2017 Issue 10 Creative Loafing

CLCLT.COM | APRIL 27 - MAY 3, 2017 VOL. 31, NO. 10

1 | APR. 27 - MAY. 3, 2017 | CLCLT.COM

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NEWS EDITOR • Ryan Pitkin rpitkin@clclt.com FILM CRITIC • Matt Brunson mattonmovies@gmail.com THEATER CRITIC • Perry Tannenbaum perrytannenbaum@gmail.com CONTRIBUTING WRITERS • Jasmin Herrera, Corbie Hill, Erin Tracy-Blackwood, Vivian Carol, Charles Easley, Allison Braden, Page Leggett, Alison Leininger, Sherrell Dorsey, Dan Savage, Aerin Spruill, Chuck Shepherd, Jeff Hahne, Samir Shukla, Courtney Mihocik, Debra Renee Seth, Vanessa Infanzon

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8 | APR. 27 - MAY. 3, 2017 | CLCLT.COM

GRAPHIC DESIGNER • Dana Vindigni dvindigni@clclt.com CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS AND PHOTOGRAPHERS • Justin Driscoll, Brian Twitty, Zach Nesmith

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Periodicals Postage Paid at Charlotte, NC. Creative Loafing welcomes submissions of all kinds.

Efforts will be made to return those with a self-addressed stamped envelope; however Creative Loafing assumes no responsibility for unsolicited submissions. Creative Loafing is published every Wednesday by Womack Newspapers, Inc. No portion may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher. First copy is free, all additional copies are $1. Copyright 2015 Womack Newspapers, Inc. CREATIVE LOAFING IS PRINTED ON A 90% RECYCLED STOCK. IT MAY BE RECYCLED FURTHER; PLEASE DO YOUR PART.

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NEWS&CULTURE

14 THE MAN WITH THE LOAFING PLAN John Grooms shaped an alternative voice for Charlotte

BY RHIANNON FIONN

16 FROM BAD TO BOUJEE Original Blotter reporter talks switching sides and beats

BY RYAN PITKIN

18 ‘THAT’S A LOT OF COLOR’ Two former ‘CL’

editors discusses the hurdles of increasing diversity

BY KIMBERLY LAWSON

21 FROM A CITIZEN WHO GOT SERVED An open letter to Tara Servatius

BY ERIN TRACY-BLACKWOOD 13 EDITOR’S NOTE BY MARK KEMP

FOOD 22 REIGNING CHAMPS

A recognition of 10 consistent Best of Charlotte winners COMPILED BY STAFF 28 TOP TEN THINGS TO DO

MUSIC 30

DOCUMENTING THE UNDERGROUND Two ex-’CL’ music editors put Charlotte’s adventurous scene into perspective

BY JOHN SCHACHT

34

NEVER LOSING HOPE Hope Nicholls on spending three decades in Charlotte’s music scene

BY RYAN PITKIN 36 SOUNDBOARD

G N I N E P P A H S T A H W S ’ E R E H ARTS&ENT

38

THIRTY YEARS A CRITIC Perry Tannenbaum looks back on his love/hate affair with Charlotte theater (and sports)

BY PAT MORAN

ODDS&ENDS

COVER DESIGN BY DANA VINDIGNI CLCLT.COM | APRIL 27 - MAY 3, 2017 VOL. 31, NO. 10

44 HISTORY REPEATS A look back at the never-ending battle and its heroes

BY RYAN PITKIN

40 THE GREAT FORD FORGERY ‘CL’

50 NIGHTLIFE FEAT. PARKER MYERS

Charlotte’s original hometown film critic opens up about his split personality

BY AERIN SPRUILL

BY MATT BRUNSON

48 LOAFER’S EXCHANGE 49 CROSSWORD 52 SAVAGE LOVE BY DAN SAVAGE 54 HOROSCOPE BY VIVIAN CAROL

42 QUEEN CITY FLOPS Charlotte-set films that make you proud there are no more Charlotte-set films

BY MATT BRUNSON 1 | APR. 27 - MAY. 3, 2017 | CLCLT.COM

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10 | APR. 27 - MAY. 3, 2017 | CLCLT.COM

HISTORIC SOUTH END’S CELEBRATION OF ART + CULTURE Sat., April 29 | 12-9 p.m.

Camden Rd. from West Blvd. to Park Ave.

Art & Soul of South End will include 40-50 artists from the Charlotte Art League, 1520 South End “makers” with handmade items to sell, food trucks, two live music stages, and a free trolley that will circulate to the South End breweries. historicsouthend.com

Discover the edge of town.

CLCLT.COM | APR. 27 - MAY. 3, 2017 | 11

Customer Appreciation Day Saturday May 13th 2pm-6pm Old School v. New School DJ Battle !!!!!

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DJ Strategy v. DJ Stampede check out $1 Drafts, $1 Hot Dogs, $6 Hookahs

the mission To raise funds for nonprofit organizations benefitting children & the homeless in charlotte

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12 | APR. 27 - MAY. 3, 2017 | CLCLT.COM

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DJ Bezzie Beatz v. DJ Blanco check out Games & Giveaways at both locations

our goal $2,000 for EACH nonprofit & collect donated goods

Plus all money raised will be matched by red@28

30th

EDITOR’S NOTE

‘WE’RE (STILL) NOT FUCKING AROUND’ ‘Creative Loafing’ celebrates 30 years of nonstop obnoxiousness

BY MARK KEMP

“WE HAD FUN, we fought, we made up, and, at least in the editorial department, we never forgot our unofficial motto: ‘We’re not fucking around.’”

Those words came from John Grooms, Creative Loafing’s original local editor who set this paper’s swaggering tone and high standards from the beginning. The quote is part of an essay Grooms wrote for the paper’s 20th anniversary issue. This week, CL celebrates 30. We’re adults now.

According to an often-cited aphorism from the 1960s, we can no longer be trusted.

But don’t believe that for a second. It’s fake news.

Thirty years ago this month, Creative Loafing arrived in the Queen City with a mission that has not changed: Give Charlotte the same intelligent, irreverent, alternative voice to counter that of the city’s mainstream daily newspaper in the way that CL’s flagship paper had been doing in Atlanta since the early ’70s.

The Charlotte edition of Creative Loafing arrived in the late ’80s, a time when alt-weeklies had proliferated across the U.S., offering countercultural narratives to the mainstream-media status quo in a similar style to that of the nation’s original alternative weekly, The Village Voice, in New York City. Since the mid-’50s, the Voice had been a counter-narrative to The New York Times, covering underground jazz and other adventurous music, film and arts movements, as well as publishing hard-hitting investigative news pieces the mainstream press either ignored or softpeddled.

The ’60s saw a rise in alt-weeklies nationwide, and in 1978, 30 of them joined forces to form the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (now changed to Newsmedia); by the time the Loafing reached Charlotte, AAN membership had more than doubled, and today it numbers over 100.

Creative Loafing was a resounding success in Charlotte from the get-go, but it didn’t come without a fight. CL was a threat to the Charlotte Observer — so much so that the Big O quickly put together and launched a fake alternative weekly, BREAK, in an attempt to syphon off the Loafing’s ad revenue and put the paper out of business.

Most readers saw through the ruse, though, and BREAK ultimately broke.

A year after CL’s launch here, Grooms — already an associate editor — took the reins (his predecessor had been an editor shipped

Hargro, CL’s first African-American in from Atlanta), and every week for the next editor-in-chief, and his assistant editor 17 years, under Grooms’ astute guidance Kim Lawson (who would later become the and (by all accounts) mercurial leadership paper’s first Asian-American editor), made style, the paper churned out hard-hitting a radical shift in Creative Loafing’s voice reporting and analyses of local government, and coverage, laying the foundation for music, arts and sports in irreverent, often the Loafing you read each week today. And titillating stories you would never, in a they achieved this during an unprecedented million years, see in the daily paper or its turbulent time for the news industry, in pseudo-alternative tabloid. general, and for CL, specifically. (Read During the Grooms years, the Charlotte Lawson’s conversation with Hargro about edition of Creative Loafing took home more media diversity on page 18.) than 40 statewide, regional and national In 2008, the rug was pulled from under journalism awards. (You can read Rhiannon alt-weeklies — not to mention everybody Fionn’s story on Grooms on page 14.) else — nationwide when the recession hit.

His shoes were tough to fill when I Creative Loafing’s Atlanta flagship went arrived in 2005 for my first go-round as bankrupt and fell into ownership limbo.

Creative Loafing’s editor. Grooms had set After I returned in 2012, the paper went a high bar, not just in terms of what kinds through two different owners, including of issues should be covered, but also of in the SouthComm corporation, terms of his rigorous journalistic whose resources allowed us the standards and ethics. My opportunity to provide solid objective was to maintain his coverage of the Democratic high standards but expand National Convention. But our coverage. The one the corporate model was area where I saw room breaking down. for improvement was in I left again two years diversity, particularly later, moved to the San in the coverage of the Francisco Bay Area where arts and music. That I did a brief stint as editorhad been a primary in-chief of SF Weekly, and goal of mine at previous Kim Lawson took the reins. publications where I’d MARK KEMP She continued her focus on served as a top editor, keeping diverse voices in the CL including the music magazines mix, but pages and staff dwindled, Option and Rolling Stone. and eventually she moved on, too. When I At Creative Loafing, my intent was to assemble a staff and stable of freelancers returned for my third go-round earlier this that better reflected the young and creative year, Creative Loafing had come full circle: It Charlotte voices of the early 2000s. In was back under independent ownership but addition to the predominantly white with a smaller staff than ever. journalists writing about predominantly The upside of all this turbulence is that white underground artists and indie CL Charlotte’s current staff is as passionate rockers, I wanted CL readers to hear from and committed as I’ve ever seen it. What’s writers coming out of the exploding Latino more, the current owner, Charles Womack, community; black journalists writing about is the company’s first North Carolina-based black artists and musicians, many of whom publisher and he’s equally as passionate came from families that had returned about Creative Loafing. to Charlotte in record numbers as the It’s comforting to know that CL nation experienced a Great Remigration Charlotte has weathered so many storms of African-Americans to the South; and over the past 30 years and come out of journalists from the city’s ever-expanding them with more autonomy than I’ve LGBTQ community. seen at the paper since my first arrival in We made some headway, bringing noted 2005. But that also means that we have black music journalist Kandia Crazy Horse fewer resources. And that has forced us on board as a full-time editor and hiring to do a lot of soul-searching and asking more black and Latino freelance reporters tough questions: What’s Creative Loafing’s and columnists. But it wasn’t until I left primary purpose in Charlotte? What do we a year later and Carlton Hargro arrived in do best? What can we provide to you that 2006 that real progress was made. no other media outlet does?

The answers, as I see it: We can cover local news and local arts with intelligence, attitude and depth, and we can leave the national news events and national musicians and artists to the national media. You don’t need CL to tell you about Donald Trump’s ties to Russia. And you don’t need CL to tell you about Snoop Dogg’s latest collaboration or Dawes’ newest album. When those artists come to town (and they’re coming), we may do a blurb on them in the Top 10 Things to Do, but that’s it.

Charlotte today generates more than enough local arts, music and news events every day that it would be silly for us to waste valuable time and space on stories about a national artist or news event that you can get in your Twitter feed. So we won’t. Our guiding principle today is to keep it local, and we aim to stick to that. We want you to know what’s going in all areas of your community. We may sometimes take you outside of your comfort zone, but we won’t take you outside of Charlotte.

Do I wish we had more internal diversity than we do now. Yes, absolutely. We have not yet mastered total diversity. But we will keep trying. And we will remain committed to keeping a diverse stable of freelance voices who will help ensure that stories and issues do not get lost in our blind spot. And even though the staff at CL today is smaller than ever, we are an enthusiastic, tightly knit team willing to do whatever it takes to get a great paper on the streets and content on the website and social media.

A decade ago, in that 20th anniversary issue, John Grooms reflected on CL’s earliest years: “Enthusiasm is what held the paper together. There was a sense in the early, founding days of CL-Charlotte that we were doing something this city needed,” he wrote. “Truth be told, that kind of faith — and a dedicated owner — can take a new publication a long way. So we persevered, we improvised, we learned, and, well, here we are.”

Another truth: That very same kind of faith is why our little staff today is able to celebrate Creative Loafing’s 30 years of nonstop coverage in Charlotte. And the paper’s first local editor deserves more than a little credit for that. After all, it was John Grooms who set the tone.

CLCLT.COM | APR. 27 - MAY. 3, 2017 | 13

30th NEWS FEATURE

THE MAN WITH THE LOAFING PLAN John Grooms shaped an alternative voice for Charlotte RHIANNON FIONN

W

HEN THE EDITORS at Creative Loafing told me that the paper’s 30th anniversary was upon us, I immediately volunteered to write about John Grooms. He is CL’s longest serving editor, Charlotte’s modern Mark Twain and my close friend.

I admit, after several rounds of cancer, I’ve worried that I would soon be writing John’s obituary. But John says he’s fine now, so I’m glad to have this opportunity to publicly thank him for inspiring writers and journalists; artists and musicians; and every day Jills and Joes to speak truth to power.

John effectively forced folks to pay attention to Charlotte’s creative scene and even closer attention to the city’s infamously creative politicians.

Grooms was not this paper’s first editor, but he might as well have been. Hired in 1987 to help the first editor, he soon began doing her job for her and, over time, made local history by giving Charlotte’s finest a place to shine. Not that he had any idea what he was doing when the paper launched.

According to Grooms, for the first two years the paper was “useless,” since it had no money to pay quality writers. And he says the first editor “had no idea what the alt-press was and wanted stories like ‘a day in the life of a groundhog at the history museum.’ I shit you not.”

Ann Wicker first met Grooms when he taught a history of rock’n’roll class at Central Piedmont Community College in the late 1980s. The two friends — along with countless others — pined for coverage of Charlotte’s musicians and artists.

Wicker, now an author and editor, freelanced for Loafing for a couple years under Grooms until, says the Charlotte native, “I hung around so much that they finally hired me.”

Wicker credits Grooms for being able to spot and attract talented and award-winning writers like Perry Tannenbaum, Frye Gaillard and Hal Crowther. “He believed in his writers and backed them up,” Wicker says, adding that he often fought with the paper’s then Atlanta-based publisher to pay them more.

“He was really high-minded about what 14 | APR. 27 - MAY. 3, 2017 | CLCLT.COM

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John Grooms stories could be,” says Gaillard, an author twenty times over who once wrote for Creative Loafing and now lives in Alabama. He continued, “John was fearless. I thought he was as good of an editor as I found anywhere.”

“Editors can only put out a paper as good, or as insightful, as the people they bring in,” says Grooms, “which is why my first and most important ongoing emphasis was to keep upping the paper’s writing quality, and I think that is what finally drew people to us: it was a smart paper with a natural, sharp sense of humor.”

Frankly, I don’t think he’s giving himself enough credit; if Creative Loafing has such a persona it’s because Grooms does too.

Of course, I’m biased. I’m also somewhat

terrified that it’s up to me to explain to you how important he is to both CL and to Charlotte — at one point I even asked him to write this himself! It’s tought to exlpain how his snarky style still flavors the pages of this rag and how his memory for local politics is long and full of juicy tidbits, such as former Charlotte Mayor and U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick’s proclivity for talking to inanimate objects.

Kids, if you don’t know who Myrick is, you could Google her or you could read this from Grooms: “She latches on to one specific issue and flogs it obsessively. If it’s not teenagers being ruined by ‘Satanic’ heavy metal music during her City Council days, it’s the evil nature of traffic problems. If it’s not traffic, it’s coffee pots talking to her (true

story, unfortunately). If it’s not Mr. Coffee coming to life, it’s illegal immigrants wrecking American culture.”

Grooms always keeps it real. In my estimation, his style is reminiscent of Mark Twain and other great American writers who could infuse public issues with blunt and needed honesty.

As Wicker puts it, “John does not suffer fools,” and that certainly includes Charlotte’s elite. For two decades, Grooms used his platform as CL’s editor to insist that local leaders consider the views of those who don’t rub elbows with them on the daily, that they exit their yes-man bubbles and listen to the people of Charlotte who, often through their creative works, stand in for the city’s soul.

As a kid growing up in rural Alabama, reading Creative Loafing was one of the things I loved about visiting the big city, which to me then was Atlanta. (My dear Millennials, this was before the time of the internet, when everything couldn’t be read on pocket computers.) So, when I began visiting Charlotte in the early 2000s, I was delighted to find the paper here, too.

To me, this paper – in all cities where it’s found – has always resonated more with my friends and I than the corporate dailies. Hollis Gillespie’s rants in her “Mood Swings” column is the early version of “Girls” – seriously.

Reviews of shows and movies and bands

quit during a time when, he says, “No one could depend on him.”

But Grooms, also the author of Deliver Us from Weasels, a collection of the Boomer With Attitude columns he published in CL after his editorship was over, didn’t go to college to become a media man. He studied political science at Belmont Abbey in Belmont, N.C., at least until they kicked him out in the spring of 1969 when, as a member of the Southern Students Organizing Committee, he aided members of the Black Student Union who took over the school’s science building in protest. (He graduated from the University of South Carolina in 1971.)

“I drew in writers who shared similar views of the city and life, and I let them guide coverage. And whenever the opportunity presented itself, we stuck it to some weasel or another,” -JOHN GROOMS

introduced me to the local creative class, validated the work of many of the coolest people I know and helped me figure out what do every weekend. And, thankfully, “The Blotter” helped me realize that no matter how much I was fucking up, I wasn’t the worst fuck up in town by a long shot.

What I really loved, though, was finding people like Grooms and Tara Servatius (see Erin Tracy-Blackwood’s piece on Servatius on page 20) sharing their views on local and state government happenings. I didn’t always agree with either of them, but I appreciated the public debate.

That, dear readers, is a core tenet of our country; the ability to share and publish our thoughts and beliefs, to share government happenings with candor and honesty and without fear is so important that our country’s Founding Fathers made those rights concrete as the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, our number one freedom in this country’s Bill of Rights. That we have alt-newspapers like Creative Loafing is as American as baseball and apple pie, and if John Grooms didn’t actually bake that pie for us here in Charlotte, he’s certainly the one who put it in the window and made sure it was edible.

Grooms, who enjoyed publishing Servatius’ contrary views but doesn’t agree with her on nearly anything in the political realm, credits her “dogged reporting” for generating so much pressure on the local housing department that its leader had to

Stories like that only scratch the surface of Grooms’ personal history of political action.

His views were influenced by a childhood split between Belgium and Gaffney, S.C., spending his formative years in a hippie enclave and a couple of decades of holding the powerful to account in Charlotte. A couple thousand words on this page can’t begin to fully express his love of music, which is what drew him into this crazy line of business in the first place.

“I had no idea what I was going to do (after college),” says Grooms. “I’d taken too much acid and was spaced out as shit,” he said through laughter, though it’s almost certainly true.

“The truth is it took a while for any vision — other than helping local artists — to evolve,” Grooms says of CL’s early days. “The reason for that was we didn’t have any money for serious news coverage until about four or so years in.”

“John always wanted the paper to have news features alongside music listings and entertainment writing,” says Wicker, who Grooms credits with keeping CL organized for more than 12 years, even through the time when they had to fax (fax, y’all!) marked up copy to the paper’s headquarters in Atlanta for a final round of editing.

And sometimes, Creative Loafing was the news. Like that time city leaders gave The Charlotte Observer control of the Uptown boxes full of free newspapers. The O, feeling threatened by CL, disallowed the alt-weekly paper a slot. Fortunately, then owner Deborah

Grooms’ telling reaction after reading Charlotte Observer’s weekly arts publication BREAK. Eason was “very litigious,” Grooms says, “She didn’t know what she was doing, but she would stand up for the paper when needed.”

She sued The Observer and won; and the paper is still in those boxes, The O is not in control of them and, though we’ll never know for sure, Grooms suspects that the undisclosed amount of money she garnered through such lawsuits helped her to recoup her losses from the paper’s first few years and allowed her to invest back into it.

“When she increased our budget by 75 percent, that’s when we really started rocking,” says Grooms.

Then, in 1994, the NCAA Final Four Basketball Tournament was lured to Charlotte.

The problem was, Grooms recalls, there wasn’t anything to do in Uptown back then. As he remembers it, city leaders had to beg restaurant owners to open temporarily in Uptown just to feed the crowd.

The city put up a grand façade, in other words, which CL satirized with a literal one.

“We did this whole thing where it was like, ‘Welcome to Charlotte’, but we ran a picture of Paris on the cover,” says Wicker.

Grooms says CL offered the basketball fans reviews of places like Crowder’s Mountain that ran alongside images of Mt. Fuji. “It was hilarious,” Grooms recalls, laughing. “Every one (of the ‘things to do in Charlotte’) was a punch in the face, a ‘this is how absurd you are’” to city leaders, he says.

Both Grooms and Wicker say they believe it was the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce that sent minions through the streets of Charlotte to collect thousands of copies of that issue and file them in a dumpster behind the old First Union building.

In the next issue, Grooms published a letter from CL’s lawyers that went something like this: “That’s completely fucking illegal.”

When I try to talk to him about his legacy,

Grooms, in his cantankerous way, disagrees.

“I drew in writers who shared similar views of the city and life, and I let them guide coverage. And whenever the opportunity presented itself, we stuck it to some weasel or another,” Grooms says. The writers were so good, Grooms says, “I learned about writing by editing.”

When I suggested that he has helped bring the powerful to account in this city he dismissed the idea, then reluctantly cops to the “one great expection,” which was the 1989 mayoral race. “I got sick of Myrick bashing her opponents’ ‘lack of morals,’ so we dug up the info on how she broke up her husband’s first marriage which led her to cussing on the John Boy and Billy Big Show and landed us on First Edition.”

Then there was the attempted censorship of Angels in America, Grooms recalled. “The rest of local media, with a couple of Observer exceptions, followed our lead, since they seemed to have no idea why people were all excited,” he wrote via email.

“Okay, maybe we did think about bringing the powerful to account,” he continued, “It just didn’t happen often enough.

“We woke up a large part of Charlotte to the unexpected but delightful fact that although they dominated local media since time immemorial, they — bankers, hustlers, Calvinists and other dullards — were not the only residents of the city. And that those ‘other’ people often had more interesting ideas and views on life than supposed city leaders.”

John Grooms, this is why we love you.

Thank you for giving ‘other’ people a voice and for creating a space for Charlotte to celebrate what makes her beautiful; thank you for creating a space for citizens and journalists to shine a light on important issues in our community.

BACKTALK@CLCLT.COM

CLCLT.COM | APR. 27 - MAY. 3, 2017 | 15

30th NEWS FEATURE

FROM BAD TO BOUJEE Original Blotter reporter talks switching sides and beats RYAN PITKIN

I

T’S SAFE to say that Olivia Fortson is not scared of change.

Fortson, who worked with Creative Loafing between 1987 and 1992 (she spent two of those years on the CL sales team, the rest as a reporter) is one of the few who have made the transition from Loafing contributor to staffer at The Charlotte Observer, and the folks there never let her live it down.

“It was funny, they never really trusted me when I went there,” Fortson says. “When I got on there [in 1992], there were some people — to the day I left 23 years later — who looked at me like, ‘She used to work for Creative Loafing.’ It was not a good thing for me there.”

Her move to the Observer offices eventually led to a turn-around in the beats she covered. While at CL she covered the darker side of Charlotte, patrolling the Wilkinson Boulevard corridor with CMPD’s graveyard shift and writing a feature on Charlotte’s seediest strip clubs, while later at the Observer she became a social editor, covering high society parties hosted by Charlotte’s privileged population, some of whom she remembered partying with in her Loafing days.

As someone who has for years covered crime on the same streets Fortson once stalked — and for much of the last eight years has written The Blotter, a column Fortson was the first to bring to Charlotte — I was drawn to her work while researching our archives for this issue.

When I met Fortson on a recent, rainy morning at Panera Bread, her outfit affirmed her effortless talent for dealing with that duality; a sensible white sweater complimented by a dazzling gold necklace, while underneath the booth, camouflage capris betrayed her history on the front lines, a chic soldier.

The Spartanburg, S.C., native shared with me the story of her beginnings at Loafing — when there were still chickens in the backyard of the so-called office — and what it meant for her to fight on the side of the underdog, even after she eventually flipped sides to work for “the big guy.”

Creative Loafing: How did you get started working with Creative Loafing?

Olivia Fortson: I graduated from Queens University in ’87. I had these ambitions to write for a newspaper, and I wanted to write 16 | APR. 27 - MAY. 3, 2017 | CLCLT.COM

Olivia Fortson w 1989, and with ith her first press pass (above Loafing party infellow sales rep Beth Obenshai ), issued in n (right) at a the early days.

RYAN PITKIN

for the Observer, because that was the big paper here. I didn’t have a journalism degree, because Queens didn’t have one, so I doublemajored in English and communications.

Back then, if you didn’t go to Chapel Hill journalism school or Duke, forget it. They were not interested in me at all. I would trudge my little portfolio up there full of things I had written for my school newspaper and my hometown newspaper, and they were like, “No, you’ve got to get out there and write some more.”

[Former CL columnist] Frye Gaillard took an interest — he was another Queens connection — and took me out to lunch and was really supportive. That’s how I met John Grooms [see story on page 14]. He was an excellent editor and I still adore him.

I was already working for the county, I did their justice system newsletter, and I think John took pity on me. They asked me to originate The Blotter here, of course it was already in [Creative Loafing] Atlanta. I got

my first press badge in December 1987, and that was such a big deal. John’s thinking was, “You’re aready there at the courthouse,” so when I left my shift up there, I would just go and show my press badge and sign in and flip through reports.

What was it like working at CL when it was still a start-up in this city, and a subversive one at that?

I remember the first office was up on the edge of the Cherry neighborhood, and there were chickens in the backyard. Then we moved over to South Boulevard and it was still just this little strip with low ceilings. It was a funny place.

The main thing people maybe don’t realize now is how cool it was to go to work for Creative Loafing. [Editor’s note: It’s still pretty cool.] We were all young, and it was such a big deal in Atlanta, and I guess they had expanded into Tampa [in 1988]. And in Charlotte, even now people still say we’re so conservative, and

that was even more so back then, so to have this kind of wild alternative weekly, you really felt like, “Oh my god, I’m a cool kid, I work at Creative Loafing.”

The other thing is how threatened the Observer was by Creative Loafing, which I never could quite understand then. Now I do, because it’s business, but back then I was like, “Why are they being so mean to us?” There was even a lawsuit at some point because they were not letting us put our racks out.

They were doing everything they could to keep us out because they were threatened.

They started Break [a weekly arts publication] because they knew we were coming, so there was this feeling not only that it’s a fun place but you were kind of battling the big guy.

Was that experience valuable for you, even when you joined sides with said big guy?

It set me up for having a media career here. I don’t think of myself as a media personality,

but people did remember me. “Oh, she used to write for Creative Loafing.” It really set me up and helped introduce me to different people. I had good connections when I went to the Observer. Later, I progressed and became the social editor and covered all the galas, but it’s still funny when you see people out that you were partying with at Park Elevator [an old South End nightclub].

now, we rode all night long and it was from one extreme to the other.

What was an experience from that night that sticks with you?

One of the wildest ones was the grits story.

It was wild, but it was some sad stuff, too.

We went to a house and there was a woman whose husband had been beating her and she waited until he had gone to sleep — and this is an old Southern thing — she cooked up a pot of grits and waited until he went to bed and she threw it on his face. Of course, that scars you and it’s a terrible thing, but that’s apparently an old-fashioned revenge tactic. I was like “Holy cow.” Before the MEDIC even came, we were already gone. They were just always off to the next thing.

Before that, though, at Loafing, you covered crime. How did you make such a drastic turn to social editor?

I got to the point where I really wanted to show the positive side of Charlotte and everything. I did start out on the local news staff [at the Observer], but long term I wasn’t cut out for it. When a young boy was killed in a tragic accident and my editor asked me to call the family and ask them how they felt, I said, “I can’t do that.” He said, “Well, you’re not going to work here, then.” I realized then that this was not for me. I was like, “I need to go to the features department and write fluffy stuff.”

Did you ever get the itch to return to the streets while covering those stuffy parties later on?

I have this saying that all the world is a trailer park, it’s just that some people have singlewides and some people have double-wides. All this stuff that you read is still going on at that level, the people are just dressed better while they’re throwing grits on someone’s face — and it’s probably organic, hand-milled grits.

I’m sure you didn’t miss flipping through those police reports, something I still do to this day.

Wow, I thought it would be online. I figured you’d be sitting at your desk scrolling through.

Nope, I think it’s about the only database that hasn’t moved online.

Ok, so you know then, how you would see all these things that are not in the paper, that were never reported, horrible things, and then you have to find the really funny or bizarre stuff in between all that. To this day, I am so paranoid, when you read what all can happen to you.

So you’re telling me this jaded feeling I’ve gotten from flipping through those reports is not going to go away?

No. You’ll still be locking your doors wherever you go. Even when I go outside to get my paper in the morning I’m looking around all crazy. I’m always looking for an exit wherever I am.

People always ask me about the craziest crime I’ve reported in The Blotter. Do you have one?

The biggest one, and actually it was such a stupid one but so funny. It was this guy who stole a bottle of Thunderbird fortified wine from a convenience store, and when they caught him he said, “Well, I’m going to Planet Thunderbird to be with my people.”

That is like the number one thing people remembered. Even when I went to the Observer, some of the editors said, “That’s the Thunderbird girl.”

Did your work on The Blotter make you interested in covering crime more thoroughly? Because I’ve read some of your feature work and it’s dark, seedy stuff.

Definitely, but also, as the saying goes, you want to hold up a mirror [to society.] I was always interested in showing a side of Charlotte that maybe not everyone gets to see, and for me at the time, because I was so young, I wanted to get out there. As my mom said, I’ve always been attracted to the

“I have this saying that all the world is a trailer park, it’s just that some people have single-wides and some people have double-wides.”

-OLIVIA FORTSON

carnival side of life, and I wanted to know, “What is that like? What’s going on? What are we not seeing?”

A lot of it stemmed from flipping through those reports. I would tell anybody that if they want a big eye opener, go down there and do that for one day. But when you do that week after week after week…

Yup, it wears on you. I find myself not surprised by anything anymore, and laughing at things I really shouldn’t.

However, it also makes you want to take a deeper look, which you did in stories like the one from 1988 in which you rode with police through a full shift patrolling Wilkinson Boulevard between midnight

and 6 a.m. at a time when it was the most troubled area in Charlotte. What was that experience like for you as opposed to just flipping through the reports?

You get to see it from their side and how dangerous it is. They’re going into all these different neighborhoods and all this crazy stuff is going on. To be honest with you, when I started that story I was like, you know, we were all young and we were like, “Oh, the police [dismissive wave].” But when I came out, that’s when I really began to have a true respect for that profession and what they do.

It’s like anything, until you actually get a taste of it firsthand, you really shouldn’t judge one way or the other. They made me feel very safe in some unsafe situations. I think about it

As one of the originals, back when chickens roamed just outside the office, are you surprised to see Loafing make it to 30?

I wasn’t surprised because they had been so successful in other markets, Atlanta was so successful and there was that backing. But I do remember being an ad rep and making $90 a week and getting my check and being like, “Holy cow, I can’t do this. Somebody else is going to have to come up who’s young and ambitious, because I’ve got to make some money.”

When I left in ’92, things were just starting to open up. I remember telling Carolyn Butler, the publisher — because we struggled, Charlotte was not Atlanta, we struggled here — I told her I think it’s really going to start exploding. And it did, it went from like 30 pages to 80. It really did well and y’all are still doing great and have hung in there.

Charlotte needs an alternative weekly.

We are a big city, so we need Creative Loafing.

It’s tough out there. The Observer, they used to take up that whole block with Charlotte Observer on the side of the building, now they’re in two floors of an office building.

Just like with y’all, I think that model of all freelancers and just a few editors, that’s where it’s all going back to, so it’s all coming back full circle. Everybody cut their staffs, and now it’s back down, but the quality is still there.

It was just such a good, special time in Charlotte when we started, where this new thing was coming and just to see it still here and going strong for years, I always get such a smile when I pass by a rack and pick it up and see what’s going on. It makes me feel great to see y’all still around and doing well.

Fortson, now 51, left Charlotte Observer in 2015 and started The O Report, a website with an annual magazine that takes a chic look at life for women over 50. You can find her at oliviafortson.com.

CLCLT.COM | APR. 27 - MAY. 3, 2017 | 17

30th NEWS FEATURE

‘THAT’S A LOT OF COLOR’ Two former ‘CL’ editors discuss the hurdles of increasing diversity

BY KIMBERLY LAWSON

I

’M SITTING in a slightly

messy Creative Loafing office conference room. Story ideas are scribbled illegibly on a whiteboard and large framed posters showing images of past newspaper issues are hanging on the wall. Seated across from me is Carlton Hargro, the editor of the newspaper.

It almost feels like 2011, when we last worked together at Creative Loafing Charlotte. Except it’s an April morning in 2017, we’re in downtown Atlanta, and my shoes are still on. (I was notorious for kicking off my shoes in CL’s NC Music Factory offices and going barefoot.)

When CL editor (and my former boss) Mark Kemp reached out to see if I’d be willing to contribute a piece to the paper’s 30th anniversary celebration edition, I thought a visit with my other former boss was in order. After all, Carlton served as the editor of CL from 2006 to 2011. As the first African American at the helm, he left an indelible mark on the paper and Charlotte in general.

“The city at large views these papers as ‘white’ papers — papers for telling the adventures of white people. That’s what I used to say all the time,” he said. Anytime an editor comes in and tries to diversify the coverage, it’s seen as an aberration, he continued.

“It’s not a ‘black’ paper, it’s not an ‘Asian’ paper, but it’s not a ‘white’ paper either.

That’s the misconception,” he said. “They think it’s a ‘white’ paper, but it’s not. It’s a paper for everybody.”

I worked with Carlton during his entire stint as editor, and then some. In the summer of 2006, I came on as operations editor and maintained some form of that gig until 2013, when I was promoted to the top editor position myself. Like Carlton, I thought it was imperative we present a variety of voices, perspectives and experiences in the paper, especially as a biracial person and the first female editor in a very, very long time (the first person at CL’s helm, albeit briefly, was a woman).

A couple of years later, I, too, left CL. Ironically, Carlton and I both now live in Georgia: he in Atlanta, me about two hours south. I spend my days freelancing for a handful of publications, including VICE’s 18 | APR. 27 - MAY. 3, 2017 | CLCLT.COM

CL ARCHIVES

Carlton Hargro.

womenfocused website Broadly. But Carlton?

Something about the Loaf brand stayed with him, as he’s now the editor in chief at Creative Loafing Atlanta.

Here are some snapshots from our conversation, edited for brevity and clarity.

ON THE STRUGGLE TO DIVERSIFY A PUBLICATION Carlton Hargro: I think a lot of people who work in journalism, who typically are white,

there’s a mission to diversify coverage in the paper.

This is something they want to do. Even if they don’t want to do it in their heart, they say it. Whenever you ask these newspapers, “Uh, we want more diversity, what are you doing for that?” Their response is, “That’s always a goal of ours. We’re trying. We’re better than we used to be but we’re not where we want to be.” It’s always loose-lip service.

These companies, as much as they say they want to do it, when they really see it, it’s not what they expect. I have had many

conversations with publishers over the years — with Creative Loafing — who’ve said, “Man, that’s a lot of color in the paper.” I’ve had people say that. Or they’ve lined them up and they’ve counted how many times we’ve put a person of color on the cover.

Kim Lawson: You’ve actually had a publisher do that?

CH: Oh yeah. They flipped through and said, “That’s a lot of color,” and my response was, “Right, isn’t that great?” Because they don’t want to come out and say what

they’re thinking. And then they try to link it with low return rates or sales — it’s very anecdotal. There are no links: Some issues do well, some don’t. But there’s never an immediate agenda there.

was like, “We want to hire some black writers but we just don’t know where to look.” And I’m like, “I know a bunch of black writers, but they’re people I know.” It’s an extension of being a black person.

KL: You know what’s interesting is that when I was editor, I tried to be aware of putting more women on the cover and also people of color. But no one ever questioned me about that. And I wonder if it’s because I’m half-white. Like, did I get a pass because my skin tone is lighter?

KL: Yep. You know, one of the covers that you did that really stayed with me, as a Korean American … was this NASCAR story.

We put this Asian chick on the cover because she was really big into NASCAR.

CH: Interesting. Yeah, well, I did not get a pass at all. [laughs] It was a battle. It was always a battle, to the point where I had to really make people feel like, “If I have a conversation with him about this, it’s not going to be a nice situation.” So they avoided it. And I think that worked for me, but at the same time … people thought I was hard to work with or whatever. I was hard to work with — with that person, but I wanted to be because I wanted to let them know, hey man, Charlotte is changing, it is not a certain way. Just look how much different now, like, mentally, it is. It’s a different city than when I first moved there.

KL: You don’t even remember this, do you.

CH: Oh yeah?

CH: I don’t.

KL: [laughs] The story was about nonstereotypical NASCAR fans. And here was this Asian person who was so big on NASCAR. And I really loved that, partly because I could see a little bit of myself in her, and it blew my mind because she loved NASCAR. I don’t know any Asian people who like NASCAR. CH: Oh yeah, I do remember that. That’s the other side of it. Sometimes there is an agenda, like, using the media as a way to broaden the idea of what it means to be a minority, instead of making it to be this eternal victim story, or these stories that are very stereotypical or assigned to those races.

We know for a fact that people do not match up with the profiles that the world tries to put on us. We can use the paper as a way to bust that.

KL: So, I remember once I was at this party, and this local promoter was there, and he found out I was the editor of Creative Loafing and he proceeded to tell me that Creative Loafing doesn’t care about black people. And that really stayed with me because, for one, I got why he said that because we always needed to do better in covering issues that impact minorities. But at the same time, I was trying so hard to be aware of diversity in everything I was doing, whether it was the writing, the covers, the photography. It really made me feel defeated too, because there are so many other factors that work against you when you’re trying to diversify your coverage, and people don’t understand all those ins and outs. That conversation did, however, make me try harder to find writers of color to include in the paper.

KL: You think that’s an alt-weekly thing?

CH: I think the media should be doing that in general but at the same time I think we have a better opportunity to do it. Plus, I think we’re supposed to be doing that. We’re supposed to be showing the alternative to the mainstream. That’s our job. And it’s our job as minorities as well to say, “What you think about us is not true. Good and bad.”

On what we both wish we’d done differently during our stints as editor.

CH: Yeah, it’s tough. I think the hardest part is the internal thing — dealing with management. But at the same time, someone’s got to do it so that it doesn’t look so weird the next time. It’s changing the face of the publication over time.

ON THE STRUGGLE TO HIRE MORE WRITERS OF COLOR CH: Here’s the hard part about getting writers of color. Writing, as you know, is one of those things that, the more you do it, the better you get.Black writers have not historically had a chance to write for publications, or good publications. They don’t get a chance to write a lot, so there’s not a big body of really good ones who aren’t already attached to [another publication].

KL: Right, and that’s an institutional thing.

You have to have someone who’s willing to work with you in order to become better.

CH: Right, it’s up to us as editors to invest that time.

Kim Lawson.

KL: So, the girl who’s doing CL’s nightlife column right now, Aerin … she was young and green when I met her. And really, her enthusiasm and excitement is what got me interested in working with her. I met with her, her personality was cool, and we worked together for a while. And now, Mark [Kemp, the current editor] messaged me the other day to tell me how fantastic she is. I think part of that is because I got to know her really well and invested a lot of time working with her and her writing.

CH: And that’s hard to do, especially for us

COURTESY OF KIM LAWSON

— we have challenges on us. We don’t want to be the minority editor who comes in and fucks it up.

ON THE IMPACT OF HAVING PEOPLE OF COLOR IN LEADERSHIP ROLES CH: As a person of color or a representative of a minority group, my rolodex is instantly going to be bigger than [a white editor’s] at the end of the day. It’s not an agenda; it’s just an extension of my relationships in life anyway. I remember when I worked here years ago in Atlanta and there was an editor who

KL: Now that I write for VICE, I wish I’d covered women’s issues more during my time at Creative Loafing. I don’t think I was aware until I left how important it was that I, as a woman, headed that paper. And especially considering what’s happening on the national scene, Trump and everything, how important it is for women to be at the table.

CH: I could say the same thing to a certain degree as a black person.

For me, I never thought we covered the Latino community as much as we should have. And we never had enough strong Latino voices. And I wanted to cover them as much as we were covering everybody else. The issues around undocumented immigrants, of course, but also the parties, the food, the culture. And I definitely felt like we needed more queer voices too.

I wanted everybody to feel represented, and we definitely did not do that enough.

BACKTALK@CLCLT.COM

CLCLT.COM | APR. 27 - MAY. 3, 2017 | 19

BE BR AV E 20 | APR. 27 - MAY. 3, 2017 | CLCLT.COM

SATURDAY May 6, 2017

GATEWAY VILLAGE

PROMENADE aidswalkcharlotte.org

#aidswalkclt

30th NEWS FEATURE

Tara Servatius.

CL ARCHIVES

FROM A CITIZEN WHO GOT SERVED An open letter to a former hero who seems to have lost her way

BY ERIN TRACY-BLACKWOOD

D

EAR TARA SERVATIUS,

I always imagined one day I’d write to you. I would’ve thought I’d be writing to congratulate you on breaking a huge story, or to ask for advice on my budding journalism career. Instead, today I’m writing you because I need answers. I need to know what the fuck happened.

Let me start at the beginning: I don’t remember when I first started reading Creative Loafing. After I moved here in the mid-’90s, it eventually became a ubiquitous part of my Charlotte life — like Bojangles’, road construction and the name “Sharon.” Back then, I read the paper in an aspirational way — to see photos and listings of events I was too young to attend, and to get the lowdown on the latest instance of local government corruption from my favorite column — your column — Citizen Servatius.

You were everything I wanted to be when I grew up. You spoke truth to power. You made it your mission to catch people in lies, call them on their bullshit, make the world a better place by exposing one untold story at a time. I’ve spoken to former editors who tell me your work ethic and dedication to research bordered on OCD. You took on issues the Charlotte Observer wouldn’t touch at the time; the need for civil investment in poor neighborhoods, preferential police treatment for Charlotte’s wealthiest citizens, church corruption and medical board corruption. You spoke about those issues with the confidence and authority of someone who knew the facts and a long trail of receipts to back them up.

When CL’s Best of Charlotte issue rolled around, each year you were voted both Best Local Columnist and Local Columnist You’re Sick Of. To me, the equal parts love and hate you received were further proof you were doing important work — people wanted to shut you up because you were a force of illumination for worlds whose elite inhabitants would prefer to remain in the shadows.

Even your headshot was badass, with your head cocked slightly sideways like you were sizing someone up, your mouth forming a sarcastic sneer barely disguised as a smile. I imagined you gave the photographer this look because you had little time for formalities like photo shoots. You had asses to kick and names to take.

To say you influenced my award-winning column, Trouble Hunter, is an understatement.

Nearly every single time someone who has lived in Charlotte for more than a decade talks to me about my column, they mention Tara

Servatius. I remind them of you back in the day, they say, or they tell me they’re happy to see another CL columnist willing to take on established power structures. I thank them for the comparison, but I know I haven’t yet reached the level of peak Citizen Servatius.

One night a few months ago, I received another comparison during a tipsy conversation at The Milestone. “Whatever happened to her anyway?” my bearded conversation companion asked. I realized I had no idea.

That night I Googled you to find out.

I figured maybe you had moved on to a gig doing consulting or teaching. Surely, if you’d continued a career in journalism, I’d be reading your articles in national publications by now, or seeing you make appearances as a pundit on cable news.

What I found brings me to the purpose of my letter today. The first result was a headline that read “WRNN radio host resigns as blogger over graphic picture of Obama.” Wait, what?

Surely they weren’t referring to you.

Oh, but they were. I learned how in 2012, as a blogger for the conservative John Locke Foundation, you posted an image of President Obama dressed in drag, holding a bucket of fried chicken. You were forced to resign and when you did, you issued the standard nonapology of racists everywhere. The one that goes something like, “I’m sorry if anyone was offended because they took it the wrong way.”

I was shocked at what looked to be a mistake in judgement, but reading further Google results revealed that I shouldn’t have been. Apparently, during the years I’d stopped reading your column while away at college and becoming a new mother, you began a drastic transformation.

You spoke to the League of the South, a radical white supremacist group with its own paramilitary unit that advocates for Southern secession. You hosted an afternoon talk radio show on WBT from 2008 to 2011 where you reported on nonfactual white fearmongering stories such as the mosque at Ground Zero (there wasn’t one), and how the New Black Panthers affected the 2010 midterm elections (they didn’t).

After your contract wasn’t renewed in 2011, you took your newfound void of journalistic integrity to stations in Myrtle Beach, Charleston and Greenville, S.C., where you currently host a show on 106.3 the WORD. How did you get to this point, Tara?

How did the journalist who wrote about the untold hardships endured by Cambodian refugees become the radio wingnut warning her listeners that the refugee program is part of a Washington conspiracy to create a one-party

system?

How did my justice-minded, truth-seeking high school role model who held the elite’s feet to the fire end up advocating for our current president — who offers not even slight regard for the truth — instead of calling him on his bullshit?

How did the pragmatic journalist I knew as the one able to always find the facts become the person reposting links from conservative conspiracy-porn sources like Breitbart, Infowars and TheBlaze.com?

How, Tara? How did a brilliant, intellectually honest journalist turn into a hateful, fear-mongering, nonsense-spewing blowhard?

Perhaps you were always subtly racist and I was too young and naïve to pick up on your dog whistles. Re-scanning your columns from the past still doesn’t offer many hints of this, but it could’ve been there.

Perhaps the election of our nation’s first black president brought your inner racist into a more prominent place in your mind and heart, like it did so many other conservative pundits.

Perhaps 9/11 scared the shit out of you and you went to a dark place as you looked for answers. Your first column following those attacks rightfully demands that Americans keep a close eye on those looking to encroach on their liberties from within the country. The call for blood included in the same column is what confuses me.

My personal theory regarding what looks to be a loss of logic on your part is that it became harder for you to make a living as a journalist in the print medium as it began to die. I think you saw the post-9/11 rise of Fox News and the radical right, and dollar signs danced in your eyes.

Perhaps the opportunity to join the ranks of celebrity hatemongers like Anne Coulter and Michelle Malkin was too much for you to turn down. Maybe you saw a lucrative book deal and your name in the headlines you once wrote.

I know how difficult it is to make a living wage as a journalist. The reason my column hasn’t reached the level of Citizen Servatius in terms of investigative reporting is that I have to maintain a day job to support my family and I’m unable to invest the time required into the stories I want to chase with all my heart.

I’ve tried other ways to reach you to discuss that balance and to ask for answers to the questions I’ve asked above, but you haven’t responded. Maybe I’ll never have those answers, but your career trajectory provided at least one: Would it be worth it to ever compromise my integrity and lower my standards to make more money? The clear answer is hell no. And I thank you for that.

Best regards, Erin Tracy-Blackwood BACKTALK@CLCLT.COM

CLCLT.COM | APR. 27 - MAY. 3, 2017 | 21

30th FOOD FEATURE

REIGNING CHAMPS A recogniton of 10 of the most consistent culinary winners in our Best of Charlotte issues

Larkin Duran.

RYAN PITKIN

MARK KEMP

LUPIE’S CAFE

THOMAS STREET TAVERN

2718 Monroe Road

1218 Thomas Ave.

While we move into our Dirty Thirties as a publication this year, we look to Lupie’s Cafe on Monroe Road for advice, as the family there just made its own leap into true adulthood last year, the original location celebrating three decades in business (save for, ya know, the few times a car would smash into the front of the building and they’d have to shut down to fix it up).

Lupie’s has been an everpresent force in our best-of picks, both from readers and staff. Its recognition ranges from Best Home Cooking (2001) to Best Inexpensive Restaurant (2001, 2008) to a critic’s pick for Best Place We Can’t Stop Going To Even Though It Gives Us Heartburn (2012).

Alas, there’s now a young buck at the wheel of this tried-and-true cafe, someone who was less than a year old when Lupie’s began taking home Best of Charlotte awards thanks to Lupie Duran’s great service and homestyle recipes.

But have no fear, the newcomer is not really a newcomer at all — it’s Lupie’s daughter Larkin, who has grown up in the cafe and helped run the Huntersville location for years before coming down to the big city in 2015 to help run the joint when Lupie broke both her ankles in an accident.

22 | APR. 27 - MAY. 3, 2017 | CLCLT.COM

Lupie has since healed up just fine, but watching Larkin at work gave Mom the confidence she needed to retire. When we visited Larkin at the end of last year, she said her mother still comes by regularly to visit with friends, but avoids the temptation to micromanage things.

“She still does all of our baking, she’s still making the poundcake and the cookies, but I think she’d rather come in for it to be a pleasure thing instead of it being a work thing,” Larkin said.

As for the consistency of the cafe’s success, Larkin says it’s not all about that amazing meatloaf (although it must be kind of about the meatloaf), but about the vibe her mom created and that Larkin hopes to continue to cultivate.

“My mom’s always created this really awesome environment. It’s a fun workplace,” Larkin said. “It’s definitely not easy. The restaurant business in general is not easy. But the people that work here, we’ve all worked together for so long, we have a very low turnover rate, and we’ve gone through good times and bad times together. It’s just a really unique place.”

Let’s just forget about the fact that the tavern is actually on Thomas Avenue and not Thomas Street, the fact is that Thomas Street Tavern has won Best Neighborhood Bar — either in critic’s picks or reader’s pick — every year since we started putting the awards online in 2006, save for one. (The much-beloved Thirsty Beaver took the prize in 2013).

A trip to Thomas Street’s back patio explains a lot about what makes the Plaza Midwood hangout such a chill spot and worthy vote hoarder.

Not only has it hosted cornhole boards since long before everybody and their mom was throwing them on the nearest sidewalk, but Thomas Street even offers two ping pong tables ... with stadium seating for your friends.

And if they aren’t interested in watching you smack a ball back and forth, they can try their hand at that wonderful time suck that is the hook and ring game. But wait, that’s not all. The fire pit and sometimes-screened-in outdoor bar make the patio bearable all year round.

However, this section is about restaurants, and for the fact that it’s known as just a fun place to hang out and drink with friends,

Thomas Street does not slack on the food.

This is not the regular oysters-and-peanuts bar fare, but the kitchen actually offers up amazing food.

For example, the chef salad there will have you feeling like you made a healthy decision but still walking with a full belly no matter your size. But hell, you’re not looking for healthy whe you’re out downing beers, so go ahead and order the cheesy fries. We promise you won’t regret it.

You don’t have to just listen to our voters (who also consitently vote Thomas Street Tavern as the Best Patio in Charlotte, along with Neighborhood Bar), Esquire Magazine even called it one of the best neighborhood bars in the country in 2007.

Thomas Street has remained a staple in Plaza — and the city as a whole — despite the amazing growth and new openings happenieng all around it.

It’s the type of place that is hard to beat when it comes to good times, cheap drinks and a solid location, regardless of whether its namesake address really exists or not.

GRAHAM MORRISON MARK KEMP

MERT’S HEART & SOUL

COPPER MODERN INDIAN CUISINE

214 N. College St

311 East Blvd.

There are lots of soul food restaurants in the Charlotte area, and CL encourages you to seek out as many of them as you can: Floyd’s Restaurant, Angie’s Diner, La’Wan’s, Nana’s, Sunset, Queens and so many others. And we sorely miss those great institutions now gone — like Simmons, Rudean’s and the original Coffee Cup near Bank of America Stadium — lost to time and development.

But the soul food restaurant for folks who have never had soul food before is Mert’s Heart & Soul. And why not? The food is fabulous, the vibe is authentic, and the place is located right smack in the heart of Uptown.

Mert’s has taken the title of CL’s Best Southern Country Food/Soul Food Restaurant repeatedly, winning either readers’ or critics’ votes — and often both — every year for the past decade, and many other years prior.

Being a repeat winner of CL’s Best of Charlotte soul food category, says owner and chef James Bazzelle, “speaks volumes about the people who work here.

“So many people still enjoy Mert’s because we’ve maintained same standard and qulaity of food, and because of our service to the community,” he adds.

Bazzelle and his family have served the community well during the more than two

decades since they moved to Charlotte from Athens, Ga. In 1995, the Bazzelles opened then-named “Ga. on North Tryon” at North Tryon and Ninth streets. Three years later, the Bazzelles moved the restaurant to its current location, changed the name to Heart & Soul, and added Mert’s in honor of a loyal customer, Myrtle Lockhart, who had died before the restaurant’s relocation.

“When we moved here,” Bazzelle tells us, “we were trying to think of a good southern name, and I thought about about Ms. Lockhart. She was a senior citizen and we had got to be really good friends with her and her family, and she had told me that when she was younger her nickename was Mert.” He laughs.

“Ms. Lockhard was flashy and she like to talk trash, so when we were trying to think of a good southern name, I said why don’t we try Mert’s?”

Good choice, because people now leave off the Heart & Soul part when they talk about Mert’s.

It’s just. . . Mert’s.

And we love Mert’s. We’ll always love Mert’s. Even as we also haunt those off-thebeaten-track places and miss the ones now gone to glory.

There are plenty of Indian restaurants throughout Charlotte but you’d hardly know it if all you went by was CL’s “best of” issues.

Readers, staffers and critics alike all agree: Copper is the gold standard.

Copper Modern Indian Cuisine has consistently won Best Indian Restaurant since it opened in 2005, nabbing our reader picks seven times in its first decade and the staff picks twice.

It’s no wonder. The food is wonderful. It explodes with flavor.

In 1997 owenr Pannu Singh, who grew up in the Punjab, opened Nawab, the first Indian restaurant in Roanoke, Va. It was so successful that he began looking for spot in a larger city to launch a more upscale restaurant.

He chose the famous house on East Boulevard in Charlotte that was once home to the city’s most famous novelist, Carson McCullers, who wrote much of her acclaimed novel The Heart is a Lonely Hunter there.

Today, the sweet aroma of Indian spices emanates from the house shaded by a canopy of trees.

“Charlotte is a bigger market and has people who will appreciate this food,” Singh

told CL in 2005. “Charlotte has 12 Indian restaurants, so people here are familiar with Indian food.”

Copper offers plenty of the familiar — traditional fare like tandoori, tikka and vindaloo — along with special dishes flavored with modern sauces.

And the wine list? It’s endless.

With prices ranging from the thirties to the hundreds, there’s a wine for your tastebuds and your pocketbook, along with Indian beers including Flying Horse, King Fisher and Maharaja.

But it’s the food and the multiple intimate dining areas, including a low-key outside patio, that keeps us pulling the Copper lever in CL’s “Best of Charlotte” voting booth.

The food that Singh calls “100 percent Indian in a modern way.”

CLCLT.COM | APR. 27 - MAY. 3, 2017 | 23

30th FOOD FEATURE

MARK KEMP

MARK KEMP

WOLFMAN PIZZA

FUEL PIZZA

106-B S. Sharon Amity Rd.

1501 Central Ave.

Wolfman Pizza and Creative Loafing have grown up together, and perhaps because of that, Wolfman took the No. 1 spot in CL’s Best Pizza category for years.

“We’ve always. . .,” chef John McNeil begins, and then pauses. “I feel like Creative Loafing is just sort of in the same vibe. You guys have been around Charlotte for about the same length of time, and we’ve always felt like the same kind of people who read your magazine are the same kind of people who like Wolfman Pizza.”

But growing up together isn’t the only reason for the mutual love.

The other reasons we love Wolfman Pizza include the amazing sauce, the delicious, fresh, un-bleached and non-bromated dough, not to mention that awesome bleu cheese dressing.

Barry Wolfman opened his first pizzeria in Charlotte in 1991, and two years later McNeil, aka “Funky,” arrived at its current Cotswold location.

Funky was Wolfman’s ace in the hole; he began stirring up magical flavors in the kitchen and was soon making the sauces for all the Wolfman locations.

The pizzeria has expanded and contracted

24 | APR. 27 - MAY. 3, 2017 | CLCLT.COM

over the years, but that Cotswold store — with its 1960s-era Ford Country Sedan parked outside, painted all black, with the words “Bite Me” on the back — still bustles, as does Wolfman’s Quail Corners store.

That’s partly because the joint has style: old-school monster posters from Wolfman flicks line the walls, Wolfman jack o’ lanterns, masks, and endless werewolf references in its Twitter feed.

The place is just cool.

But it’s the pizza that keeps us coming back. And that’s a testament to Funky.

“I’ve been making the sauces and things ever since [1993], maintaining its consistency, and I’m very proud of what I’ve done,” McNeil says.

“And I want readers to know — and Charlotte to know — that the product they get now at Wolfman is the product that’s always been here.”

He pauses, adding, “And it’s the best pizza in town.”

For the first decade that Creative Loafing held its Best of Charlotte competition, Wolfman held a consistent streak with our readers for Best Pizza in Charlotte. Then, a challenger arrived.

Fuel Pizza opened its first location in a former gas station (get it?) in the blooming Plaza Midwood neighborhood 19 years ago, and immediately took home the Best Pizza prize that year. It’s been a consistent winner ever since, which hasn’t shocked Lincoln Clark, a partner at Fuel.

“Well, we’re in the pizza business, we try, we strive to make the best freshest quality pizza we could possibly make and winning Best Pizza is a direct result of the hard work that we do and the ingredients that we use,” Clark said.

He said he was unaware of the stranglehold Wolfman had over the preceding years, but was pleasantly surprised to receive the first award.

“We were reaping a reward for our hard work,” Clark said. “I don’t think we really knew that we were beating Wolfman Pizza or anybody else, we were just doing it for ourselves and satisfying the customers, the guests, who are the most important thing.”

Now, as the original location prepares to

turn 20 next year, and the five other Charlottearea locations continue to flourish, the oncenewcomer is an O.G. in Plaza Midwood, where pizza locations have popped up all around, even one in a former gas station across the street.

Still, Clark still looks at that competition the same way he looked at Wolfman in the early days, which is not really at all.

“I can only worry about myself,” he said.

“I can only make the best product that I can make, have the best employees and the best customer service. I can only worry about me. I can’t worry about anybody else.”

He says the numerous Best Pizza wins have made an impact, especially back when the business had just started nearly two decades ago. The award itself is not something Clark spends time thinking about, but consistency is, and with that, more recognition will come, he said.

“It’s consistency, making sure that we’re making the best dough, that we make the best sauce, that we cook the best wings, that we have the freshest product,” Clark said.

“And it’s made the same way every day, and [giving] the best customer service that we can give.”

PHOTO COURTESY OF SMELLY CAT.

The “new” Diamond staff: (l-r) owners John Fuller, Brian Rowe, Andy Kastanas and Jimmy King struck gold, or... diamonds.

SMELLY CAT COFFEEHOUSE

THE DIAMOND

514 E. 36th St.

1901 Commonwealth Ave.

The long lines at the French bakery down the street might show a loyal appreciation for salted caramel brownies, but when it comes to a straight-up cup of joe, our readers have spoken over and over again, choosing Smelly Cat as the Best Coffee Shop right down the line over the past decade.

The homey coffee house with the unappealing, Friends-inspired name looked to have a shaky future over the past year, as the land it was on — shared by Revolution Ale House — went up for sale. However, there are no new big development plans for Smelly Cat’s corner at the center of NoDa (a new Moo & Brew will take Revolution’s spot next door, leaving the coffee shup unaffected), and owner Cathy Tuman will finish out at the next four and a half years left on her lease, at the least.

That’s good news for us here at Creative Loafing, as we keep a constantly replenished stock of Black Cat beans at our grinder here in the office, and wouldn’t know what to do with oursevles if we had to look elsewhere for our journalistic fuel. We even have a Kegged Cold Brew tap installation in the newsroom, but we think we broke it a year or two back and have been too afraid to admit it to Cathy. It’s alright, we can make the trip.

Anyway, enough about us here at the ‘Loaf, we’re not the ones constantly putting Smelly Cat back in the winner’s circle every September. It’s our readers who vote them in every damn time.

“We work hard to put our customer service and relationships first,” Tuman said when asked about the consistent Best of Charlotte success. “Then right darn close second is a great product, but the people come first and our customers recognize that Smelly Cat puts people first.”

She’s darn right about the great product, too, so some of the coffee shop’s success might come from the fact that mud’s not the only drink they’re slinging. In the winter, there’s not much better than the caramel apple cider that Tuman and staff serve, and in the summer months, they’ll make you a frappe that blows the socks off whatever weird glittery concoction Starbucks will come out with next.

This is one of those situations where the reader’s always right, but only because the reader agrees with us.

It was a giant fuck you to the family of the original owner of the fabled Penguin Restaurant, a hotspot among the Plaza Midwood hipsterati since 2000. That’s the year Brian Rowe and Jimmy King puchased the old drive-in founded in 1954 by Jim Ballentine.

Rowe and King allowed the restaurant with the taletell penguin sign in the heart of the hood to grow organically into a popular hangout. By the mid-2000s you’d wait in a long line just for the opportunity to drink PBRs and scarf up the Penguin’s delicious friend pickles.

Then Ballentine’s kids got the bright idea to regain control of the name and capitalize on it. Rowe and King were basically forced out as the neighborhood interlopers attempted to “hipify” the Penguin more by replacing stickers customers had put on the walls with brand new “Green Day” decals. The new old owners figured they could launch a chain of “hip” Penguins!

Naturally, Plaza Midwood rebelled, and when rebels rebel, well. . . it ain’t pretty.

“We did something special here, the whole city loves it,” Rowe told CL in 2010. “All walks of life — young, old, black, white . . . everyone is very fond of the place.” Indeed, the Penguin

PHOTO BY JASIATIC

had been a perennial CL “best-of” winner.

So Rowe and King, along with partners Andy Kastanas and John Fuller, purchased the nearby Diamond Restaurant, another beloved diner that had been around for more than half a century and also needed the kind of TLC the duo had given the Penguin.

“We’re going to keep a lot of the signature items and be respectful to the building and put it back similar with a bit of a new look and new feel,” Rowe told CL at the time.

But would it work? Could lightning strick twice?

Ker-POW! The old Diamond had won CL “best of” categories before Rowe and King’s team turned it into another “it” spot, but after the neighborhood war had left the duo battered and scarred, critics and readers alike jumped to their support. In 2011, the Diamond won numerous CL “best of” awards, including best hot dog, best fried pickles (once a given for the Penguin), best late-night restaurant, best hangover-friendly restaurant, best cheap restaurant and others, and they continued winning them.

We all showed the Diamond major love — and we still are. That’s why you’re reading about it in our 30th anniversary issue.

CLCLT.COM | APR. 27 - MAY. 3, 2017 | 25

30th FOOD FEATURE

MARK KEMP

ours.

YO U R S . M I N E .

FO OD WORTH SHARING.

1 5 1 1 E A S T B LV D . • C H A R L O T T E , N C 704.334.2522 •

E AT

B A B A L U. C O M

B A B A L U N O W C AT E R S !

Contact our Catering Manager at 704.430.5840 26 | APR. 27 - MAY. 3, 2017 | CLCLT.COM

RI-RA 514 E. 36th St. With Smelly Cat turning 10 and us turning 30 this year, we had to include one perrenial winner in the middle, and that’s everybody’s favorite Uptown Irish pub, Rí Rá.

From the time Rí Rá won Best New Nightlife Spot in 1997, it’s been shutting down the competition in the Best of voting booths (well, you’re allowed to vote in a booth, if you like).

The scariest part of it all is that we almost lost the Uptown staple, which won Best Downtown Bar between ‘07 and ‘14, when a fire nearly gutted it from the inside in 2009.

The Irish are a tough bunch, however, and it reopened in March 2010 and just kept on rolling, keeping its impressive CL Best of streak going.

Restaurateur Ciaran Sheehan opened the pub after visiting in 1996 and falling in love with the skyline, he told CL, so we hope he doesn’t mind that it’s changed a bit since then.

Many of Sheehan’s employees are fresh off the boat from Ireland, as they participate in an exchange program and come live in Charlotte for a matter of months, taking in the “New South” atmosphere while adding to the authentic feel for pub patrons.

When we last spoke, Sheehan said he couldn’t decide between the fish and chips, the house-brined corned beef and the burgers made from scratch for his favorite meal, but we might suggest the Irish breakfast for a Sunday brunch as our top pick. It comes complete with some of the best black and white pudding — yes, that’s blood sausage for you squeamish Americans — to be found in the Queen City.

But the real reason our voters keep Rí Rá a constant presence in the Best of Charlotte issues is the nightlife, not the bangers and mash, and the pub offers up a nice mix of class (you’re not going to get clocked by a drunken hooligan upset over a futbol match) and cool (not too many EpiCenter-esque banker bros on a given night).

The fire is now a distant memory, as is the Yeats poem it torched from above the bar, but regardless, Rí Rá will remain etched in by our voting blocs for decades to come. ....

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half light, ....

PHOTO BY MARK KEMP

Penny Craver looking marveous behind the counter at Dish.

DISH 1901 Commonwealth Ave. When CL’s staffers voted Dish the best gutbustin lunch place in Charlotte in 2013, they were not exaggerating. You can’t look at Dish’s menu without gaining five pounds. But oh, is it worth it.

Penny Craver, who also owned perennial best-of punk-club winner Tremont Music Hall, took her gruff but loveable personality to her home neighborhood of Plaza Midwood in 2002, opening Dish for some much-needed downhome Southern cuisine.

“We’re a Southern state and a Southern community,” Craver told CL last year, “and this is Southern food we grew up on back when people used to cook.”

Southern food indeed. Dish’s early menu was a mix of basic, but high-quality comfort foods — shrimp and grits, chicken and dumplings, mac ’n’ cheese, deviled eggs, pork chops, and biscuits topped with honey — augmented by plenty of vegetable options and not-so-Southern fare such as couscous and exotic mixes of herbs and spices. It was nouvelle Southern, and it fit right into the vibe of the an area just beginning to teem with young artists and musicians.

“We fought for this location,” Craver told CL the year she opened the joint. “We looked at other locations, but we wanted this spot

on Thomas Avenue.” And she wanted Dish’s look and feel to fit into the burgeoning art scene. For that, she recruited folks she knew from her years on the punk underground.

“The decorating was done by friends Hope Nicholls and Scott Weaver of Boris & Natasha, and Melody Hoffman and Brigit Wyant from Tremont,” Craver said.

Dish hasn’t changed an iota since then, and that’s because it’s never lost its lustre; it doesn’t feel old.

“I think people — even if they’re not from here — once they realize it’s comfort food, they end up making it their own,” Craver said last year. “Everybody likes good food. No matter who you are, you’re gonna like it here and you should feel comfortable. If you can’t feel comfortable here, I don’t know where you can.”

Dish may not boast the number of “bestof” wins that other restaurants on this list do, but to us, that little yellow building on Thomas Avenue with a bowl-of-veggies as its logo is a spot every current staffer at CL hits on a regular. And it will always be a perennial winner in our hearts.

“Do I look OK?” Craver, in a rare moment of vulnerability, asked as we snapped the photo for this piece.

CLCLT.COM | APR. 27 - MAY. 3, 2017 | 27

THURSDAY

27

WALL OF COMPASSION What: Despite what news from the White House may tell you, human decency is still a thing. For the past few weeks, AboutFace CLT has been placing “blessing boxes” around town. The idea is that once you perform an act of kindness, you write it down and place it in the box. Now these good deeds are being unveiled as the Wall of Compassion, over 100,000 conscious acts of kindness to see and share.

When: 6 p.m.

Where: Grace AME Zion Church, 219 S. Brevard St. More: Free. AboutFaceCLT.org.

28 | APR. 27 - MAY. 3, 2017 | CLCLT.COM

THURSDAY

27

THINGS TO DO

TOP TEN

Of Montreal SATURDAY PHOTO BY BEN ROUSE

FRIDAY

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FRIDAY

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SATURDAY

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JUNIOR ASTRONOMERS

LAURYN HILL

NEIL DIAMOND

OF MONTREAL

What: Charlotte’s favorite emo band since Taking Back Sunday’s Adam Lazzara laid foundations in the Queen City will appear at Birdsong for a beer blowout before resting up for a tour and returning in June for a big album-release party. We’ve heard the new LP, Body Language, and it sounds sweet. Go check out the track “That’s Why” on their website.

Apparently, the band has brewed a beer with Birdsong and this show celebrates the release of said beer.

Party on!

What: She was the most amazing singer/rapper alive when Fugees were at the top of their game. Her solo debut, The Miseducation. . ., was among the greatest albums of the ’90s. Lauryn Hill was poised to rule the 2000s. Then she went a little cuckcoo, with an Unplugged set that became a brilliant train wreck. Now she’s back, having rescheduled a missed Charlotte date. By all accounts, her shows today are powerful mixes of the electric and acoustic brilliance she’s long been known for. Take the risk.

When: 7 p.m.

Where: Charlotte Metro Credit Union Amphitheatre, 1000 NC Music Factory Blvd.

More: $47 - up. livenation.com.

What: Let’s say Lauryn Hill doesn’t show up. Here’s a very different option just down the street. Don’t laugh. For every overblown schmaltzy moment in Mr. Diamond’s discography, there’s a “Cherry Cherry.” For every overwritten dramatic narrative, there’s a little Leonard Cohen song just dying to get out. Urge Overkill killed their take on Neil’s “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Now” in Pulp Fiction. Look: Your mama and grandmama loved him. Schmaltz?

Yes. But brilliant schmaltz.

When: 8 p.m.

Where: Spectrum Center, 333 E. Trade St. More: $62 - up. spectrumcentercharlotte.org.

What: “He inspired me to be constantly creative.” That’s violinist Kishi Bashi talking about Kevin Barnes, the mad musical genius known as Of Montreal. That’s all the space we can devote to Barnes in this blurb, because he’s just one of the acts playing throughout town on Saturday for Reverb Fest 5. Of Montreal at the Neighborhood, Hectorina at Snug, LeAnna Eden at Lunchbox Records, and MyBrother MySister at The Station are just the tip of the Reverb iceberg.

When: 5 - 10 p.m.

Where: Birdsong Brewing Co., 1016 N. Davidson St. More: Free. birdsongbrewing.com.

When: 7 p.m.

Where: Neighborhood Theatre, 511 E 36th St. More: $20-25. neighborhoodtheatre.com.

NEWS ARTS FOOD MUSIC ODDS

Wall of Compassion THURSDAY

Lauryn Hill FRIDAY PHOTO BY DAIGO OLIVA

SATURDAY

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BOOM AfterParty SATURDAY

PHOTO COURTESY OF ABOUTFACECLT.ORG

SATURDAY

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PHOTO COURTESY OF AFROPOP!

SUNDAY

MONDAY

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BOOM AFTERPARTY

WILMINGTON ON FIRE

MANOR TURNS 70

MAY DAY MARCH

SHAUN MARTIN

What: Smack dab in the middle of the arts explosion that is the BOOM festival, AfroPop! And Urban Züe collaborate on the BAM Session, a fusion of fashion, art, culture, live performance and whole lot of dancing. Petra’s will be transformed into an eclectic creative space where live drumming, audio-visual displays and African diaspora music thrive.

Organizer Eric B. Ndelo’s stated goal is to party with the purpose of empowering the community.

What: The Wilmington Massacre was a bloody attack on the AfricanAmerican community by a heavily armed white mob with the support of the North Carolina Democratic Party on November 10, 1898 in Wilmington, North Carolina. This award-winning doc takes a deeper look at an event that inspired the white supremacist movement and Jim Crow segregation.

Documentarian Christopher Everett will lead a conversation about his film, the massacre and how it shapes Wilmington.

What: The cozy Manor Theatre opened its doors 70 years ago on Sunday, and it’s been holding that spot on Providence Road since damn near World War II. To celebrate that birthday, two movies will screen through the day that ran in 1947, the Manor’s inaugural year. First, The Egg and I, the first movie ever played at the theater, followed by the Gregory Peck flick Gentleman’s Agreement, which won Best Picture in ‘47.

What: A coalition of immigrant rights groups including Comunidad Colectiva, Alerta Migratoria and the Southeast Asian Coalition will continue the stand they took on A Day Without Immigrants in February to show solidarity with the immigrant community and make demands of local leaders, including the termination of the county’s 287(G) program and the use of city resources to protect immigrant communities.

When: 10 p.m.

Where: Petra’s, 1919 Commonwealth Ave. More: $10. boomcharlotte.org.

When: Showings at 4 and 7 p.m.

Where: Little Rock Cultural Center, 401 N. Myers St. More: $10. bit.ly/2oWavs2.

When: The Egg and I: 1:30, 7:30 p.m.; A Gentleman’s Agreement: 4:20 p.m.

Where: Regal Manor Twin, 6009 Providence Road.

More: $5. bit.ly/2ojsU35.

When: 12 p.m.

Where: Marshall Park, 800 E. 3rd St. More: Free. facebook.com/ ComunidadColectivaCLT/.

What: One of music’s more eclectic players, Shaun Martin has tickled the keyboards for acts ranging from gospel great Kirk Franklin to the jam-jazz-fusion band Snarky Puppy.

And now he’s out with a five-piece combo supporting his effervescent 2015 solo album, Seven Summers.

Expect a diverse crowd of gospel fans, jam-band aficionados, jazz heads and more when the seventime Grammy winner hits the stage at the Evening Muse for an intimate evening of great-sounding music.

Can we get a hallelujah?

When: 8 p.m.

Where: The Evening Muse, 3227 N. Davidson St. More: $10 - $15. eveningmuse.com.

CLCLT.COM | APR. 27 - MAY. 3, 2017 | 29

Fred Mills several years ago doing what he does best: Assessing records

at a record store.

COURTESY OF FRED MILLS

30th MUSIC FEATURE

DOCUMENTING THE UNDERGROUND Two ex-‘CL’ music editors put Charlotte’s adventurous scene into perspective

BY JOHN SCHACHT

A

SK TWO FORMER Creative Loafing music editors to wax nostalgic about the Charlotte music scene during their respective eras, and you’re going to get an earful — after all, volubility about their musical loves and loathings helped land them the gig in the first place.

Over the course of Creative Loafing’s three decades, we’ve followed everything from the rise of the American indie-rock scene that spawned Charlotte’s Fetchin Bones alongside 30 | APR. 27 - MAY. 3, 2017 | CLCLT.COM

Georgia’s R.E.M., to the alt-country and rootsrock tributaries that ushered in bands like Jolene and the Avett Brothers. We’ve documented the early-aughts explosion of Latin-alternative bands, the experimental avant-garde brewed up at Yauhaus, and the myriad of underground hiphop and neosoul artists making homemade tracks today and releasing them digitally, including the Forever FC crew that gave rise to rapper Lute, who just last year signed on with J. Cole’s Dreamville label.

We asked CL’s first music editor, Fred Mills (1987-92), and one of his successors, John Schacht (2003-05), to discuss the city’s music scene as it’s evolved over the years. As they page through its 30-year back story, these windows in time tell us much about where we are today.

Creative Loafing has been a trusted barometer, booster and occasional cattle prod over that time, chronicling the city’s music scene from its humble and provincial roots to a diversity on par with any Southeastern metropolis.

After his stint at Creative Loafing, Mills went on to write for or edit numerous national publications including Option, Spin, Harp and Magnet. Schacht has written for Paste and Harp, and ran the regional music quarterly Shuffle from 2007 to 2011; he teaches courses at UNC Charlotte, including Popular Culture and the American Music Scene. Both Mills and Schacht still write about music — the latter writes for the former at Blurtonline.com, where Mills is editor in chief. — Editor

John Schacht: It’s hard to get across to people under a certain age how essential altweeklies have been in championing portions of the nation’s underground music scene.

Since you were there at the very beginning of Loafing Charlotte, tell us about what it was like back then.

Fred Mills: Radio in Charlotte at the time was the pits. Concurrent with that era, a lot of bands were coming out of the woodwork — it was definitely some real good synchronicity and some mutual respect, because here was Loafing taking bands like ANTiSEEN and Fetchin Bones seriously. And that in turn gave all these other little garage and bedroom musicians the idea that maybe they could do something, because people were paying attention to them. I won’t say Loafing should take all the credit for jumpstarting the scene, but I know we were definitely there cheering it on and doing anything we could to support it.

JS: I always saw that as the gig — being an advocate for the underrepresented, and also doing zeitgeist stuff in a more thoughtful and provocative way. The Avetts were just kicking into that extra-regional gear when I started in 2003; it was clear they were going to be just fine without us, so I felt our limited space would be better spent highlighting lesser-known bands or touring acts that weren’t featured in the Observer. Was that kind of your mindset?

FM: I totally get that. The Charlotte scene in the late ’80s and early ’90s was perpetually operating under the shadow of the Triangle.

A lot of those bands were getting known nationally, but initially, at least, the only bands that were getting much ink outside Charlotte would be Fetchin Bones, and ANTiSEEN, who were really underground but were moving beyond the hardcore crowd they initially appealed to.

As we got to the late ’80s and into 1990, say, you suddenly had this groundswell of scenes within the larger scenes. For example, there was definitely the neo-psychedelic scene spearheaded by Mitch Cooper and The Inn. They had these Psychedelic Sundays that they put on at clubs. It’d be The Inn and Sloppy Joe and the Rhythm Section, Trees, The Ravelers, Other People — so there was that scene. And there was a very, very strong heavy metal scene, too, epitomized by Firehouse, who during that period probably went farther nationally than any band in town. There were other bands like the glammetal Lickety Split, the more punk metal of Seducer. There was a Goth scene and the stirrings of a roots-rock scene, such as The Belmont Playboys and David Childers.

Coincidentally or not, Loafing’s arrival roughly coincided with the rise of the Amerindie Underground (scene) that R.E.M., Husker Du, etc., had pioneered. This meant that by 1987 through ’89, there was a genuine network of clubs around the country, which in turn meant there were more people such as club bookers able to operate professionally, which in turn helped Charlotte get on the radar of national bookers and managers.

Pretty soon, you had a situation where bands would play Chapel Hill and then Charlotte en route to Atlanta and Athens, instead of

Mills (right) and CL editor John Grooms back in the day.

CREATIVE LOAFING ARCHIVES

G TO IN V A H T E G R O F “I’LL NEVER 100 R E V O Y L B A B O R P GO THROUGH TS, BUT U N T S U J S A W IT . . .

CASSETTES PLE O E P Y N A M W O H U IT SHOWED YO SIC.” U M G IN K A M E R E H T WERE OUT -FRED MILLS skipping Charlotte altogether. This opened up additional possibilities for local groups to open for name and signed acts and be seen by a wider audience. I forget who opened for The Replacements at The Milestone, but you can bet that was something they could put on their resume.

JS: One of the first stories I did was profile

the new Milestone owners, who launched themselves into reviving that venue with manic dedication — they wound up living there, basically, fending off crack addicts and shooting rats during the early days of the club’s comeback. And they also gifted us their door-booth guy — literally: Andy the Doorbum, one of those eclectic voices so key to a healthy music scene.

FM: The excitement was very real — the bands also seemed to really be bonding together just for the sheer joy of community.

Everybody was helping each other out and sharing touring tips and sharing gig tips. Pretty soon, a lot of these bands were SEE

UNDERGROUND P. 32 u

CLCLT.COM | APR. 27 - MAY. 3, 2017 | 31

“IT’S HARD TO GET ACROSS TO PEOPLE UNDER A CERTAIN AGE HOW ESSENTIAL ALT-WEEKLIES HAVE BEEN IN CHAMPIONING PORTIONS OF THE NATION’S UNDERGROUND MUSIC SCENE.” -JOHN SCHACHT

30th MUSIC FEATURE

John Schacht

UNDERGROUND FROM P.31 t beginning to get gigs in the Triangle and there was good cross-pollination between the Athens, Ga., scene and the Triangle scene, and a lot of those bands would come up and play and then let those Charlotte bands go down there and open for them. So in one sense it was a golden era [for rock].

JS: By the 2000s, many of those bands you’d drive to see at Cat’s Cradle or the Garage or Local 506 began playing Charlotte, and that helped, too. Credit to the Yauhaus gang and Brian McKinney for booking bands like Phosphorescent, Magnolia Electric Co., Little Brother, Xiu Xiu, SMOG, Dan Deacon, Do Make Say Think — not your standard fare back then in Charlotte. But attendance could be very fickle. How was the label scene in Charlotte back in your day? By the early 2000s, Ramseur had planted their flag, MoRisen 32 | APR. 27 - MAY. 3, 2017 | CLCLT.COM

was making some waves with The Talk and Elevator Action, and there were the usual boutique, vanity or one-and-done efforts. But that groundwork was laid during your era, no?

FM: Early on you did have ANTiSEEN putting out their own records, and I think that was the model for a long time [now extending to websites like Soundcloud and Bandcamp] — bands just creating their own little one-off labels to release their stuff. But eventually you had label rosters. It was a pretty big deal when Chris Peigler’s band, Intensive Care, put out an album, because they put a lot of money into it, and it was the kind of thing that a lot of bands paid attention to — ‘Hey, we can do this, too.’

And you would have a lot of self-released cassettes, of course, and some singles. When Creative Loafing started putting on Night Fest — which was the answer to Spring Fest, which

we thought was pretty vanilla — I’ll never forget having to go through probably over 100 cassettes that people had sent in to try and get to play Night Fest. It was just nuts, but it showed you how many people were out there making music.

JS: Now it seems like there are almost as many performing musicians as there are concertgoers; and with the internet and streaming services and Bandcamp and Soundcloud, people seem to take music for granted much more today than even in my era. It must seem even stranger for bands in that first Loafing era. . .

FM: In preparing for this I went on Spotify to see what bands from that era had gotten their stuff belatedly up on a streaming service, and honestly ANTiSEEN and Fetchin Bones and

Spongetones were the only ones I could find.

I didn’t have time to check for everybody, but there’s so many bands from the Charlotte area and region, from that time period, whose stuff is basically kind of lost to time. But it constitutes an unwritten history of the town and the era.

YouTube is kind of the go-to venue for hearing some of these bands because you’ll have an old band member or fan transfer an LP or a couple 45s to digital and put it up on YouTube. So to me the logical next move would be for some of these folks to figure out how to get onto streaming services — I mean, let’s face it, you’re not going to make a bunch of money via music streaming services. But it’s better than not having it up there at all.

Think about all these bands like Misguided Youth and Van Gogh’s Ear or Adam Shame and the Blind Dates, Second Skin, or Hard

Mills (right) with Mountain Times’ Jeff Eason on WNCW’s ‘What It Is’ in 2012.

PHOTO COURTESY OF WNCW

Soul Poets, Phantom Tennants, God’s Water — Discord, man, what a great band. Helpless Dancer, the Dalai Llama, which featured a young Tara Bush in there. All these bands, they deserve to be heard.

JS: Is there any genre of music, looking back, that you would cover differently? High on my agenda was getting more experimental music into the pages. We had a couple of local outfits at the time, Pyramid and Calabi Yau, that were really pushing at the boundaries of rock music in their own different ways. Both of them were really intent on crosspollination, too. You can still find their band members scattered throughout local acts today, like Don Telling’s Island Mysteries, Ghost Trees, Patois Counselors, Chocala, et al. But I could’ve done more legwork identifying local hip-hop

artists, since they started to cross over with gigs at The Room, the ill-fated venue on Montford Drive, right before Loafing and I parted ways.

FM: Hip-hop came to the Charlotte area very belatedly, and I’m going to qualify that by saying I was not a habitué of the African-American clubs in town, although my impression is that at the time those were primarily DJ-related. But I do remember, in the wake of the 2 Live Crew controversy, Schoolly D had been booked to play in Charlotte, possibly the 4808 Club, and they cancelled that out of fear that you would have a repeat of the 2 Live Crew obscenity blowup — of course, not long after that, we had the GWAR incident [Editor’s Note: recounted in Mills’ review of 4808 club owner Michael

Plumides’ book, Kill the Music, in Blurt], so. . . so much for steering clear of the Moral Majority.

In ’89, George Clinton and the P-Funk All-Stars came to the 13-13 Club, that was a rainbow audience and it was an amazing show, like two-and-a-half-hours of jamming.

And I remember thinking to myself, ‘Wow, this could be the start of something really significant if a lot of local bands are inspired by this.’ But of course, in America at that time, hip-hop was taking off and bands inspired by Clinton were headed towards rap careers, and not just straight funk.

One genre I wish I had covered more, even though I did quite a bit, was the roots-rock scene in the area there. We always covered the Belmont Playboys, but they were almost our representative roots-rock band, and then

there were just a few others that we covered.

There was just not a whole lot going on during the time I was there, though I know it began taking off in North Carolina in the early ’90s, and that was when I moved to Tucson.

JS: Yes, well, thanks for leaving that for us. . .

FM: Yeah, everything that happened after ’92, you guys can thank me for. But seriously, Creative Loafing has a legacy of having very good, attentive music writers who understand that not only is it their job to cover the local scene, it’s to do it with a little bit of intelligence.

BACKTALK@CLCLT.COM

Conversation compiled and hacked to pieces

by John Schacht; for a longer version, visit our website @clclt.com.

CLCLT.COM | APR. 27 - MAY. 3, 2017 | 33

RYAN PITKIN

30th

NEVER LOSING HOPE Hope Nicholls on spending three decades in Charotte’s music scene and why she still won’t leave

Over the decades you’ve been consistently steadfast, almost to the point of being stubborn, about your desire to stay in Charlotte no matter how successful you got. You’ve cited family, geographic location and lack of oversaturation in the music scene as reasons for this. Still no regrets on that front?

Absolutely, definitely not. I still think Charlotte’s way cooler than Atlanta, it’s got a lot more soul. I still think it’s a place of opportunity. It’s home, I love it.

RYAN PITKIN

I

MAY BE A news editor, but I consider myself relatively well plugged in to the Charlotte arts community. So in hindsight it’s bewildering that I only recently became aware of the woman whom I now consider to be the coolest person in Charlotte, especially because I’m (kind of) related to her.

Just two or three years ago, I introduced myself to acclaimed Charlotte sportswriter Tommy Tomlinson at an event. When he heard my name, he immediately said, “Oh, any relation to the guy from Fetchin Bones?”

One confused look and a quick text to my genealogist mother later, and I learned that I was, in fact, the eighth cousin once removed to Aaron Pitkin. He was the cofounder of Fetchin Bones, a band he and his wife Hope Nicholls formed in 1983 that rose to considerable fame and got played on MTV at a time when the country’s residents were demanding access to the channel.

A further look into the rabbit hole that is Hope and Aaron’s joint career sent me into an “Aha” moment, as I found they had been the driving force behind bands I had been a fan of and even seen play, including Sugarsmack, Snagglepuss and, now, Its Snakes, for which she plays the drums and sings.

Following that realization, I went into the couple’s Plaza Midwood thrift shop, Boris & Natasha, which they’ve owned and operated since 1999, to meet Nicholls. When I asked if she had a second to chat. Her response shocked me. “Are you a Pitkin? I can see it in your face.”

To say I was taken aback would be an understatement, but after a short conversation it became clear that Hope, now 57, is one of the more interesting folks to have blessed the Charlotte music scene; and why not, she helped create it.

As I pored over our 30-year archive over the past month or so in preparation for this anniversary issue, I kept coming across Hope and her bands. Fetchin Bones’ Hope on her Christmas wishes for 1988 (“I wish no more old buildings will get torn down,”); a cover story in 1993 about prolific Charlotteans like Sugarsmack’s Hope on staying put despite their success (“There’s a lot of good things going on now and the city is getting better, 34 | APR. 27 - MAY. 3, 2017 | CLCLT.COM

impression and got signed to DB [Records] in Atlanta. A band called Art in the Dark from Athens came up and watched us play and were like, “We love you.” There was nobody at that show, it was at The Milestone, but they were like, “Come back and play with us in Athens.” As soon as we played Athens, it was like [makes whooshing flame sound] wildfire for some reason. They got us in Georgia big time. We got signed to DB and really it wasn’t until we got signed to Capitol that Charlotte really caught on to what Fetchin Bones was doing.

Hope Nicholls with one of her pups in her Plaza Midwood boutique, Boris & Natasha.

even faster than I thought . . . but they tear down all the old buildings,”); and, well, you get the picture.

In a sense, Nicholls and Creative Loafing grew up together, so we knew we had to invite her to our birthday party (this paper is our party). I went and hung with Hope at her store last week to talk about how we, she and Charlotte have changed over the last three decades, for better or worse.

Creative Loafing: You’ve spoken in the past about how you were not a musician growing up, but once you became aware of the DIY punk scene, it inspired you just to get out there and do it regardless.

Tell me a little about that process and how it progressed into making music successfully.

Hope Nicholls: Aaron and I met at Warren Wilson [College, in Asheville] in 1981, and we’ve been together ever since. I think Aaron and I both were that way where we were just such big music fans and music just meant everything to me, and it still does, really.

Growing up, basically junior high and high school are the worst times in your life, so what saves you? Different people find different things, and music was the thing

for me.

It just kind of spilled out, where you love music so much and you’re so inspired by it.

But hearing some of the DIY punk bands, especially the southern ones like Pylon and B-52s, where I was like, “OK, you don’t have to be Elvis Costello. There’s a lot of different ways to do this.” That’s where I was like, “Hell yeah, we’re going to do it our way. If the B-52s can do this, then we can do it.”

Right at that same time, we moved back from living in Vermont after I graduated from college and a lot of shit was happening here at Reflection [Sound Studios, which operated on Central Avenue between 1969 and 2014], rest in peace. Our friends were hanging out with R.E.M., and R.E.M. was recording their second record there and they were still playing places like The Milestone.

We started just getting to know people that were doing the same thing, and that really was inspirational.

When I graduated from college and then we moved back here a year later, my ultimate goal was like, if I could just do a gig at The Milestone, that would be fuckin’ incredible.

We played The Milestone after we had lived here about nine months.

People didn’t really care about us here until we had really already made a strong

Were you ever tempted throughout your career to move? When Fetchin Bones was at its peak, for example?

Oh yeah. Absolutely. I mean if we had ever moved to New York or L.A., I’m sure we would have had a lot more commercial success, but commercial success has never been the gold standard for me. To me it was always about doing what we wanted to do, and Aaron and I staying together. A lot of the times the more successful your career is the harder it is on your personal life. So, I just think it was the perfect mix to be here.

I think that also translates on the stage.

You’ve always been one of the most fun performers to watch, and you don’t leave anything on the stage in terms of energy. Is that something you’re aware of or is it just the natural state of things when you’re in the midst of a performance?

I have to. The one reason I’m playing drums in It’s Snakes is because, unless you’re Mick Jagger and you’re lucky enough to be 70 years old and jumping around, most people don’t really want to see a 70-yearold person going fuckin’ nuts. I wanted to have something that had some builtin governance, and keeping the beat and playing the drums, that was a way that I devised that. But otherwise, yeah I’m pretty full of beans, and I get excited when I play. [laughs] It’s not anything that was ever contrived. I’m just happy to be up there, happy to be able to do what I love to do.

How have you seen the music scene change over these last 30 years?

I’ve seen it being built, basically. Now, we’re talking about alternative music. Not like the Double Door scene, because the Double Door wasn’t trying to play alternative music. But from the DIY, alternative, punk rock perspective, at first, there were just a few bands, and people like ANTiSEEN came around the same time — actually, we started the same night. Our first show was in Boone together. [Lead singer Jeff] Clayton and I had always been good friends. We were

With Snagglepuss (above), Hope to the far right. With Fetchin Bones (right), Hope to the far left. outlaws of the scene at that time, so we stuck together. We did a ton of shows together in ’83 and ’84.

We knew a few bands, bands like The Spongetones and stuff, but there weren’t that many bands really being out there. We were never doing avant-garde – but we were always pretty different.

Charlotte’s never been a college town, so there was a small number of cool people but it wasn’t like it is now, where word spreads with social media and everyone carrying a massive computer in their back pocket, word gets out quickly.

I feel like now, we have an amazing music scene and so many people, and people don’t have to leave. We had to go to Athens, we had to go play New York, we had to go tour.

Now people don’t have to do all that as much, so it’s a really different world. But I think, in general, the music scene here is really strong.

There’s so many good bands.

Fetchin Bones had already gained good momentum by the time Creative Loafing dropped into Charlotte in 1987. What did it mean to have a rag in town dedicated heavily to the arts and music scenes?

It meant a lot for Charlotte, because it was already in Atlanta. We’d already been touring a lot down there and to have it finally come to Charlotte, I was like, “Alright, we’re finally getting some indie cred.” The [Charlotte] Observer’s always done a pretty decent job with local music. They always were very kind to Fetchin Bones and to all my bands, so I’m not going to slag them, but of course, the ‘Loaf had a different perspective; it was the indie perspective, it was the alternative perspective.

It’s Snakes is named after Linda Berry’s Life in Hell, the comic strip. The ‘Loaf was the only place you’re going to read Life in Hell.

For some people, it’s like The Approval Matrix on the back page in New York Magazine. It’s the kind of thing you turned to and you always read those comics, or whatever it was that you turned to.

Let’s switch gears to a cause you’ve spoken a lot about in our pages over

the years — starting very early on — and that’s Charlotte’s tendency to knock down historical buildings. In the last 30 years, things certainly haven’t gotten better in that sense.

It’s disgusting.

[Pause] So my question was going to be whether it’s still something you feel strongly about, but I guess you just answered that.

and better.” And if you’re a banker, it’s not only going to be bigger and better, but you’re going to keep making money for your friends and for yourself, because you always make more money tearing shit down than you do preserving it.

“If we had ever moved to New York or L.A., I’m sure we would have had a lot more commercial success, but commercial success has never been the gold standard for me.”

-HOPE NICHOLLS

Absolutely. I rant and rave about that to anyone that wants to hear me. If I thought I could fucking tolerate it, I would run for office. But I don’t think I possibly could stand it. I’m not a meetings kind of person.

I figured it out, the reason why, well, it’s a multi-faceted reason. I like places like Asheville, which was really down on its luck.

When we went to Warren Wilson, Asheville was so on the skids, the whole downtown was like skid row. When things get bad like that, it just becomes like a time capsule.

Charlotte’s never been on skid row, we’ve always had savvy business people running this town, but they’re not savvy enough to keep it like Charleston was kept. They’re only savvy enough to think, “This time we’re going to do it better.” So every time they do it, they say, “Well, this time it will be bigger

You’ve been a business owner here in Plaza Midwood for nearly 20 years now, and its seen drastic change just in the last two years. What’s it been like to watch it grow over two decades?

I think most of the changes are fabulous.

Having a brewery and some of the best restaurants in Charlotte, three nightclubs within basically two blocks of each other, it’s awesome.

But again, you tear shit down, it’s demoralizing. I wish Charlotte would learn — I wish all of America would learn — that history is vital. We’re wired to love the things that we’ve seen, even if it’s just an ugly mall like Eastland or whatever it is. When it’s gone, it’s irreplaceable, because it’s memories. It’s in your brain, it’s your wallpaper. We don’t have any wallpaper. It’s been ripped off and

painted over and shellacked.

You grew up in Davidson near a lot of rural areas, and have spoken fondly of those times, driving around drunk with friends in the back roads of north Mecklenburg blasting Led Zeppelin or Aerosmith. How do you stay connected to that in this growing city that’s increasingly surrounded by suburban sprawl?

We keep property out in Virginia. [exposes her scabbed up and bug-bitten arm] I’m covered in poison ivy and bites and scratches right now because we spent our spring break clearing our land there, like how they clear the rainforest. We were mowing, cutting, sawing, making tiny piles and burning it. The land there got logged really irresponsibly so we’re trying to bring it back. Aaron and I are just those people, like I said that I could never do a meeting, I could never have a fucking allday computer job or anything. I do best if I’m sweeping or if I’m digging a hole. And music does that for me, too.

So as we hope to keep pushing toward 40, and It’s Snakes continues to rock in venues new and old, do you have any parting words for now to help us ring in our 30th?

I’m so blown away that it’s already 30 years, but I’m so proud and happy for you all. [claps] I think the Loaf continues to be relevant in a time when print media is challenged because y’all have some really good reporting that is not done in other media. NPR serves the same purpose. God bless the Charlotte Observer for doing whatever they can.

Anything that has people paid to be reporters, we have to be thankful for in this day and age. So I’m very glad and I’m proud that we can have supported Creative Loafing so far.

RPITKIN@CLCLT.COM

For the full interview, visit clclt.com.

CLCLT.COM | APR. 27 - MAY. 3, 2017 | 35

SOUNDBOARD APRIL 27 CLASSICAL/JAZZ/SMOOTH The Girl of the West (Belk Theater)

DJ/ELECTRONIC AQUAPHORIA ft. Mashd N Kutcher (Label)

HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B

HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B

George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic (The Fillmore Charlotte)

Lauryn Hill (Charlotte Metro Credit Union Amphitheatre) Super Symmetry Show: H3 Higher, JahMonte, Matrix P, Phaze Gawd (Terhass)

COUNTRY/FOLK Cory Branan, Brian McGee (The Evening Muse)

DJ/ELECTRONIC Architect, Distorted Retrospect, Iioioioii, DJ Price (Milestone)

POP/ROCK Bless These Sounds Under The City, Justin Lacy, Drugstore Ghost (Petra’s) Dopapod, Groove Fetish (Neighborhood Theatre) Hard Candy: New Talent Music Showcase (Morehead Tavern) Jim Garrett Trio (Comet Grill) Karaoke with DJ ShayNanigans (Hattie’s Tap & Tavern) Shiprocked (Snug Harbor)

APRIL 28

CLASSICAL/JAZZ/SMOOTH The Fourth Marcello Giordani International Voice Competition (Belk Theater)

COUNTRY/FOLK Jon Langston (Coyote Joe’s) The Lenny Federal Band (Comet Grill) The Whiskey Gentry (The Evening Muse)

POP/ROCK Mall Goth (Snug Harbor) Deathcrown, Violent Life Violent Death, Alluvion, Blackwater Drowning (Milestone) Froggy Fresh, Malibu Shark Attack, Dead Sea $crilla (Neighborhood Theatre) Jamestown Revival, The Ghost Of Paul Revere (The Underground) Jon Stickley Trio (Visulite Theatre) Neil Diamond (Spectrum Center) Radio Lola (Hattie’s Tap & Tavern) Shana Blake Band (Vinyl Pi) Shannon LaBrie, Kyshona Armstrong (The Evening Muse) Urban Soil (Thomas Street Tavern)

APRIL 29

BLUES/ROOTS/INTERNATIONAL Aris Quiroga & Daniel LeSolis (International House) Tom Hanchett and Joe Cline: Fiddle Tunes and Sweet Songs (International House)

CLASSICAL/JAZZ/SMOOTH The Girl of the West (Belk Theater)

HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B

36 | APR. 27 - APR. 3, 2017 | CLCLT.COM

AfroPop! + UrbanZüe: BOOM After Party (Petra’s) Morgan Gayla of Hip Hop Orchestrated (International House) Terrance Shepherd of Hip Hop Orchestrated (International House)

DJ/ELECTRONIC DJ Lobo (Label) New Wave Undertow with DJ Price (Milestone)

POP/ROCK Mall Goth (Snug Harbor, Charlotte) Concrete Players (International House) Lara Americo (International House) Mic Larry (Tin Roof) Mike Corrado Duo (Vinyl Pi, Huntersville) The Mystic’s Ball: Celtic Creatures (Visulite Theatre) The Naked and Famous, Wavves (The Underground) The New Schematics Canvas People (The Evening Muse) Nicole Atkins Trio, The Houston Brothers (The Evening Muse) Poison (PNC Music Pavilion) Reverb Fest 5: Boulevards, Hectorina, Blame the Youth (Snug Harbor) Reverb Fest 5: LeAnna Eden & the Garden of, Infinity Crush, Tape Waves (Lunchbox Records) Reverb Fest 5: Of Montreal, JMSN, Christina Schneider’s Jepeto Solutions, Sarah Shook & the Disarmers (Neighborhood Theatre) Reverb Fest 5: The Coathangers, Paint Fumes, MyBrother MySister, Alright (The Station) Tosco Music Party (International House) The Worm Holes (Hattie’s Tap & Tavern)

APRIL 30 CLASSICAL/JAZZ/SMOOTH Gregg “Moneyman” Jones, DJ Ngenius (Label)

HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B Snoop Dogg, Flatbush Zombies, Berner (Charlotte Metro Credit Union Amphitheatre)

POP/ROCK Alan Cumming Sings Sappy Songs (Belk Theater) Ari Hest, Michael Logen (The Evening Muse) Ballantyne School of Music - Spring Jam (Visulite Theatre) Mall Goth (Snug Harbor) Russian Circles (The Underground) The Young Step (Milestone)

MAY 1 HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B Motown on Mondays (Morehead Street Tavern)

POP/ROCK The Monday Night Allstars (Visulite Theatre) Shaun Martin (The Evening Muse) Shannon Lee and Thomas Stainkamp Dueling Piano’s Night (Vinyl Pi, Huntersville)

MAY 2 CLASSICAL/JAZZ/SMOOTH Bill Hanna Jazz Jam (Morehead Tavern)

DJ/ELECTRONIC BYOV with DJ Aswell: Bring Your Own Vinyl Night (Petra’s)

POP/ROCK Bunch, Estuarie, Sentiments (Snug Harbor) Nothing Feels Good - Emo Night (Noda 101) Sarah Sophia (Vinyl Pi, Huntersville) Sue Foley (The Rabbit Hole)

MAY 3 CLASSICAL/JAZZ/SMOOTH The Clarence Palmer Trio (Morehead Tavern)

BLUES/ROOTS/INTERNATIONAL Bugalú – Old School Latin Boogie (Petra’s, Charlotte) Outcry Tour (Bojangles’ Coliseum, Charlotte)

POP/ROCK BoDeans (Neighborhood Theatre) Dawes (The Fillmore Charlotte) Hectagons, Modern Primitives, Brut Beat, The Not Likelys (Snug Harbor) The Hell Hole Store (IAlive and Darko the Super), Red Jesse, King Callis, Simon Smthng (Milestone) Tosco Music Open Mic (The Evening Muse)

COMING SOON Sean Rowe (May 4, The Evening Muse) Carolina Rebellion (May 5-7, Charlotte Motor Speedway) Bastille (May 6, CMCU Amphitheater) X (May 8, Neighborhood Theatre) San Fermin (May 9, Visulite) Sara Watkins (May 12, Neighborhood Theatre)

4/28 JON STICKLEY TRIO 5/10 COIN 4/29 Mandyland Presents ~ The Mystic's Ball ~ Celtic Creatures 5/9 5/12 LEWIS DEL MAR 5/24 6/6 HAYLEY KIYOKO 6/11 JOSEPH 6/16 ALL THEM WITCHES 6/22 OLD 97's 7/20 JOHN MORELAND NEED DIRECTIONS? Check out our website at clclt. com. CL online provides addresses, maps and directions from your location. Send us your concert listings: E-mail us at mkemp@clclt. com or fax it to 704-522-8088. We need the date, venue, band name and contact name and number. The deadline is each Wednesday, one week before publication.

CLCLT.COM | APR. 27 - MAY. 3, 2017 | 37

30th ARTS FEATURE

THIRTY YEARS A CRITIC Perry Tannenbaum looks back on his love/hate affair with Charlotte theater (and sports)

BY PAT MORAN

L

IKE MANY PEOPLE, I felt like I had a personal relationship with Perry Tannenbaum long before I met him. Shorty after I moved to Charlotte in 1998, I started dabbling on the fringes of the city’s robust theater scene. One of the first names I heard mentioned, passed around by producers, directors and actors like a magic incantation or a curse word, was Tannenbaum’s. You couldn’t dip a toe in the QC’s theatrical currents without reading or discussing the opinions of Creative Loafing’s longstanding theater critic.

At a show, we’d peep through the curtain before it was raised and say with hushed anticipation, “Perry’s in the audience!” That tone often turned on a dime from excitement to dread. “Oh fuck, Perry’s in the audience!”

I may be an outlier, but as a sometime actor, I don’t have an axe to grind with Perry.

I was usually adequate so he frequently ignored me, but he never trashed my performances. On occasion I received Perry’s praise. Combing through CL’s archives, I found this snippet in a review of Warehouse Theater’s October 2002 production of Snapshot: “a mystical body-painted kook, (is) nicely acted — and hilariously danced — by Moran.”

Love him, hate him, revere his opinions or try to dismiss them, but what Perry wrote — and continues to write — contributes to the lifeblood of Charlotte theater.

Creative Loafing: I had no idea that in a previous life you studied writing under (Deliverance author) James Dickey.

What can you tell us about that?

Tannenbaum: This was right at the height of his notoriety when the film of his novel Deliverance, which he actually appeared in, was competing against The Godfather for the Academy Award. When he lost, it was not a happy time for him — although everybody knew that the writing was on the wall. It was an exciting time to be in his class, and to be listening to how he approached literature and poetry. I think his very lively approach to criticism had a lot of influence on the way that I write about theater, as opposed to being very sober, cautious and prudent.

Dickey was enthusiastic about what he wrote and very passionate about what he 38 | APR. 27 - MAY. 3, 2017 | CLCLT.COM

Lagrange Point Productions’ True West promo photo spoofs what the theater world sometimes feels about Perry (L-R) Tom Ollis, George Cole, Perry, James Yost, Hugh Loomis (July 2006)

didn’t like, but he didn’t have any animus against playwrights and poets. He was in their corner because he was a poet himself.

Since I performed in theater, I felt very much the same way. While I was at the University of South Carolina, I appeared in musicals like Brigadoon, and I played one of the leads in a Sherlock Holmes drama called The Crucifer of Blood. It was a lot of fun. First and foremost, you want to be writing for the reader, [but] I felt like I knew what theater was about from the inside when I started to write about it on the outside.

Let’s talk about the early days of Loafing.

You’re on page 8 of the very first issue, covering a production at Spirit Square of As Is, a show about AIDS. That was pretty edgy out of the gate. Was that the idea?

It was definitely part of my portfolio to give a lot of emphasis to the fringe scene in Charlotte. But I covered the mainstream too — Theater Charlotte, Children’s Theater and Charlotte Repertory Theater productions.

Charlotte Rep had just changed their name.

They started off as ACE [Actors Contemporary Ensemble] when Steve Umberger founded it. The big difference then was that they hadn’t started producing any plays during the regular season. It was all during the summer.

Charlotte Shakespeare was in the same boat.

They primarily produced in the summer, and

Central Piedmont always was — and has remained mostly — in the summer.

Who was doing stuff year-round in 1987?

It was mostly Children’s Theater, Theater Charlotte and this element of the fringe theaters that were around then, like Saturday Night Leftovers. They did shows in what Steve Umberger used to call a broom closet at Spirit Square that was called Performance Place. When they renovated Spirit Square in 1990, you had the space you have now with all the technical amenities, which were so stateof-the-art back then. On the second floor, where there is a dance studio now, there was an additional performance space. It was like a black box theater. Actors Theater started there. Innovative Theater, a group that [actor] Alan Poindexter started after he got out of college, performed up there as well. I was in an Innovative Theater show up there called Kvetch in 1993.

You’ve always covered theater for CL, but in 1988 you started covering sports, and doing stories about the Hornets. How did you get into the loop with the Hornets?

I’m a big sports fan. I was living out on Tyvola Road. The coliseum was going up about two miles from my apartment, and I wanted in on it. So I conned the Hornets into letting me

COURTESY OF PERRY TANNENBAUM

attend and photograph the first four or five home games of the year. I got to sit under the basket with my camera and shoot professional basketball players and write about it. I got into the locker room to interview Charles Barkley and Danny Ainge — he was an ace interview. And of course there was Muggsy Bogues and Dick Harter. I was interested in him because Dick Harter had been the basketball coach at the University of Oregon when I was attending there. [I] got to see the game, and before and after the game I got to see how well the press were treated. We got chow before and after the game. It was fabulous. Who wouldn’t want a gig like that?

Can you remember your first really big theater scoop where you thought this is a big story, it’s not being told, and you were in the unique position to tell it?

In my Charlotte Shakespeare: Wanted Dead or Alive? cover story of 1991, I sounded the alarm over the impending death of the Charlotte Shakespeare Company due to the non-support of the Arts & Science Council, while The Charlotte Observer was burying its head in the sand and hyping something called Honky Tonk Angels. One thing came to me right out of the gate: I didn’t think anybody was aware of the caliber of the talent that was in Charlotte, and how good the locally

COURTESY OF PERRY TANNENBAUM

Ilana Tannenbaum, Perry Tannenbaum, Sue Tannenbaum @ Schubert Alley on Broadway (January 2009)

COURTESY OF PERRY TANNENBAUM

produced shows were. It was like the whole town was asleep on it. Of course, that’s not entirely different from what it’s been like all along, and what it is like today. I felt I needed to write about that. That was the subject of the first theater cover I did.

One of the biggest stories during your tenure as critic was the controversy surrounding the full frontal nudity of a male character in Charlotte Rep’s 1996 production of Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize winning Angels in America. Even The New York Times covered it, writing that, “Lawyers for [Charlotte] warned that the police and District Attorney Peter S. Gilchrist 3d would enforce the indecent exposure law if they received a complaint about the play.” On top of that, then-Mayor Pat McCrory said, “The Pulitzer Prize does not give you license to break the law,” conveniently forgetting the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Angels in America became a big thing mostly because the pre-publicity was managed to fan the flames of the play’s notoriety while supposedly educating the city about [the show]. Creative Loafing got onto the story a year ahead of time because we knew it was going to be a breakout role for Alan Poindexter. We knew the whole city, which had been sleeping on him, would be awakened suddenly to his immense talent.

We had no idea there would be a huge controversy about it. There was a whole mess of things going on. Granted, Blumenthal was in an uncomfortable position as the presenter of this show, but they and the Arts & Science Council seemed to be leaning too far backwards to accommodate the wacko religious right, which was making so much noise at that time.

Though Angels was a success, in retrospect it seems Charlotte Rep never recovered from the controversy and that it was just a matter of time that someone would pull the plug. What do you remember about the protracted death rattle of Charlotte Rep in 2005?

Perry Tannenbaum and Sue Tannenbaum on the red carpet @ CAST (November 2013)

On top of everything else there were the bean counters and the upstanding citizens that were on Charlotte Rep’s board. They set in motion the syndrome that we saw play out in 2014 with CAST, Carolinas Actors Studio Theater, in which the city’s indifference to the importance of theater manifested

“BLUMENTHAL AND THE ARTS AND SCIENCE COUNCIL SEEMED TO BE LEANING TOO FAR BACKWARDS TO ACCOMMODATE THE WACKO RELIGIOUS RIGHT.”

-PERRY TANNENBUAM ON THE ANGELS IN AMERICA CONTROVERSY.

itself by letting a theater organization be euthanized.

I acted in a few shows Michael Simmons directed before he founded CAST, which had a much more sudden demise than Charlotte Rep. What was going on there?

Organizational fatigue. When you get right down to it, nobody wanted to raise money.

Did that help shutter Rep as well?

No, that was more complicated. With Rep, the board boxed themselves in, so it became a matter of pride. It was a sequence that began with the firing, or “releasing,” as they spun it, of Steve Umberger and (managing director) Keith Martin. The board was very

Perry Tannenbaum being made up as Alistair Ross in Crucifer of Blood (1984)

COURTESY OF PERRY TANNENBAUM

nice and diplomatic about it, but they kicked (Umberger and Martin) out while popping champagne bottles and paying tribute to them both. So Rep showed them the door, brought in Michael Bush, treated him no better, and put him out the door.

Then they discovered that when you treat people that badly, nobody is going to want to come down to Charlotte to replace them.

They had not only screwed over Michael Bush and Steve Umberger, but Rep had coproductions at the same time with a Syracuse theater organization. That was just tossed down the tubes. So who would want to work with a company like that?

They had one option, which was to grovel and beg Steve Umberger to come back, but they had too much pride to do that. So instead they closed the company.

They boxed themselves in by treating their Artistic Director so badly and dishonoring the commitments that they had made with other theater organizations. They closed the company and blamed the city for it.

people who would greet me enthusiastically at one time, and then shun me another time.

I got the idea that some people admired what I said, and some people discounted it. I always felt very close to people who performed because I performed myself. I know what they go through. I remember when I was in Kvetch, waiting with a certain trepidation for the papers to come out, and see what they wrote about the show or me. I understand how much it can hurt.

How did Creative Loafing’s Charlotte Theater awards, forever known as “The Perrys,” get started, and what prompted you to launch the awards?

It’s an unlikely story. We were looking at the end of the year when they theaters are either flooded with out of town productions or shut down. The theater scene was, and largely remains, dark in December. Suzanne wanted a year-end round-up, and she asked me to do that. On top of that she asked me if I could give out some theater awards.

She thought I should do nominations and awards like a regular award show. It sounded a little strange that I would be making the nominations as well as electing the winners.

But I wanted to cash a paycheck on January 1, so I said I’d do it.

CAN YOU DO IT?

The theater scene has always had a love/ hate relationship with you. People go from one extreme to the other: “I don’t care what Perry says! But did he like my performance?” Were you aware of that?

I felt that something was going on. There were

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CLCLT.COM | APR. 27 - MAY. 3, 2017 | 39

30th ARTS FEATURE

THE GREAT FORD FORGERY ‘CL’ Charlotte’s original hometown film critic opens up about his split personality

BY MATT BRUNSON

T

HE CHARLOTTE EDITION

of Creative Loafing had its coming-out party in April 1987, but it took over a year for me to receive my invitation.

It was the spring of 1988, and I was set to graduate from UNC Charlotte in a few weeks.

Having spent the past four years writing movie reviews for the college newspaper, I figured there was no harm in applying to this relatively new weekly alternative that was slowly beginning to pop up all over the city — and on the campus grounds. Frankly, I was surprised to receive a call from editorin-chief John Grooms, who said he liked the sample reviews I had submitted.

Grooms informed me that the powersthat-be at the Atlanta Creative Loafing, the flagship publication, insisted that the Charlotte CL use the syndicated movie reviews from their critic, the late Jim Whaley, but how would I like to pen video reviews once a month? I eagerly agreed, and my professional freelance career would commence after I graduated. Thus, in the July 9, 1988, issue of Creative Loafing, there appeared my byline followed by reviews of seven titles new to VHS. (These were the Dark Ages, kids, before the advent of Blu-ray and DVD.) For the record, the best movie reviewed in that opening salvo was Stanley Kubrick’s brilliant Full Metal Jacket; the worst among the septet was the Bill Cosby disaster Leonard Part 6. The passage of time has changed their respective reputations not one iota.

My stint as CL’s video reviewer proved to be short-lived, lasting only five months.

Having just been hired as a proofreader and, later, a clerk-reporter at the Charlotte Observer, I was told working for CL would represent a conflict of interest. So I painfully made the decision to drop the weekly gig. But it quickly became clear (and continued to be made clear) that real writing opportunities at the Big O would never come my way. So when Grooms got in touch with me again and asked me to become CL’s sole movie critic in December 1988 (the paper was now 40 | APR. 27 - MAY. 3, 2017 | CLCLT.COM

PHOTO BY DANA VINDIGNI

Brunson today in the CL office. strong enough that he wasn’t required to use Whaley anymore), I weighed the risks. When he then stated that he would be OK with me writing under a pseudonym, I jumped at the chance.

That’s when “Greg Ford” — a combo of Gregory Peck, my all-time favorite actor, and Harrison Ford — was born. He (I) became CL’s movie critic, with his first assignment being a cover story on the Charlotte Film Society’s new season. For the next several years, Greg Ford was this publication’s fulltime film critic, while Matt Brunson found employment as a reviewer for CL’s competitor,

the long-defunct, Observer-owned BREAK (the daily newspaper’s attempt at launching a fake alt-weekly to compete with CL). To this day, I still can’t believe I spent more than six years basically writing two sets of differently worded reviews (albeit with the same star ratings) for each picture I saw. I get exhausted just thinking about it.

That Matt Brunson and Greg Ford were one and the same — kinda like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, when you think about it — was one of the biggest open secrets in Charlotte journalism at the time: Everyone at CL and BREAK (and even a select few at

the Observer) knew the score, even if those in the general population did not. There was at least one exception among the readerships: Sam Shapiro, now a good friend as well as the film programmer at Charlotte’s main library, noticed over time that both critics loved and hated the exact same movies and sent me (or Greg) a letter asking if we were the same person, twins, or shameless copycats.

His Sherlock Holmesian powers of deduction should be commended.

I WAS ABLE to kill off Greg Ford and say adieu to BREAK (which folded shortly

30th ARTS FEATURE

Brunson always had a flare for the dramatic: here he is from his high school days in Kenya (where he was an extra on a TV show) to his UNCC and early Creative Loafing years. At left, he’s pictured more recently with actor Danny Trejo. (Photos courtesy of Matt Brunson)

thereafter), when Matt Brunson became a full-time staff member at Creative Loafing’s staff in August 1996. Of course, I retained my film beat but also oversaw (at various points) just about every other section in the paper, from Happenings to Food to News to Music (sadly, my plans for an all-Blondie music section never gained traction).

But cinema, of course, has been my true love, and most of my favorite CL moments draw from that. I still fondly recall a screening we sponsored for the 1990 Dana Carvey dud Opportunity Knocks, during which we handed out Frisbees with Creative Loafing blazoned

across them. The movie turned out to be such a turkey that, as the end credits began to scrawl, scores of CL Frisbees went sailing toward the screen. Definitely not one of our finer moments.

There were the press junkets to New York and Los Angeles to interview the filmmakers and stars behind such films as Cape Fear (including Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro), Speed (Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock), Fight Club (Brad Pitt and Edward Norton) and Anywhere But Here (Susan Sarandon and Natalie Portman). In retrospect, the most amusing was the one I did

in Miami for Romeo & Juliet, with director Baz Luhrmann and co-star Claire Danes. The upand-coming Leonardo DiCaprio was MIA from the junket because, as all media attendants were informed, he was busy filming “that boat movie” with James Cameron.

And then there was all the local hoopla surrounding 1990’s Days of Thunder, the Tom Cruise racing flick largely filmed at the Charlotte Motor Speedway. The media frenzy that centered on this cinematic lemon was downright embarrassing: The Observer ran a non-story begging Cruise for an interview; a local TV critic lavished the film with praise,

awarding it an 8 out of 10 and somehow working the words “Oscar nomination” into his babble; and the local premiere featured the presence of a Tom Cruise look-alike who, truth be told, looked more like Paulie from the Rocky pictures.

The punchline to all of this? The film didn’t even bother to let the rest of the world see that Charlotte was an advanced civilization (see sidebar).

Thankfully, that Greg Ford fellow was on hand to cut through all the nonsense with a 1-1/2 star review.

CLCLT.COM | APR. 27 - MAY. 3, 2017 | 41

30th FILM

QUEEN CITY FLOPS Charlotte-set films that make you proud there are no more Charlotte-set films

BY MATT BRUNSON

B

Patrick Swayze in Black Dog (Photo: Universal)

Tom Cruise in Days of Thunder (Photo: Paramount)

EFORE

THE

right-wing dictators in Raleigh screwed over the state, North Carolina was a popular location for big-budget film and television productions. This included the Queen City, which found its skyline popping up in many quality productions. Yet even in those halcyon days, not all movies made in Charlotte (either entirely or just partially) could boast of being a Hunger Games or a Nell or even a Talladega Nights. Here, then, are five of the worst films to be shot in our fair city.

Days of Thunder (1990). Although Charlotteans at the time treated this film like the Second Coming, this pale reworking of Top Gun actually manages to smack the Queen City right in her kisser. The opening scene finds a good ol’ boy drinking out of a Mason jar while standing in front of a dilapidated barn — and then imposes the word “Charlotte” over the sequence! (It took 1994’s Nell to show the rest of the world that, by gum, we do have running water, electricity and even tall buildings in this here city.) As far as films featuring footage of the Charlotte Motor Speedway are concerned, this is slightly worse than 1968’s Speedway (with Elvis Presley as a racer and a miscast Nancy Sinatra as an IRS auditor), but both place well above the following film on this list.

Stroker Ace (1983). Few Hollywood superstars have made as many genuine bombs as Burt Reynolds; this brain-numbing horror just might be his worst ever. Filmed at Charlotte Motor Speedway, this redneck comedy, starring Reynolds as a hot-shot race car driver, contains countless awful elements: Reynolds wearing a chicken suit while sitting atop a giant egg; Loni Anderson as a Godfearin’ virgin who shucks her morals for this womanizing good ol’ boy; Jim Nabors singing (and destroying) “Amazing Grace”; and much, much more. If nothing else, Stroker Ace represents one of Charlotte’s biggest presences on the year-end awards circuit. No, not the Oscars — instead, it was nominated for five Golden Raspberry Awards (including Worst Picture), winning for Worst Supporting Actor (Nabors).

Jim Nabors, Loni Anderson and Burt Reynolds in Stroker Ace (Photo: Universal)

42 | APR. 27 - MAY. 3, 2017 | CLCLT.COM

Black Dog (1998). Charlotteans who want to catch a glimpse of their hometown on screen but don’t especially want to sit through an entire lame movie can count their blessings: The Queen City — including its crown jewel, Bank of America (then Ericsson) Stadium — appears only in the first sequence, after which viewers can turn off the DVD player and pop

in something worthwhile. Black Dog, about a truck driver (Patrick Swayze) who gets caught up in a scheme involving the transport of contraband firearms, is your standard yahoo fare, full of unshaven rednecks, highspeed car chases, and countless vehicles that conveniently burst into flames at the slightest provocation. You also get Randy Travis as a trucker who writes rotten country songs and Meat Loaf as a Bible-thumping villain prone to yelling things like, “Witness the resurrection, brothers and sisters!” as he tries to run Swayze off the road. Bad Dog! The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999). There’s no pig’s blood, but everything else is pretty much par for the course in this unnecessary sequel to Brian De Palma’s Carrie. The 1976 original, based on the Stephen King bestseller, remains one of the great horror and great teen films of the past half-century. This mediocre follow-up is merely a pale imitation, with a strong central performance serving as scant compensation for a lackluster screenplay.

Emily Bergl is fine as Rachel, a high school outcast who begins dating a sensitive jock (Jason London); his disapproving friends hatch a scheme to humiliate her, not realizing that hell hath no fury like a telekinetic woman scorned. Male viewers will collectively wince when they see the damage that a spear gun does to one guy’s nether region, but that’s about the only jolt provided by this wholly derivative film that was filmed in Charlotte as well as at North Gaston High School.

Eddie (1996). True story: Upon this film’s release, I talked to a manager who had attended the local premiere. After all, much of Eddie had been filmed here in town — particularly at the now-demolished Charlotte Coliseum on Paul Buck Boulevard — and this advance screening was an invitation-only showing for those locals who had worked on the film. “It went well,” I was told. “One of the film’s producers showed up, there was an enthusiastic crowd, and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves.” She paused. “And then the movie started.”

Whoopi Goldberg (in a Razzie-nominated performance) stars as a New York Knicks fan who’s unexpectedly picked to be the new coach of the slumping team. She has no experience, but it’s not long before she takes the team to the verge of the playoffs thanks to her brilliant motivational talks (“Who the hell do you guys think you are?”) and ingenious sideline coaching (“Defense!”).

The Charlotte Coliseum was home to another poorly received basketball flick, 2002’s Juwanna Mann, but I somehow managed to miss that one. My loss, I’m sure.

CLCLT.COM | APR. 27 - MAY. 3, 2017 | 43

30th

FROM THE NEWS DESK

HISTORY REPEATS A look back at the never-ending battle and its heroes RYAN PITKIN

I WRITE THIS as a man who has traveled

that would be considered as problematic through time, and I’m feeling a little jet- now. While there was some cringe-worthy lagged for someone who didn’t leave his desk material (a music writer in the late ’80s called LL Cool J “the best black rapper out right the entire trip.

I’ve spent the last three weeks poring now,” as if there were non-black rappers that over Creative Loafing’s archives, from that could compare), but for the most part, I was godawful first cover with the unrecognizable impressed by the Loafing staff’s ever-present skyline to the early aughts, when our Best of penchant for covering issues that are only Charlotte issue coincided with news of the today (and only sometimes) getting attention from other outlets: trans issues, gentrification, 9/11 attacks, souring the mood a bit.

The process has been exhaustive, staying lack of economic mobility, etc.

Grooms’ coverage of homeless issues was late after finishing my normal slate of work or coming in on weekends and combing through tireless from before he even became editor, old issues (my workstation is pictured top and once he did, his staff’s coverage of the left), digging for fun finds and appreciating AIDS epidemic was heroic at a time when the reporting that’s long been forgotten by other media treated the issue like so many others treated the patients. most of the local population.

A related but more-depressing observation I’ve learned more about our city over the last month than in my first two years as involved my gnawing realization that I wasn’t really reading the past. The reality that news editor at the Loaf. I have half a history repeats itself had never been mind to dump all these old books so clear. I sat at my desk feeling on the lap of any new intern like Rustin Cohle riding along in and tell them to spend a pickup truck going nowhere. their first week reading Time is a flat circle. No battle through them. In an age is new. of clickbait and headline I’m not so naïve as skimming on social to have assumed that media, an assignment both sides in debates like like this could serve as an abortion and gun control invaluable lesson in the haven’t been arguing circles importance of context. for decades — the same RYAN PITKIN My curiosity has points, accusations and halfpulled me into rabbit holes truths being flung back and forth regularly, oftentimes getting over a wall that nobody even bothers me lost in spaces like the Crossed to look over anymore.

Paths section of the Loafing Exchange.

The recent return of a mainstreamed white I still think regularly of the man who ran a personal ad through much of 1993. He had nationalism in response to a progressive, met a woman at Waffle House and said he black president put things in perspective for was tired of going back there to eat in hopes me, but now, reading a 1992 column blasting of seeing her again. I truly hope she called Jesse Helms that could have been copied and pasted into a 2015 issue blasting Pat McCrory before obesity took hold of him.

My two more-intellectual takeaways gave me the sinking feeling that nothing will from this project involve both pride and ever truly change.

Don’t get me wrong, this work is still as discouragement. First off, I am more proud than ever to work with Creative Loafing after important as ever. When I look at a 1993 digging through the crates, becoming familiar “Local Zero” entry in our Best of Charlotte with the voices that built this paper. Some I had issue (pictured right), I’m encouraged that worked with (Kim Lawson, Ana McKenzie, Jeff some staff member, almost certainly Grooms, Hahne), some I had been aware of but never met tried to warn everyone about the storm that (Sam Boykin, Tara Servatius, John Grooms) and named McCrory that was building on the some came from before my time in Charlotte. horizon. Alas, nobody listened, and now we’re These are the folks I’m now embarrassed to say standing in the debris of HB2, waving that I hadn’t read. Acquainting myself with their now prophetical issue at the clouds, cursing.

But we’ll be here helping pick up the pieces work makes me all the more thankful for this little research project. These are writers who left and continuing to punch up, as long as people everything on the page for years — Jerry Klein, like Trump, McCrory or whatever crawls out Vance Cariaga and Lynn Farris — and, although of the swamp to replace them exist. That’s my this column, and even this issue, wasn’t big promise. For two years I’ve been dedicating all enough to fit them all in, they will always be my time to it, and I plan to continue to do so for the foreseeable future. appreciated in the Loafing annals.

As for any free time I can snag in between, I went into this issue expecting to see a progressive but antiquated point of view you’ll find me at the Waffle House, waiting. . .

44 | APR. 27 - MAY. 3, 2017 | CLCLT.COM

s e v i h c r A e h t From ing f a o l e v i t a e of Cr

CLCLT.COM | APR. 27 - MAY. 3, 2017 | 45

An interesting trip through cyberspace, as we were right on with some coverage of the oncoming internet, and sometimes not so much. Below left is from a 1994 story estimating that books would only be available electronically within 20 years, and while that isn’t neccesarily true, the illustration certainly represents the idea of an iPad pretty well consideirng it was 16 years before its release. On the right, from a 1996 story called “Top 10 Lies, Rumors, Myths and Hard Truths About the Internet,” we mistakenly said you could live wihtout the web. That may have been true at that point, but by ‘99 we were reporting on the danger of internet addiction.

46 | APR. 27 - MAY. 3, 2017 | CLCLT.COM

more Archives....

Pa r k e r M ye r s ’ perfectl nightlif e colu y captur mn ed the y would n uppie — ow be c what alled a lifestyle banker . Check bro — out pag Spruill’s e 5 0 resurrec for Aeri tion of n night o Parker ut in p for a resent-d Some ad ay Cha vertisin rlotte. g flashb page, fa acks (op r left; ri posite ght) giv ‘90s sty e a glim le. Who pse at doesn’t funky in want to the club get wearing with the equestr s w eate ian? Tha Hunt gr t’s range raced ou ! Jim r pa a decad e with p ges for more th olitical an were oft cartoon en timel s that ess. Pic t u r e d above one of o is ur favor ites.

CLCLT.COM | APR. 27 - MAY. 3, 2017 | 47

A Hat Tip to a few best of charlotte winners:

We’d like to give a little shout-out to a few past Best of Charlotte winners who helped get CL’s special 30th Anniversary Issue on the racks.

Babalu Tapas and Tacos

1511 East Blvd.

The name is Cuban, the food is expanded Latin American, the patio is stellar and (for y’all veg-heads) the bean “burgers” rock.

Label Charlotte

900 NC Music Factory Boulevard but it gets some of Not only is this club CL’s neighbor, ducing performers the hottest DJs and other sweat-in around.

Savvy & Co. Real Estate Company 1920 E 7th St. These folks know all the cool neighborhoods to move into and create your own lifestyle.

FOX 46

fox46charlotte.com The Big FOX owns it, but FOX 46 is all Charlotte all the time, and if you love sports in particular, well, they got you covered.

Coyote Joe’s

4621 Wilkinson Blvd.

Country music fans in the Charlotte area have known for years that whether you want to see legends like Charlie Daniels or newcomers like Jon Langston, CJ’s is where you go. Hell, even Garth Brooks has graced its stage.

48 | APR. 27 - MAY. 3, 2017 | CLCLT.COM

30th

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Charlotte, N.C.

704- 522- 8334

TAYLOR GUITARS Holloway's Music in Monroe has the best selection & lowest prices on Taylor guitars in the Carolinas. Call for availability and prices.

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30th

CROSSWORD

X MARKS THE SPOT ACROSS

1 Between 6 Cartoon thud 9 Snively cries 15 Film format 18 Chat session 20 The Bruins’ Bobby 21 Author -- de Balzac 22 Aussie leaper 23 “You only have so much time” 26 Ron of “Tarzan” 27 Quaint suffix with poet 28 Virgil’s 61 29 “How sad” 30 Entwine anew 32 Den furniture 33 Swimmer also called a blueback 36 Scheduled mtg.

39 “+” or “-” atom 41 Take -- (cab it) 42 Wee child 43 Boggy area 45 Possess 47 Campbell’s product, in Spanish 49 Netherlands cheese 52 Forts made of squared timbers 55 Any “:50” time 58 Slo- -- fuse 59 One of the Greys on “Grey’s Anatomy” 60 Emailer’s “incidentally” 61 Gun of Israeli design 63 “The Waste Land” poet 65 Suffix with trick or hatch 66 New Nintendo system of 2012 68 Bingham of “Baywatch” 70 Proverbs 71 Where all eight X’s appear in this puzzle 74 “No --, Bob!” 77 Greek island near Paros 78 “Time --” (1990s sci-fi series) 79 Blabber 82 Trunk gunk 84 Actress Farrow 85 Pronounce 86 Bella -- (British Columbian native) 88 CPR-trained pro 89 Be dozing 91 Has a frank discussion 94 Heavy hammer

96 Old Pontiac muscle cars 98 TV scientist Bill 99 On deck 100 Turnip, e.g.

103 Regal crown 105 Sis or bro 107 Royal name of Norway 108 “Gravity” actress 112 -- -T-Pak (Wrigley’s gum unit) 114 Worry-free 115 Nerve cell extension 116 River islet 117 Devilkin 120 Broadway’s Hagen 121 “A Treatise on Money” economist 126 Click in Morse code 127 “Crack a Bottle” rapper 128 Dr. -- (“Crack a Bottle” rapper) 129 Wields 130 I, to Johann 131 Really uncool types 132 Nile snake 133 Bird noise

DOWN

1 Part of a French play 2 -- scale of hardness 3 Individuals 4 16-team grid gp.

5 Noted family name in wine 6 -- choy 7 Opera solos 8 “Entertaining --” (Joe Orton play) 9 Cat food brand 10 Ad -11 Pen filler 12 Bete -13 Borgnine of film 14 Self-balancing twowheeler 15 Had lofty aspirations 16 Saab rival 17 Senior group member 19 Puffer’s cousin 24 “Bye now!”

25 Savoir-faire 31 Sommer of the screen 32 Actress Keanan 34 Unusual foreign objects 35 “Criminy!”

36 Stroll along 37 Gondola guider 38 Authorized substitute 40 Sign banning 180s

44 Statistical asymmetry 46 Compass pt.

48 Toiling insect 50 Salve plant 51 Verbal gems 53 Big Apple stage award 54 Tunic worn over armor 56 Port of Japan 57 Annual PGA Tour event 62 Drummer Starkey and screenwriter Penn 64 Secular 67 Perfect 68 Poison: Prefix 69 Entry points on pipes 71 Suffix with press 72 Kerosene 73 Abstainers from alcohol 74 Flower stalk 75 “-- la Douce” 76 Address that bounced email is delivered to 79 Rustic sort 80 Vega of “Spy Kids” films 81 Cable shows, e.g.

83 Tent securer 85 Clever 87 “Smoking --?”

90 Reproach to Brutus 92 Big boa 93 Resembling a vat 95 Ore deposit 97 Low bows 101 Toothache relief brand 102 City near Seattle 104 Old Big Appletheater 106 Apple tablet 108 -- Arabian 109 Garret 110 Vikki Carr’s “It Must --” 111 Knots on tree trunks 113 Digital book, e.g.

117 As to 118 Dole (out) 119 “Hey, you” 122 Dir. 135 deg. from 46Down 123 Sea, in Caen 124 Sales -125 Hedge bush

SOLUTION FOUND ON P. 54.

CLCLT.COM | APR. 27 - MAY. 3, 2017 | 49

ILLUSTRATION BY DANA VINDIGNI 50 | APR. 27 - MAY. 3, 2017 | CLCLT.COM

30th

NIGHTLIFE

PARKER MYERS IN A DIGITAL WORLD Aerin Spruill links up with CL’s original nightlife columnist “PARKER YOU are kind of a douchebag,

but I think I like it. Even better? I like that you’re the one throwing up right now and not me.”

I laughed as I looked over at Parker Myers burping next to me in the Uber. Then I looked up to see whether the driver was getting ready to kick us out. But he, too, was cracking up as he reached for a barf bag to pass back to me.

Let’s rewind.

About a week ago *insert YouTube video of what will probably be Bobby Shmurda’s one-hit wonder* my editors, Mark Kemp and Ryan Pitkin, informed me that they wanted me to link up with the infamous Parker Myers. Don’t know who that is?

Neither did I. Apparently, Parker used to write about nightlife for Creative Loafing, and his column was fairly popular.

The thing is, Parker is locked in an ’80s and ’90s timewarp. It’s not that he’s dead.

He’s just kind of. . . well, he isn’t exactly real. He was a parody and a composite of at least two writers whose pseudonym was a play on Myers Park (touché!).

I was stoked. So I did my homework.

This is how CL described him back in the day: “Parker Myers is a real social animal.

Here’s a guy who knows the Charlotte social agenda like it was written on the back of his BMW owner’s manual. . .”

I sighed, looked at the caricature of him wearing glasses, high waters and a UNC sweatshirt while holding a beer. Typical.

Then I read about his adventures as a recently divorced single guy exploring local bars with his friend Craven Hempstead.

That’s when I got the tell-tale sign of the type of guy Parker was: “Some gentleman [Craven Hempstead] was – the rascal didn’t even have on Topsiders.”

Separated by time, space, class, race and well, style, I knew exactly what our first encounter would look like.

I DECIDED to meet Parker at Draught, one of my favorite brunch spots, so we could get an early start. It’s an upscale sports and craft beer bar that usually blasts hiphop music while bargoers are encouraged to make their own mimosas and Bloody Marys. I knew upholding the stereotype of being late wouldn’t be an option with this UNC frat guy, so I showed up a bit early, requested a table for two and wondered if I would recognize him when he walked through the door.

Just as I was about to pull out the caricature sketch of Parker, a white guy wearing high water khakis, a polo and

“I should’ve mentioned that I’m a Duke grad.” I responded.

“You went to Duke? Interesting. . . Well, Dean Smith will go down in history.”

“To each his own. I’ll let you have it. UNC just won this year’s NCAA Championship.”

A grin appeared on his face, and even though we were clearly a Tinder match gone wrong, I could tell he was enjoying the idea of becoming my frenemy as Biggie Smalls came on and we both started singing, “I love it when you call me big POPPA! Throw your hands in the air, if you’se a true player…”

I breathed a sigh of relief: “At least you know a lil’ sum’n sum’n about hip-hop,” told him. “I was nervous.”

He laughed as he finished the chorus: “If you got a gun up in your waist, please don’t shoot up the place, ’cause I see some ladies tonight who should be having my baby, baybee!”

You never get used to seeing a white guy in khakis rapping all the lyrics to old-school hip-hop. This was going to be interesting, to say the least.

Topsiders stepped through the door. Yep, he was the poster child for either Selwyn Pub or Montford.

“Parker?” I asked as he strolled past the receptionist.

“Aerin?” he responded.

“You got it bud!” Why the hell did I feel the need to say “bud” and why did it roll off my tongue so casually?

He sat down, stuck one finger in the air, OVER MIMOSAS and Bloody Marys, we and a confused waitress traipsed over to the talked about how the nightlife scene has table. changed since he was “picking up hot chicks” “Did you need something sir?” the at hole-in-the-wall bars after his wife, waitress asked, puzzled at his laissez-faire Peaches, left him and took his Beemer. I filled approach to getting someone’s attention. him in on the dating scene and how almost He didn’t even lift his gaze to order. everyone is on Tinder, works at a bank and “I’ll take a Bloody Mary. Make it a double, loves brunch, craft beer and tapas. While honey.”

I could tell he was confused about the I awkwardly watched the exchange meaning of “tapas” and “craft beer,” and smiled weakly at the waitress he was only interested in one as she turned to go put his thing that was unknown to order in. him: Tinder.

He turned to me: “So I explained that Tinder what are we doing today, is a dating app used to hun? Can I call you match users, giving the ‘hun’?” account holder the option There we were, a of swiping right if they hip-hop loving black girl were interested and left wearing Doc Martens, if they weren’t. He had jeans, a tee and a leather no idea what I was talking harness, and a white guy AERIN SPRUILL about. When I pulled out my dressed like he was itching iPhone to download the app, to buy a keg and recreate he looked frightened. He’d never Project X. Boy, were we a sight to seen a cell phone that weighed less five see! pounds, let alone a smartphone.

Despite his dress code and demeanor, I Yeah, this was going to be fun. I set up silently told myself, “You went to Duke, you a Tinder profile for Parker and laughed as know all about the frat-star life, and you he set out on meeting a “hot blonde” at our can do this. All you need is a few mimosas next stop, Lucky’s Bar and Arcade. and you’ll be good to go!”

When I summoned our Uber, I knew “Ha! C’mon now Parker,” I said. “Surely he’d have 100 questions. He grilled the Uber you did your research on feminism in 2017 driver on how everything worked as soon as before making your trip to the future. ‘Hun,’ we piled in. After taking a break to ask how along with ‘shag,’ are no longer on the menu his Tinder was doing, he started delving into when you’re trying to get it in with the his divorce and how he was more concerned ladies. While we’re on the subject, ‘super’ that she’d taken his Beemer and that she and, no offense, Topsiders, aren’t really a even went as far as to take the Carolina thing anymore either.” sticker off their other car, a Ford Country He looked at me and smiled, but I knew Squire — whatever that is. Shout out to his line of thinking was right in line with Peaches for taking out the trash before she mine as he stared back at me. Fortunately, left. the waitress returned with our drinks.

We pulled up to Lucky’s and Parker’s I gave him the rundown on the venue, eyes lit up as he saw something I knew he’d pointing out the industrial décor, showing recognize: arcade games. I pretty much had him the downstairs event space and to tackle him as he began to run right up to highlighting that this is a popular spot for a PAC-MAN machine. watching sports in Charlotte.

“We have to buy tokens first, Parker. You Oops, I should’ve left sports out of the know you’re paying, right?” I was joking, a conversation. little. We grabbed some tokens and went “Go Heels!” he shouted as he showed his straight to the bar. I told him he could have class ring. whatever he liked, but he had to add a Nerds

rope to it.

Parker may or may not have beaten my PAC-MAN score, but I knew he wouldn’t be able to handle my skills on air hockey.

Between the multitude of #tbt games he’d seen before and the Nerds rope he was munching on, you would’ve thought he was Charlie winning a golden ticket.

Just as I was giving him the lowdown on one of my fave spots in the Q.C., I noticed Parker staring at this blonde chick. And just like that, I knew I’d lost his attention. He turned to me with his cheesy grin and before I could say, “Parker, please don’t use the ‘wanna check out my Carolina ring’ line,” he was in front of the blonde. He’d already set his ring in front of her and was attempting to pick her up with his other signature line, “Hey baby, want to shag?” then added, “You should find me on Tinder.”

I shivered. Those were the worst pickup lines I’d ever heard. And yet, with a tipsy blonde, it seemed to work. *insert my knack for blocking* I walked up to the two, put my arm around him, smiled and said, “I’m sorry, is my boo bothering you? Let me guess, he used the ‘wanna shag’ pick-up line? And that worked? Trust me, it’s not worth it.”

She shot me a look of confusion as she compared the two of us and said, “Nice meeting you Parker?” I thought he would be offended that I interrupted “the one” hookup that may have been successful, but then, after singing Biggie, he was probably down with the swirl.

He laughed and said, “Oh, someone’s jealousss…”

I shook my head, rolled my eyes and searched for a change of subject before things got awkward. I had to break it to him that I wasn’t interested.

“ALRIGHT PARKER, I hear you like jazz?

The smooth kind? Let’s go around the corner to The Imperial. They have live jazz every weekend, an intimate vibe, a comfortable rooftop patio and craft cocktails. Trust me, you’ll be toe-tapping in no time.”

Without any hesitation, Parker gathered himself as best he could. We’d had quite a bit to drink and I could tell it was starting to weigh on him. We ordered a couple more and listened to the soulful sounds of a local smooth jazz band.

Even though we were the drunkest duo in the room, it was nice to be surrounded by mature, young professionals. Quite frankly, I couldn’t believe they even let us in between my boots, his high waters and our belligerent states of mind.

Parker excused himself for quite some time and when he re-emerged I could tell by his paling face that it was time for us to head home. I called an Uber and that’s when I shared my excitement with Parker about him being the one who couldn’t hold his liquor instead of me while the driver laughed.

The next day Parker was back in the late ’80s or early ’90s — wherever he lives these days — with a hangover, telling his buddy Craven Hempstead about his strange dream of pocket phones and digital portals that could get a guy laid.

Me, I was kinda missing my frenemy who wore high water khakis and Topsiders and called me “hon.”

BACKTALK@CLCLT.COM CLCLT.COM | APR. 27 - MAY. 3, 2017 | 51

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loud, obscene vocalizations from sleep I’m a 31-year-old gay male. I’ve been (that are typically uncharacteristic of the with my fiancé for three years, and individual while awake), prolonged or we are getting married in the fall. I’ve violent masturbation, inappropriate touch got a question about initiating sex upon the genitals, buttocks, and breast in my sleep — I read somewhere that of a bed partner, and initiation of sexual “sexsomnia” is the “medical” term, intercourse,” said Dr. Bornemann. “The vast but maybe the internet invented that? majority of sleep disorders are not reflective According to my fiancé, I have initiated of a significant underlying psychiatric or performed some kind of sex act in condition.” the middle of the night and then gone So your unconscious, late-night right back to sleep. The next day, I don’t gropings/initiatings/rimmings don’t mean remember anything. This freaks me out you secretly desire to be an ass-eating top. for a couple of reasons: My body doing And there’s no need to drag poor Sigmund things without my mind being in control or Carl into this, SHEETS, since you’re not is concerning enough, but it feels kinda doing anything in your sleep that you don’t rapey, since I doubt I’m capable of desire to do wide awake. You wanna rim hearing “no” in this state. My fiancé your fiancé, you’ve topped other guys and doesn’t feel that way; he finds it sexy. would probably like to top this one The other thing — and maybe I too — so neither of the examples shouldn’t have read so much you cite qualify as desires your Freud and Jung in college “conscious mind doesn’t — is that I’m worried want to acknowledge.” my body is acting (Unless you wrote me in out desires that my your sleep.) Like all sleep conscious mind doesn’t disorders, sexsomnia want to acknowledge. is just something that According to my happens to a very small fiancé, the last time I number of people, did stuff in my sleep, SHEETS, there’s no need I rimmed him and told DAN SAVAGE to endow it with deeper him how much I wanted meaning. Take it away, Dr. to fuck him. Rimming Bornemann… isn’t a typical part of our “The brain is made of sex life (although I’d like it to approximately 100 billion neurons, or be), and my fiancé has never bottomed electrical connections that allow effective for anyone (I’ve topped guys in prior communication between brain subunits. relationships, but in our relationship As with all electrical systems, errors in I’ve only bottomed). Is my body doing transmission may occur — these are called things that my mind won’t admit it ‘switching errors.’ In sleep, switching errors wants to do? Is there a way to prevent it may activate previously quiescent areas of from happening? the brain while other areas remain off-line.

SEXSOMNIAC HOPING EVENTUALLY EAGER TRYSTS In sleep-related behaviors, it is thought that STOP deep-seated subunits near the sleep-wake generating center become triggered, which Sexsomnia is a real and sometimes troubling activate primal automatic behaviors. Simply phenomenon, SHEETS, and not something stated, electrical switching errors in sleep the internet made up like Pizzagate or Sean may unleash the animal that actually lies Spicer. The American Academy of Sleep within us all — sometimes to an extent that Medicine says sexsomnia is real — a real may have unintended criminal or forensics clinical condition — but they prefer the implications.” fancier, more “medical” sounding name: In most cases, sexsomniacs will sleep related abnormal sexual behaviors. hump a pillow or jerk themselves off.

Dr. Michel Cramer Bornemann, a lead The sexsomniacs who tend to make the researcher at Sleep Forensics Associates news — the ones we hear about — are (sleepforensicmedicine.org), describes the “unintended criminals” Dr. Bornemann sexsomnia as “sleepwalking-like behaviors alluded to, i.e., people who’ve sexually that have sexualized attributes.” And sleepassaulted someone while asleep. Luckily for rimming your delighted fiancé definitely you, SHEETS, your fiancé is okay with your “primal automatic behaviors.” counts.

“Sexsomnia may be expressed as

CLCLT.COM | APR. 27 - MAY. 3, 2017 | 53

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FOR ALL SIGNS The horoscope of an individual is a precise map of the entire solar system at the time of his/her birth.

The planets in the personal horoscope bear similarity to the Board of Directors in a corporation. Each planet is a member of the individual psyche with his or her own agenda. Venus is the planet that symbolizes relationships; Mars represents our assertive, Warrior side; Saturn is the inner teacher and sets boundaries, etc. The combination of their respective signs at birth offer a specific personal description of just how these qualities mesh to create a unique style in the individual who owns the horoscope.

No two are alike. Even twins cannot not have exactly the same birth charts, as one must be born before the other.

ARIES Avoid challenging authorities this week. They are bigger than you and there might be an unpleasant outcome if you do.

Venus has entered your sign this week and will be traveling “with you” through June 5, 2017. She is a people attractor. Her presence gives you an air of poise and people will simply like how you look. (This does not include authorities.)

TAURUS the Bull (Apr 20—May 20) You have a need to be alone and quiet during this period. That is why social life is not going so well. Give attention to your inner life and notice what your thoughts may be manifesting. Is it really what you want in your future? Think carefully. Give attention to your dreams. They are likely to be meaningful for the next month.

GEMINI Information has been flying your way thick and fast. A surprise concerning a friend or a family member might have you reeling. This is a good week to let yourself be quiet while you absorb the changes that have come your way. If you feel on edge, transfer that energy to physical exercise.

CANCER At the beginning of the week you

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may be feeling stress related to your lover or a partner, maybe a child. Underneath it all, the issue is tied to your internalized sense of what a woman “should” do or be. Our culture has always struggled with images of the feminine. Is she a caretaker or a seductress?

LEO You may encounter a stumbling block in your path. One part of your mind wants to give up. But the better part of you knows this is a “test” of your intentions. Facing it and overcoming the trial will make you stronger and you will be more confident on the other side. Go for it!

VIRGO Information comes your way concerning investments, debt, or other financial matters. Don’t respond frantically because Mercury is retrograding,. Due

diligence is necessary here. You need to check the source of this information. The person may be misleading you in some way.

The info may be flat wrong. Don’t panic.

Circumstances concerning partners, lovers, or children are throwing pebbles in your path. Perhaps this includes clientele, if you have a business. It seems everyone is selfinterested and wants a piece of you as well.

Do as much as you feel is warranted. Don’t sell the whole farm.

SCORPIO This is not your best week.

People will be quarrelsome and you may open your mouth one time too many. Set aside that compulsion to tell the truth, even if it hurts. Given that Mercury is changing direction, you may not actually have accurate information anyway.

SAGITTARIUS You have a challenge to your new life pattern. It may be impossible to stay true to yourself without hurting someone’s feelings. This has happened to you in the past. Now you are stronger and the structure is more solid under you. Do the best you can in this situation. Remain aware that most adults are in charge of their own reactions. You can’t fix everyone.

CAPRICORN It is just possible that you may not be well this week. The culprit is likely an infection that gives you a headache, along with other symptoms.

Lie down and don’t struggle. You will heal faster. It is possible the “headache” comes through employees or lessees. Everyone is quarrelsome this week.

AQUARIUS You may be in receipt of a surprise piece of news that is startling. Be aware that this news may be erroneous.

Consider the source. Is it reliable? Don’t rearrange your life until you have verified information. The surprise may be related to a roommate, neighbor, or a sibling.

PISCES You have been and continue to be challenged by the need to mature.

Allowing old emotional wounds to run your life and your feelings is not the way to go. The lessons started last year and will continue through 2017. By now you may be feeling much more courageous and able to surmount the old fears.

Are you interested in a personal horoscope?

Vivian Carol may be reached at 704-3663777 for private psychotherapy or astrology appointments. You may also visit her at www. horoscopesbyvivian.com.

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