TCB Jan. 18, 2017 — Who owns the High Point ghetto?

Greensboro / Winston-Salem / High Point January 18 – 24, 2017 triad-city-beat.com

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Who owns the

High Point ghetto?

A special investigative report PAGE 8

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January 18 – 24, 2017

EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK

Like a lot of other great pieces of work, this week’s cover story had a long lead time.

In 2015, Senior Editor Jordan

by Brian Clarey Green identified the poorest Census tracts in the Triad.

We weren’t sure what we were going to do with the information — High Point and Greensboro had just been named the worst cities for food insecurity in the nation, with Winston-Salem not far behind, and we’ve always been interested in income inequality, systemic poverty and the question of how things got to be the way they are.

And so, nine months ago, Green undertook the project of learning who, specifically, owned the poorest tracts in High Point, where renters outnumber resident property-owners almost nine to one and the people who live there dwell near the bottom in the key statistics of income, education, employment and opportunity.

What he uncovered in this zone of despair goes beyond a list of property owners and the business of low-income housing. It bleeds into the systemic federal policies that created ghettoes in and around our cities and enshrined segrega-

triad-city-beat.com

A deep investigative dive tion into law.

Along the way, he identified a small cache of high-end condos in the High Pointy Furniture District and a Deadhead property manager who named his company after the fictional stomping grounds of the Dire Wolf.

It’s worth mentioning that no other papers in the Triad would dedicate nine months of the year to investigative work of this caliber — let alone an investigative piece about High Point, which often gets the short end of the stick when it comes to Triad-wide media.

And I don’t know another journalist in our three cities who could pull something like this off.

This is the kind of story Triad City Beat was created to run: deep-dive investigative work that nobody else will touch, with subject matter that defies the easy 800-word news piece and requiring as much time to research as to gestate a human baby.

It’s an honor to publish this piece, and an honor to work with Green, who so meticulously gathered and interpreted the data.

It’s a long one — we’ve blown out the front of the paper to accommodate all the elements of what amounts to a body of work — but I think you’ll agree it was worth the wait, and the space.

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QUOTE OF THE WEEK

I have an army of contractors that work for me that can take care of everything from a dripping kitchen faucet to removing a dead body.

— Cam Cridlebaugh III, in the Cover, page 8 1451 S. Elm-Eugene St. Box 24, Greensboro, NC 27406 Office: 336-256-9320 BUSINESS PUBLISHER/EXECUTIVE EDITOR Brian Clarey

EDITORIAL INTERN Joel Sronce

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Stallone Frazier Anthony Harrison Matt Jones

Cover photography by Jordan Green of a condemned home in High Point.

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January 18 – 24, 2017

CITY LIFE Jan. 18 – 24

by Joel Sronce

However you expect to face Friday’s inauguration and all the stormy days to follow, never forget that there’s plenty happening here in the Triad. Use these events to get to know new people in your community and appreciate the diversity and energy unique to the area we call home.

THURSDAY Community coloring @ the Creative Center (GSO), 6:30 p.m.

This free event encourages an ongoing, community experience as well as personal creative exploration. Bring coloring supplies, a snack and a friend. Artist Margaret Newlin and the Creative Center Executive Director Joseph Wright lead the event. More info is on the Facebook event page.

Raw Edges opening reception @ Delta Arts Center (W-S), 6 p.m.

The Delta Arts Center opens an exhibit on African-American quilters.

Featured artists speak briefly about their textile art works. The event is free and open to the public. The exhibit shows in the Simona Atkins Allen Gallery from Jan. 17 through April 8. More info at deltaartscenter.org.

FRIDAY Trump inauguration protest @ Central Carolina Worker Justice Center (GSO), 1:30 a.m.

Catch a very early bus or van to Washington DC on the morning of the inauguration to join the tens of thousands protesting the racist, misogynistic and xenophobic dangers of the president-elect. More info on the Facebook event page.

SATURDAY

Art Jam @ Unleashed Arts Center (W-S), 12:30 p.m.

Bring the kids to downtown Winston-Salem to create art and influence young imaginations. All ages are welcome and the event is free with no registration necessary. Art supplies are provided. More info at theafasgroup.com.

Peter Yarrow @ High Point Theatre, 7:30 p.m.

A member of the legendary folk trio Peter, Paul & Mary, Grammy Award winner Peter Yarrow visits High Point. Join a night of conversation and song as Yarrow brings tales of the 1960s folk renaissance to the Triad.

More info at highpointtheatre.com.

SUNDAY

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Black Girls and Women Matter: Telling Our Stories @ Scuppernong Books (GSO), 1:30 p.m.

Ahead of a town hall at Dudley High School on Feb. 4, black girls and women tell their stories during a four-hour mini-marathon on Sunday. All are invited, and black girls and women living in Greensboro are encouraged to read their own stories. More info at scuppernongbooks.com

Trump should keep his Twitter account

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

by Brian Clarey I started following @realDonaldTrump on Twitter just about a week ago. I was quite late to the party; the president-elect has been tweeting since 2009, with a mouthy, brash style that has remained consistent over the years.

And now, it’s pretty much the only thing I follow on Twitter.

The archived stuff is — pardon the expression — golden: swipes at Arianna Huffington, boasts about his IQ, diatribes against “haters” and “losers,” an extended “truther” campaign against the legitimacy of Barack Obama’s birth certificate.

The new material, issued nearly every morning, has become required reading for his fans, detractors and stenographers, and they are driving the news cycle — the Washington Post fact-checks every one of them.

He tweeted just now, about “big stuff” in the automotive jobs market and negotiated military spending, and also another dig against Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, with whom he is currently engaged in a feud. It’s haughty and a little stupid. And right now thousands upon thousands of words are being written about them, as if trying to decipher a meaning from them that I suspect does not exist.

Trump told the UK’s Sunday Times this week that he has no intention of dropping his Twitter handle in favor of a new, more presidential one — he’s got 20 million followers, more than the populationof Romania. And he said he doesn’t plan to stop tweeting, citing it as a way around the traditional press that he says covers him “dishonestly.”

It’s a terrible idea, of course. Trump’s tweets have stirred tensions with China, spread half-truths and propaganda and outright falsehoods. He’s lobbed insults and threats and childish taunts — Sad! — that I honestly have not heard since I was on the elementary school playground.

The man has always tweeted like the drunk guy at the end of the bar, shouting at the television set. And I kinda love that guy. I’m pretty sure I have been that guy. I’m not saying that guy should be president, but I am saying that guy is going to be president, and in my book a president with an active Twitter feed that is completely off the cuff — Obama’s last tweet, for example, plugs a broadcast of his farewell address… on Jan 10 — is more revealing than one who speaks only in official missives.

Yes, his behavior on Twitter is … un-presidential. But as I understand it, that very boorishness is one of the reasons he won the election. And like it or not, it is a unique and thorough window into who he is — or, who he wants us to see.

And I for one cannot look away.

News

If constructed, the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline — transmitting highly pressurized natural gas (about 75 percent methane) — would run approximately 600 miles through West Virginia, Virginia and eight counties in eastern North Carolina.

Methane is not only a far more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide; it’s explosive, too. Poorly maintained lines can scorch acres of land and endanger lives, as seen in last year’s pipeline explosion in Westmoreland County, Pa. Another natural gas pipeline threatens not only further environmental exploitation, but human exploitation as well. Running through some of our state’s poorest counties, the Atlantic Coast Pipeline would endanger the ownership, function and value of agricultural and ancestral land, not to mention the risk of sinkholes, water contamination and the explosive potential of methane in proximity to homes and schools.

Though job creation is an important consideration — not to mention highly successful propaganda — a report commissioned by Dominion Resources, a leading company in the pipeline proposal, estimates only 18 permanent jobs in North Carolina once construction is complete. Development of the pipeline would discourage the region’s pursuit of renewable sources of energy that would reduce the threat of climate change and could quickly create jobs in solar, wind, tidal and other energy futures.

Despite the ominous possibilities, protests against other pipelines have been pretty successful. Influenced by years of demonstrations and pressure, President Obama finally — though perhaps symbolically — rejected the request to build the Keystone XL pipeline.

And though the fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline is by no means over, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe continues its incredible stand against oil companies and their disregard for indigenous rights, land and water.

The thousands of native and non-native supporters’ defense of indigenous sovereignty is proof of power in solidarity.

A Trump presidency could terrorize both the previous and potential achievements of human and environmental rights activists. Now is the time for increased solidarity, action and dissent.

Protests, prayer walks and other forms of resistance should continue to happen as long as the Atlantic Coast Pipeline remains a threat. Research, fund and join these efforts. Explain that human rights and environmental rights are inseparable issues, exploited jointly for deliberate, ruinous gain. We can build on the successes at Standing Rock.

Up Front

by Joel Sronce

triad-city-beat.com

Blocking the Atlantic Coast Pipeline

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January 18 – 24, 2017 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Sportsball Crossword Shot in the Triad

OPINION

EDITORIAL

Before the inauguration, a state of confusion Sen. Richard Burr, acting in his capacity as chair of the Intelligence Committee, announced last week that he’d lead an investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.

It’s a stunning first in US history: A probe into an elected president for connections with our most long-standing and powerful enemy, before he’s even inaugurated. The situation is so singular that we are not even sure how to articulate the accusation: Fraud? Treason? Conspiracy? Espionage?

Perhaps even more remarkable is that the announcement came just about 24 hours after a previous announcement from Sen. Burr saying that there would be no exploration of the connections between the president-elect and former KGB agent and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Things are happening pretty quickly in the nation’s capital in these vexing days before Trump’s inauguration, sending an uneasy ripple across the rest of the nation, much of which has only very recently learned what a “golden shower” is.

Now, out here in the real America, we’ve got Cold War conservatives deciding all of a sudden that Russia is not so bad after all — With a guy like Putin, you know where you stand! — and lifelong anti-authoritarians defending the honor of the CIA. It’s hard not to get the feeling that new battle lines are being drawn, new alliances forged in the face of the coming calamity. And it’s becoming more evident with each tweet that aligning with the incoming president is a tricky business.

Just days after the House and Senate initiated action to repeal the Affordable Care Act, over the weekend Trump announced that his replacement plan will guarantee healthcare “insurance for everybody,” running roughshod over a long-held Republican tenet that healthcare is a privilege and not a right and leaving party operatives in both houses of Congress scrambling for rationalization.

It’s said in political circles that Democrats need to fall in love with a candidate before they come with support, but Republicans just need to fall in line. So there’s no shortage of senators and congressmen looking to cast themselves in their president’s image — they’re just having a hard time trying to pin down what that means.

Join the Beat.

All She Wrote

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336-402-0515

CITIZEN GREEN

A test of faith in investigative journalism It started as a simple question: Who owns the properties in the poorest areas of High Point?

This question has vexed me since I started reporting on the Triad’s third

by Jordan Green largest city in 2008, but it quickly became more complicated. I had to understand how it became poor. Was the blight and substandard housing driven by a handful of bad landlords or by deeper structural challenges that prevent reinvestment?

Do the landlords operate from out of state or do they live right in High Point?

What was the history of the city’s efforts to address poverty? What were the results of such efforts? Do recent strategies adopted by city leaders represent a new commitment to improve the area or are they just part of a continuing pattern of neglect?

I’ve been doing investigative and data journalism for 20 years, but I’ve never put more time into a project than this one. That doesn’t mean it’s the best work I’ve ever done. But over the years I’ve become a jealous guardian of the integrity of my data, especially after an embarrassing episode almost two years ago when I omitted a development from an ownership study because I failed to align my geographic parameters with a data set I obtained from the Guilford County Tax Department.

I spent more than six months of late nights and weekends keying properties into a spreadsheet for this week’s cover story. After that task was completed, I decided to use voter registration records to identify the race and ethnicity of the property owners, prompted in part by a critique

by Guilford County School Board member Deena Hayes, who said the previous project overlooked the overwhelmingly white nature of ownership in downtown Greensboro.

Much of the research for this cover story was fairly tedious, and I sometimes struggled to remind myself of the greater goal of the project when I found myself getting lost in the granular detail of the data.

As I reached the conclusion of my research and analysis, and the publication date neared, I’ve felt an increasing sense of anxiety and heaviness.

Candidly, I’ve found myself struggling to maintain hope with the arrival of a new president whose divisive and toxic rhetoric seems incompatible with progress and with a state government that seems

largely deaf to the concerns of cities.

If all this story does is scandalize readers with a picture of devastation without eliciting a sense of solidarity with the residents or promoting a serious discussion about solutions, it will have failed. But I myself struggle with doubts about whether there are still viable openings for reform.

As I wrestle with my own doubts, I also feel more than ever that journalists are obligated to offer at least some silver lining of hope while being unsparingly truthful about conditions as they are.

By drilling into the data, I thought I might pinpoint the primary culprits for the conditions in the ghetto, but the more I delved into the research the more I realized that the story is complicated. If there were an easily identifiable villain, it would be simple to devise a straightforward solution. While it’s clear to me that past federal housing policies inflicted serious harm on people and created a legacy of abandonment, I’ve concluded that the local players — policymakers and housing providers — have acted from a broad range of motivations, both good and bad.

The communities of people and the economies of subsistence in the ghetto are fragile. The area is familiar to me from years of reporting and weekly distribution runs, but I know that for many readers, not only in Greensboro and Winston-Salem but also in High Point, the ghetto is practically invisible and easily put out of mind. This story may be their first and last impression of the community, making it all the more important to get it right. A portrait of devastation without humanity — “disaster porn” is the term of art — is exploitation. I genuinely care about the people who live in these communities and who work to make them better, and I’ve tried to signal as much by keeping the focus on people.

I don’t want anyone who reads this to feel like they can get away with being a voyeur and not come away with some sense of responsibility for making High Point a better city. There are no obvious solutions, but one thing is clear: It will take a thoughtful debate among citizens and civic leaders followed by coordinated action to make a difference, and it can’t happen without the involvement of those affected.

Ultimately, all I can do is report the facts in good faith. If the facts matter to people who live in High Point, to their elected representatives, to people who care about the vitality of cities and about the Piedmont Triad region as a whole, then it’s up to them to take ownership of the problem and fashion a collective response equal to the challenge.

And I’ll be there to cover it, notebook in hand.

triad-city-beat.com

The skinny on Deep Roots

It’s only common sense

Cover Story

Thank you for pointing out the obvious (to thinking folks): North Carolina is leaving millions on the table for other states, both northern and southern, to help their own citizens, while the sick ideologues like Berger and Moore condemn North Carolinians to their death [“Citizen Green: Gov. Cooper shows backbone on Medicaid expansion”; by Jordan Green; Jan. 11, 2017].

Art Kainz, Kernersville

Opinion

Let me say thank you! [“Unsolicited Endorsement: Betty Harris”; by Jordan

News

All hail the queen

Up Front

Thank you for the recent article about Deep Roots Market [“New leadership installed after board exodus at local food co-op”; by Jordan Green; Jan. 11, 2017]. That’s where we pick up our copy every week. As owners and patrons we have been concerned about its survival and the recent downgrade in products. You have provided information that we were not yet aware of. We had heard about trying to cater to the “downtown area” but didn’t realize it was about Tylenol, batteries and laundry detergent.

Charles Cameron and Elizabeth Riggs, via email

Green; Dec. 29, 2016] There have been a lot of things written about me, but personally I love your interpretation. You were spot-on. I am in the documentary Bang! The Bert Berns Story, who wrote “Cry to Me.” If you haven’t seen it, let me know.

Betty Harris, via email

Culture Sportsball Crossword Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

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January 18 – 24, 2017

Who owns the

High Point ghetto?

Cover Story

by Jordan Green

Jerry Mingo has lived in his family’s home in High Point’s Burns Hill neighborhood since 1965

The Singer sewing machine, fully functional with the exception of a missing belt, is a totem of hope in the anteroom of the spacious garment factory at the end of a downscale derelict shopping center on High Point’s East Green Drive.

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“I learned to sew on this machine as a child,” said Jerry Mingo, who started Jerry Mingo Design Work Room about a year ago as a nonprofit to provide jobs for ex-offenders and other people facing employment challenges in the poorest swath of this city.

Garment production is woven into Mingo’s identity and history. He supervised the cut-and-sew area for Izod LaCoste, whose preppy alligator-logo shirts were ubiquitous in the 1970s and ’80s, before the company moved its production line from High Point to Honduras in the 1990s.

Mingo worked another 13 years as a supervisor in the medicine department at Banner Pharmaceutical before he retired.

He was in his junior year of high school when his family moved into the Burns Hill neighborhood just across University Drive and on the other side of Green from the shopping center. When they purchased their home in 1965, the Mingos were one of the first black families to move into the otherwise all-white neighborhood.

“During that time we lived here we didn’t feel like it was a lot of poverty because people had jobs,” Mingo said.

STALLONE FRAZIER

A condemned house on a commercial strip on East Green Drive stands open after vandals removed plywood from the door.

“Burlington Industries had a plant here. Slane Hosiery was hiring a lot of people. You could almost walk to the jobs.”

The 70-year-old entrepreneur gestured to the shopping center, noting that it was once anchored by a Big Bear grocery. There was a pizzeria and a drug store. Now, aside from Mingo’s nonprofit, the shopping center is occupied by two beauty supply stores, a dollar store, a tax-preparation business and a storefront church. Across the street, next door to where another church serves free meals under a large tent, there used to be a fish market. Now, two corner marts within a block of one another — mostly stocked with beer, sodas, cigarettes and snacks — function as an inadequate substitution for the neighborhood’s food needs.

“In the ’90s, when the older people started dying, it became a rental area,” Mingo said. “That was around the time the factories started moving.”

Burned out or vacant houses, often unsecured in violation of local housing code, are a common sight, both on Mingo’s block and along the commercial strip on East Green Drive where he works. Three adjacent houses on East Green Drive, including a former daycare center, have been fenced off, but the gate stands open and sheets of plywood that previously covered the doorways have been ripped down, providing a haven for drug dealers and squatters.

Mingo said people leave old sofas and other large pieces of furniture outside the abandoned houses rather than

JORDAN GREEN

paying fees to properly dispose of them. The blight also undermines pride in the neighborhood, and he is quick to acknowledge that residents are also guilty of leaving litter in the street.

Derelict properties undermine property values for homeowners in Burns Hill and other distressed neighborhoods because the appearance of the surrounding area makes it difficult for them to resell their homes. And they impose multiple costs on homeowners.

“Homeowners that live in close proximity to vacant or abandoned properties often face higher insurance premiums because vacant properties may be considered by insurance companies as hazardous liabilities,” a recent housing market segmentation study commissioned by the city of High Point found. “Homeowners surrounded by vacant properties also report a lower quality of life that may manifest in many ways, such as social fragmentation, isolation and loss of aesthetic appeal. Childhood asthma, lead exposure and cancers have also been shown to be possible negative effects of living in proximity to vacant lots, boarded homes, high-density traffic areas and substandard housing.”

Mingo’s neighborhood and the East Green Drive commercial corridor are part of a 1,096-acre area designated as having an “extremely weak” housing market in the study, which was completed by the Center for Housing & Community Studies at UNCG. The study identifies five Census block groups stretching from Hines Street in

hoods and the largest home furnishings market in North America might seem puzzling, but it’s explained by the fact that there’s little housing in the market district, with the notable exception of the condos at Market Square Tower, which are used by furniture industry executives to entertain guests during the market. There’s simply not enough housing to weight the statistics for the handful of Census block groups that carve up the central business district.

More than 80 percent of the residents of the inner core area, designated as an “extremely weak” housing market, are African American and 9.4 percent are Latino, with whites and Asians making up the rest.

The UNCG study explicitly acknowledges the linkage between race and poverty. All six Census block groups that received the “extremely weak” housing market designation are identified in the study as Racial and Ethnic Concentrated Areas of Poverty — a federal designation based on having a non-white population of 50 percent or more with 40 percent or more of individuals living below the poverty line.

“Many of the poorest neighborhoods have only limited access to amenities such as good schools, healthcare or affordable and nutritious foods,” the UNCG Center for Housing & Community Studies reported. “Access to retail shopping and high-quality child care is also quite limited in most of these areas.

Combined with the relative lack of extensive public transit systems, persons living in such areas are greatly disadvantaged. Concentrated poverty itself becomes a significant impediment to fair housing choice because COURTESY A map produced by the UNCG Center for Housing & those living in such areas must spend Community Studies shows the poorest area of the city in red. far more time and money in order to purchase groceries or medicine, find Residents of the core area subsist on less than a third opportunities for entertainment, or place their children in of the median household income of the average Guilford daycare while working. Since employment opportunities County resident. Seven in 10 live below the poverty line, are also limited in such areas, residents must commute compared to 17.6 percent of county residents overall. outside their residential communities for virtually all of Compared to a 5.6 percent unemployment rate across the their daily needs.” county, the inner core of High Point is burdened with a Drilling into the linkage between race and poverty, the Depression-level unemployment rate around 27 percent. study says, “The areas under study in the core city are Almost a third of the housing is vacant, compared to 11.2 some of the most segregated and impoverished neighpercent citywide, and almost 90 percent of housing is borhoods in High Point. Poverty plays a significant part rental, compared to 44 percent citywide. in ethnic segregation. Geospatial analysis of the region The depressed housing area cuts a swath through the shows a picture of concentrations of poverty which interheart of the city’s central business district, which is popsect with concentrations of race/ethnic minorities resulting ulated by glitzy showrooms that teem with buyers from in an intergenerational lack of opportunity and little across the country twice a year for the biannual furniture chance of upward social mobility. For example, segregatmarket. The coexistence of blighted residential neighbored and impoverished areas result in ‘zones of denial’ for

Methodology

The research for “Who owns the ghetto in High Point?” is built from a draft copy of a report prepared by the UNCG Center for Housing & Community Studies for the city of High Point entitled “Market Segmentation & Targeted Revitalization: High Point Core City,” which identified six centrally-located Census block groups as “extremely weak” housing markets, with the city’s highest concentrations of poverty. The UNCG report was finalized in September 2016.

Beginning in April 2016, Triad City Beat undertook a nine-month research project to answer the question articulated in the headline: Who owns the ghetto?

With the UNCG map as a reference, the author used Guilford County tax records to manually log 2,556 properties in the six census block groups into a spreadsheet. The research included all types of properties, including industrial, retail, institutional and city-owned, but focused on 1,555 zoned for housing, mostly designated as residential but also a smaller cohort of apartments, condos and duplexes. Properties with no appraised building value were presumed to be empty lots and were coded “unimproved.”

Residential properties where the owner’s mailing address matched the location address were coded as “owner-occupied,” while properties that listed a separate owner’s mailing address were coded as “rental.”

Property ownership necessarily changes with sales, making the research subject a moving target. For purposes of expediency, the project was designed as a modified point-in-time count: While the properties were logged from April 7 through Oct. 11, 2016, a second review of the 2,556 properties from Oct. 14 to Oct. 25 captured any changes of ownership that took place as the data was being compiled.

In cases where rental properties were owned by a limited liability company or other business, the author used the North Carolina Secretary of State website to pull annual reports and identify the actual owners.

As an additional layer of research, the author used North Carolina voter registration records to identify the race and ethnicity of residential property owners.

The author was able to determine the race or ethnicity of 70.3 percent of residential property owners.

The most significant limitation to this method is that many property owners are not registered to vote, including some who may not be eligible because they are not citizens. The review was also limited to property owners who live in the state of North Carolina, which comprise 92.9 percent of the sample, as many states do not make voter registration information public. In consideration of anecdotal reports that the North Carolina Board of Elections does not always accurately record the ethnicity of Latino voters, this study uses Spanish surnames as a proxy for Latino ethnicity.

triad-city-beat.com

east-central High Point through the heart of the furniture market district and into the southwest quadrant beyond Ward Avenue as being burdened with the highest levels of poverty and unemployment, the highest rental and vacancy rates and the lowest home values in the city. A sixth non-contiguous Census block group that hugs Interstate 74 between Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and Lexington Avenue shares the same designation.

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January 18 – 24, 2017 Cover Story

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What we learned

• 80 percent of rental properties in the High Point ghetto are owned by people who live within a 25-mile radius of the properties — a span that encompasses Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Lexington, Thomasville, Trinity and Asheboro.

• Almost half of rental properties are owned by people who live in High Point.

• Landlords who live in the 27262 ZIP code, which includes the affluent neighborhood of Emerywood, own the largest share of rental properties (130).

The second largest share of landlords (116) live in 27260, the ZIP code that includes the ghetto itself. The third largest share live in 27265, which covers the prosperous north end of High Point.

• 81 percent of the residents of the ghetto are African American, but African Americans own only 35 percent of the housing stock in the ghetto.

• Rental housing in the High Point ghetto is distributed across a relatively large number of owners: The Hughes family of Jamestown, which owns the largest number of properties (29), controls only 3.6 percent of the single-family homes and duplexes in the ghetto. Thirty-five families control almost a third of the rental properties.

The remainder is controlled by individuals and companies that own one to three properties.

mortgage applications, making it very difficult for those seeking to purchase affordable homes to obtain a mortgage.”

Naming the conditions that define an area of concentrated poverty and segregation can be sensitive. Local policymakers often use geographic or neighborhood identifiers such as “east-central High Point” or “Southside” as substitutions for race and socioeconomic status. “Disadvantaged,” “challenged” and “areas of greatest need” also perform some of the work in policy discussions.

A more direct word is “ghetto,” a term largely synonymous with urban black poverty since at least the middle of the 20th Century.

The word previously described areas of European cities where Jews were forcibly restricted through the 19th Century, and ghettos were later resurrected under Nazi control during World War II as a means to control, and later liquidate, the population during the Holocaust.

Unofficial ghettos also sprang up in American cities in the North and Midwest where Jews and other immigrants settled, later to be supplanted by African-American migrants from the South.

Mingo said he considers the word “ghetto” to be derogatory.

Equating it to the N-word, he said residents use it with one another to describe where they live, but it carries a sting when uttered by outsiders.

“When you hear the word, what do you think of?” Mingo asked.

“Most people, when they hear that, they think black.”

The term as applied to areas of concentrated poverty in High Point isn’t new. The headline of a 1968 article in the High Point Enterprise testifies to both the cyclical concern about poverty and the stubborn persistence of the problem: “Citizens Group is Formed to Fight Slum Conditions — Goal: To Eliminate the Ghetto in the City’s Southwest Quadrant.”

The word “ghetto” is enmeshed in a painful history of racism in High Point. Recalling what it was like to be a member of one of the first black families to move into the previously all-white Burns Hill neighborhood, Mingo said he didn’t recall any unpleasant interactions with his white neighbors. Trust between neighbors was high enough that when Mingo’s father took the family to South Carolina on weekends, they would leave their house unlocked. Mingo noted with amazement that his family’s friendly relations with their white neighbors coincided with one of the most racially turbulent periods of High Point’s history.

Yet, gradually at first and then with quickening speed, the neighborhood flipped from all white to virtually all black as white residents took advantage of better housing opportunities. When asked why he thought the white residents moved out, Mingo responded by stating the obvious, with an evident sense of personal hurt: “Because blacks moved in.”

Richard Rothstein, a researcher at the left-leaning Economic Policy

Institute, argues that using descriptive terms instead of euphemisms is an important part of being honest about the history of race and poverty in the United States.

“One of the ways in which we forget our history is by sanitizing our language and pretending that these problems don’t exist,” he told Terry Gross, the host of NPR’s “Fresh Air,” in September 2015.

“We have always recognized that these were ‘ghettos.’ A ghetto is, as I define it, a neighborhood which is homogenous and from which there are serious barriers to exit. That’s the technical definition of a ghetto.”

Rothstein argues that the federal government, together with state and local governments, created ghettos beginning in the 1930s through policies that discouraged banks from providing home loans in integrated urban areas — a practice known as “redlining” — while subsidizing housing development for suburban communities that were restricted to whites. Rothstein charted the evolution of segregation in the St. Louis metro area — a pattern that he says was replicated across the nation — in an October 2014 article entitled “The Making of Ferguson: Public Policies at the Root of its Troubles” to explore the underlying social and economic problems that led to upheaval in the wake of the police killing of Michael Brown.

Beginning in 1934, Federal Housing Administration underwriting manuals “stated that ‘protection against some adverse influences is obtained by the proper zoning and deed restrictions that prevail in a neighborhood’ and elaborated that ‘the most important among the adverse influential factors are the ingress of undesirable racial or nationality groups,’” Rothstein wrote.

“The FHA not only insured individual mortgages of white homeowners,” Rothstein continued. “Perhaps even more importantly, it effectively financed the construction of entire segregated subdivisions by making advanced commitments to builders who met FHA construction standards for materials used, lot size, setback from the street, and location in a properly zoned neighborhood that prohibited industry or commercial development threatening home values.

Aware that the Supreme Court had prohibited explicit racial zoning the FHA took the position that the presence of African Americans in nearby neighborhoods was nonetheless a consideration that could threaten FHA insurability and that racial exclusion in the insured subdivision itself could be accomplished if deeds in the subdivision included mutually obligatory clauses prohibiting African Americans from residence.”

High Point and other industrial Piedmont cities developed somewhat differently than did Midwestern and Northern cities that absorbed black migrants fleeing Jim Crow conditions in the South.

Incorporated in 1859, High Point’s rapidly developing furniture and textile industries attracted black migrants from the North Carolina

erbating the overcrowding. With higher housing costs, 11 largest landlords by number of properties African Americans with good jobs were less able to 1. Hughes family, Jamestown — 29 save than were whites with similar incomes — reduced 2. Donald P. Vileno, Lexington — 13 savings made leaving the ghetto for better surround3. Schwarz family, Asheboro — 15 ings more difficult.”

4. Davis family, Asheboro — 12 Historic barriers for black families pursuing home5. William B. Reid & Rosaline Reid, Henrico — 11 ownership played out in High Point, where Cam 6. Henry Lee Briles & Ruth R. Briles, Jamestown — 10 Cridlebaugh Sr. started a savings and loan to serve the 7. City of High Point — 10 needs of African Americans who would have otherwise 8. Cridlebaugh family, High Point — 10 been shut out of the market. Atlantic Realty & Prop9. Robert L. Bryant, High Point — 10 erty Management was founded in 1922 as a savings 10. James M. Hughes & Lori S. Hughes, Denton — 10 and loan, but began providing property management 11. Del Ray Wilson & Rebecca A. Wilson, High Point — 10 services during the Depression. Eventually, the savings and loan business was sold off and was later acquired

by BB&T. neighborhoods in the High Point ghetto.

“My grandfather used to give home loans to minority “I like the neighborhood; it ain’t no worse than any families that could not get loans through other means,” other neighborhood,” said Sherman Marshall, a 74-yearsaid Cam Cridlebaugh III, who is white. old Burns Hill resident who has lived in the neighborhood White people started moving out of Clara Cox Homes since the mid-1960s and worked for Carolina Springs and in the mid-1960s, said Yvonne Short, adding that many Haywood Rolling Panel. He first rented a house on Furblack people also left in starting in the early ’70s. By the lough Avenue, and then moved to his current residence ’80s, residents complained that the public housing comon RC Baldwin Avenue in 1984. At the time, the neighmunity had become infested with drugs. borhood was plagued by break-ins.

“Well, these folks moved out and moved further “It changed a whole lot,” Marshall said. “Right around because the courts had really spoke about integration here it ain’t been as many break-ins. The police stay busy.” and made it a reality within these communities and a lot Dorothy Darr, executive director of the Southwest Reof these folks didn’t like that and they left,” Thurmond Marley added. “Left the project and the surrounding area.”

Rothstein argues that the federal government bears responsibility for the white flight that gathered force in the 1960s because of decades of policies that undermined black homeownership.

“Whites observed the black ghetto and concluded that slum conditions were characteristic of black families, not a result of housing discrimination,” Rothstein wrote. “This conclusion reinforced whites’ resistance to racial integration, lest black residents bring slum conditions to white communities. Thus… government policy bears some responsibility for creating conditions that supported the racial stereotypes fueling such flight.”

In an interview with Triad City Beat, Rothstein added that another reason whites left the ghetto is simply because 100%/ART/VOL 2017 PROOF they could.

“The whites left because the federal government was creating white-only suburbs for them to leave to,” he said.

“Whites, when they moved to these white-only subdivisions, their monthly mortgage payments were less than the SCHEDULE VISIT US ONLINE AT FOR A COMPLETE PERFORMANCE rent they were paying in public housing WWW.GREENSBOROFRINGEFESTIVAL.ORG projects.”

INFO LINE: 336.549.7431 Despite decades of redlining, deindustrialization and disinvestment, many residents speak positively of the

triad-city-beat.com

countryside and from South Carolina, along with white workers from the Appalachian foothills in the late 19th Century. In the pre-auto age, mill owners typically built housing for their employees so they could walk to work.

An oral history completed by the UNCG Community Outreach Partnership Center in 2004 suggests a checkerboard of racial coexistence in the area that now makes up the High Point ghetto, which is now predominantly African American, with Latino immigrants gradually replacing pockets of elderly white residents.

Thurmond Marley, a black resident of the Macedonia neighborhood, recalled that as a child he had to walk through the all-white Southside neighborhood to reach the Fairview School in the 1940s and ’50s.

“We used to have to be together because race relations wasn’t that good,” he said. “And if we got caught in the Southside coming back, we had to fight because these boundaries were off limits to black folks.”

The Macedonia community was bounded on the north

by Clara Cox Homes, an all-white public housing community. Daniel Brooks Homes was built for black residents to the north of the present-day ghetto. The public housing community now lies in the path of High Point University’s southward expansion.

“The neighbors to our left and right were blacks, but the neighbors across the street from us in the front of us were white and two streets back behind us were whites and about two streets to our left were whites,” Yvonne Short, a former Macedonia resident recalled. “We were surrounded by white people. We were just like in a square.

The blacks were like in a square because we were surrounded by the white neighborhood.”

As early as 1931, suburban developers catered to white High Point residents who wanted to move out of the urban core. While the Oak Hill Forest subdivision predated federal policies that explicitly favored all-white housing developments, a newspaper advertisement spelled out the appeal for exclusivity, along with affordability, that gave shape to the residential segregation emerging across the country.

Headlined “The cleanest and the fairest,” the advertisement urged prospective homeowners to “come and see for yourself why Oak Hill Forest is today the outstanding residential park in High Point — for the family who love and appreciate fine old shade trees, expert landscape architecture, restrictions, city conveniences, schools and stores near but not too near, but for various reasons do not care to spend $1,000, $1,500 or $3,000 for a home site.”

Rothstein writes that federal housing policies throughout most of the 20th Century made housing more expensive for black people in the ghetto and prevented them from building wealth.

“With FHA mortgages mostly unavailable, families bought homes with mortgages having very short repayments periods, or with contracts that permitted no accumulation of equity,” Rothstein wrote. “Late installment payments could trigger repossession. To make the higher rent or contract payments, black families took in boarders, or subdivided and sublet their homes or apartments, exac-

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newal Foundation and a resident of the West High Street Historic District, emphasized a sense of pride in the area’s manufacturing legacy.

“It is historic housing stock,” she said. “It was mostly neighborhoods that were associated with the manufacturing industry of furniture and hosiery. The West High Street area was people who owned the mills. The other areas were largely made up of residents who worked in the factories or the mills, some of them craftsmen, some of them just working in the hosiery or cotton and then yarn, as they did at Highland [Cotton Mill].

“The people that I’ve met in these neighborhoods — there’s almost no crime — they’re just really decent, nice people who have a lot honor and integrity,” Darr added.

“We do have a large proportion of renters in the South-

west — 70 to 30 renters to owners — and we would like to see more ownership in the area, some restoration, infill, all of that is necessary.”

While perception is almost as important as reality when it comes to public safety and neighborhood stability, the stats cut against Darr’s claim: The UNCG market segmentation highlighted one of the Census block groups in the southwest area for a violent crime rate of 9.58 calls per 1,000 residents.

The southwest quadrant in particular shows signs of reinvestment. Most notably, the Belgian furniture maker BuzziSpace took over the historic Pickett Cotton Mill in 2014. And in late 2012, part of the old Myrtle Desk company was jointly purchased by a company that contracts furniture manufacturing in China and an import business

that specializes in South African wine.

Yet for all of its promise, 43 percent of the residents of the southwest quadrant fall below the federal poverty level, and in one Census block group the figure is as high as 87 percent. The UNCG researchers found that median household incomes in the two poorest census tracts in the southwest charted at $9,006 and $15,806 respectively.

They found generally high levels substandard housing and vacant units throughout the southwest.

Stephen Sills, the lead researcher of the UNCG study and director of the Center for Housing and Community Studies, likens rental housing to an extractive resource industry, even going so far as to compare it to the “mountain-top removal” method of coal mining where the tops of mountains in Appalachia are literally blown off.

value of single-family homes in the area.

After a house at 1408 W Green Drive owned by Nancy Hughes Bailey was severely damaged by fire, the city ordered extensive repairs, including the replacement of fire-damaged exterior walls in June 2016. The house was torn down after the city issued an order for repair or demolition in October.

The city summoned Jennie Leigh Hughes for a hearing to answer a complaint about substandard housing

at a property at 1227 Dorris Ave. in September. Among numerous violations cited, inspector Billy Caudle ordered the landlord to replace broken windows and replace deteriorated siding on the house. After Hughes failed to appear for the Sept. 28 hearing, the city ordered her to repair or demolish the house. City council must sign off on the order before the city can proceed with demolition.

Representatives of the family could not be reached for this story. A woman who answered the phone at rental

Cover Story

Hughes family

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The Hughes family, which controls 29 rental properties in the ghetto, operates a rental agency on West Green Drive in High Point, but the family members live in Jamestown, according to corporate records.

The family’s holdings include properties owned by Hughes Family LLC, Carolyn W. Hughes, Nancy Hughes Bailey, Jennie Leigh Hughes and Charles Hughes III. The average valuation for single-family homes owned by the family is $25,711 — 22.7 percent below the average

A house owned by Nancy Hughes Bailey at 1408 W. Green Drive was boarded up after it burned out.

COURTESY PHOTO

By October the house had been demolished.

Schwarz family agency in High Point responded to an inquiry about the family’s rental properties by saying, “Not interested” and promptly hung up the phone.

JORDAN GREEN

ment, Cridlebaugh’s company manages about 1,200 residential properties around High Point. The vast majority of the monthly rents fall between $400 and $600, what Cridlebaugh calls “a recession-proof range” because “it doesn’t matter if you’re working a low-income job; you still need housing.” Cridlebaugh and his wife, Nicole, also own 18 rental properties of their own through Fennario Properties LLC. A longtime Grateful Dead fan with framed photographs of Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir on his office wall, Cridlebaugh named his real estate company after a fictitious locale that crops up in at least two songs by Dead lyricist Robert Hunter. “Fennario” is referenced in the traditional folk song “Peggy-O” that entered the band’s repertoire in the late ’70s, but also in the Hunter-penned

“Dire Wolf” from the 1970 album Workingman’s Dead: “In the backwash of Fennario, the black and bloody mire/ The Dire Wolf collects his dues, while the boys sing ’round the fire.”

“I don’t work with slumlords,” Cridlebaugh said. “I’ve fired plenty of clients who don’t keep up their properties.

My job is to make money for my clients. My job as a landowner is to make money for Fennario Properties. I don’t make money if my houses are vacant.”

Cridlebaugh’s days are filled with working through a constant stream of code violation letters from the city and repair requests from tenants. He takes pride in responding quickly.

“I have an army of contractors that work for me that can take care of everything from a dripping kitchen faucet to

The Schwarz family’s holdings in the High Point ghetto include nine properties owned by Schwarz Properties LLC, a company owned

by Todd Schwarz; three properties owned by SHP Capital LLC, also held by Schwarz; one property owned by Southeastern Residential Properties, again held by Schwarz; and three properties owned by Elly’s Place LLC, a company owned by COURTESY Vivian Schwarz, the family matriarch. The city has issued an order to repair PHOTO or demolish for 1310 Ragan Ave. The average property valuation of the family’s rental properties is $20,815 — 37.4 percent below the average value of in the area.

In 2012, the High Point City Council ordered the demolition of the Meredith Street Apartments, a six-building complex with 24 units owned by Schwarz Properties in the east-central area.

Among the complaints about the complex were broken windowpanes, missing plumbing and electrical fixtures and holes in interior walls. The apartments were finally torn down in early 2015.

Properties owned by members of the Schwarz family have continued to rack up violations.

The city opened a public nuisance case for a property owned by Vivian Schwarz at 1310 Ragan Ave. in late July 2016, with an inspector reporting that the front door was kicked in. The next month, the city opened a substandard housing case, citing the property for broken windows, damaged interior walls, overgrown vegetation and broken gutters, among other violations. The city issued an order to repair or demolish in early December.

On Nov. 14, the city opened a substandard housing case on the property at 1411 Pershing St., which is owned by Schwarz’s Southeastern Residential Properties. Records show that the city had paid a contractor $100 in late August to board up a window on the house. In November, the city placed a lien against the property in an effort to get reimbursement for the expense. At a Dec. 1 hearing the city found the property unfit for human habitation.

Three other properties owned by companies held by Todd Schwarz have been cited in public nuisance cases for — among other violations — overgrown vegetation, trash piles and unsecured dwellings, but the city closed the cases after the landlord corrected the problems.

Asheboro-based Schwarz Properties boast of being “one of the largest real-estate management companies in the Mid-Atlantic region” on the company website, with more than 500 residential, industrial and commercial locations under its management. Todd Schwarz is the company’s president.

Far from lacking funds to maintain their properties, the Schwarz family appears to have built significant wealth from their real estate dealings: Vivian Schwarz’s home in Asheboro is valued at $2.4 million.

Todd Schwarz did not respond to repeated phone messages for this story.

triad-city-beat.com

Even though the vast majority of landlords in the High Point ghetto live nearby, Sills said, “You’re still extracting wealth from one side of town to the other, largely from low-income black people to high-income whites. I still see this as a social justice issue. If I’m a landlord, I’ve bought low-income housing because it’s a good investment and I can still extract the dollars from rent payments but I’m not going to invest very much as long as there’s a tax advantage. They get to write off the wear and tear as it’s rented.

As soon as it reaches the highest level of depreciation, there’s incentive to sell. Then the next owner comes in and the cycles repeats. They buy the house and put lipstick on it — paint it, fix the windows, do some cosmetic things so they can rent it out.”

As the owner of Atlantic Realty & Property Manage-

The High Point ghetto, by the numbers

• Acreage: 1,096 • Total valuation: $654 million • Total valuation of all residential properties: $61.9 million • Total valuation of all industrial properties: $87.1 million • Total valuation of all retail (including furniture showrooms) properties: $302.5 million • Total valuation of all government-owned properties, churches and other nontaxed institutional properties: $105.9 million • Total value of all office and commercial properties: $73.8 million • Local tax revenue generated from showrooms and other retail properties: $1.9 million • Percentage of land that remains undeveloped: 21.9 percent • Total acreage available for redevelopment: 240 • Factor by which developed property exceeds the value of unimproved acreage: 4:1 • Local tax revenue lost annually from underutilization of undeveloped land: $742,560 • Factor by which the matriarch of the Schwarz family’s home exceeds the average value of the family’s High Point rental properties: 115:1

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January 18 – 24, 2017 Cover Story

Cam Cridlebaugh III is the owner of Atlantic Realty & Property Management, which manages about 1,200 rental properties in High Point.

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removing a dead body,” he said.

From Cridlebaugh’s perspective, the challenges in the ghetto include both homeowners who simply find themselves unable to afford the cost of upkeep to people in the neighborhood who commit property crimes.

“There’s a house where we recently put new carpeting throughout the house,” he said. “The next weekend all the windows were broken out. They had made a campfire in the living room. The owner of it told us to board it up, put Roundup on the yard, and put it up for sale.”

Making a property management business works revolves around a couple fundamentals, Cridlebaugh said.

“It’s by getting qualified tenants in the house,” he said.

“Collections, collections, collections. And keeping maintenance costs as low as I can. People wouldn’t come to me if I didn’t turn a profit for them. On the other side, people wouldn’t come to me if I didn’t provide a good house, provide fair housing and an affordable rent.”

Since the city engaged the UNCG Center for Housing and Community Studies to conduct the market segmentation study, the city has increased its code inspection staff from one full-time inspector to six.

“We’re up to full speed now,” said Michael McNair, the city’s director of community development and housing. “We’ve got a regular diet of demolitions and repair orders.”

Jerry Mingo, who lives in Burns Hill and operates the nonprofit sewing factory on East Green Drive, said the city’s stepped-up efforts have produced results.

“You can tell with a lot of the lots being cut that weren’t being cut before,” he said. “And with some of the houses that were in disrepair being torn down you can see the difference.”

Also notable in the city’s efforts to address housing conditions in the ghetto is a partnership with the national nonprofit Operation Inasmuch. Leveraging volunteer

JORDAN GREEN

labor from churches, the city is targeting a handful of houses on a single block for repairs. The first project took place in the Southside neighborhood in May 2016, followed by the east-central area in November. The third project will take place in Highland Mills in May. “The idea is that if you target four or five houses on a block for light rehab — it might be painting — it has a spill-over effect,” Sills said. “Neighbors might be inspired to improve their houses. It makes people think about the status of the neighborhood. The program targets elderly homeowners who might have paid off their mortgages, but they have fixed incomes so they can’t always afford to make repairs.”

The completion of the market segmentation study has raised a nettlesome but ever present question in High Point — whether the city should focus resources on the areas of greatest need or strategically target distressed areas with stronger assets that are likely to yield a higher return on investment.

The market segmentation study bluntly recommends “wholesale redevelopment” for the ghetto. Such an undertaking would require millions of dollars in federal funding, Sills said, adding that the $500,000 budgeted by the city this year for blight removal and redevelopment would barely make a dent.

“We recommend focusing on the constrained markets,” Sills said. “They bottomed out in 2009 at the beginning of the recession. They’re selling, but very slowly. The city can turn that around by providing low-interest loans to prospective homeowners. Things like credit counseling would help. Trainings for new homeowners: When you’re accustomed to renting, you might not know about cleaning out the hair trap under the sink so you can save money instead of hiring a plumber. The city could strategically seize properties with delinquent taxes and then find new owners. That’s a way to bring money back in paid taxes.”

The recent buildout of the Park Terrace Apartments, a public housing community that received an award for excellence in affordable housing from the NC Housing Finance Agency in 2013, would seem to be a bright spot in the High Point ghetto. The apartments, which replaced Clara Cox Homes, lie a block south of the East Green Drive shopping center where Jerry Mingo operates his nonprofit garment factory. But Sills cautioned against siting affordable housing in areas that lack resources.

“The opportunity structures aren’t there,” he said.

“Where are these kids going to go to school? You’ve got a concentration of poverty there. What are the grocery stores like? You’ve got a food desert. A Family Dollar counts as a food store. That, in my mind, does not count as a healthy food store.”

Instead, Sills said the city should look for opportunities to build affordable housing in more stable housing markets around Emerywood that would provide residents with access to public transportation, shopping and employment. As a tradeoff, the city could look for ways to incentivize higher-income, mostly younger people to move into the urban core to diversify incomes and stimulate demand for retail.

In previous conversations, Michael McNair, the city’s community development and housing director, has emphasized a redevelopment strategy in line with Sills’ recommendation, but he said over time he’s come to believe that the city can’t afford to neglect the areas of greatest need.

“What we’ve come to recognize — we still have to be smart — is that red doesn’t mean don’t go in there; it means don’t go in there without a plan,” he said. “This is not a wasteland.

“Our council’s serious about this, our manager’s serious about this,” McNair added. “They’re serious about addressing blight in the core.”

The High Point ghetto is a place with almost 5,000 residents that happens to include City Hall, an Amtrak station and cluster of showrooms that serve as a hub for the largest home furnishings market in North America.

Armed with a new study and a granular view of conditions in the ghetto, city leaders face a reckoning about whether to make a concerted effort to address urban poverty and blight or to continue on the same course as in the past 50 years.

As a person who made a good livelihood as production supervisor, Mingo knows he could have moved away, but he said he likes Burns Hill, and his neighbors.

He recalled a time when his house was broken into and a police officer asked him why he didn’t move.

“Why?” Mingo replied. “I shouldn’t have to. Your job is to protect and serve.”

He knows the value he places in his community is not reciprocated by its real-estate values.

“I know if I decided to sell my property tomorrow I couldn’t find a buyer,” he said. “Or, if I did, it would become a rental property. If I die tomorrow, that’s it.”

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January 18 – 24, 2017 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story

C

hef Tim Grandinetti jokingly calls the Brooklyn-style ramen — with its chicken broth, chicken and crab cake — “hipster ramen.” After trying more than half the bowls on his pop-up menu, I’ll reluctantly concur with the title.

Grandinetti, the chef behind Spring House and Quanto Basta just blocks from each other on the west side of downtown Winston-Salem, organized a weekly event series with Gwen Roach of Caldero Bone Broth and Winstead Farms. Using Roach’s broths — and help in the kitchen — Spring House launched the pop-up ramen concept on Jan. 12, continuing indefinitely. And with reservations completely booked for the first four Thursday evenings, the ramen likely isn’t disappearing any time soon.

We’ve called for standalone a ramen restaurant in the Triad in these pages repeatedly. I made it part of my 2016 year-end food piece, very shortly before the ramen pop-up was announced.

Doing such a thing might be enough reason to call a bearded white guy like me a hipster anyway, but appreciating a good bowl of ramen has nothing to do with being hip.

Ramen isn’t new, even in the US. It’s been years since I first tried some — I admit, in Brooklyn — back before I did

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any kind of regular food writing. And that happened long after David Chang’s famed Momofuku opened in 2004.

And ramen is already available in the Triad. You can find it at sister restaurants Don Japanese and Sushi Republic — both on the collegiate Tate Street — and even the newer Crafted: The Art of Street Food and Tunazilla in Greensboro. It may show up on other menus too, but at the very least you can go to one of Ise Japanese’s two Winston-Salem locations to try one of eight hibachi ramen choices, including a vegetable-based option.

And while Spring House’s pop-up inside ERIC GINSBURG The ramen pop-up includes five different kinds of the Japanese soup, but it’s its luxurious, refinished already sold out for the next several iterations. home of a restaurant once a week still isn’t the And so I ordered some. standalone, dedicated ramen shop of my dreams — the likes of I wondered how the tonkotsu ramen with its creamy pork which have also thrilled me in Boston, Durham and Austin — broth, shiitake mushrooms and pork belly would stack up. To it’s a nonetheless heartening development. my delight, it arrived with a much more generous helping of That’s not just because it’s more ramen. It’s also because broth, allowing the ingredients to soak in its warmth.

Grandinetti and Roach can really cook.

I’d already eaten a considerable amount — we ordered the Roach walked surreptitiously through the dining room fried chicken steamed buns appetizer with Japanese mayo about halfway through the first evening of the affair, a black to kick off the night, and I strongly urge you to do the same baseball cap pulled low towards her brow. She hadn’t had a — and the heavier, creamy broth just about knocked me out. I chance to try any of their finished products yet, and would finished it off the next day, but my verdict remained the same: return to the kitchen before she had a chance to do so. But the Brooklyn-style for the win. whole thing excited her; she normally doesn’t operate out of a If you’ve only ever had one bowl of ramen and it happened restaurant, flying solo or alongside her husband instead. to be stateside, chances are good you tried tonkotsu. Before I’ll tell you what I told her before her return — it tasted you call me a hipster, make it a point to try Grandinetti and excellent, and I especially appreciated the Roach’s Brooklyn-style. broth. My girlfriend Kacie and I ordered I admittedly haven’t had every bowl of the Brooklyn-style and the “umami house ramen available in the Triad, but I’ve done a Visit Spring House at ramen,” the latter of which has two broths solid job making the rounds. The choices at 450 N. Spring St. (W-S) — one of them a lighter dashi — with crispy Spring House — which also include turkey or at springhousenc. pork, pork meatball and kimchi. Grandinetti paitan and vegetable — are my favorite yet, said beforehand these two were likely his thanks to fantastic broth, legit noodles, com, and reserve a spot favorites, and they appeared first on the care for other ingredients including egg and for the Thursday ramen menu, too. overall taste. menus at 336.293.4797.

Nothing against the house ramen, and I would still put it a notch below Dashi in you can feel free to blame my still relatively Durham, and a few other memorable bowls inexperienced ramen palate, but I favored I’ve had out of state. But though it may be the Brooklyn-style, preferring the taste of the chicken broth. weekly and booked up for a bit, Spring House’s pop-up is satisKacie agreed, though I expected nothing less considering the fying and much closer to home. presence of the pork belly.

And if Grandinetti’s corner of downtown Winston-Salem But we briefly lamented that each bowl didn’t feature more isn’t accessible enough for you, fear not; there are whispers of broth, with the soups looking more like the sort of ramen a food truck with a seasonal menu, one which the chef says that’s dipped in broth rather than steeping in it. That’s certainwould likely feature ramen in the winter, given the pop-up’s ly a style of ramen, but we still wanted more. immediate popularity.

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he smell is unmistakable: greasy, smoky pork pulling you by the nose into the front door Camel City BBQ Factory, but you’re on a mission. Follow the signs for the bar up the external

by Kat Bodrie stairway. The table service portion of the restaurant is here, too, and if you want to avoid the demon children running around, screaming and speaking strings of English like a scene from The Wicker Man, then it’s best to come after their bedtime.

That should be no problem, considering the Winston-Salem “barcade” — bar and arcade — doesn’t close before midnight during the week.

The bar draws a fair number of late-night customers. On a recent Friday, nearly all the seats were taken, with more patrons standing behind.

Still, it was easy to get the bartender’s attention and start a tab.

Camel City BBQ Factory is likely not on a beer nerd’s short-list. The offerings, even those on tap, KAT BODRIE The bar empties after a rousing Packers vs. Cowboys game on are pretty mainstream, and many are owned by Sunday.

Big Beer: Devils Backbone, Lagunitas, Blue Moon and others. The Ballast Point Mocha Marlin Porter, to give introverts some breathing room. another product of Big Beer, had a solid coffee flavor and Reboot, a full-service bar and arcade, is slated to open made for a perfect second drink of the night. mid-February on Liberty Street in downtown Winston-Salem, Asterisks on the draft list denote North Carolina craft beers. just down the street from Camel City BBQ Factory, according These, too, are fairly typical, like Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and to recent news reports. It’s a move that will hopefully push Red Oak Amber Lager. The Appalathe local forerunner to offer a better chian Mountain Long Leaf IPA and craft beer selection and ensure their Visit Camel City BBQ Factory at New Belgium Rampant looked intergames and other machines, including esting; unfortunately, both kegs were 701 N. Liberty St. (W-S). Find it on the Atari Flashbacks in the table serempty when I returned on Sunday.

Facebook or at camelcitybbq.com. vice area, are in working order.

The Deep River Pumpkin Pie Porter Even so, Reboot may find it hard to was decent, and one I haven’t seen beat a place that offers a barcade with elsewhere. Wines unsurprisingly fall such delicious food, where the pulled pork and mac & cheese in the middle of the road, Cupcake Vineyards and the like. are among my favorites.

Daily specials trend toward the bottom of the barrel, most with “lite/light” and “ultra” in the names. But all drafts are $5 Kat loves red wine, Milan Kundera, and the Shins. She wears when not on special, which is hard to beat. scarves at katbodrie.com.

Camel City BBQ Factory is best for liquor fans, who can find great spirits like Larceny bourbon or local products such as Sutler’s gin and Broad Branch whiskey.

It also suits those who aren’t as concerned with what they’re drinking, as long as it has alcohol and the setting is right.

The bigger draw, aside from the food, is the arcade, located up a short flight of stairs from the bar. Adults flock to the darts, pool, air hockey and skeeball. Old-school electronic ’80s games are plentiful: Donkey Kong, Asteroids, Pac Man, Centipede. Pinball machines boast TV and movie themes like Ghostbusters, Starship Troopers and “Game of Thrones.” For those with no cash on hand — or when the change machine is broken, as KAT BODRIE A wall divides the Camel City BBQ arcade in half, creating a it was on Sunday — giant Jenga and Connect 4 are layout for more games and a place for patrons to set their drinks. good options, and they’re out of the way enough

triad-city-beat.com

Competition cometh for Camel City BBQ Factory’s ‘barcade’

602 S Elam Ave • Greensboro

(336) 698-3888

17

January 18 – 24, 2017 Up Front

W

arm light radiated off the exposed brick of Kleur, a boutique in Winston-Salem’s Big Winston complex, as the small space filled with a veritable Sgt. Pepper’s-esque collage of the city’s musicians, artists, barkeeps and journalists — Laura Gardea, Danielle Bull, Eddie Garcia, Tori Elliott, Eric Swaim. A row of five figures sat patiently at a table along the wall: scene veteran Saylor Breckenridge, Estrangers drummer Drew Braden, Katelyn Allivato of the Genuine, Foxture frontman Marlon Blackmon and weirdo-garage-noise

Cover Story

Opinion

News

CULTURE Sound Ecology lays foundation for a scene’s growth

by Anthony Harrison

All She Wrote

Shot in the Triad

Crossword

Sportsball

Culture

All Showtimes @ 9:00pm

18

1/17

Bring Your Own Vinyl

1/18

Comedy Night ft. Pat McMurrian, Tori Chaffee, Micah Hanner

1/19

Tyler Godfrey

1/21

Peter May & the Maybirds, Abe Reid, Arcus Hyatt

1/22

Bjorn & Francois

1/23

Marco Butcher

701 N Trade Street Winston-Salem, NC 27101

(336)955-1888 Pick of the Week Magpie Feast @ The Garage (W-S), Saturday, 8 p.m.

Raleigh-based folk-rock quartet Magpie Feast brings guitar, banjo, violin, bass and drums to the Triad.

Their songs range from acoustic to gothic to dirty garage. Scrub Pine and Kyle Caudle join. More info on the Facebook event page.

purveyor Anthony Petrovic.

Kleur filled even further, the crowd outgrowing the number of chairs provided, a front row forming before the quintet, sitting crosslegged like kids ready for storytime. A small group crowded around a table holding wine and charcuterie; the former was already nearly gone. The quiet din of anticipatory conversation hummed through the shop.

“I wish I could get this many people to my show,” Jacob Leonard of Dark Prophet Tongueless Monk remarked to a friend.

In a way, that’s why everyone had gathered ANTHONY Panelists respond to questions about how to attract college in the little boutique.

HARRISON students and build an inclusive local music scene.

Sound Ecology was billed as a community discussion on the “local music ecosystem.” The “There’s a lack of venues for college students,” Allivato said. forum served to broach subjects affecting Winston-Salem’s “Lots of undergrads are under 21; some are still under 18.” music scene and proffer possible solutions on how to engage Of course, many venues in Winston-Salem and elsewhere with challenges facing the town’s web of talent. are bars, either 18- or 21-and-up establishments. And, natuThe discussion was organized by local impresario Philip rally, alcohol sales represent an important revenue stream Pledger and Kleur proprietor Molly Grace. making music venues viable.

After the slight tension in the room was broken by humorApproaches to this problem brought up varying opinions. ous fake coughs, Grace took the time to thank the attendees.

“Can we do this without an all-ages venue?” one attendee “This is not the first, but it is the best-attended community asked. discussion we’ve hosted on this issue,” Grace said. “Part of my “I’m old now; I don’t want to hang out with a lot of kids,” vision for this space was a discussion like this, so I’m so glad Petrovic scoffed, drawing laughs from the forum. y’all have turned out like you have.”

Age wasn’t so much of an issue as it was figuring out where Following further introductions, the panel, moderated by to play. DIY spaces like Kleur, record stores, galleries like Breckenridge, launched into the most significant questions Delurk and SECCA were suggested. One inevitable answer — facing the Winston-Salem music scene: How does the commugoing underground with house shows. nity get college students to better engage in live music? How Then, that question led to others: Does the community do colleges figure into the equation of increasing audience move more towards free shows? How would bands promote sizes? Where can bands rehearse? How can the music commuthe shows? How would they get paid? nity best embrace a diversity of musical genres? How can the Hurdles jumped leading to taller ones. scene prevent stagnation?

“Despite passion, hard work and success, our music scene The panel addressed these big issues as best they could. is not growing,” Winston-Salem Arts Council member Devon On the topic of college engagement, Foxture’s Blackmon Mackay said after the event. “A lot of that might be a lack of had mixed opinions. opportunity beyond a certain level of success.”

“If we play directly on college campuses as venues, kids Not every sensitive, relevant issue was addressed. might feel more obligated to go when they’re already there,” “The lack to racial variety within the music scene… in my Blackmon said. “They feel safer and more welcome.” opinion, could easily deter people of color from feeling welLater, though, he did acknowledge the sizable time during come at shows,” Blackmon said in a follow-up interview. which students disappear.

“We want our culture to be bordered by a permeable mem“In the summer, you’re screwed at that point,” Blackmon brane, not a wall,” Mackay commented in a similar vein. said.

But the point wasn’t to arrange an omnibus plan to vitalize Allivato got even more pointed. the scene immediately; it was but a beginning.

“It’s strange that we’re a college town, because it doesn’t “I realize some people may have been frustrated by a lack of feel like it at all,” Allivato commented. “It’s not like Chapel concrete, actionable items or takeaways, but sometimes beHill. Even Appalachian [State University] has a student-run fore those can come, it’s important for there to be dialogue,” music venue.”

Pledger said in an interview. “It was successful as a safe space Petrovic added that, in some cases, college students seem for people to let their voices be heard, which doesn’t happen completely divested from the local music scene. too often in that kind of setting in Winston.”

“School of the Arts blows me away,” Petrovic said. “A lot of One plain takeaway: People in Winston-Salem care about those kids are prodigies, but they don’t seem interested.” bolstering the city’s beloved but unstable scene.

Even these opening topics positively engaged the crowd.

As people filed out of Kleur at about 9:30 p.m., someone “I’ve heard at NCSA that they are told, ‘Do not be distracted announced with much ado, “There’s a show at Test Pattern by outside projects,’” one attendee stated. right now.”

College kids, no matter their attendance, did bridge into another subject: venues.

triad-city-beat.com

CULTURE Visiting artist contends with mundanity

C

Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Sportsball Crossword

Pick of the Week

All She Wrote

Allen Jay and the Underground Railroad @ High Point Public Library (HP), Saturday, 3 p.m.

Josh Brown, editor of Autobiography of Allen Jay, discusses how Jay was inspired to become involved in the Underground Railroad, fight against slavery, promote education for freed slaves and encourage Quaker social activism. More info at highpointnc.gov.

Shot in the Triad

by Joel Sronce ontradiction doesn’t normally appear in exhibit literature, much less represent an artist’s shifting perspective and the elaborate, enriched work that follows. But such might be the case for the newest installation in the Falk Gallery of UNCG’s Weatherspoon Art Museum.

Entering the gallery, visitors first encounter the “Income’s Outcome” selections of Danica Phelps’ Hoping to Help exhibit.

These line drawings display ordinary moments of Phelps’ life — opening a letter, sitting at a desk chair, flipping through the pages of a book — and are themselves tracings of the originals that have already been sold.

Below each drawing, painted atop strips of recycled US currency, the artist represented each dollar that the piece earned with a small green line, and the dollars she then spent with red ones. Though not terribly engaging from piece to JOEL SRONCE Danica Phelps depicts an ordinary moment in her life (left). Phelps gave the piece, it’s an interesting lens proceeds from the piece to a nonprofit, and then depicted the organization (right). through which to consider art as a livelihood. By arranging “The Gratitude Project” stems from an auction Phelps crethose ordinary moments with the coming and going of the ated to donate money from each sale to a nonprofit organizaeach drawing’s financial success, Phelps hopes to “celebrate tion. Once a piece had been sold, Phelps combined a tracing of the mundane aspects of life that we all share.” it with a drawing that illustrates the work of that nonprofit.

But, as the artist admits, not everyone shares the same Still adorned with the painted green and red lines of mundanity after all. monetary transactions, her own ordinary occasions have The literature for Hoping to Help includes the artist’s their charitable matches. Scratched in pencil on each piece changing perspective, one that has led to a series titled “The are the descriptions of each moment and the names of the Gratitude Project” that completes the rest of the exhibit. In nonprofits. Examples include “Opening the the literature, Phelps explains, “Increaswindow” with the Syrian American Medical ingly my thoughts turn to those people Society, “Trying to figure out my finances” Danica Phelps’ Hoping to who do not experience anything mundane. with Planned Parenthood, and “Coffee” Listening to the news reminds me that for Help exhibit runs through with Doctors without Borders. many people each day is a nightmare of April 9. For more info visit The pairs themselves seem like strange, hardships and uncertainty. I am haunted weatherspoon.uncg.edu. even awkward bedfellows, as do the flimsy by their stories and confused by the fact series titles, and another piece of the that I get to live my comfortable life in this exhibit literature, a Facebook post that particular spot on the planet by relative includes, “I have never had enough money to make a differchance while others, by the same random assignment of locaence in the lives of people who are suffering, but I can make tion or circumstance, suffer so terribly.” drawings!” The first clause of that quote almost suggests a So often known for their pursuit of truth and their confronnarrow understanding of influence, whether it be limited to tation of established social understanding, it’s surprising to financial ability or not directly against the systems that deterhear these words from a successful artist. People shouldn’t mine financial inequality in the first place. need the country’s recent political turmoil to be aware of the But many of the pieces are alluring, and all seem sincere. nightmarish lives of members of any community. Nor should The auction raised more than $10,000 in its first two months. anyone be confused by their privilege or oblivious to fouler Despite the literature’s contradiction and frustrating quotes, things than relative chance and random assignment that are Phelps’ honesty is still useful in a time when criticism strives to blame for terrible suffering. to conquer influence.

Yet to Phelps’ credit, her shifting perspective and goals have led to the more powerful portion of the exhibit.

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January 18 – 24, 2017 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Sportsball Crossword Shot in the Triad All She Wrote

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SPORTSBALL

Swarm sting State alum, sell out small stadium

T

he Fieldhouse sold out for the Greensboro Swarm’s Jan. 13 home game against the Delaware 87ers, the awkwardly named D-League affiliate of the Philadelphia 76ers who nevertheless touted a respectable 12-9

by Anthony Harrison record. While the tickets sales must encourage the team and the Charlotte Hornets’ decision to base their farm team in Tournament Town, the bummer remained: There was no way to get into the Friday-night game.

Unless you had a connection.

The weekend prior, I banked on attending the game that night, securing a press pass. But then, my friend Alexander texted me.

“I’m going to see [former NC State guard] Cat Barber play against the Swarm on Friday night,” his message read. “Are you planning on being there to cover that one?”

Background: Alexander is one of the biggest sports fans I know. He’s a rabid Tar Heels fan, too.

It runs way deep. His family owned two goats back when we were kids in the late ’90s, and he and his younger brother Clayton named the goats after two Carolina superstars, forward Rasheed Wallace and swingman Jerry Stackhouse. Clayton and Alexander

also co-opted the name of the family cat, Addie, and usable photos in 500 shots, and so on. insisted on referring to him as Ademola, after Chapel With a few minutes left in the first quarter, the score Hill forward Ademola Okulaja. was already 21-13, Swarm advantage. While walking If all these clues serve as any indication, basketball to the press tables right along the baseline, Alexander ranks as his favorite sport. He was rather hyped about was like a kid finding out he’d soon inherit a candy the Swarm coming to Greensboro, and after their store. He fumbled with the camera a bit, but mainly debut, we had chatted about the team’s prospects and fawned at the players on the court. made tentative plans to attend a game together.

“Damien!” he exclaimed, noticing the veteran swingI figured Friday the 13th was as good a night as any. man Wilkins on the floor for the Swarm. “There he is!

Luckily I could get him in as my phoHe must’ve been playing before we sat tographer, and honestly, it was nice to down.”

While Cat Barber and pass off the responsibility to someone Alexander recognized the journeythe 87ers kept it tight else. Sports photojournalism isn’t easy, man player from his time with the at times, the Swarm and it often distracts me from taking Seattle Supersonics and other teams. satisfactory notes.

Though the oldest player on the court, never trailed, winning I met with Alexander and his college 115-10 and bumping up Wilkins already had 9 points. buddy Jeff beforehand at Old Town Alexander agreed with my earlier their sad record to 7-17. estimation regarding his presence on Draught House.

“Who would you say is the best playthe Swarm roster. er on the Swarm?” Jeff asked me.

“He’s like a camp counselor,” he said. “Older than And, like an idiot, my brain farted all over the place everyone, but leading people and having a good time.” as I drew a blank on the star point guard’s name. I Wilkins finished with a season-high 22 points, and mumbled something about the big-man tandem the Swarm as a whole were in rare form that night, between Mike Tobey and Christian Wood, but Wood with four others reaching double digits. Xavier Munbounces back and forth between the Hornets and the ford reached 21, guard Rasheed Sulaimon contributed Swarm like a ping-pong ball. So did potential phenom 13 and Mike Tobey came off the bench for 18 points, guards Archie Goodwin and Aaron Harrison. All this, producing even after a fourth-quarter fall sent him and I was still unable to recall Xavier Munford’s damn spinning like a pinwheel onto his tailbone. name until Jeff brought up But Christian Wood proved immensely vital once the roster on his phone. again.

“He was starting point On the heels of a 45-point, 16-rebound effort against guard for the Memphis the Long Island Nets the night prior, Wood recorded Grizzlies last year — as his third-straight double-double with 25 points and 15 • Flash your ad on websites across the internet. was everyone,” Alexander boards.

• Target your customers by age, income, ZIP code and more. said.

“They suffered a While Cat Barber and the 87ers kept it tight at times • Pennies per impression. plague of injuries.”

— Barber put up 22 points himself; two others recorded I opted to drive. The double-doubles — the Swarm never trailed, hitting 54 sellout crowd bottlepercent of their shots on the night and hitting 22 of necked traffic at the 29 free throws. They won, 115-108, bumping up their entrance to the coliseum record to 7-17. complex parking lot, but It was the best Swarm game I’ve seen yet. And I was when we finally arrived happy to share the time with my friend and fulfill a at the attendant’s kiosk, I little dream of his. flashed my credentials.

He even snapped some good pics.

Call Dick at 336.402.0515 “Go ahead, press,” the blond woman said, or Brian 336.681.0704 perhaps with a hint of sarcasm. My two passengers still seemed dazzled.

Pick of the Week Jeff split from us to meet his friend Jaclyn in the swelling line outside Skate spot opens, skate park coming the front lobby, and AlexRibbon-cutting ceremony @ Glenwood Skate Spot ander and I rounded the (GSO), Saturday, 3:30 p.m. back of the Fieldhouse, Bring your board and get ready to party. Greenscamera in tow. I told boro Parks & Recreation will hold a ribbon-cutting him the basic ropes: It’s ceremony for the new Glenwood Skate Spot at the practically impossible for Glenwood Recreation Center. The celebration will all intents and purposes; include refreshments, games for kids and a trick triad-city-beat.com you’re lucky to get two contest sponsored by Board Paradise..

Audience Extension

Playing January 20 – 25

“Arise!” — Get up to the challenge.

by Matt Jones Across

15 16

1 2

49 51 52 54 57 59 62 63 64 65

SPECIAL 20th Anniversary Screening Hayao Miyazaki’s

“Princess Mononoke” In Japanese with English

Subtitles! 7–10 p.m. Saturday, January 21st. $2 Tickets! Available online!

--OTHER EVENTS & SCREENINGS--

Board Game Night More than 100 Board & Card Games -- FREE TO PLAY! 7 p.m. on Every Friday!

Saturday Morning Cartoons

Great Cartoons! Free Admission! 10 a.m. & 10 p.m. Every Saturday!

Super Smash Bros Melee Tournament 12 p.m. Sunday, January 22. CASH PRIZES!

FREE SCREENING: “Democracy for Sale” Directed by Zach Galifianakis for the “America Divided” series.

6:30 p.m. Tuesday, January 24

Totally Rad Trivia! $3 buy in! Up to six player teams!

Winners get CASH PRIZE! 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, January 24

Drink N’ Draw 6 p.m. Wednesday, January 25.

All Artists of All Ages & Skill Levels are Welcome!

Beer! Wine! Amazing Coffee!

2134 Lawndale Drive, Greensboro geeksboro.com •

336-355-7180 Culture

“Unbelievable” band of 1991 Wrestler-turned-B-movie-actor Johnson 3 Yes, in Yokohama 4 How files were often stored, before the cloud 5 Bangalore wrap 6 Part of the NRA 7 Crossword puzzler’s dir.

8 Places where one may tip for getting tips 9 It’s visible on cold days 10 “O.K.” from Tom Sawyer 11 Special appearance by a Chevrolet

30 32 34 36 37 41 44 46 47

muscle car?

Emulate The Dude State with the most counties Gives confirmation New Mexico’s official neckwear American Revolutionary patriot Silas Shine Places to buy Indian string instruments?

“I ___ robot, beep boop beep” (unusually common impersonation of a robot) Tucker who sang “Delta Dawn” Company with a duck mascot Vague At ___ (puzzled) Like a clogged dryer vent “Go forward! Move ahead!” song Couturier Cassini Cleopatra’s undoer Removes, as an opponent’s spine in “Mortal Kombat” ___ dragon (world’s largest lizard) Business bigwig Mad as hell Others, in Spanish Author unknown, for short Comes to a close Got into a stew? “___ Action: It’s FANtastic” (old slogan) Musical ability “___ the season ...”

Cover Story

48 50

Down

12 13 18 22 23 24 25 27

Opinion

23 26 28 29 31 33 35 38 39 40 42 43 45

51 ___ en place (professional kitchen setup) 53 “King ___” (Jackson moniker) 55 “Ring Around the Rosie” flower 56 Paper crane art 58 Makes a knot 60 B-movie piece 61 Team of nine that doesn’t draw, dance, or play an instrument?

66 Beehive State college athlete 67 “___ Joy” 68 Home of the Burj Khalifa 69 “WKRP” character Nessman 70 Tissue masses 71 Rating system basis, often

News

17 19 20 21

Body of beliefs Zipped past Heathcliff, for one 2016 Disney title character voiced by Auli’i Cravalho Statement of empathy (or sarcasm, depending on tone) He shared a phone booth with Bill and Ted Sides at the monastery diner?

Commingle Rotary phone feature “Forbidden dance” popularized in the late 1980s “Daily Show” correspondent ___ Lydic Kombucha brewing need Pitchblende and hornblende, e.g.

Is here “Thank you,” in Honolulu “Just don’t look nervous” Pivotal “Read Across America” gp.

Smoking alternative, once Hogwarts letter carrier Muhammad of the ring The Jetsons’ youngest Creator of “Community” and co-creator of “Rick and Morty” Quenches Most dangerous, as winter roads

Up Front

1 6 11 14

triad-city-beat.com

CROSSWORD

Sportsball Playing January 19 – 23 Answers from previous publication.

MONDAY NIGHT

Crossword

It’s Comedian vs. Comedian in the Ultimate Insult Slam-War.

Shot in the Triad

OTHER SHOWS Open Mic 8:30 p.m. Thurs., Jan. 19. $5 tickets!

Friday Night Standup!

8:30 p.m. Fri., Jan. 20. $10 Tickets Family Matinee Improv ALL AGES COMEDY! 4 p.m. Sat., Jan. 21. $6 Tickets!

All She Wrote

2134 Lawndale Drive, Greensboro idiotboxers.com • 336-274-2699

21

8:30 p.m. Monday, January 23.

Tickets are $6 online and $8 at the door!

©2017 Jonesin’ Crosswords (editor@jonesincrosswords.com)

January 18 – 24, 2017

Nathan Hunt Road, Greensboro

All She Wrote

Shot in the Triad

Crossword

Sportsball

Culture

Cover Story

Opinion

News

Up Front

SHOT IN THE TRIAD

22

January has its moments.

PHOTO BY CAROLYN DE BERRY

The Nussbaum Center for Entrepreneurship... connect your business to success.

336-379-5001

www.nussbaumcfe.com

I

Name 10 records...

Sportsball Crossword Shot in the Triad

BILL T. JONES/ARNIE ZANE DANCE COMPANY

Culture

University Performing Arts Series presents:

Cover Story

Follow Jelisa Castrodale on Twitter @gordonshumway.

Opinion

Paul Westerberg, 14 Songs: My 14-year-old self was completely transfixed by the slightly unhinged looking musical guest on “Saturday Night Live,” who slurred lines like “I say he who laughs first/ Didn’t get the joke.” I intentionally stayed awake to see his second performance, even though the back half of the show was always littered with Rob Schneider sketches. Within two weeks, I’d loaded the dishwasher enough times to earn $15, so I strolled into Camelot Music and asked the cashier where I could find “Pat Whistlerberg.” 14 Songs will forever by my favorite of the, um, Whistlerberg catalog, and it eventually led me into the drunk and disorderly arms of the Replacements. For that, I’m forever grateful.

REM, Automatic for the People: I bought this the day I started my period. “Everybody Hurts” indeed, especially everybody’s newly spasming uterus.

The Smiths, Singles: I’d never heard of this band when I saw their CD at the mall, but there was something alluring about the expression of the woman on the cover, a look somewhere between boredom and abject misery that as a 10th grader I was all too familiar with. So I dropped $18.99 on the disc — the most I’d ever paid for music at the time — and hoped it would be worth it. Was it ever.

Sugar, File Under: Easy Listening: This record introduced me to the brilliance of Bob Mould, and songs like “Believe What You’re Saying” and “Can’t Help You Anymore” prepared me for the kind of relationships that wouldn’t disappoint me for another decade.

Weezer, The Blue Album: I was recovering from an emergency appendectomy when this CD showed up in the Columbia House catalog. I wasn’t allowed to participate in gym class for several weeks, so I sat on the bleachers listening to “The World Has Turned and Left Me Here” while my classmates threw lopsided volleyballs at each other. As a nerdy, uncool kid, this record was beyond reassuring, and not just because I thought I would’ve been picked for kickball before Rivers Cuomo was.

Now, who wants to see a picture of my avocado toast?

News

tion cassette that my mom had confiscated. At the time, I didn’t know the Beatles except by name, but somehow I think I knew that this record would change my life. These 30 songs started a love affair with the Beatles that has endured longer than anything in my life, other than my chronically oily T-Zone.

Bruce Springsteen, Born in the USA: This, along with the Top Gun soundtrack and a handful of Alabama songs, reminds me of midsummer weekends with my dad, when I’d climb into the shotgun seat of his Ford Bronco and he’d reach over to help me roll the window down. I was too young to comprehend the Important Themes of the album and now — despite knowing all of the headline-grabbing ideas it rails against — whenever I hear it I instinctively think of a time when someone tucked me in every night and the worst thing I could imagine was someone dropping a toothbrush in my Trick-or-Treat bag. This album has always made me happy, whether it’s supposed to or not.

Genesis, We Can’t Dance: Because what middle-schooler doesn’t relate to a mournful 10-minute ballad about 19th Century British railroad workers?

The Grateful Dead, American Beauty: On one middle school Saturday, I was forced to hang out with a kid from another school while our parents had dinner together. After we’d scrutinized each other’s baseball card collections, he pulled out a couple of cassettes and popped them in. “These are my dad’s,” he told me, as though I was supposed to think that was awesome, even though his dad had a habit of picking his nose during lulls in conversation. When he pressed play on American Beauty, I was completely transported out of his bedroom, which may be why I didn’t notice that he’d stolen my Kirby Puckett rookie card.

Green Day, Dookie: We’d gone back-to-school shopping in the state capital and, other than a mock turtleneck, this was the only thing I bought. I tore it open in the back of the minivan, dropped it into my Discman... and hated it. It took several listens before I understood that there were songs that were supposed to be screamed and music meant to be played loud enough to kill the shrubbery outside your window. This is the album that taught me it was okay to turn the volume knob all the way to the right.

Up Front

have a complicated relationship with Facebook. On the one hand, it allows me to stay connected with former classmates and colleagues, keeping me sort of ambiently aware of their successes or struggles. On the other, it also

by Jelisa Castrodale lets me know who just ate the best avocado toast.

Facebook has grown increasingly complicated in the months since your neighbor with the “Still Crazy After All These Beers” window decal helped to elect Orange Julius Caesar. Even the most innocuous conversation can turn into a political debate, one that usually ends when the most vocal participant’s mom tells him that he’s over his Screen Time limit for the day. But last week, everyone temporarily stopped typing “No, you’re the snowflake” and instead started arguing over which Blue Oyster Cult record was the best. That’s the kind of interpersonal conflict I can get behind. (Also, it’s Secret Treaties).

It seemed like everyone on my feed participated in a meme that asked you to name 10 records that made an impression on you as a teenager, and I absolutely loved reading everyone’s lists. The responses fit into two categories: those who were completely honest about their middle school record collections and those who got a little revisionist with their memories: “Yeah, I’d say that my most influential albums were Big Star’s Third demos, a mix tape of unreleased SST Records singles and a 60-minute recording of a rabbit screaming.”

Stop, it was Smash Mouth and you know it.

Anyway, I spent a tremendous amount of time writing and rewriting my own list, possibly more time than I’ve spent on this column. (Just kidding, editors! It took the same amount of time!) So, with no apologies but plenty of explanation, here are the 10 records that made the biggest impact on Teen Me. The Beatles, The White Album: My parents were Motown and beach music people, preferring Marvin Gaye to Paul McCartney, so I was surprised to find this LP when I was rummaging through the cabinets in the family room, trying to find the Appetite for Destruc-

triad-city-beat.com

TRIADITUDE ADJUSTMENT

Fri, Feb. 3 8:00pm UNCG Auditorium

All She Wrote

Scan this QR code with your smartphone to purchase tickets for UPAS performances.

You can also go to upas.uncg.edu or call 336-272-0160.

for more information, visit:

upas.uncg.edu

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