2017 Issue 21 Creative Loafing Charlotte

CLCLT.COM | JULY 13 - JULY 19, 2017 VOL. 31, NO. 21

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PHOTO COURTESY OF THE FILLMORE.

14

Wheeler Walker, Jr., can’t get played on the radio but you can see him and hear him at The Underground on July 13.

We put out weekly

6

NEWS&CULTURE TEARING THROUGH TIME Morgan School represents Cherry’s

last attachment to a rich past

BY RYAN PITKIN

4 EDITOR’S NOTE BY MARK KEMP 5 THE BLOTTER 10 MUSLIM IN CHARLOTTE: HANNAH HASAN BY LARA AMERICO 10 THE SCRIBE’S CORNER BY KONATA EDWARDS 11 NEWS OF THE WEIRD

12

FOOD SOUTHPARK GETS ADVENTUROUS New restaurants like Yafo

Kitchen bring dining options to the ‘burbs

BY CATHERINE BROWN

14

14 TOP 10 THINGS TO DO THIS WEEK

16

MUSIC A MAN OF MANY MEDIUMS Hectorina frontman Dylan Gilbert goes beyond songwriting

BY GREY REVELL

22

19 MUSICMAKER: BUNNY GREGORY BY MARK KEMP 20 SOUNDBOARD

ARTS&ENT MILLING ABOUT New exhibit shows NoDa before it was NoDa

BY MARK KEMP

26

24 FILM REVIEW: SPIDERMAN: HOMECOMING BY MATT BRUNSON

ODDS&ENDS 26 NIGHTLIFE BY AERIN SPRUILL 27 CROSSWORD 28 SAVAGE LOVE BY DAN SAVAGE 30 STARGAZER BY VIVIAN CAROL

GO TO CLCLT.COM FOR VIDEOS AND MORE!

COVER DESIGN BY DANA VINDIGNI PHOTOS BY RYAN PITKIN

CLCLT.COM | JULY 13 - JULY 19, 2017 VOL. 31, NO. 21

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CLCLT.COM | JULY. 13 - JULY. 19, 2017 | 3

VIEWS

EDITOR’S NOTE

A PLACE IN TIME Cherry, the built environment and the ones who live in it sounds almost villainous as stated, what he WHILE I SIT in the old home-turnedmeant was that an important part of his job office of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic is to see gentrification coming and step in to Landmarks Commission chatting with Dan ensure that the major cornerstones of some Morrill, the HLC’s consulting director, he of these neighborhoods will remain, even if tells me a story from his youth that perfectly the residents don’t. underscores his role in preserving Charlotte’s “Any given neighborhood has a couple landmarks today. of structures that define it,” he says. “If you In his younger days, Morrill was into lose things like the Morgan School in Cherry, theater. Specifically, he was interested in set that’s the kind of thing that really, you’ve cut pieces. out the soul of the neighborhood.”

“I was in a play, and I’ve always been For this week’s cover story, I wanted to influenced by the set,” he recalls. “I got so focus on that one set piece and the role it wedded to that set, and I went to the next plays in a neighborhood’s identity. However, play that was after the one I did and I said, you can’t tell any story about Cherry without ‘Oh shit.’ Everything was gone. It was a talking about redevelopment and displacement whole new arrangement.”

— the folks coming in and the folks going out.

For decades now, Morrill has ben fighting Even for all his passion toward the “built to save us all from having that “Oh shit” environment,” Morrill understands the real moment every time we step on the set soul of a neighborhood is in its people. of the play that we call our lives in “If you completely replace Charlotte. a culture, and you bring in a Morrill likes to talk about different culture, you could “the built environment” and even save all the structures, “cultural continuity.” The but you’ve profoundly built environment refers changed the place,” he says. to that set piece we move That’s what people in every day. fear is happening in “ The manmade Cherry, a historically black environment has neighborhood that is now tremendous impact on just 35 percent black, with RYAN PITKIN human beings — what they expensive homes popping see, what they interact with, up, and affluent homeowners the spaces and places,” Morril moving into them. says. “Many people don’t think It happened in South End, it about that, but it does.” happened in NoDa. While many structures As for cultural continuity, it refers to remain there, the culture has changed. keeping that set piece steady, savoring a sense For one of the newcomers to Cherry, of history within your built environment. however, all the negative talk around Morrill references one of his favorite books gentrification is off base, as what he’s by renowned urban designer Kevin Lynch experienced since moving in last obtober is called What Time Is This Place? not something he’s seen in any news article.

“That really is the question. What time “When we talk about gentrification in is this place? I think built environments are Charlotte, we talk about it like it’s a binary much more evocative if they have a sense of thing of affluent people coming in and poor cultural continuity,” Morrill says. people going out and that’s just not what is Morrill has worked over the years to stay happening,” says Keith Alyea. “I watch the one step ahead of Charlotte development, basketball games on the court at Cherry Park, buying historic buildings and placing I will tell you, that is not affluent people restrictive covenants in the deeds that playing one time and non-affluent people protect them from the eyes of overzealous playing another time. It is everyone playing developers who would rather see a new together. That’s what happens in a city. condo in their place.

“The people coming into the neighborhood That’s what he did with the old Hand’s want to be part of the neighborhood as it Pharmacy building in NoDa in the mid-‘80s. already exists, not take it over, not change it in He brought the streetcar to South End. a way that is negative to the neighborhood. We Although that streetcar is long gone, its want to become a community.” operation set the scene for what is now the While that is all well and good, there are Blue Line light rail. still people in Charlotte asking an important Interestingly, Morrill says HLC has been question: , “At what price?”

RPITKIN@CLCLT.COM “in the lead” for gentrification. While that 4 | JUL. 13 - JUL. 19, 2017 | CLCLT.COM

NEWS

BLOTTER

BY RYAN PITKIN

LOST CHILDHOOD A mysterious police report in CMPD’s stack last week left more questions than answers, and could possibly make for a good subject in the next season of the Serial podcast. The report lists a 1-year-old girl as the victim, with the name temporarily withheld. In the report’s narrative, it simply states that the victim believes “that she may have been kidnapped sometime during the time period beginning in 1949 and ending in 1953.”

PLAY THE VICTIM It’s unclear what exactly

happened at a Speedway convenience store on North Tyron last week, but somebody somehow ended up with some money that doesn’t belong to them. According to the report, at about 2:30 in the afternoon, a suspect, “stole money from the cash drawer [$498], and placed the money in the victim’s back pocket, while working at Speedway.”

So it appears that it was an employee who masterminded this backward pick-pocket theft, although what I can’t figure out is — if the person who ended up with the money was truly an unknowing “victim” — what was the next move if this had worked?

EARLY BLOOMER A typo may have been

at fault for yet another confusing report stemming from a couple vehicle break-ins in north Charlotte last week. Police responded to an apartment complex near J.T. Williams Middle School where the two cars were broken into and listed the items stolen.

According to the report, these items included a revolver, a television, an Xbox 360 and “various gold chains stolen from a shaving kid.” The officer probably was supposed to state that the gold charms were kept in a shaving kit, but still, it raises a funny image.

LONG LUNCH Management at a Dollar Tree in the University area realized that one of their employees was done for the day when he never came back from his lunch break. Later, they realized that he probably wasn’t coming back ever, when they realized he had taken $150 from the cashier before going on break.

SAY WHAT? A 53-year-old woman filed

a police report after falling victim to an especially mean and seemingly meaningless vandalism incident at the shelter she was residing in last week. The woman told police that she was charging her cochlear implant in an outlet on the wall at Salvation Army Center for Hope at around 5:30 a.m. when some unknown suspect used scissors to cut the cord to the charger, leaving the victim with no way to charge her implant.

TRY AGAIN A 33-year-old woman called police after some unknown suspect tried to play a prank on her around July 4, but

the suspect will have to go back to the drawing board. The woman told officers that someone knocked on the door of her northwest Charlotte apartment and when she opened the door all she found was a flaming sparkler sitting there. The woman said only very minor damage was done to the front door and vinyl siding (a total of $1, according to the report) and nobody was injured.

UNMASKED A 25-year-old woman in

east Charlotte may have saved a whole laundromat full of people from being robbed at gunpoint by simply picking up her phone and yelling at some men last week. The woman told police she was sitting in her car outside of the laundromat on Central Avenue and looking at two men hanging out suspiciously near her car. Suddenly, she realized that one of the men was putting on a mask, at which time she rolled down her window and yelled at the men that she was calling the police. The masked man appeared startled, then ran at the woman’s car and tried to open the door to drag her out, but it was locked. The brave woman said that during the entire incident, the suspect had his hand at his side but under his shirt, as if grabbing at a gun. When he couldn’t open the door, the man and his friend both took off on foot down Central Avenue. They were both arrested only moments later.

STRONG MAN Employees at a Shell gas

station on Beatties Ford Road called police after one man stole a record amount (our unofficial record) of beer for just one man.

The employees told officers the man walked in at about 6 p.m. and stole nine cases of Bud Light. A case, mind you, is 24 beers, meaning the man walked out with 216 beers, valued at $216, in one swipe.

LIKE A LEAF While we

don’t condone the use of force in disciplining your children in any way, we don’t normally get on soapbox for minor ways in which parents or grandparents punish their children, given that the practice is, as we stated, minor.

That being said, one 21-year-old woman decided she was too grown to have to sit and take punishment form her granddad, no matter how minor, last week in east Charlotte. The woman told police that, for no apparent reason, he grandfather came up behind her and grabbed her shoulders and shook them. She suffered no injury from the incident, but immediately called police and said she wanted to press charges for assault on a female.

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NEWS

COVERSTORY

TEARING THROUGH TIME Morgan School represents Cherry’s last attachment to a rich past RYAN PITKIN

B

OLTED TO A wall in the back

of the historic Morgan School building in Charlotte’s Cherry neighborhood is a rusted out sign facing out to a wooded area.

“School maintained in this community for benefit of its citizens. Please protect against damage and abuse to your buildings,” the signs says. It’s a message to its neighbors from the local school board, but now, as the building sits abandoned, it reads more like a cry for help.

The Morgan School was built in 1925 and opened two years later as a school for black children in the historically African-American neighborhood of Cherry. It operated as such until 1967, and continued to offer different educative programs after that, serving as a school for pregnant teens in the ‘80s and for emotionally and behaviorally handicapped students in the ‘90s.

In 1997, the Morgan School became Community Charter School, and stayed that away until the end of the school year in June 2017, when Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, which still owns the building, declined to extend the lease. Community Charter had been struggling in recent years with declining test scores and enrollment, and CMS officials decided to sell the property.

Now, as CMS undergoes a change in leadership, any plans for the historic building have been placed on the back burner.

The school sits empty today, the grass growing longer. A wooden stage in the back goes unused, colorful but empty benches facing it in anticipation.

Dan Morrill, consulting director of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission (HLC), is hoping that whatever the future holds, the historic brick building, built by renowned Charlotte architect Louis H. Asbury, is saved.

“It’s the icon of the neighborhood,” Morrill says. “It’s the most significant structure in that community, done by a very prominent architect. Obviously, there are people who have strong feelings about that.”

Although the building itself remains in relatively good shape, driving by gives Morrill a bad feeling. His Randolph Road office is just a mile or two from the old school, and he’s been sad to see the building going unused and uncared for. It’s the first time he knows that the school has sat abandoned.

“I drove by the Morgan School today, and I was a little bit alarmed because the grass 6 | JUL. 13 - JUL. 19, 2017 | CLCLT.COM

PHOTOS BY RYAN PITKIN.

Shots of the present-day Morgan School. is being allowed to grow up, and that clearly communicates that it’s an abandoned building, and that is an invitation to vandalism,” he said.

Morrill and the HLC put in an offer to buy the building in late 2016, when it became clear that Community Charter would no longer be operating there. He said he was told the city had showed interest in potentially purchasing the building and that he should wait to see how that plays out.

He was OK with that, but now he’s getting anxious for some plan to be announced.

“From my own particular perspective, it would be really beneficial to have a preservation plan in place, where either we move ahead or the city moves ahead or somebody else moves ahead,” he said.

Representatives with CMS said there’s no plan in place for Morgan School’s future at the moment, and no one could be reached with the city who had any knowledge of efforts to buy the school.

If the HLC were to buy the building, Morrill’s goal would be to stabilize the structure — replacing the roof, windows and the foundation, if needed — then place restrictive covenants in the deed that would protect its future before reselling it to someone or an organization with a viable plan for long-term adaptive use. He carried out a similar plan in the ‘80s with the old Hand’s Pharmacy on North Davidson and

35th streets, now home to Cabo Fish Taco.

Unlike if the county or city owns a property, HLC is not regulated to sell to the highest bidder. They take factors such as the long-term viability of any potential use into consideration before selling properties.

This helps Morrill make moves based on preservation over profit.

“The marketplace has no sentiment, it’s going to be driven by highest and best use, and highest and best use is defined by how much money can you make on something,” Morrill says.

“You cannot just listen to the marketplace.

Listen, every last bit of Cherry would be gone. Every bit of Cherry will be gone, in my judgment, if the market is simply allowed to do what it wants to do.”

TO THIS DAY, Myers Park and Cherry, both

designed in similar fashion by renowned local planner John Nolen, stand in stark contrast to one another in terms of average income and home prices.

Morrill notes how a simple drive through the two serves as a powerful lesson.

“I remember years ago when I would take people on tours of Charlotte and I wanted them to understand the impact of racial division on the built environment, I would purposefully take them into Cherry and then take them right into Myers Park and, boom, you go half a block and then, whap, it’s just unbelievable,” he says.

One of Charlotte’s oldest neighborhoods, Cherry began as a town separate from Charlotte in 1891. Cotton planter John Springs Myers, owner of the 1,000-acre Myers Plantation, founded Cherry two decades before his plantation would become the nucleus for the Myers Park neighborhood.

Myers, known in his time as a philanthropist for the African-American community, included institutional, recreational and commercial facilities within Cherry, things that were rarely seen in black neighborhoods at the time.

He included relatively inexpensive lots throughout the planned community, and by the time the Morgan School was built in the mid-‘20s, home ownership in Cherry was more than 60 percent, extremely high for a black community at that time. Morgan Park, which sits directly across from the school and is known now as Cherry Park, was the first city park to serve a black neighborhood.

Myers died in 1925, the year the contract was let for Morgan School. His son and later his grandchildren became responsible for managing the community. As development pressure grew due to the construction of Independence Boulevard in the ‘40s and the opening of the nearby Charlottetowne Mall in 1958, Brevard Myers successfully campaigned against the wholesale clearance of Cherry due to urban renewal plans that would do away with other black neighborhoods like

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PHOTOS BY RYAN PITKIN.

Shots of the present-day Morgan School.

Greenville and Brooklyn.

Despite Brevard’s efforts to save the neighborhood, he and John Dwelle — noth grandsons to John Springs Myers — began consolidating their holdings in Cherry throughout the ‘50s and ‘60s. By 1970, home ownership was at just 17 percent.

At some point in the 1960’s, however, Cherry residents stepped up and took control of their neighborhood. Neighbors formed the Cherry Community Organization, a neighborhood association that also acted as a land trust, and bought out the remaining holdings of Brevard Myers and Dwelle.

In 1985, the first new construction in 25 years began in Cherry. Over the years, development and construction would change the borders of Cherry, but the foundation of the neighborhood, centered by the Morgan School and Cherry Park, remained intact.

In recent years, however, due to rapid development and urban sprawl, the face of the neighborhood has changed dramatically.

In 2015, the percentage of black residents living in Cherry stood at 37, compared to 66 percent in 1990.

Since the end of the recession in 2008, developers have moved in on Cherry at a rapid rate, building $600,000 homes where housing worth a fraction of that once stood.

Mike Gordon, owner of Gordon’s Barber Shop, which sits on the corner of Baldwin Avenue and Baxter Street just a block from Morgan School, says he has witnessed a dramatic change in the decade since he moved his shop into Cherry.

“It was a majority black community, and what I’ve found out over the years is they were renters, they were ran out in that capacity and now it’s more luxurious spots, the $600,000 houses,” he says. “It’s almost like it’s pushing out the minorities from certain parts of the city. Cherry community was really where all the folks would do the house cleaning for the ones living over there in Dilworth and places like that. There’s a lot of history here in Cherry. What I’m afraid of

OVER

40

is that we lost it when all this stuff came in.

We lost a lot of our luster.”

SITTING IN A coffee shop in Uptown on a recent afternoon, Rhonda Fisher-Duncan and Keith Alyea look like the embodiment of the term “gentrifiers,” and they know it.

The well-coiffed, sharp-dressed pair just scream affluence, and it’s a label they’ve been trying to shake since they recently moved to Cherry.

Fisher-Duncan moved into the neighborhood two years ago with her husband in search of a shorter commute to their Uptown jobs. The two were empty nesters, and wanted to downsize from their large suburban home.

Alyea moved from South Charlotte to the Metropolitan with his husband a few years back and they kept their eyes on Cherry’s development. When a row of Saussy Burbank homes went up last year, they jumped on the opportunity, and moved in officially on October 1.

Fisher-Duncan spent some time before our meeting combing the web looking for articles that paint Cherry’s development in a negative light. She says she has 30 links saved from searching for just a short time, with none that tell the positive stories of the neighborhood’s evolution.

Alyea emphasizes that he was attracted to the neighborhood for its diversity.

“We did not move to Cherry because we wanted it to become a completely gentrified, washed-out neighborhood,” he says. “I don’t want to live in South Charlotte again.”

Fisher-Duncan nods in agreement.

“Exactly, that’s why I moved. That’s what I moved from,” she says.

The two say they have tried to get involved in the neighborhood through community meetings held by the CCO, which still owns 10 properties in the neighborhoods, but SEE

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NEWS

TIME FROM

COVERSTORY

P. 7

t

“There’s a lot of history here in Cherry. What I’m afraid of is that we lost it when all this stuff came in. We lost a lot of our luster.”

-MIKE GORDON, OWNER OF GORDON’S BARBER SHOP

8 | JUL. 13 - JUL. 19, 2017 | CLCLT.COM

Shots of the present-day Morgan School. doesn’t operate as your typical neighborhood association.

The CCO holds “information sharing meetings” but doesn’t allow input from residents in attendance. Attempts to reach CCO leaders for this article were unsuccessful.

Alyea said he was frustrated at a meeting regarding the future of Morgan School — when a merger between Community Charter School and Davidson Charter School was still on the table at the end of 2016 — after his calls for a floor vote on one particular issue went completely ignored.

“There’s the feeling that we just don’t know how to get involved to help drive any of the decisions that are going on in the neighborhood,” says Fisher-Duncan. “My husband and I were very aware when we first arrived that it wasn’t something where we just wanted to go in and say, ‘Here we are.’

But we really want to get involved and I think with the diversity of the people that have moved in we could bring a lot of good ideas and creativity and things like that into the neighborhood and help make it better.”

That effort could begin with plans for the Morgan School.

Larken Egleston, a candidate for city council District 2, where Cherry is, has suggested the school be turned into affordable housing. Alyea and Fisher-Duncan say they’d rather see it remain in the public space.

They point out that, although Cherry gets a bad reputation as being a poster child of sorts for gentrification, the 163 units of affordable housing already in the neighborhood or currently under construction make up around 45 percent of all housing in Cherry, a higher percentage than any “fringe” neighborhood near Uptown. A potential rezoning could also open the door for a proposed development of 200 income-restricted units for “workforce housing,” as well.

Around the neighborhood, many longtime residents and newcomers alike agree that if there will be no school in the building,

PHOTOS BY RYAN PITKIN.

it should be used as a community center of some sort.

Gordon, whose granddaughter attended Community Charter School, shot down the suggestion of a rec center, saying he’s “sick of basketball and football” and wants to see the kids learning something that will help them in school.

“We’ve got an issue here with a lot of killings in Charlotte, in the community,” Gordon said.

“We need to have a place where the kids can go and get educated for things to get better.

That place is a great place to have a center with computers and educational stuff so kids can more or less go and see there’s more to life than what they see out here in front of them.

“As a kid who grew up on the streets of Philadelphia, by not having outlets, you felt like that was all there was. That building could be a great place for kids to envision beyond where they’re at.”

Fisher-Duncan’s hopes for the property echo those of her neighbor Gordon.

“We need something we could use in the community because we don’t really have a place; some kind of arts center, a women’s center maybe. It used to be a center for pregnant teenagers, so it used to function in that kind of way,” she says. “My vision would be a center where people could go to learn skills of some sort, to educate them, be it on basic finance, how you operate a checking account, a savings account, things like that.”

Regardless of their feelings on the neighborhood evolution, the one thing almost everyone in Cherry can agree on is that the Morgan School building needs to stay. For Gordon, losing the school would be a last straw, the complete erasure of a bygone era.

“The Cherry community, now I don’t even know the neighborhood anymore because of all the stuff that they did,” Gordon says.

“The school is a landmark for us in this area. I believe if you take that kind of stuff away, the community is gone, it’s over.”

RPITKIN@CLCLT.COM

CLCLT.COM | JUL. 13 - JUL. 19, 2017 | 9

VIEWS

THE SCRIBE’S CORBNER

A TALE OF TWO PLAYERS Greg Olsen’s contract demands bring up a disturbing comparison

VIEWS

MUSLIM IN CHARLOTTE

SPEAKING OUT WITH SPOKEN WORD Meet Hannah Hasan LAST YEAR, CL contributor Lara Americo debuted her photo series “Trans & Queer in the

Workplace” in Creative Loafing between August and December. The series was later picked up by Huffington Post and served as the basis for Americo’s Chrysalis exhibit at C3 Lab. This year, Americo is highlighting another marginalized and misunderstood population, the local Muslim community.

Every other week, we are running a photo and some insights from a local Charlotte Muslim, who will discuss their work, personal lives and the judgment they often live with. This week, Americo spoke with Hannah Hassad. Visit clclt.com for previous entires and videos of Americo’s subjects.

Hannah Hasan, 34, is an artist and activist living in Charlotte since 2007. She’s a talented spoken-word poet, and you can check out video of her performing some of her work at clclt.com.

“I think people have a lot of misconceptions about Muslims, and they think that we’re oppressed and we’re quiet and docile, and all of these other things. There are some women that are quiet and that’s just how they are. There are some women, unfortunately, who are oppressed, and they’re not always Muslim, and that happens here in America and all over the world. I think what people don’t understand is that the teachings of Islam actually empower women. I never feel like I’m being forced to make any decision about my life, my body, the way I dress or anything that makes me feel uncomfortable or that makes me feel like I don’t have my rights as a Muslim women.

“I think that it’s important to understand that we’re a very diverse people, the Muslims in Charlotte, the Muslims in America for that matter. We look, sound, think, view life in so many different ways and it’s important for people to get to know their neighbors, regardless of who they are, so that you can understand — and it doesn’t necessarily have to mean agree — but who they are and what their life experiences are, because I think that’s what we’re all here for.”

10 | JUL. 13 - JUL. 19, 2017 | CLCLT.COM

man who had made only $3 million through IN NFL CONTRACT negotiations, each his career up to that point, would rather seek player is like a snowflake — although the payday than stay on a winning team. It since that word has been hi-jacked by the is also a grudge that some fans still hold to insecure alpha assholes of the right, let’s say this day. fingerprint instead.

Which, brings us to the curious case (in What I mean to say is that each player, comparison) of Greg Olsen, a man with one each agent, each owner, each contract has its year left of his contract. He received a new own complex nuances and must be treated contract with the Carolina Panthers in 2014: differently by teams, fans and others. In three years, $22 million in total, with just $12 reaction to each piece of news during said million guaranteed. Olsen, a free agent at the negotiations, however, fans often don’t end of the 2018 season, would like a new deal take this into account, and in turn, some in order to finish up his career as a Carolina negotiations turn more contentious than Panther. others.

“In the ideal world, that’d be great,” Every spring begins the annual tradition of Olsen said, in an interview with the Charlotte NFL veterans trying to squeeze every precious Observer. “I’m very confident on where I dollar out of the team they’re employed by. stand in the league and where I belong.

And who can blame them?

Both productivity and all things After all, football careers can considered, there’s nobody end in a snap, literally. The lack of that’s been more productive guaranteed money in football or more consistent than separates it from every I have. And I’ll stand on other professional sport, so that until the cows come it’s hard for the objective home. You can make of observer to fault NFL that what you may, I feel players for wanting to recomfortable with where negotiate their deals every I belong, and hopefully time one outperforms his other people do, too.” contract. Keep in mind, the KONATA Among Panthers fans, average career in the NFL Olsen’s comments inspired spans around 3 years.

EDWARDS indifference. Many even took Now let’s take a look at the his side, saying the Panthers should difference in fan reactions to the give him a new deal out of loyalty because contract negotiations between the Panthers Olsen was loyal to the Panthers for so long. and Greg Olsen of this year as compared to For many, Olsen was the exception rather Josh Norman of last year. Norman, at the than the rule when it came to athletes time, was about to be a free agent and had negotiating in the public. been franchise tagged, which in effect gave the The only question that leaves is, What Panthers first dibs on contract negotiations with him. makes the cases of Olsen and Norman so Other teams would have to give up two different? Why is it okay for Greg Olsen to draft picks to sign a player with a franchise negotiate in the public spectrum and yet for tag, so they’re usually reticent to do so.

Norman, it was an unforgivable sin? Both As an older cornerback (29 years old), Norman and Olsen continue to do charitable Norman had outplayed his contract in his works in the Charlotte area, and yet only one final two seasons in a Panthers uniform. is cheered upon to grab as much money as he Business logic told him that this likely was can from the franchise, whilst the other was his only chance for a big payday. So instead shunned and blasted verbally through many of signing the franchise tender, Norman different mediums on his way out of town. decided to go on a press junket of sorts to If the argument is loyalty, then fans campaign publically for a long term deal with should’ve been just as enthusiastic for the Carolina Panthers.

Norman to get as much money as he could “I can’t report if I haven’t signed from the Carolina Panthers as possible, just anything, so I don’t feel as if I’m at the point as it was their right to release him from the where I’m ready to get back to working right franchise tag later. now,” Norman told NFL Network. A few However, if the duality of the fans in weeks after that comment, Norman was both of these scenarios proved anything, released from his franchise tender and was there remains an implicit bias within the fan free to sign with any team without penalty. base, one that they only need to look in the Fan reaction fell heavily on the side of the mirror to confront.

Panthers. Many felt betrayed that Norman, a BACKTALK@CLCLT.COM

NEWS

NEWS OF THE WEIRD

BY CHUCK SHEPHERD Weird News is forever, but this is my last “News of the Weird” column, as I am now exhausted after almost 30 years in the racket. In this final edition, I remember a few of my favorites. My deep thanks to Andrews McMeel Syndication and to readers, who started me up and kept me going.

Y’all take care of yourselves. — Chuck Shepherd

(1995) Chesapeake, Virginia, inmate Robert Lee Brock filed a $5 million lawsuit against Robert Lee Brock — accusing himself of violating his religious beliefs and his civil rights by getting himself drunk enough that he could not avoid various criminal behaviors.

He wrote: “I want to pay myself five million dollars (for this breach of rights), but ask the state to pay it in my behalf since I can’t work and am a ward of the state.” In April, the lawsuit was dismissed.

(2002) The Lane brothers of New York, Mr. Winner Lane, 44, and Mr. Loser Lane, 41 (their actual birth names), were profiled in a July Newsday report — made more interesting by the fact that Loser is successful — a police detective in the South Bronx — and Winner is not — a history of petty crimes. A sister said she believes her parents selected “Winner” because their late father was a big baseball fan and “Loser” just to complete the pairing.

(1996) A pre-trial hearing was scheduled for Lamar, Missouri, on Joyce Lehr’s lawsuit against the county for injuries suffered in a 1993 fall in the icy, unplowed parking lot of the local high school. The Carthage Press reported that Lehr claimed damage to nearly everything in her body. According to her petition: “All the bones, organs, muscles, tendons, tissues, nerves, veins, arteries, ligaments ... discs, cartilages, and the joints of her body were fractured, broken, ruptured, punctured, compressed, dislocated, separated, bruised, contused, narrowed, abrased, lacerated, burned, cut, torn, wrenched, swollen, strained, sprained, inflamed, and infected.”

(2002) From time to time “News of the Weird” reported on the fluctuating value of the late Italian artist Piero Manzoni’s personal feces, which he canned in 1961, 30 grams at a time in 90 tins, as art objects — though, over the years, 45 have reportedly exploded.

Their price to collectors has varied from low of about $28,000 for a tin in 1998 to a high of $75,000 in 1993. In June 2002, the Tate Gallery in London excitedly announced it had purchased tin number 004 for about $38,000.

The price of 30 grams of gold in 2002 was a little over $300.

(1994) The New York Daily News reported in

April on a cellblock fight between murderers Colin Ferguson and Joel Rifkin at the Nassau County jail. Reportedly, Ferguson, convicted

of six race-related murders on the Long Island Rail Road in 1993, was using a telephone and told Rifkin, a serial killer serving 203 years for nine murders, to be quiet. According to the Daily News source, Ferguson told Rifkin, “I wiped out six devils (white people), and you only killed women.” Rifkin allegedly responded, “Yeah, but I had more victims.”

Ferguson then allegedly ended the brief incident by punching Rifkin in the mouth.

(1999)

Commissioners in Florida’s Seminole County and Manatee County passed ordinances regulating public nudity by requiring women to cover at least 25 percent of the area of their breasts and at least 33 percent of the buttocks, with detailed instructions as to the points from which each coverage must be measured. Refresher for law enforcement: The lateral area of a cone is pi (times) r (times) s where r=radius and s=slant height; for the surface area of a sphere, it’s pi (times) r (squared), and, alas, for a flat surface, it’s length times width.

found inside a van taking pictures of a child relieving himself. The man had offered service to the child’s parents as a toilet trainer.

(1992) The Philadelphia Inquirer reported in June on the local “Silent Meeting Club,” consisting of several people who gather at various spots around town and make it a point not to speak to each other. Founder John Hudak said his inspiration was his observation that people often feel obligated to talk when they really have nothing to say, such as at parties, and wondered how nice it would be “to have a group of people where you wouldn’t have to talk.”

(1991) In May, Maxcy Dean Filer, 60, of Compton, California, finally passed the California Bar exam. He graduated from law school in 1966, but had failed the exam in each of his previous 47 tries.

(2001) A child pornography investigation in Minneapolis turned up 1,000 suspect images on the office computer of a 58-yearold University of Minnesota classics professor named Richard Pervo.

(2004) The New York Times reported in February on a Washington, D.C., man whose love of music led him, in the 1960s, to meticulously hand-make and hand-paint facsimile record album covers of his fantasized music, complete with imagined lyric sheets and liner notes (with some of the “albums” even shrink-wrapped), and, even more incredibly, to hand-make cardboard facsimiles of actual grooved discs to put inside them.

“Mingering Mike,” whom a reporter and two hobbyists tracked down — but who declined to be identified in print — also made real music, on tapes, using his and friends’ voices to simulate instruments. His 38 imagined “albums” were discovered at a flea market after Mike defaulted on storage-locker fees, and the hobbyists who found them said they were so exactingly done that a major museum would soon feature them.

(1993) In May, Elk River, Minnesota,

(1999) From a May police report in The

(1998) On the day before Good Friday,

reported the Los Angeles Times, Dr. Ernesto A. Moshe Montgomery consecrated the Shrine of the Weeping Shirley MacLaine in a room in the Beta Israel Temple in Los Angeles.

Inspired by an image he said he had while riding in the actress’s private jet, Montgomery said a subsequent large photograph of him with MacLaine was “observed shedding tears,” which had inspired prayers and testimony of miraculous healings.

landlord Todd Plaisted reported that his tenant Kenneth Lane had fled the area, abandoning his rented farmhouse and leaving behind at least 400 tons of used carpeting, at least 10,000 plastic windows from Northwest Airlines planes, and rooms full of sofas, mattresses and washing machines, among other things. Lane told townspeople he ran a “recycling” company, but there was no evidence of sales. A deputy sheriff driving by the farmhouse the year before saw Lane burying carpeting with a tractor and said Lane merely muttered, “I don’t know what to say. You got me. I can’t even make up an excuse.”

(1990) An FBI investigation into interstate

trafficking by diaper fetishists resulted in the arrests of five men belonging to an organization called the Diaper Pail Foundation, which has a letterhead and publishes a newsletter and information exchange for members. A Madison, Wisconsin, man, arrested in April for possession of child pornography, was

Messenger (Madisonville, Kentucky), concerning two trucks being driven strangely on a rural road: A man would drive one truck 100 yards, stop, walk back to a second truck, drive it 100 yards beyond the first truck, stop, walk back to the first truck, drive it 100 yards beyond the second truck, and so on. According to police, the man’s brother was passed out drunk in one of the trucks, so the man was driving both trucks home, though the success of such a scheme is better imagined if the driving brother has a high blood-alcohol reading, too, which was the case.

(1988) And, from the very first “News of the

Weird” column came good ol’ Hal Warden, the Tennessee 16-year-old who was married at 15 and granted a divorce from his wife, 13.

Hal had previously been married at age 12 to a 14-year-old (and fathered children with both), but the first wife divorced Hal because, as she told the judge, “He was acting like a 10-year-old.”

CLCLT.COM | JUL. 13 - JUL. 19, 2017 | 11

FOOD

FEATURE

SOUTHPARK GETS ADVENTUROUS New restaurants like Yafo Kitchen bring dining options to the ‘burbs

BY CATHERINE BROWN

OR A LONG TIME, SouthPark was known

F

as an upscale, suburban, rather homogenous and boring neighborhood. As were its dining options: steak, steak and more steak. Grilled chicken on salads, maybe with some hearts of palm or mandarin oranges, if the chef was feeling wild. Grilled salmon. And “gourmet” hamburgers.

Vegan or vegetarian? If you lived in SouthPark and wanted to dine out, you’d drive to the Park Road or Plaza-Midwood areas.

SouthPark restaurants typically had zero veg options — indeed, a SouthPark restaurant’s claim to fame was often based on the foie gras they served.

And ethnic? Bao Ding, a fairly traditional Chinese restaurant in a modern setting, was about as ethnic and edgy as SouthPark got.

But times have changed. SouthPark, while still upscale, has gotten more diverse. There are more nationalities, more ethnicities. The recent influx of townhouses and condos has made it attractive for younger singles or couples. And, being a major business hub, it pulls in all ages and income levels during daylight hours.

And slowly, the dining options have started to reflect that.

Perhaps it started with the chains. Brixx Foxcroft does a brisk business selling vegan pizzas (in addition to meat pizzas with extra cheese). Moe’s at Sharon Corners and Chipotle at the mall sell vegan bean burritos and bowls. Zoe’s sells a version of fast-casual Mediterranean with many veg options, but no falafel or babaganoush.

Gourmet hamburger places now offer Charlotte’s de rigueur black bean burger as an option. (Seriously, in Charlotte you can’t be veg without being bombarded by black bean burgers — even in SouthPark.)

More recently, there’s Living Kitchen, a raw vegan restaurant and juice bar which ironically occupies the space recently vacated by the foie gras-loving Zebra.

And now there’s Yafo Kitchen, which opened in June 2016 and has attracted an almost cult-like following.

Frank Scibelli (who also owns Midwood Smokehouse and Mama Ricotta’s) told Charlotte Business Journal in May, “It seems 12 | JUL. 13 - JUL. 19, 2017 | CLCLT.COM

Build Your Own Bowl can be anything your heart’s desire. to have a following like nothing I have ever done.”

This could be because it flips the SouthPark restaurant stereotype on its head. Instead of a meat-based restaurant where you have to seek out the one veg option, Yafo is basically a vegan/vegetarian restaurant where the chefs will drop in some meat — spiced chicken, spiced beef, beef koftas (think spicy meatball) or lamb — for the omnivores.

Of course, the big question for any Mediterranean restaurant is: Is it authentic?

The answer, surprisingly, is yes. That’s largely due to executive chef Shia Fargian, who is from Israel and imports the spices Yafo Kitchen uses from a market in Tel Aviv. And everything except the cheese is made from scratch.

“These are largely the foods I grew up eating, that I learned to cook in Israel,” Shia says. “Customers from the Middle East will dine here and say, ‘This tastes like home.’”

When you walk into Yafo Kitchen for the first time, you may feel you have mistakenly walked into a Chipotle’s. It’s bright and cheerful and colorful; the seating and tables are spare; there’s a cafeteria-like line where people are not just ordering mezze platters but putting together salad, grain or hummus bowls.

This evening, it seems about half the customers are ordering their food to go.

There’s also a sizable group waiting with me at the call ahead/order online counter. (Note: You cannot order falafel or other wraps online — bummer.)

In my new role as Creative Loafing’s vegan reporter, I’ve become very chatty with strangers. I soon find out that everyone in our call ahead/order online group are repeat customers.

Gary, a sweaty 20-something in biking gear who recently moved into his first apartment on Colony Road, says it’s one of SouthPark’s

ALL PHOTOS BY CATHERINE BROWN

few takeout options — and few affordable options. (Mezze plates run from $5.99 for two items, to $13.99 for six. Bowls start at $8.99, with proteins adding another $2 - $4.)

Cynthia, a well-groomed, expensive smelling woman who lives on Giverny Drive, is picking up hummus and babaganoush for her book club meeting that evening. “It’s so much better than what the supermarket sells,” she tells me.

Gene, an African-American with long braids who lives in nearby condos, says he’s there for the vegan options.

MENU RUNDOWN The Traditionals Hummus: Made from organic chickpeas, this hummus is exceptionally creamy and not too oily. (They will drizzle your portion in olive

IS IT AUTHENTIC? NO. BUT I CAN TEMPER MY “NO” BY ADDING THAT IT DOESN’T REALLY MATTER, BECAUSE MOST OF THE TRADITIONAL ESSENTIALS ARE AWESOME.

YAFO KITCHEN SOUTHPARK Sun–Thurs, 11 a.m.–9 p.m.; Fri-Sat 11 a.m.-10:00 p.m. . 720 Gov Morrison St., Ste. #120 (Morrison Place, a/k/a the Earthfare Shopping Center). 704365-7130. www.yafokitchen.com

Six Mezze

oil but you can request otherwise.) Tip: If you want more flavor, mix it with one of the dressings – Amba (pickled mangos), Greek (red wine and oregano), or Schug (traditional Yemeni hot sauce, not nearly as spicy as they warn you).

Babaganoush: Ok, you know how sometimes you order hummus and babaganoush, and then you’re not sure which one is which, because they both taste like tahini? You won’t have that problem here. The babaganoush is exceptional, maybe the best I’ve had in Charlotte. You can taste the eggplant as well as see some tiny seeds. And unlike some restaurants where you’re pretty sure they just added some smoked paprika or liquid smoke, this babaganoush has an authentic, charred, smoky flavor.

Falafel: Another winner. Not too dry, with the green interior from herbs falafel should have! These are served with tahini; I like to mix the tahini with Schug. My only complaint is that the falafels are quite small, and if you order mezze you only receive about half a container. Order double if you plan to share.

Laffah: Yafo Kitchen has laffah bread instead of pita bread. Laffah is softer and stretchier than pita bread — think of a light, stretchy naan.

Tabbouleh: This is Americanized — mostly bulger with a few random green shreds of unidentified herbs. I prefer a traditional tabbouleh of mostly parsley and mint — the kind that makes your mouth seem zingy and fresh even though you also just ate a ton of garlic.

Hot Sauce: Points taken off for the lack of a good hot sauce. Yafo does have schug, a blend of peppers and herbs. Perhaps it’s hot enough for omnivores, but for vegans who appreciate Indian and Thai food – or who are

Rotisserie Potatoes

used to traditional spicy sauces in their falafel wraps - it’s going to seem mild. Tasty, though, especially mixed with tahini.

be a tad oily.

Non-traditionals:

Not good, not bad, these options (mostly for bowls) are just. . . meh.

Roasted mushrooms (tastes a bit canned even though they’re not), cucumber-tomato salad, pickled cucumber, chickpea and roasted pepper salad, microscopically diced tomato, sumac onions (pickled onions are always good, I just couldn’t taste the sumac).

Beets with Goat Cheese and Pistachios and Greek Yogurt Mac and Cheese win raves with vegetarians and omnivores; obviously I’ve not tried them myself.

Now let’s talk about the “build your own bowl” concept, which should be familiar to anyone who has ever been to a Moe’s or a Chipotle. You can choose a green (romaine, spinach, spring mix or kale), a grain (cumin

Yafo sells a number of non-traditional mezze items (at least, I don’t think they are traditional).

I asked a line server what the most popular mezze item was (outside of hummus, falafel, and babaganoush). The young man gave me a plaintive look. “Brussel sprouts,” he whispered.

Yeah, I don’t get the Roasted Brussel Sprouts either, but it is popular. So, too, is the Crispy Cauliflower (which I have found to be tasty but never actually crispy). Rotisserie Potatoes are also popular and a safe choice if you’re unsure about Mediterranean food. Try them with a little tahini. Be aware all three can

The ‘Meh’ List

rice or “seasonal” grain), or a hummus bowl with laffah. Next, pick a spread (hummus, babaganoush, or tzatzikim, but take note: the tzatziki has yogurt so it’s veg, not vegan.

Then, choose from a number of free toppings, several premium toppings for 99 cents (avocado, cage-free eggs), $2-$4 proteins (from falafel to lamb), and dressings.

I noticed while most of us in the pickup queue had ordered mezze, bowls and wraps seemed to be the most popular dine-in choices.

For beverages, skip the soft drinks and have organic sweet or unsweet tea, hibiscus tea, or cucumber lime mint juice.

YAFO KITCHEN has proven so popular in

such an unlikely location as SouthPark that Frank Scibelli is opening another restaurant in Plaza Midwood in Spring 2018.

The restaurant will be located in the One305 development at the corner of Central and Clement avenues.

It will be interesing to see if the menu changes in his heavily vegan/vegetarian neck of the Charlotte woods.

Stay tuned.

Catherine Brown is a native Charlottean (yes, they exist) and vegan foodie (no, vegan and foodie are not mutually exclusive). Find out more about being vegan in Charlotte at her blog vegcharlottenc.com.

CLCLT.COM | JUL. 13 - JUL. 19, 2017 | 13

THURSDAY

13

FRIDAY

14

THINGS TO DO

TOP TEN

Blue Cactus FRIDAY

PHOTO BY ROXANNE TURPEN

FRIDAY

14

FRIDAY

14

SATURDAY

15

BASTILLE DAY DINNER

BLUE CACTUS

C.S. LEWIS ONSTAGE

BREWERY BIRTHDAYS

What: In his recent interview on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast, Wheeler seemed dejected, basically admitting that he thought his short career was on its last legs and that he would probably be moving back to his parents’ farm to get fucked up with all his old high school buddies soon, since radio refuses to play him. It’s not a surprise, with songs like “Finger In My Butt” and “Pussy King,” so we don’t feel much sympathy, but still, compared to what else passes for country these days, he’s fresh.

What: Did you make it through our own country’s Independence Day celebrations with all your fingers? Is your dog tired of hiding under the bed while your asshole neighbors continue popping off leftover fireworks? Class it up with a celebration of the storming of the Bastille with dinner at one of Charlotte’s finest eateries. A collaboration between Chef Charles Semail of Chef Charles Catering, Chef Sylvain Rivet of Renaissance Patisserie & Chef Blake Hartwick of Bonterra.

What: Everybody loves Blue Cactus.

Nobody doesn’t love them. And that’s because this hipster country outfit from Chapel Hill makes socalled Americana so-called country that doesn’t sound like every other “alt-country” act that’s come in the wake of Uncle Tupelo. Blue Cactus plucks from the best ‘50s honkytonk to the best ‘60s countrypolitan to the best ‘70s Gram Parsons teardrop, but doesn’t copy any of that stuff. This is just great country music, folks. Come lap up the twang and support your local dive bar.

What: What’s the next-best thing to seeing C.S. Lewis live-streamed from Heaven? Watching actor Max McLean’s award-winning portrayal of the famous atheist who found God, became a born-again Christian and wrote Mere Christianity and a bunch of Biblical allegories like the Narnia series. C.S. Lewis Onstage: The Most Reluctant Convert has been blessed with comparisons to Hal Holbrook’s Mark Twain performances. But let it be known: You’re paying top dollar to be witnessed to, which is usually free around here.

What: Folks on the north and south sides of Uptown will have choices for where to celebrate when their local brewery turns 2 years old. For the Bash at the Bot in South End, Wooden Robot will be hosting Chef Rob and the Twisted Eats crew, serving a special anniversary menu. with That Guy Smitty on the wheels.

At Free Range in NoDa, look for Farmhouse BBQ and family-friendly play opportunities. Each event offers a custom-made glass for attendees.

When: 7:30 p.m.

Where: The Underground, 820 Hamilton St. More: $15. fillmorecharlottenc.com.

When: 6:30-9:30 p.m.

Where: Bonterra Dining & Wine Room, 1829 Cleveland Ave. More: $150. bonterradining.com.

When: 7 p.m.

Where: Thirsty Beaver, 1225 Central Ave. More: Free. bluecactusmusic.com.

When: 8 p.m.

Where: Knight Theater, 430 S Tryon St. More: $29 - $89. blumenthalarts.org.

WHEELER WALKER, JR.

14 | JUL. 13 - JUL. 19, 2017 | CLCLT.COM

When: 12-11 p.m.

Where: Wooden Robot Brewery, 1440 S. Tryon St.; Free Range Brewing, 2320 N. Davidson St. More: $10; woodenrobotbrewery. com; freerangebrewing.com.

Raekwon SATURDAY

C.S. Lewis Onstage FRIDAY

Game of Thrones SUNDAY

NEWS ARTS FOOD MUSIC ODDS

SATURDAY

15

PHOTO COURTESY OF HBO

PHOTO COURTESY OF WEEKLYDIG

PHOTO COURTESY OF KNIGHT THEATER

SATURDAY

15

SUNDAY

16

TUESDAY

TUESDAY

18

18

GIRLS ROCK CHARLOTTE

RAEKWON

GAME OF THRONES

SOAPBOX SOLILOQUY

SPOON

What: Bring the family to check out Charlotte’s emerging rock stars from the 2017 Girls Rock Charlotte summer camp. The kids will perform original songs they cowrote in just a week with help from powerful local mentors. Girls Rock Charlotte is about helping gender-diverse youth ages 8 to 16 find their voices through music. They learn to play instruments, form bands and incorporate social justice issues into their songs. These kids truly represent a better future for our country and community.

What: We won’t lie, we were a bit put off when Raekwon came to The Fillmore two years with Ghostface and made the crowd wait well over an hour past showtime before finally hitting the stage. But when he finally did, it was bucket list worthy. This time, he’ll be next door at The Underground, a smaller, more personal venue, and let’s just hope it was Ghostface that was holding him up for all that time in his last appearance.

What: It’s been more than a year since we last saw Westeros, so before we get any of our burning questions answered — Will Arya rejoin what’s left of her family? How long will Cersei remain queen? — your best bet would be to come by Hattie’s early, as the bar will be screening the entire sixth season on the projection screen (and seven other TVs) before the seventh season premieres at 9 p.m. Bring your dire wolf and enjoy a stein full of Ommegang’s GoT Bend the Knee Golden Ale.

What: Soapbox Soliloquy is Jasmine Deja, whose heady, self-described fagcore combines dreamy pop, psych rock, swirling electronics and all manner of hazy, disjointed, postJefferson Airplane/Opal/Spacemen 3/My Bloody Valentine head music into sounds for the current millennium. Our favorite Jasmine Deja line in the CL office is, “Verbs should have action.” A discombobulated night of psychedelica that also features other merchants of the trippy: Blanket Fort and Dark Prophet Tongueless Monk.

What: There wasn’t a better or more critically acclaimed band in the first decade of this millennium than Spoon, the Austin, Texas, band that began on a major label before getting snapped up by N.C.’s indie Merge Records and delivering album after album of terrific indie rock beginning with 2001’s Girls Can Tell.

Spoon has evolved over the years but never stopped making great records.

The band’s latest, Hot Thoughts, is as sonically daring as ever, and the songwriting remains top notch.

When: 7 p.m.

Where: McGlohon Theatre, 345 N College St. More: $10. blumenthalarts.org.

When: 7:30 p.m.

Where: The Underground, 820 Hamilton St. More: $25. fillmorecharlottenc.com.

When: 12-10 p.m.

Where: Hattie’s Tap & Tavern, 2918 The Plaza More: Free. hattiescharlotte.com.

When: 10 p.m.

Where: Snug Harbor, 1228 Gordon St. More: $5. snugrock.com.

When: 8 p.m.

Where: CMCU Amphitheatre, 1000 North Carolina Music Factory Blvd.

More: $25 and up. amphitheatercharlotte.com.

CLCLT.COM | JUL. 13 - JUL. 19, 2017 | 15

PHOTO BY SHANE SANDERS

MUSIC

FEATURE

A MAN OF MANY MEDIUMS Hectorina frontman Dylan Gilbert goes beyond songwriting

BY GREY REVELL

T

HE ELECTRIC GUITAR is dead.

As a lightning rod for wayward souls, as a compass for creative nomadic minds and as way out of whatever real or figurative slum you may have grown up in, the electric guitar has bowed to the 16 | JUL. 13 - JUL. 19, 2017 | CLCLT.COM

synth and the drum machine, and its age has passed. Tell that to Dylan Gilbert, guitarist, singer, helmsman of Charlotte’s indie darlings Hectorina and the city’s most interesting art-rocker, and you might be surprised at the response.

Gilbert has agreed to meet me at Central Coffee, in the center of the quickly gentrifying

vortex of Plaza Midwood, and right on the heels of a late Friday morning southern summer downpour. Before sitting down to focus and talk about all things Charlotte art and music and Hectorina and whatnot, we kvetched for over an hour, touching on subjects like interdimensional travel, the new Twin Peaks (he’s a serious fan and knows his

stuff), Jodorowsky’s El Topo, our current political climate (of course), and the pros and cons of turning a studio into a forest (more on that in a minute).

The focus, once we rolled tape however, was on Dylan Gilbert: what he’s doing, why he does it, and how it comes to him. The first question of course was, how do we navigate

MUSIC

FEATURE

indie in the last days of the guitar? As mentioned, the answer was unexpected.

“The big part of me is that that I really don’t care that much, and let me elaborate on that.” The leader of Hectorina’s grin is infectious. “Because I’m sure every guitar player who reads that quote would be like, ‘What the fuck?’”

Gilbert leans forward, and the first thing you notice is how even his speaking voice is, a stark contrast to the aggromelodic acrobatics he accomplishes vocally when fronting the angular guitar attack of Hectorina. “The guitar is what I gravitated toward in my own house to make music with when I was a kid. When I really first started making things though, it was sound collage.

We’re talking like when I was twelve, before I knew how to play anything, before any real music knowledge at all.”

Sound was what attracted the young Dylan Gilbert at first, until bands like Weezer and the Beatles lit the guitar runway for him.

Ultimately though, he would come to see himself as a songwriter, and the guitar was simply a good way for him to write songs.

Nowadays however, the palette has certainly expanded. “I’m just as apt to write a song on the piano, or on Garageband, or whatever.”

The spinach quiche that Gilbert bought with his coffee has been spared up until now, but he’s starts to tear into it as the conversation gets deeper. “I’ll start out with a beat, and put something down that way, but I really try to not think of myself as a ‘guitar player’ proper, because there’s certainly people that do it a lot better than I do.” Gilbert laughs, shakes his head selfdeprecatingly, and takes a sip of coffee.

THAT COULD BE true, but many of Charlotte’s guitar-based heroes at home and abroad have definite opinions about Gilbert’s skill and creative mind, and the praise is sincere and effusive. Phil Black is the production manager for one of the city’s last free standing indie venues, the Rabbit Hole. He’s also a guitar instructor for Rock University (one of the competitors for Gilbert’s School of Rock, where he’s taught for years) and the well respected axeman for Charlotte’s Crackers and Snackmeat.

“I first met Dylan when he was in his teens,” Phils says, “and he has been constantly resetting the bar for creativity, ambition, and drive in the Charlotte music scene. There isn’t a box that can contain his musical thought process.” As the almost nightly sound engineer for the Rabbit Hole, Phil has seen and heard just about all of it, but Gilbert, whether on his own or in one of his group projects, never ceases to bring the fan out in him. “I’m always excited to hear something new of his, and to watch his musical journey.”

Case Federal, whose pedigree in Charlotte music is beyond reproach — his dad is local Blues legend Lenny Federal — spent years making a holy racket in Queen City art dives and bars before taking his own special brand of musical weirdness to Austin, Texas.

HECTORINA W/ SPIRIT SYSTEM, HUNGRY GIRL, SANDCASTLES Friday, July 21. 9 p.m. $8. Petra’s, 1919 Commonwealth Ave. 704-332-6608. petrasbar.com.

PHOTO BYJEFF HOWLETT

Even now, Case has nothing but respect for Gilbert, whom he’s shared years and musical adventures with. His allegiance is strong. “Dylan is a musical tour de force,” Federal declares, “I’ve had the pleasure of sharing the stage with him for over a decade, and he is easily one of the most prolific and entertaining musicians in the Charlotte scene.” In addition to sharing stages, Federal and Gilbert were both instructors at the School of Rock, but the roots go back even farther than that. “Ever since high school, he has been an inspiration and a positive influence on me and my music, as I’m sure with countless local artists as well.”

Early Dylan Gilbert performances betrayed the influences of classic and indie art rock. Artists as diverse as James Brown, Tom Verlaine and The Shins could be heard in the musical approach that Gilbert himself describes as “somewhat twee and nerdy.”

Gilbert was naive in his early years but also very idealistic. “I felt like the scene should help each other, there should be more love there, and it seemed like more pockets of social groups. I became somewhat

disenfranchised from this beer-drinking attitude about rock’n’roll.”

This disenfranchisment led to Dylan Gilbert and the Over Easy Breakfast Machine, a trio Gilbert formed with drummer John Harrell III and bassist Zachary Jordan.

After extensive touring in 2011, the trio reincarnated on New Years Eve 2012 as Hectorina. “The thing about Hectorina is that we are total music nerds,” Gilbert grins, “Like we’ll be obsessed for 5 months with only Brazilian psychedelic samba from 1967-68, and we’ll all be on board with that..”

Musical nerdiness can pay creative dividends. If rock has died and it’s totems are in its last days, no one told these guys.

After a well-received, self-titled full-length album, the group decided to go the sensible route; they followed it up with a full-blown rock opera.

RELEASED IN 2013, Collywobble was adapted to the stage for 2014-15. Hectorina shared bills with national acts in New York City during the 2014 CMJ Music Marathon, and headlined the opening night of the Indie Grits Fest in 2015. As a followup, A Thousand Jackals produced by Daniel Hodges (Fun, Steel Train) was released on January 1, 2014, and later won Best Local Album of the last 12 months in Creative Loafing’s Best of Charlotte issue.

It was Collywobble, though, that got Gilbert together with the Goodyear Art collective. “I always felt more in common with painters and artists of all kinds.” Gilbert says, as we get up to get another round of coffee. “I started gravitating toward that, thinking they could maybe promote a better dialogue. Goodyear came along, and I thought they were amazing because they’re dodging the gentrification problem we have here in Charlotte, where every cool neighborhood is getting bulldozed.”

It’s not lost on either of us that just across the street from where we’re sitting, a wonderfully homogenous new apartment building has sprung up on the bones of the legendary Reflection Studio, where R.E.M. recorded the legendary Reckoning album, as well as tracking names such as James Brown, Joe Walsh and Whitney Houston. “All those great albums were made right where that shitty apartment complex is right now.”

Gilbert shakes his head, sincerely astounded.

“It’s really a problem here in Charlotte, but -”, his face lightens, “what Goodyear is doing is they’ll move into a building that they already know is gonna get torn down, with the purpose of using that space up as much as they can, and then move on to another building that will get torn down. It’s an awesome way to dodge the gentrification problem.”

Gilbert went into a collaboration with Goodyear and was given studio space, which he promptly filled with dead leaves, dirt and broken tree limbs. A canopy of PVC pipe was placed over it all, but with a twist: this spooky forest was wired for sound. “Everything you touched and every step you took made a sound. So it was this interactive sound collage.” Participants would get a cassette of the sonic journey they took through Dylan Gilbert’s Sonic Wood at the end of the happening.

“That idea came from being a music teacher for the last few years. I was thinking,

PHOTO BY HEATHER LIEBLER

what is it that I really love about being a musician? One thing I really love about being a teacher of music is that blind excitement that a child has when they’re just...going wild with something. A kid will be like ‘I wanna play the drums!’ and they’re not even necessarily thinking about doing a song per se. It’s more about how loud the drums are, and what kind of a noise they can make. Not even about being an artist or a performer.

Just the sheer wonder of it all. So that’s where the forest idea came from. How do I take a person out of their reality, and put them in a situation where they can just make as much racket as possible.”

Another project that Gilbert undertook with Goodyear, the one-act acid western All The Dogs And Horses, was expanded on and done at the Boom Festival this year. That involved a rotating cast of some of Charlotte’s best performers and an immersive desert set.

To minimize the cost of musicians and sound effects, the soundtrack and the script was prerecorded. Actors lip synced to the canned dialogue, giving the already trippy piece an even more surreal edge.

Indie film work, commercials — local trivia tidbit: Gilbert was the voice of Kepper Kia in Mooresville for a minute — and experimental theatre, there hasn’t really been a media that Dylan Gilbert hasn’t put his own creative spin on. It raises a final question though. How does Gilbert feel that all the theater and film work he’s done is going to inform the work he does with Hectorina, or any other music project?

“For me, I can’t write the same kind of songs, I’ve already written 200 songs, so at the end of the day, regardless of whatever project I’m working on, I’m still gonna be sitting down with that guitar, or my computer, or at a piano, and writing a song, in the simplest terms. But all these other experiences are going to inform that, and the creative people that I’m so lucky to get to work with, are going to help me look at that work differently.

I’m less prolific now, but maybe a little more mindful.”

BACKTALK@CLCLT.COM CLCLT.COM | JUL. 13 - JUL. 19, 2017 | 17

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MUSIC

MUSICMAKER

THE QUEEN MOTHER OF CHARLOTTE’S ‘UNDERGROUND’ HIP-HOP Bunny Gregory opened her home to rappers and forever changed the local music scene.

BY MARK KEMP

BUNNY GREGORY WAS the “weird” kid

in her school. For one thing, it was the ‘70s and ‘80s and she was a black artist in Charlotte who liked poetry and listened to everything from country to R&B, jazz and even crooners like Frank Sinatra. It only made sense a couple of decades later that in Charlotte, where few music venues cater to black artists, particularly hip-hop artists, Gregory, 52, would start a basement venue on Monroe Road that catered specifically to artists who were shunned everywhere else — artists like Tizzy and Kizzy of Th3 Higher, who are not only rappers but also poets, visual artists, merchants of psychedelia, and (dare I say) philosophers.

Gregory’s venue was called the Underground, and after a few different location changes and an extended hiatus, it’s now back as a floating event, presenting shows at places like New Era Music House on Old Concord Road and Three Spirits Brewery on Old Pineville Road. We talked with Gregory — call her “Bunny,” please; only journalists use last names after first reference — about why she decided to launch her amazingly selfless showcase for young, talented “weird” artists .

Creative Loafing: So you told me earlier that you listened to everything from Loretta Lynn to Sergio Mendes growing up. When did rap grab you?

Bunny Gregory: I had listened to a lot of oldschool R&B, and a lot of them were essentially rappers — they’d do some talking parts over the music and that was something that I really enjoyed. It was like poetry. And so when the Sugar Hill Gang hit, I loved them. That was one of first records I ever bought, but the very first album I bought was a ParliamentFunkadelic album.

What inspired you about hip-hop in Charlotte, decades later, to start a venue catering to hip-hop art in all its forms?

Being black here in Charlotte, there was nothing here for black artists. Knowing that and growing up with that, I felt something needed to be done about it. They always called me weird growing up. And when I started thinking about opening the Underground, I wanted a place where people could just do what they do, express who they are. We had people who would write poetry, do other kinds of art, and just hang out and be comfortable being who they are.

“I guess sometimes if you can’t find it, you gotta make it.”

I’d had another place over in NoDa, but to make money we had to start doing ravelike parties and I didn’t like that. It wasn’t working out the way I had envisioned. But the good thing is that I met a lot of kids there who still come to the Underground. They were some of the more talented ones. And I still have great relationships with all of those kids.

I recently interviewed Tizzy and Kizzy of Th3 Higher, who consider you a sort of goddess of Charlotte music. Then I noticed that you wrote a comment on the story at CL’s Facebook page saying they were the ones who inspired you to do the Underground. It is that true?

I met Tizzy when I moved to Monroe Road, and he and Kizzy wanted to do something with me. From there it sort of snowballed.

We started in 2014 in a little white house on Monroe Road next door to the Auto Bell, and were there for two years but ran into a lot of opposition — “code violations.” It would have been crazy expensive to do the necessary improvements, so we took it outside and started doing them as bonfires.

You’re very resourceful.

PHOTO COURTESY OF BUNNY GREGORY

You gotta be.

Did you feel like you were being singled out because you had rappers?

Yes, the cops were coming by constantly.

They’d say, “If you guys are just showing art, that’s fine.” But they wanted us to have dancehall permits. And they weren’t helpful when we needed them. They were always parked next door, but six or seven cars got broken into, and the cops never did anything about it.

If anybody, who would you say set the tone for the creativity that’s happened at the Underground?

Tizzy and Kizzy definitely set the tone of it.

They had been working on the music they do for quite a while and were going to other venues and trying to do something like this.

Let me guess: They got, ‘We don’t do rap.’

Am I right?

[Laughs] Yes. Anybody who know doesn’t know anything about rap thinks it’s all the same — they think gansta or trap. But Tizzy and Kizzy are doing amazing things. And everybody else at the Underground was like that. Every time you came it would be a different genre. Leanna Eden would come in and do her folky stuff. It was one of the most diverse crowds you’d see. It could be very folky, lo-fo acoustic music, and I even had some guys playing heavy metal-type things there. And in all the years I had it, we never had any problems. Never. Everyone seemed comfortable in their surroundings there.

Kids even came on days we weren’t doing an event. They’d just come, hang out and talk

about working with each other. I just let them have the basement. They painted it, they made the stage, and from there, I just met so many other young people in Charlotte who wanted to do things but couldn’t find a place.

You stopped at some point. When did you start back and why?

We started back in March of this year at my home. I started back because we’d been gone for about a year or so, and people were asking about it, and I was thinking, ‘You know what: I can start it back out here at the house.” Well, the first night so many people showed up that there weren’t places for them to park.

I had no idea how much these kids missed it. I can’t even tell you how quickly it kicked in. I didn’t realize to the great extent that they needed this space.

Would I be correct in assuming you’ve moved the Underground out of your house now?

Yes, we’re doing them now at the New Era Music House on Old Concord Road, and we have since talked to the owner of Three Spirits Brewery and have done a few shows there in the past month and a half.

How did the Underground inspire you as an artist?

I started painting again. A lot of my art is very Afrocentric, and I never felt like there was a place for me and now I do. It allowed me to think, “There is a place for me. There is a place for us.” I guess sometimes if you can’t find it, you gotta make it.

CLCLT.COM | JUL. 13 - JUL. 19, 2017 | 19

MUSIC

SOUNDBOARD

JULY 13 CLASSICAL/JAZZ/SMOOTH John Alexander Jazz Trio (Blue Restaurant & Bar)

COUNTRY/FOLK Jason Aldean, Chris Young, Kane Brown (PNC Music Pavilion) Wheeler Walker Jr. (The Underground) Whitey Morgan, Tony Martinez (Neighborhood Theatre)

Rosewave, Bad Karol, Jistu (Hattie’s Tap & Tavern) Sounds on the Square: Caroline Calouche & Co (Spirit Square) Stump Tail Dolly, PPR, Joules, Asbestos Boys, “The Southern Madman” Tom Stover (Milestone) Summer Lights: Mercyme, Jeremy Camp, Natalie Grant, Jimi Cravity, Meredith Andrews (Charlotte Metro Credit Union Amphitheatre) Thirsty Horses (RiRa Irish Pub)

DJ/ELECTRONIC

JULY 15

Le Bang (Snug Harbor)

BLUES/ROOTS/INTERNATIONAL

POP/ROCK

Chris Jones & The Night Drivers (South Mecklenburg Presbyterian Church)

Carmen Tate (Eddie’s Seafood & Raw Bar, Mooresville) Bentwater (Comet Grill) Bitter Inc., The Emotron, Pray 4 Triangle Zero, Camping (Milestone) Cris Jacobs (U.S. National Whitewater Center) Goose (The Evening Muse) Holy Ghost Tent Revival (Visulite Theatre) Karaoke with DJ ShayNanigans (Hattie’s Tap & Tavern) Live Band Karaoke (RiRa Irish Pub) New Kids On The Block, Paula Abdul, Boyz II Men (Spectrum Center) Throwback Thursdays: 80s and 90s Music (Morehead Street Tavern)

JULY 14 CLASSICAL/JAZZ/SMOOTH Jazzy Fridays (Freshwaters Restaurant)

BLUES/ROOTS/INTERNATIONAL Steven Engler Band (Blue Restaurant & Bar)

COUNTRY/FOLK Blue Cactus (Thirsty Beaver) The Lenny Federal Band (Comet Grill) Live on the Green (First Ward Park)

DJ/ELECTRONIC DJ Method (RiRa Irish Pub) Mic Larry (Tin Roof) Player Made : An Ode To Southern Rap Of All Eras (Snug Harbor)

POP/ROCK Born of Osiris, Betraying The Martyrs, Widowmaker (Neighborhood Theatre) Ezra Root (Vinyl Pi, Huntersville) Joshua Cotterino, Count Vaseline, Labia Minor (Petra’s) NüSound Showcase featuring Den of Wolves, Levy Wiggi, Blu House, Black Linen, Railz, Heather Himes (The Evening Muse) Pig Pen, Slade and the Wasters, Hooliganz (The Station) 20 | JUL. 13 - JUL. 19, 2017 | CLCLT.COM

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CLASSICAL/JAZZ/SMOOTH Jazz in July (Blue Blaze Brewing)

DJ/ELECTRONIC Digital Noir featuring Michael Price and DJ Spider (Milestone) Mic Larry (Tin Roof) DJ Red (RiRa Irish Pub)

HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B Raekwon (The Underground)

POP/ROCK Blakeney Summer Concert Series (Blakeney Shopping Center) Anchor Detail, Black Powder (Hattie’s Tap & Tavern) Below The Belt (RiRa Irish Pub) The Big Lonesome, Future Lives, The High Beams (The Evening Muse) Elonzo Wesley (U.S. National Whitewater Center) MoSART (Comet Grill) Music of the 80s (Morehead Street Tavern) Rumours: a Tribute To Fleetwood Mac (The Fillmore) Sinners & Saints w/ David Childers, It’s Snakes, Timothy Eerie (Snug Harbor) Summer Camp Concert: Girls Rock Charlotte!

(McGlohon Theater at Spirit Square) Toleman Randall, Mirror Man, Travis Phillips (Petra’s) Will Schmitt (Vinyl Pi, Huntersville)

JULY 16 HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B Lil Pump (The Underground)

POP/ROCK Picnic in the Park (Fourth Ward) Kasey Chambers, Garrett Kato (Neighborhood Theatre) Omari and The Hellhounds (Comet Grill

Tedeschi Trucks Band, The Wood Brothers, Hot Tuna (Charlotte Metro Credit Union Amphitheatre)

JULY 17 HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B Knocturnal (Snug Harbor) #MFGD Open Mic (Apostrophe Lounge)

POP/ROCK Find Your Muse Open Mic with Wild Rivers (The Evening Muse) Locals Live: The Best in Local Live Music & Local Craft Beers (Tin Roof) The Monday Night Allstars (Visulite Theatre) Open Mic with Jade Moore (Primal Brewery, Huntersville) Primus, Clutch (Charlotte Metro Credit Union Amphitheatre) Shannon Lee and Thomas Stainkamp Dueling Piano’s Night (Vinyl Pi)

JULY 18 CLASSICAL/JAZZ/SMOOTH Bill Hanna Jazz Jam (Morehead Tavern)

COUNTRY/FOLK Red Rockin’ Chair (Comet Grill) Tuesday Night Jam w/ The Smokin’ Js (Smokey Joe’s Cafe)

POP/ROCK The Bald Brotherhood (Tin Roof) Friends at the Falls, Reaves, Futurists (Milestone) Jesse Jazz Band Jam (The Evening Muse) Soapbox Soliloquy w/ Nicholas Holman, Blanket Fort, Dark Prophet Tongueless Monk (Snug Harbor) Spoon, The New Pornographers (Charlotte Metro Credit Union Amphitheatre)

JULY 19 CLASSICAL/JAZZ/SMOOTH The Clarence Palmer Trio (Morehead Tavern)

DJ/ELECTRONIC Cyclops Bar: Modern Heritage Weekly Mix Tape (Snug Harbor)

COUNTRY/FOLK Open Mic (Comet Grill)

HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B Against All Odds Tour: Meek Mill, Yo Gotti, Moneybagg Yo, YFN Lucci (Charlotte Metro Credit Union Amphitheatre)

POP/ROCK Fruits + Flowers (The Station)

SOUNDBOARD

MUSIC

Karaoke with DJ Pucci Mane (Petra’s) The Kickback, Airpark (The Evening Muse) Millennial, Victoria Victoria, Reaves (Neighborhood Theatre) Open mic w/ Jared Allen (Jack Beagles) Pluto For Planet (RiRa Irish Pub) Songwriter Open Mic @ Petra’s (Petra’s) Spirit System w/ Mall Goth, True Believer, Your Fuzzy Friends (Snug Harbor) Trivia & Karaoke Wednesdays (Tin Roof)

COMING SOON The Lowest Pair (July 20, U.S. National Whitewater Center) The Steel Wheels (July 22, Neighborhood Theatre) Pinky Poodle Doodle (July 25, Snug Harbor) Dollar Signs (July 25, Milestone) Patty Griffin, Lee Ann Womack (July 26, Neighborhood Theatre) Chastity Brown (July 26, Evening Muse) Boy Harsher (July 28, Snug Harbor) Toad The Wet Sprocket (July 28, Neighborhood Theatre) Aborlea (July 28, Milestone) Frank Secich (July 29, Snug Harbor) Future Thieves (August 2, Evening Muse) Fuel (August 2, The Underground) Sumilian (August 3, U.S. National Whitewater Center) Gillian Welch (August 4, Knight Theater) Descendents (August 4, The Fillmore Charlotte) Pleasures (August 4, Snug Harbor) Gov’t Mule (August 5, CMCU Amphitheater) Foreigner, Cheap Trick (August 5, PNC Music Pavilion) Playboi Carti (August 6, The Fillmore Charlotte) Ford Theatre Reunion (August 6, Milestone) Carpoolparty (August 8, Snug Harbor) Farruko (August 9, The Fillmore Charlotte) J. Cole (August 9, Spectrum Center) Wyclef Jean (August 10, Neighborhood Theatre) Erykah Badu (August 12, PNC Music Pavilion) Flagship (August 13, The Underground) John Mayer, (August 15, PNC Music Pavilion) Social Distortion (August 19, The Fillmore Charlotte) Counting Crows, Matchbox 20 (August 20, PNC Music Pavilion) The Veldt (August 25, Snug Harbor) Ryan Culwell (August 26, U.S. National Whitewater Center) Jim Lauderdale (August 27, Evening Muse) Kendrick Lamar (August 29, Spectrum Center) TKO Faith Healer (August 29, Snug Harbor) Ed Sheeran (September 3, Spectrum Center) Cabinet (September 7, U.S. National Whitewater Center) Apocalyptica (September 8, McGlohon Theater) Bruno Mars (September 14, Spectrum Center)

7/13 HOLY GHOST TENT REVIVAL + EMMA'S LOUNGE 7/13 TRUCKSTOP PREACHERS + Loose Lugnuts 7/20 JOHN MORELAND & TRAVIS LINVILLE 7/21YARN 7/28 YO MAMA'S BIG FAT BOOTY BAND THE 7/30 ROCKET SUMMER 8/29 Great Van Fleet 9/6 BIRDTALKER 9/8 WILL HOGE John Prine (September 16, Belk Theater) Adam Ant (September 22, The Fillmore Charlotte) Stephane Wrembel (September 22, Evening Muse) Kings of Leon (September 27, PNC Music Pavilion) Katy Perry (September 27, Spectrum Center) The Secret Sisters (September 29, Evening Muse) Cafe Tacuba (October 6, The Fillmore Charlotte) Imagine Dragons (November 8, Spectrum Center)

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 704-5228088. We need the date, venue, band name and contact name and number.

The deadline is each Wednesday, one week before publication.

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YOUR LISTINGS!

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JULY 21

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CLCLT.COM | JUL. 13 - JUL. 19, 2017 | 21

ARTS

FEATURE

MILLING ABOUT New exhibit shows NODA before it was NODA

BY MARK KEMP

ONCE UPON A TIME, what’s today known as gentrified NoDa in North Charlotte was a simple mill village, where the citizens, mill workers, were disparagingly called lintheads.

Back in the Day is showing a gallery of photos spanning from the neighborhood’s early years to the 1970s. It’s an amazing, eyeopening look at a village where workers were more concerned with earning enough to live and feed kids than where to find the perfect condo or place to show art.

One place that shows really interesting art today is NoDa Company Store, which will dispay “North Charlotte: The Villages of Highland Johnston Mecklenburg Charlotte” from opening day July 14 through Labor Day. Here’s a little teaser, but take note: these are just a few of the many pieces that will be on display. You have to actually go out and see them to get the full effect. Best of all: it’s free.

The captions in the photo essay are from the actual show.

For more info, contact backintheday.org.

SUPER TRUCK SERVICE (THAT DOESN’T SUCK) The doors give away this NoDa landmark – the Rat’s Nest on 36th Street. Photo by Barry Lester/1977 Photo Essay. To purchase: Photo #2 barry@barrylester.com

NORTH DAVIDSON MILL WORKERS North Charlotte Inn, later Shue’s Boarding House

and now the Highland Inn on Alexander Street, was home to single mill workers. Rent was $8 a week and included three meals a day (two on Sunday.) Proprietor Ceola Shue was an avid baseball fan and housed several mill ballplayers, paying them $5 for every home run. Local legend has it that the ghost of a baseball player still inhabits the space. The inn, built in 1903, was meant to be the anchor to a business district that never came to be. It is now apartments.

Photo courtesy of the Robinson-Spangler Carolina Room of the Public Library of CharlotteMecklenburg County.

22 | JUL. 13 - JUL. 19, 2017 | CLCLT.COM

IT’S PAT’S TIME! Locals hang out at Pat’s Time for One More in 1977. Pat’s Time was a

favorite local dive bar years before NoDa was NoDa. It was in a strip of three storefronts that at different times included a dry cleaner, five and ten store, shoe repair shop and a public library branch. Proprietor Pat Nevitt stayed in business during the arts district transition, leasing the adjoining storefronts to 23 Studio and Wrightnow Gallery. The buildings were razed to make room for the 2-story Nevitt building, erected in 2002. Pat’s was roughly where NoDa 101 now sits. Photo by Barry Lester/1977 Photo Essay. To purchase: Photo #13 barry@barrylester.com

WHEN KIDS RODE BIKES Young

children ride bikes in North Charlotte in 1977. Photo by Barry Lester/1977 Photo Essay. To purchase: Photo #20 barry@barrylester.com

CABO FISH PHARMACY Looking north on North Davidson

Street in 1977. The pharmacy at left is now Cabo Fish Taco. Photo

by Barry Lester/1977 Photo Essay. To purchase: Photo #10 barry@ barrylester.com

TOY STORY You could grab a skin mag, sex toys and catch up on the news with Barbara Walters inside the Astor Art Book Store and Peep Show.

Photo by Barry Lester/1977 Photo Essay. To purchase: Photo #7 barry@ barrylester.com

GAMBLES’ EVOLVED TO GROWLER’S Thomas Durant McCall poses in the business district in the early 1950s. In the background is Gambles’ Drug Store, now Growler’s Pour House. Photo courtesy of the Robinson-Spangler Carolina Room of the Public Library of CharlotteMecklenburg County.

NEIGHBORHOOD’S WILDEST TRANSITION The Astor Theatre was born in

1947 as a traditional movie house and Saturday morning haven for neighborhood children, who could enjoy a double feature and snacks for a couple of coins. By the early 1950s, the Astor was screening B-grade films before closing completely.

It reopened in the 60s as Astor Art Theatre (“Carolinas’ Most Unusual Theatre”) and by the 70s was strictly showing X-rated movies. Rumor has it the apartments upstairs doubled as a brothel during this time. Porn flicks gave way to church services in the 1980s. Then Paul McBroom and Sharon Pate bought the theater and turned it into a full-time music venue in 1997, setting the stage for today’s Neighborhood Theatre. Photo by Barry Lester/1977 Photo Essay. To purchase: Photo 4 barry@barrylester.com CLCLT.COM | JUL. 13 - JUL. 19, 2017 | 23

COLUMBIA

Tom Holland in Spider-Man: Homecoming.

ARTS

FILM

SWINGER LIFESTYLE Spider-Man reboot makes the right moves

BY MATT BRUNSON

I

T’S REMARKABLY easy and

completely understandable to complain about superhero fatigue, until one realizes that the superheroes are the ones saving the day — and the box office.

While this summer’s other franchise pictures have been performing below expectations — regardless of whether they’re good (Alien: Covenant), bad (Transformers: The Last Knight) or just downright ugly (Pirates of 24 | JUL. 13 - JUL. 19, 2017 | CLCLT.COM

the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales) — it’s the efforts from the cinematic branches of Marvel and DC that have prevented this movie season from being a total washout.

More importantly, in terms of quality, both Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and especially Wonder Woman have proven to be among the few bright spots — and now here comes Spider-Man: Homecoming (*** out of four) to further strengthen the argument.

The best Spider-Flick since 2004’s SpiderMan 2, this one finds Tom Holland justifying

the goodwill generated by his supporting stint in last year’s Captain America: Civil War. As the new Peter Parker/Spider-Man, he’s an utter delight, emerging as less cocky than Andrew Garfield and even more self-effacing than Tobey Maguire. For that, credit not only Holland but also director Jon Watts and a sextet of scripters (including Watts), who collectively serve up an interpretation of the web-slinger that capitalizes on the character’s teenage roots. Wisely, the origin story isn’t replayed for the umpteenth time

— yup, the kid was bitten by a radioactive spider; let’s move on! — allowing for more time to focus on Peter as he faces the horrors of high school life when he’s not facing real-world horrors. In fact, much of the charm of Spider-Man: Homecoming is how it adheres closer to vintage John Hughes than trademark Stan Lee, with many of the brightest moments centering around Peter’s taxing school days.

Still, it’s hard for our friendly neighborhood hero to concentrate on

Tom Holland in Spider-Man: Homecoming.

COLUMBIA

For more videos & interviews check out Michael Keaton in Spider-Man: Homecoming. chemistry classes when there are villains out there to vanquish. Anxious to tackle the bad guys — but kept in a holding pattern by mentor Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) and Stark’s right-hand man Happy (Jon Favreau) — Peter finally strikes out on his own when he gets wind of the dastardly maneuverings of one Adrian Toomes, aka The Vulture. As Toomes, Michael Keaton is excellent, showing us two sides of a complicated individual who allowed the big, bad world to corrode his soul.

The final battle royale gets too convoluted and continues for too long (a problem also in

COLUMBIA

GotGV2 and WW), and my pet peeve of two people in a city of 8.5 million coincidentally turning out to be related receives a major workout here. Then there’s Tony Stark/Iron Man, whose “guest appearance” occasionally feels more like a crutch — it’s not unlike, say, Henry Winkler’s Fonz from Happy Days and Penny Marshall’s Laverne from Laverne & Shirley both turning up in the pilot episode of Mork & Mindy to give the fledgling show a blessing and a boost. But these carps are ultimately mere asides. In most respects, Spider-Man: Homecoming swings and scores.

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NIGHTLIFE

HAVING A SPELL When nap time is not optional on my shoulders.

HAVE YOU ever fainted in a crowd of As if it wasn’t humbling enough that this people? Without hardcore drugs and limited time I fainted on a stranger’s porch, now alcohol in your system? No? Well, I’ve got a produce was being used to cure my fainting story for you. spell. #winning Picture it: Uptown, Charlotte, NC, July 4th weekend 2017. After grabbing a few It’s safe to say that once I rounded the drinks at The Blind Pig in NoDa on Friday corner to The Corner Pub I wasn’t too keen night — it’s popping there on a Friday, in on the idea of pouring up. I opted for bacon case you didn’t know — I was very excited cheese fries and ate as if my life depended to sleep in and hit up the pool with some on it. Later on, my friend asked if I’d like friends on Saturday. You know: “Hair of to venture with her to the University area. the dog” or “sweat it out” are both popular She’d left her car there the night before but phrases when someone’s trying to figure out knew I wouldn’t mind hanging out with her how to get rid of their hangover. and her squeeze at a spot you’ve probably I forced down a couple beers, foam heard of before: Boardwalk Billy’s. included, and was completely sold on the I walked in still wearing the bathing idea of sweating it out. I stretched out on suit I’d fainted in and an oversized a poolside lawn chair and prepared for grandpa’s shirt-dress. #keepitclassy. While the alcohol to leave my system magically.

Boardwalk Billy’s may best be compared to Somewhere between ordering a floating a cheesy, Myrtle Beach bar, I was still drinking game off of Amazon’s Prime underdressed. And yet, we shut Now app at 2 p.m. and leaving to the bar down. You can’t take escape the thunderstorm that me and my friends anywhere. had swept in around 5 or 6 The next day, my friends p.m., I lost track of how invited me to the pool once long we had been at the more. I couldn’t decide if pool. they really wanted to see We ended up tucking me of if they wanted to away to a new friend’s witness another fainting apartment for a postgame spell, and this time be party.

Now, this was no ready to capture it on video.

AERIN SPRUILL festival situation where I’d I kid, I kid, however, that had way too much to drink would’ve been epic. Just like the and “popped a Molly or Percocet” kid that learns not to put his or her like Future, but you would’ve thought hand on a hot stove, I learned my lesson I was at Bonnaroo when I tell you what about hydrating. happened next.

Yes, I went back to the pool, but not In a fog of humidity and cigarette smoke without double fisting a huge water and I started to realize I was swaying. My friend Gatorade. Not to mention, I retreated to the asked, “Aerin, do you need to sit down?” I shade every single time I stepped out of the looked up and responded, “I’m swaying, I pool. know, but I’m good.”

After surviving a couple hours of summer But then as I started thinking about sun, I thought I could handle rallying at The it, I realized just how damn hot it was Corner Pub yet again. I didn’t realize I’d outside. Just as I’d made up my mind that, surpassed my threshold and lost track of yes, I needed to go sit down inside, another time chatting it up with all the regulars innocent bystander asked me a question. I until I looked up and saw the staff shutting thought about ignoring him so I could escape the place down for the night. This is when I faster, but I answered. should’ve realized that it was time for me to Everything went black. When I came go home. to, I was looking at the floor, and everyone Instead, someone convinced me I should around me was staring in silent shock. That’s pay a visit to Crave Dessert Bar. My first when I busted out laughing. time visiting and I was wearing a faux leather It must have been hilarious watching bathing suit and a sheer cover-up with how my tumble caused all those people’s Rainbow flip-flops. Dress code violation, buzz to be killed. Party foul! anyone?

Next thing you know, I’ve fallen again but this time I’m sitting on the cold floor of the Well, that’s a story for another time. apartment with frozen peas and blueberries BACKTALK@CLCLT.COM

ENDS

CROSSWORD

PERMANENT LINKS ACROSS

1 Neighbor of Rwanda 7 Only OK 11 Lucky mystique 15 Odist, e.g.

19 Bagel shape 20 “-- Excited” 21 Baldwin of film 22 Duncan of education 23 Decorative window option 25 Grown-up eft 26 Dryer fuzz 27 Tendril, e.g.

28 Atop, to a 15-Across 29 Washed-out 31 Slowly, on a score 33 Hurdle for a new driver’s-license applicant 38 See 24-Down 41 Wall St. news 42 Prefix with vision 43 Superhero film of 2015 44 Apple pic application 46 Bottom-row PC key 47 “-- Miniver” 48 Mimics a wolf 51 Totem pole, essentially 53 Item in an election box 56 Ocean’s hue 57 Ocean’s kin 58 Cleveland cager, briefly 59 Subsides 60 Oxidizes 62 Upright height 65 Coach Riley 66 Pick up on 68 What can follow eight key words in this puzzle to get phrases meaning “permanent” 70 SSA part 75 City area, informally 77 Deny, as a fact 79 Mambo relative 80 “No, not true!”

84 Mine rocks 85 Bang into 87 Fix, as a cat 88 Vase inserts 90 Fixed goal 93 State, to Luc 94 Alias initials 95 Jacob’s first wife 96 Secondary 97 Venerate

100 Objectives 101 24-hr. cash source 102 Serpentine letter 103 Fancy wedding mailing 108 Frosh topper 109 Seedy loaf 110 Salem-to-L.A. dir.

111 It’s a no-no 115 Greek liqueur 116 White-dwarf explosion 119 Feature of a bodybuilder’s tummy 122 Dunkable cookie 123 Smack hard 124 Gofer, e.g.

125 Isis’ brother 126 “Freak on a Leash” rock band 127 In times past 128 Fulfill 129 Cloud layers

DOWN

1 Colorado natives 2 Alternative style to emo 3 Former BP gas brand 4 Not at all, informally 5 Classic cola brand 6 Count up 7 -- mignon 8 Italian liqueur 9 Specific mag. printing 10 UFO museum city 11 Miracle food from above 12 Bullfighting yell 13 Hanukkah observer 14 Eighth of a circle 15 Tasty 16 They’re not facsimiles 17 Film scorer Morricone 18 “Grand” mountain 24 With 38-Across, deteriorate 30 Logger’s tool 32 Block (up) 34 Apple items with earbuds 35 Geeky sort 36 Rover’s planet 37 Foot section 38 Jean-Luc of the U.S.S. Enterprise 39 Light-blocking 40 Propulsion

45 Egg-shaped 46 Raccoon lookalike 47 Experts 49 “__ name it!”

50 Brand of fuel additives 52 “Gone” actor Bentley 53 “Lili” actress Leslie 54 Dolly’s calls 55 Fur tycoon on the Titanic 58 “Aw” inspirer 61 Certain oar 63 Longhair cat 64 Romanov bigwigs 67 Half a sextet 69 Neighbor of 36-Down 71 Tooth parts 72 Horn in (on) 73 Demeans 74 Parfait parts 76 Look out for 78 Talk shrilly 80 Cola cooler 81 “Tsk, tsk!”

82 Daydreamer 83 Matinee time 86 Prefix with faceted 89 Barely earned, with “out” 90 Rig on a road 91 Manhattan area 92 Most distant 95 Equipment for realtime viewing on the Net 98 Steve of rock guitar 99 “All the same ...”

100 Above zero 101 To __ (unerringly) 103 Nook reading 104 Prefix with physiologist 105 Beyond mad 106 Good point 107 Low point 112 Silents vamp Theda 113 Somber paper notice 114 Greek mount 117 Have 118 Carpet sweeper, briefly 120 Move hastily 121 UCLA part

SOLUTION FOUND ON P. 30.

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I’m a gay medical student with a medical fetish, and I can’t even open up to my therapist about this. I think the fetish started when I was young; I was once in the hospital and given a suppository for a fever. Then one time I was given a Fleet enema. I don’t think the “butt stuff” turned me gay, but my fetish may stem from the aspect of being controlled. I grew up in a very conservative religious household. I’ve never been in a relationship, and I don’t know that I could have one while hiding what turns me on. In my profession, we have to be confident and even sort of “dominant” in our roles as providers, but underneath I’m incredibly submissive. I didn’t go into medicine for this reason. We have very strict professional boundaries and ethical expectations, and I have no problem with that. I expect my job to be very clinical and boring. But outside of work, I feel like my sexual desires need some kind of outlet.

physicals, insert and irrigate catheters, use sounds, and otherwise have enough technical expertise to do a medical scene that’s realistic enough that I can enjoy being their patient without screaming, ‘No, that’s not how it’s done!’ He may find himself doing the same.”

The good news?

“DOC won’t have any trouble finding like-minded people,” said Eric. “Medical fetishists are well organized online; just spend a few minutes on Google and he’ll find them.”

I have a phone-sex kink, and I got Tinder to explore that. I tell guys it won’t get physical and that I’m interested only in text play and photo swapping. I matched with a cute, kinky guy, and I have been playing with him mostly over text for about two years. The issue is that I found out recently that he’s engaged. I’m pretty conflicted about this.

He says that sex with DILEMMA OF CONSCIENCE her is good but vanilla and that she’s unwilling to experiment. He “Someone can have also isn’t comfortable one persona at work and sharing his kinks with DAN SAVAGE another at home,” said Eric her. I understand that the Red, a Florida nurse and a some people have a hard fellow medical fetishist. “DOC can time reconciling the dirty shit be confident and dominant at work — they want to do in bed with the his patients need someone confident and sweet girl they want to marry, but he dominant to get them through their medical seems unwilling to try. Do I cut him issues — and then find someone to spend off? Is he just doing what he has to do his life with who brings out his submissive to make an otherwise good relationship side and gives him the balance to make him work? Is it okay of him if she never finds feel like a whole person.” out and everyone is happy?

In other words, DOC, when you do start PLAYING HURTFUL OVER TEXT ONLY? dating and having relationships, you’re going to want to be open about your kinks. They’re The odds that your sext buddy’s wife nothing to be ashamed of, and there’s no will never find out are slim. Spouses snoop, point in hiding your sexual interests from computers and phones get left open, a dirty your future partner(s). You want a sex message or photo intended for one person partner who meets your needs, not one you (say, you) gets sent to the wrong person (say, have to hide your needs from. So long as you her). If you’re not comfortable playing with keep things professional at work — which someone who is deceiving his girlfriend and/ shouldn’t be hard, since it’s being the patient or wife — if you don’t want the incriminating and not the doctor that turns you on — you message his wife inevitably finds to be one have nothing to feel conflicted about. intended for or from you — you should end “The one practical problem he will this, PHOTO. encounter is that since he actually knows But it is possible to continue playing/ how to give a physical, he may have less texting/sexting with a semi-clear conscience: patience with fetishists who are not medical He may be doing what he needs to do to make professionals in real life and don’t really this relationship work or he’s exploring his know what they are doing,” said Eric. “Over kinks without touching another woman. If the years, I have trained nonprofessionals this is cheating, it’s cheating lite. who want to play doctor to give semi-realistic

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SOLUTION TO THIS WEEK'S PUZZLE

FOR ALL SIGNS Mars is featured prominently in the zodiac this week. This planet represents the principle of raw, physical power. He is the original god of war and therefore “rules” knives, guns, surgical instruments, or anything that might cut, like a sword. He rules “attack” on any level, including that which is accidental. On the mental level Mars operates through will power and can press us to take risks and take on projects we might normally be fearful to try. On the emotional level, Mars can represent anger, the rush of adrenaline, and the power to carry through with our feelings.

On a spiritual level, which is his highest principle, Mars is best used as a warrior who protects those who need personal justice.

War, on some level may be featured in the news.

ARIES Plan to work and play alone this

week. You likely will be feeling restless and generally tense. Your patience could be short and you might say things you’ll wish you hadn’t. You have a desire to break free from restraints. It is a short transit. Look for a way to handle this moderately. Heavy work around the home is a good outlet.

TAURUS Under your placid exterior lies a layer of desire which may or may not get you in trouble. It depends upon how you manage this energy. Make an effort to avoid mowing over others. Your drive is best used for protection of those less capable than yourself.

GEMINI It is possible you will feel a sense

of fatigue this week. Maybe something has caused you to be disappointed with yourself.

Don’t take the blues seriously or worry about yourself. In a few days you will feel much better. It is a temporary mood swing. Get some extra rest. Stay in touch with good friends.

CANCER (June 20 – July 21) Drive and

handle tools carefully this week. Your reflexes may be off center. Exercise judiciously. Listen to your body. You are likely to be edgy and irritable, thus making an accident of some kind more likely. As the week moves onward, you will feel better. Step aside from battles over ego or power. That is a poor use of your energy.

LEO THE LION This is not the time to seek

favors or special requests from the Powers That Be. And you are not likely to be long on lenience if someone requests help or a donation from you. Your attitude is practical and straightforward. He or she who asks had best truly deserve the requested gain or privilege.

VIRGO Vesta, goddess of devotion to the flame (spirit), enters your sign this week and will be with you through mid-September.

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She was one of the Vestal Virgins, whose assignment was to attend to the sacred fire.

This represents a new development that requires your full attention. You may become the vessel of spiritual sustenance for one or more others during these weeks.

LIBRA Your optimistic and happy attitude

causes others to join your bandwagon and support your projects. You can envision a grand result and are able to express it in a way that others can understand. Let your imagination flow and consider adding something beautiful, maybe inspirational, to your everyday surroundings. It will perk up your attitude.

SCORPIO Your warrior self is front and center during this period. The best use of this energy is on behalf of the Greater Good or another person who needs a champion. Use that energy with thoughtful intentionality.

Your reflexes may be off kilter. Ground your adrenalin with heavy exercise.

SAGITTARIUS This week an opportunity

to expand your social life brings smiles.

You may be invited to a party or you might meet someone new. This aspect is from Venus, goddess of love and creativity. The muse may be at your side as you produce a particularly creative idea or solution to a problem. Partners and clientele are verbally appreciative.

CAPRICORN Life continues at a snail’s

pace due to one detour or another. People seem generally uncooperative and it is possible that forward motion is thwarted by mechanical breakdowns or even the weather.

Aspects become less troublesome next week.

Everyone has a week like this sometimes.

AQUARIUS Read the lead paragraph

carefully. You may be encountering one or more people this week who have a war-like attitude. Don’t engage with them at all.

Don’t allow others to drag out your defensive side. Ignore the ongoing yada, yada of the Inner Critic. It exaggerates and sometimes lies outright.

PISCES This week brings an assorted list

of trials and tribulations. Speak and act with conscious intention around family members.

You may feel short-tempered and snap at others. It is possible that communications could go awry. Don’t allow a misperception to ruin a day. Discuss it immediately, if possible.

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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