing has been in some ways inspired by that band.” Pledger has enjoyed watching Dalholt evolve as a musician in Estrangers.

“Transitioning to electric was a new thing for him,” Pledger said. “It’s been cool to see him get his feet wet and then get more comfortable with it over the year.

Now he’s messing around with more effect pedals and stuff. It’s sort of like watching him explore all the things an electric guitar can do.”

In contrast to his role as a sideman in Estrangers, Scrub Pine provides a platform for Dalholt’s songwriting, his first love.

“I love to play music,” he said, “but I am a songwriter.”

Dalholt said he also appreciates the opportunity to just focus on playing his instrument in Estrangers.

“I am not a part of the writing process for that band,” Dalholt said. “So I basically show up and Philip tells me what to play and I play it. I’m grateful for it because I only have so much creative energy.”

What creative energy Dalholt does possess comes through vibrantly on stage with his refreshing folk-inspired lyrics accompanied by ’60s-style country rock

Scrub Pine is a four-piece band from Winston-Salem led by Thomas Dalholt, who also plays in Estrangers.

chord progressions. The accompaniment of band members Jesse Grace on guitar, David Dalholt, brother of Thomas Dalholt, on bass and Chad Newsom on drums makes the sound of the band tight and complete.

“I started writing music and Jesse, who is our guitar player, I showed him the songs I had been working on,” Thomas Dalholt said. “We sat down and started working on them together and it was after that that we brought David, our bass player, then Chad the drummer. So we’ve been probably working on some of this material for the better part of eight months.”

Scrub Pine is in the middle of mixing its first album which is almost ready to be released.

The series of recording sessions, were a testament to the uniqueness of the band. Instead of confining themselves in a traditional studio booth, they recorded in a setting similar to one of the homes they often find themselves practicing in on a late Monday night from the comfort of what appears on their Facebook feed to resemble a friends living room. While it may not have been the most traditional of situations, the group agrees that that sound will provide their listeners with an authentic similar to what one would hear if they came to see the band play live.

TUCKER THARPE

“Yeah, even the engineer tried to talk us out of it,” Grace said.

Sat., Oct. 29th from 4–6:30PM Come enjoy a safe family and community event full of fun, games, food, and treats! Our parking lot will be full of delightfully decorated cars with lots of goodies in their trunks!

Pick of the Week Rocking up the dead Jukebot @ the Garage (W-S), Saturday, 9 p.m.

Join the group of rocking righteous misfits that come together every year for your Halloween howling pleasure. Costumes are optional but highly encouraged and just plain on fun to wear. More information can be found on the Jukebot Halloween Costume Party Facebook page and pre-sale tickets available at the-garage.ws.

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336.323.1288 204 S. Westgate Dr., Greensboro

For the tweens, Terror is relative

by Brian Clarey

T

Cover Story Culture Sportsball Crossword Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

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Up Front

hey had me sit up front by myself, like a chauffeur, and in the back they squiggled with anticipation and more than a little anxiety.

“Will there be clowns there?” my daughter’s friend asked. “I’m a little bit scared of clowns.”

“There’s no such thing as clowns, honey,” I said.

But I knew damn well that at least a dozen clowns, terrifying one and all, would be stalking the grounds at the Woods of Terror on this night and almost every other through the month of October. I’ve been through the thing at least five times myself over the years, and though each year brings a little something new to proprietor Eddie McLaurin’s outdoor autumn fantasy, there have been a few constants through the years: chainsaws, vampires, zombies and, yes, clowns. It takes an hour to go through the award-winning attraction, with dozens of jump-scares and gallons of blood. By the end of it even the most sanguine among us are genuinely rattled.

I’ve learned, though, with the young ones, not to oversell the fear factor.

When my oldest was 9 years old, he begged to come with me on media night.

“Is it scary?” he wanted to know.

“Totally,” I said. “But if you get too scared, just remember that it’s mostly a bunch of teenagers in COURTESY IMAGE I told my daughter and her friend that there’s no such thing as clowns, but that’s not true — they’re really good make-up.” among the many spooky attractions at Woods of Terror in Greensboro.

By the end of the monster parade that kicked off the evening, the kid had pressed himself against me Over the years, I have come to love that look. and pulled my shirt over his head.

Woods of Terror gives the illusion of constant danger with “They didn’t look like teenagers to me,” he said as we exquisitely detailed installations that sprawl over the McLauwalked out to the car, our cruise through the woods called off rin family farm, cartographied with twists and turns designed for the night. to disorient, and salted with hiding holes from whence the Three years later, he brought a friend monsters emerge. with him, ready to attack the course The girls stuck close to me as I naviwith gusto. That was the year his younggated the darkness with a glo-stick held Check out the Woods of Terror er brother, then 10, insisted on making before me like Diogenes, but after the Vintage & Eclectic furniture, at 5601 N. Church St. (GSO) or the trip up Church Street. With an first couple scares they became emboldhome decor, women’s clothing, obligation to the other kids and, more visit woodsofterror.com. ened enough to venture ahead. It was accessories & more... importantly, a story to file the next day, in a room full of nuclear waste barrels, I told the youngster that if he came out I believe, that I stepped aside to allow Hours: Wednesday – Saturday 11am–5pm there with us, there would be no turning back.

834 S. Broad St • Winston-Salem, NC 27101 a gas-masked ghoul to creep up and scare the bejesus out of He tried anyway, just 15 minutes before we were to go facebook.com/cinnamongirlvintage them in what was one of the greatest moments in my parentthrough. Once again it was the monster parade that did him ing career. in. We don’t remember if I carried him part of the way through Me, I’m not scared of monsters with chainsaws or covered the haunted woods that night, but we both recall how in blood — I find enough terror in the real world. But still my impressed the older teenagers were with him when he ran heart raced as a wave of zombies emerged from the graveyard. through the final exit — even for a 10-year-old, he was really And everybody is a little scared of clowns. small, and they showered him with high-fives.

Still, he has vowed never to return, and has upheld that oath for four years.

Pick of the Week And so the Woods of Terror has become something of a rite Transgender pride of passage in my house. When this autumn came around, my Major! @ Bennett College, Global Learning Center (GSO), 11-year-old daughter thought she might be old enough to take ary’s Friday, 6 p.m. the plunge. And she convinced a friend of the same cohort to Bennett College hosts a viewing of the documentary accompany her.

Gourmet Diner Major!, which chronicles the life of Miss Major Griffin-Gracy We skipped the monster parade on Saturday night, and a trans woman of color, activist, formerly incarcerated at instead got on the general admission line with the other Attica prison, part of the Stonewall Rebellion and respecthooples, where I watched a recognizable look pass over their ed elder in her community. More information can be found faces — the look of resignation: This was really happening, no on the NC Trans Pride Screening: Major! Facebook page. turning back.

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CULTURE

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Oct. 19 — 25, 2016 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Sportsball Crossword Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

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SPORTSBALL

T

he Carolina Panthers lost a 41-38 heartbreaker in the Big Easy to the New Orleans Saints on Sunday after rookie kicker Wil Lutz drilled a 52-yard field goal right down the goalposts’ guts and the Panthers failed to answer in the final 10

by Anthony Harrison seconds.

Who saw this coming?

Haters and naysayers and Atlanta Falcons fans in our midst may relish this downturn in the Carolina Panthers’ good fortunes. But can any of them say with any seriousness that they predicted this sputtering tailspin of a season as a rational, educated calculation based on the team’s performance last year?

We held our breath as the Panthers refused to lose over the course of a nearly flawless 2015 season. We watched in awe the swelling playoff victories, a cresting tide of rising momentum leading to a tragic end in Super Bowl 50.

But once the sheriff had ridden off into the sunset, we all figured, “Wait ’til next year.”

Pundits across the board favored Carolina in the ensuing months. As the resident sportswriter in my friends’ lives, I’d tell them with all the confidence in the world: “The drive and talent we have doesn’t go away.”

Is the Panthers’ season over? resurgent Falcons squad— at least a serious threat — I figured we’d be something like the Buffalo Bills of and bumbled pathetically sans Cam and running back the late ’80s and early ’90s, dominating our division, Jonathan Stewart through a pitiful 17-14 loss to the running riot in the NFC and appearing in the Super Tampa Bay Buccaneers. But I didn’t catch the Sept.

Bowl multiple times in a few years, except in my mind’s 18 matchup against the San Francisco 49ers, a 46-27 eye, the Panthers would take the Lombardi Trophy mirage of a return to form. home with them at some point.

I did however witness our disappointing loss on I analyzed the 2016-’17 schedule in April with as stern Sept. 25 against a Minnesota Vikings team somehow and discerning an objective eye as I could and — humdecimating the NFL without its star offensive threats bly recognizing a repetition of last year’s greatness (running back Adrian Peterson and quarterback Teddy impossible — conservatively projected 12 wins.

Bridgewater had earlier sustained seaFor a moment, it seemed insane, son-ending injuries). predicting the lowly Panthers could This New Orleans game affected me accomplish such a feat.

His kick went more grievously.

Maybe it was crazy, for here we are, The Saints, a team as misfortunate six games into the season, going into narrowly right as as Carolina, scored three unanswered our bye week with just one lone win and I moaned, “NOOO!” touchdowns early in the game, and five depressing losses.

Newton’s only stab into the end zone What the hell happened? and the Carolina went to New Orleans cornerback SterI touched on the Super Bowl 50 ling Moore. rematch debacle against the Denver Panthers reCarolina has never won after trailing Broncos in a previous iteration of this mained down. by 21; it’s typically impossible to come column, and it deserves further analysis back. in this diagnosis of the Panthers’ ills.

Yet we did… for a second.

That game set the tone for what I’ve Scrapping and scrambling through the second half, seen in subsequent matches: Momentum stalled, the Carolina got close enough for Stewart to heave himself opposition took the opportunity to run up the score on over the line for a 1-yard running touchdown. The score crucial drives and Carolina failed to convert. was 30-31. If Gano could clinch the extra point, he’d Of course, two factors came into play. put the fear of God into the Saints.

For one, Denver head coach Gary Kubiak iced PanHis kick couldn’t have been straighter… but he’d set thers kicker Graham Gano up a bit to the right. His kick went narrowly amiss as I at the very second that moaned, “NOOO!” and the Cats remained down. he aced a last-second, Sure, Carolina’s offense recovered and we truly tied 52-yard field goal atthe game with a 2-point conversion on the next drive. tempt that would’ve won But Gano’s miss solidified the loss, especially since our Carolina Game One; Gano defense couldn’t hold up down the stretch. missed the try for keeps.

New Orleans took advantage of a woefully young More on the Golden Toe secondary. Considering their room for improvement, I later. would’ve paid former star cornerback Josh Norman a Secondly — I loathe to trillion dollars to stay with Carolina. He was but one sound like this, but it’s man, but his fire drove the Panthers’ defensive intensitrue — referees turned ty last season. many blind eyes to the So where do the Panthers go from here? shellacking quarterback We may need to win the rest of the season in order Cam Newton took from to remain in contention for the playoffs, with perhaps the Broncos defense. one dropped game for wiggle room. Five losses already These officiating failures accrued, Carolina must play with the desperate confiprove more egregious dence possessed by men with nothing left to lose. than simple broken nerves That worked last year. by a kicker, considering the flak NFL officiating crews have received over lack of response towards clear headhunting against the reigning MVP, let Pick of the Week alone players across the From Cone down to Holden league.

Page High School Pirates @ Smith High School GoldI barely caught glimpses en Eagles (GSO), Friday, 7:30 p.m. of that game, being on Brave that crosstown traffic to see the Page an airplane for much of Pirates take on the Smith Golden Eagles. The Pirates its runtime. And, truth only lost in the season opener against Davie High be told, I’ve missed the School and have since rolled seven Triad teams, majority of this season. while Smith (2-6) has struggled both home and I count myself lucky, away. considering we fell to a

EVENTS

‘Will Ya Look at the Time?’ it’s a little off.

by Matt Jones Across 1

19 20 21

34 35

“Black Forest” meat Portishead genre Mosque adjunct Winner’s wreath Competed (for) Heavenly creature, in Paris Contract ender?

Wu-Tang member known as “The Genius” 9 Ground-cover plant 10 Inquisitive 11 French explorer who named Louisiana

Monday, October 24 @ 7pm

Mystery Movie Monday Tuesday, October 25 @ 7pm

Vaxxed - Screening and Discussion

602 S Elam Ave • Greensboro

(336) 698-3888

Culture

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Sunday, October 23 @ 6pm

Weaver Academy Talent Show

“The Walking Dead”

Premiere Party. Presented by NC Comicon DOOR PRIZES! First 20 Zombies/Cosplayers get free Spooky Woods Tickets!

7:30 p.m. Sunday, October 23. Free Admission With Drink Purchase!

Crossword

Answers from previous publication.

Sportsball

Playing October 21 – 29

Beer! Wine! Amazing Coffee!

2134 Lawndale Drive, Greensboro geeksboro.com •

336-355-7180

All She Wrote

Presented by the Idiot Box 8:30 p.m. Friday, October 21. $8 tickets Free Horror Fridays presents “Green Room” 10 p.m. Friday, October 21. FREE ADMISSION! Improv Comedy Presented by the Idiot Box 4 p.m., 8:30 p.m., & 10 p.m. Saturday, October 22. $8 Tickets!

Totally Rad Trivia 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, October 27 $3 Buy In! Up to Six Player Teams! Winners get CASH PRIZE! Open Mic Comedy Presented by The Idiot Box 8:30 p.m. Thursday, October 29

Shot in the Triad

--OTHER EVENTS & SCREENINGS--

Ultimate Comics Challenge

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

Cover Story

30 31 32

Down

Sarah Sophia

Opinion

23 24 26 27 28

Friday, October 21 @ 8pm

News

15 16 17

12 Body of water between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan 13 It’s filled at the pump 18 Just a ___ (slightly) 22 Sing like Ethel Merman 23 Nestle ___-Caps 24 Bond, before Craig 25 Naturally bright 28 Sole syllable spoken by the geek on “American Horror Story: Freak Show” (and Beaker on “The Muppets”) 29 Working 30 Cable channel launched in 1979 32 Arcade machine opening 33 “Vaya con ___” 35 Spiral-shaped 36 Get rusty 37 Some newsbreaks 38 Certain allergic reaction 39 Never existed 40 Coiffures 41 Rock worth unearthing 44 Windham Hill Records genre 46 “Rubbish!”

47 Pokemon protagonist Ketchum 49 Bi- times four 50 Like Scotch 51 Flanders and his name-diddly-amesakes 54 Org. for analysts 55 Home of “Ask Me Another” 56 Double agent, e.g.

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5 11 14

Language in which many websites are written Favreau’s “Swingers” costar Internet connection problem “Summertime” from “Porgy and Bess,” e.g.

Where tigers may be housed Notre Dame coach Parseghian Vessel even smaller than the one for shots?

Airline based in Stockholm Marching band event Capulet murdered by Romeo [spoiler alert!]

Prepare lettuce, perhaps Community org. with merit badges “Let It Go” singer Gallagher of Oasis Badtz-___ (penguin friend of Hello Kitty) She voices Dory Bow (out) Component of a restaurant’s meateating challenge?

Reveal accidentally “I like 5 p.m. better than 11 p.m. for news”?

“CSI” theme song band, with “The” National who lives overseas, informally Dye holders

44 Word said by Grover when close to the camera 45 Canning needs 46 Marker, e.g.

47 Hawk’s high hangout 48 Big baking potatoes 50 It may be printed upside-down 52 Nyan ___ 53 What the other three theme entries do?

57 Scarfed down 58 Accessed, with “into” 59 Pomade, e.g.

60 Primus frontman Claypool 61 Tony and Edgar, for two 62 Website specializing in the vintage and handmade

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When President Obama comes to town.

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