Issue 32 Creative Loafing Charlotte

CLCLT.COM | OCTOBER. 4 - 10, 2018 VOL. 32, NO. 33

1 | DATE - DATE, 2015 | CLCLT.COM

2 | OCT. 4 - OCT. 10, 2018 | CLCLT.COM

CLCLT.COM | OCT. 4 - OCT. 10, 2018 | 3

NCDOT TO HOLD PUBLIC MEETING OCT. 10 FOR THE PROPOSED U.S. 21 (STATESVILLE ROAD) & CATAWBA AVENUE INTERSECTION IMPROVEMENTS IN MECKLENBURG COUNTY STIP Project No. C-5621 The N.C. Department of Transportation will hold a public meeting to present information on the proposed improvements to the intersection of U.S. 21 (Statesville Road) and Catawba Avenue in the Town of Cornelius in Mecklenburg County.

The meeting will be held on Wednesday, October 10 at the Cornelius Town Hall Community Room located at 21445 Catawba Avenue, in Cornelius from 4 to 7 p.m. Interested citizens may attend at any time during the meeting hours. Please note there will be no formal presentation.

The opportunity to submit written comments will be provided at the meeting or can be done via phone, email, online or mail no later than October 31, 2018. All comments will be taken into consideration as the project progresses.

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STAFF

PUBLISHER • Charles A. Womack III publisher@yesweekly.com EDITOR • Ryan Pitkin rpitkin@clclt.com

EDITORIAL

ASSOCIATE EDITOR • Courtney Mihocik cmihocik@clclt.com FILM CRITIC • Matt Brunson mattonmovies@gmail.com THEATER CRITIC • Perry Tannenbaum perrytannenbaum@gmail.com CONTRIBUTING WRITERS • Erin Tracy-Blackwood, Allison Braden, Konata Edwards, Jeff Hahne, Vanessa Infanzon, Ari LeVaux, Kia O. Moore, Grey Revell, Dan Savage, Aerin Spruill, Veronica Cox

ART/DESIGN

ART DIRECTOR • Dana Vindigni dvindigni@clclt.com CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS AND PHOTOGRAPHERS • Justin Driscoll, Brian Twitty, Grant Baldwin

ADVERTISING

To place an ad, please call 704-522-8334.

SALES MANAGER Aaron Stamey • astamey@clclt.com

As information becomes available, it may be viewed at the NCDOT Public Meeting Webpage: https://www.ncdot.gov/news/public-meetings

ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES Justin LaFrancois • jlafrancois@clclt.com Christos Kakouras • ckakouras@clclt.com ADVERTISING COORDINATOR

For additional information please contact NCDOT Project Team Lead, Sean Epperson, by phone at (704) 983-4400 or by email at smepperson@ncdot.gov or Consultant Project Manager Jenny Noonkester, by phone at (704) 940-4787 or by email at Jenny.Noonkester@rsandh.com.

NCDOT will provide auxiliary aids and services under the Americans with Disabilities Act for disabled persons who wish to participate in this meeting. Anyone requiring special services should contact Simone Robinson via email at strobinson1@ncdot.gov or by phone at (919)707-6062 as early as possible, so that arrangements can be made.

Pat Moran • pmoran@clclt.com

Creative Loafing © is published by CL, LLC 1000 NC Music Factory Blvd., Suite C-2, Charlotte, NC 28206.

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

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

Persons who do not speak English, or have a limited ability to read, speak or understand English, may receive interpretive services upon request prior to the meeting by calling 1-800-481-6494.

Aquellas personas no hablan inglés, o tienen limitaciones para leer, hablar o entender inglés, podrían recibir servicios de interpretación si los solicitan antes de la reunión llamando al 1-800-481-6494.

4 | OCT. 4 - OCT. 10, 2018 | CLCLT.COM

A MEMBER OF:

14

Kali Uchis will be dancing into The Fillmore on Sat. Oct. 6. Looking for more cool shit to do? Check out our Top 10 on page 14.

PHOTO BY FELIPE Q. NOGUIERA

We put out weekly 8

NEWS&CULTURE A WEST SIDE RIDE FOR HISTORY Pedal to Porch aims to connect new residents with historic neighborhoods

BY RYAN PITKIN 6 EDITOR’S NOTE BY COURTNEY MIHOCIK 6 THE BLOTTER BY RYAN PITKIN 7 NEWS OF THE WEIRD

10

FOOD&DRINK DRIER SIDE OF CIDER True cider continues to carve out its own space in the craft industry

BY COURTNEY MIHOCIK 12 THREE-COURSE SPIEL: PERRY LOWE ORCHARDS BY COURTNEY MIHOCIK

14 16

TOP 10 THINGS TO DO THIS WEEK

MUSIC THE KEEPER OF SOUL Calvin Richardson comes home

BY PAT MORAN 18 MUSICMAKER: COURTNEY LYNN & QUINN BY COURTNEY MIHOCIK 20 SOUNDBOARD

22

ARTS&ENTERTAINMENT CREATING A WAY OUT R Creative Collective uses art as a tool for recovery

BY RYAN PITKIN 24 FILM REVIEWS BY MATT BRUNSON 24 ARTSPEAK: JANELLE DUNLAP BY RYAN PITKIN

26

ODDS&ENDS 26 NIGHTLIFE BY AERIN SPRUILL 27 CROSSWORD 28 SAVAGE LOVE BY DAN SAVAGE 30 SALOME’S STARS

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COVER DESIGN

BY DANA VINDIGNI CLCLT.COM | OCTOBER. 4 - 10, 2018 VOL. 32, NO. 33

Website: www.clclt.com Facebook: /clclt Pinterest: @clclt Twitter: @cl_charlotte Instagram: @creativeloafingcharlotte YouTube: /qccreativeloafing 1 | DATE - DATE, 2015 | CLCLT.COM

CLCLT.COM | OCT. 4 - OCT. 10, 2018 | 5

NEWS

EDITOR’S NOTE

NEWS

BLOTTER

TIME TO GIVE CIDER A TRY

BY RYAN PITKIN

The cider industry in Charlotte is growing, be sure not to ignore it.

pharmacy in west Charlotte last week after a desperate man took desperate measures to improve his appearance. According to employees at a CVS on Wilkinson Boulevard, a suspect walked into the store at about 5:10 p.m. one day and stole eight boxes of the hair regrowth treatment Rogaine. The question now is this: Do you look for a bald suspect or one with brand-new hair?

WHEN I FIRST STARTED imbibing to a company like Angry Orchard.

One of the important things that I spoke craft beer, I only wanted one thing: IPAs. Everything else was just not hoppy to Beauchemin about was education about enough or it was too sweet. Eventually, my what a true craft cider is.

True cider is not concentrated apple juice palate began to expand, and I was taking in pilsners, lagers, porters, stouts, Belgians and watered down and then fermented with yeast then laden with extra sugar to raise the hefeweizens.

However, I still left out cider. It was just alcohol content.

Beauchemin believes that once the general too sugary for me. My first experiences with ciders in the form of Angry Orchard and public understands the variety of flavors and Woodchuck really warped my sense of what textures that cider can achieve along with a cider should taste like. I could feel a spike the excitement that each harvest brings, the in my blood sugar after one — two, if I was popularity of it will rise and realize its true potential. lucky.

It’s really an underrated category of It wasn’t until I had to force myself to go gluten-free for medical reasons that I really drink. One of the most memorable things tried out what true craft cider is. Shouts out that Beauchemin told me during our conversation was, “What a lot of people to Rhinegeist Brewery in Cincinnati, don’t recognize, is anything that Ohio, for its semi-dry and dryyou do with beer, you can do hopped year-round ciders and with cider.” to CiderBoys made in Stevens It’s important for Point, Wisconsin for Peach the general public to County, an apple and understand that the shit peach cider by which I was that the “big guys” are absolutely enthralled. bottling and distributing Those ciders really is back-sweetened with kickstarted my obsession tons of sugar or corn syrup and helped me ease into to give the yeast more the cider scene, which was food to convert to alcohol COURTNEY now a necessity for me. because the concentrate used They weren’t too sweet, MIHOCIK doesn’t have enough natural and I could tell that they were sugar. That’s why it’s so sweet and crafted with care and passion for you can feel the grainy sugar settling in quality.

I could almost taste the creativity and your molars.

If you want to taste what real cider is, try spirit of the craft industry that the cider Red Clay and Good Road. The dry, wine-like makers placed in the bottles, cans and kegs.

It soon became quite annoying when I quality that true cider has is quite enjoyable would head to a restaurant or a bar with and venturing outside of your normal variety friends and while they looked over the long of libations is always a good thing.

Want something sweeter? Ciders with a list of drafts, cans, bottles, wines and liquors available to them, I was usually stuck with little bit of natural fruit added will bring your one cider to choose from — maybe two if I tastebuds joy.

If those options are somehow still not to was lucky. If I was unlucky, the only thing your taste, stay in North Carolina and try out available to me would be wine or liquor.

“Then why don’t you drink wine or Bull City.

When I visited its booth at Creative liquor?”

Loafing’s Taco Lucha taco and beer festival Because I fucking like cider, OK? When I met up with Jay Bradish of Red over the weekend, the Off Main and Cherry Clay Ciderworks and Brian Beauchemin of Tart ciders really piqued my interest in the Good Road Ciderworks, I knew that I was Durham-based cidery.

This is all to say that if you are weary of going to have great conversations with people who were passionate about creating truly cider, don’t let your fear of the overly-sweet keep you from trying something new. handcrafted cider.

More importantly, stop spending your I spoke with both of them separately about the ciders out in the Charlotte money on variety packs of Angry Orchard. community. While it’s nice to see that many This is Charlotte, keep it local.

See you on the other cider. restaurants and bars are beginning to free up CMIHOCIK@CLCLT.COM one or two taps for a cider to offer to guests, it’s disheartening to see one of those taps go 6 | OCT. 4 - OCT. 10, 2018 | CLCLT.COM

BAD HAIR DAY Police responded to a

HOT MESS One woman should probably

consider staying away from the mini bar for a while after she was literally dragged kicking and screaming from the Aloft hotel near the Epicentre on a recent Sunday night. The “appreciably impaired” suspect was escorted out of the building by police, who reported that she pulled away from them multiple times while screaming curse words. She then upped the ante by kicking one of the police officers, and was eventually charged with assaulting a police officer, resisting arrest and intoxicated and disruptive behavior.

BOTTLE SERVICE Police cracked down on one man’s local business after he was found to be violating a plethora of liquor laws during a recent Panthers game day. The entrepreneur was found to be running his own personal ABC store on the side of East Morehead Street near Uptown. When police confronted him, they found 135 mini bottles of liquor, made up mostly of Finlandia Vodka and Jack Daniels. Police confiscated all of the man’s bottles, despite the fact that he was doing every tailgater in Charlotte that day a service. Not all heroes wear capes.

SHOTS FIRED More epic fails in Uptown hotels, as a 49-year-old Oxford man will not soon forget his recent excursion to Charlotte, which ended with a trip to the hospital. The man told police he had placed his Cobalt handgun in a bag with his clothes, and when he got into his room at the Hampton Inn he threw the bag onto the ground, at which time the gun fired and struck him. The man was hospitalized for a gunshot wound, although it was listed as just a minor injury on the report.

SECRET’S OUT It’s a pretty common

DESTROYER A 39-year-old northwest

occurrence for folks to pull grab ‘n’ go shoplifting runs at Victoria’s Secret, but one suspect leveled up recently, getting away with what might be a Blotter record worth of underwear. The suspect ran out of a Victoria’s Secret at SouthPark Mall with nearly $5,000 worth of merchandise, including 257 pairs of panties, 20 pairs of pajama pants and 26 bras.

LOADED Two suspects in south Charlotte decided to take a more tactful approach to their shoplifting last week, steadily increasing their bounty throughout the day while ignoring any demands that they pay for what they were drinking. Employees at a QuikTrip convenience store told police that the duo came into the store multiple times between 2 and 10:30 p.m. on a recent Saturday, each time snagging some beer.

They weren’t just stealing tallboys, either.

The report states that the pair made off with an 18-pack of Bud Light, a 24-pack of Bud Light, a 24-pack of Corona, a 12-pack of Corona and an 18-pack of Heineken. It’s a wonder they were able to walk by 10:30 p.m.

INCREDITABLE A 30-year-old Fort Mill

woman filed a report with CMPD recently after her attempts to boost her credit score were unsuccessful. The woman told officers that her friend recommended somebody who could help her increase her credit score back in March. She met the suspect at a Circle K, the sure sign of a legit operation, and gave him $425. Surprisingly, she reported that in the seven months since, the suspect has not done anything to help her with her credit score.

Charlotte man woke up one recent morning to find that someone had done some serious damage to his car — damage that went beyond your average vandalism report.

The man told police that some unknown suspect did $2,500 worth of damage to his 2018 Honda Civic by slashing all four tires, smashing the windshield and denting the hood and doors with a bat. The man said he isn’t sure whether the suspect ever tried to enter the car, but that’s sort of beyond the point. Whatever the vandal’s intentions, it’s safe to say the victim pissed someone off pretty thoroughly.

RESPONSIBLE FATHER Police responded

to the Mecklenburg County Child Support office last week after a man threw a hissy fit when told that he would have to continue to to pay for the child that he brought into this world. The man went to the office to see if he could get his monthly child support payment reduced, and when he was told it would not be reduced, he went into a rage, kicking a trash can and throwing a chair into the wall, doing $100 in damage. Just put it on his tab.

CHANGED MY MIND A similarly cheap

man — possibly the same man — was at the center of a dispute at Leather & Lace strip club in north Charlotte recently. Police responded to the club just after 1 a.m. in response to reports that a man allegedly enjoyed the fruits of $280 worth of private dances, then decided after the fact that he no longer wanted to pay for them.

All stories are pulled from police reports at CMPD headquarters. Suspects are innocent until proven guilty.

NEWS

NEWS OF THE WEIRD

NEW WORLD ORDER Kimberel Eventide, 36, believes her purpose here on Earth is to help other humans become elves, just like herself. A resident of Illinois, Eventide identifies as a Pleiadian Starseed, an Otherkin who first realized she was an elf after reading and watching the Lord of the Rings series by J.R.R. Tolkien. She spends her time dressing as an elf in silk, velvet or nature-inspired clothing and pointed elf ears — but she doesn’t wear them all the time because “my own ears have a slight point to them.”

Eventide’s husband supports her elfdom but “he does not understand it and does not watch many of my videos,” she said. “I am an Elven spiritual teacher who offers personal Skype online sessions to help individual souls,” she explained to the Daily Mail. Her mission, called “Projectelvenstar,” is specifically aimed at helping humans transform themselves into High Elves — “ears are optional but can become a byproduct of becoming extrasensory and hearing better over time.”

EASY MARKS Three men in Westborough, Massachusetts, are out $306,000 after falling victim to a scam, MassLive.com reported on Aug. 29. Joseph Boakye, 31, of Worcester is one of two suspects wanted by Westborough police for allegedly selling 15 kilograms of counterfeit gold dust. In July, the victims met Boakye and his accomplice at an Extended Stay America hotel and tested the gold dust for authenticity.

Apparently satisfied, they paid $26,000 in cash and transferred $280,000 into a Bank of America account, after which they received a locked Sentry safe that supposedly held the gold dust. Boakye told them they would get the combination to the safe after the transfer cleared. But two days later, when they were unable to open the safe, the victims called a locksmith. Inside — shocking! — was counterfeit gold.

THE RIGHT MOVES Thieves in Roanoke County, Virginia, hit the same shoe store twice in July and August, according to the Roanoke Times, stealing shirts, hoodies, jackets — and right shoes. Thirteen shoes meant for a right foot were taken from Clean Soles, where store operator Rob Wickham said he typically displays right shoes and keeps the mates behind the counter. They’re “not much good unless you have two right feet,” said Wickham. A 17-year-old suspect has been charged with the July break-in.

A WALL AND HARD PLACE A

homeowner in Toluca Lake, California, looked at video from his surveillance camera late on Aug. 29 and saw a person on the property, but it wasn’t until the next day, when he looked around for any damage, that a man was discovered stuck between a

wall and a garage. KCAL TV reported that it took firefighters more than an hour to free the unnamed man, a suspect wanted in connection with a burglary the night before. Los Angeles police arrested him for trespassing as he was transported to the hospital with minor injuries.

GET OFF MY LAWN Bryan Tucker of

Sandston, Virginia, was fed up to here with kids littering his lawn as they waited at the Henrico County school bus stop adjacent to his property. So on Sept. 4, he installed a battery-powered electric fence. “They don’t respect other people’s land,” Tucker told WTVR TV. “I pick up trash every day.”

Officials informed him later that day that the fence was placed on county property, not his own, so Tucker took it down. But he still thinks the point was made: “The message has gotten across,” Tucker said. “Parents are posting and talking about it.”

SORE LOSER Pavel Matveev, 15, of Mogochino village in the Tomsk region of Russia, apparently despairing of having lost a video game, was found in his yard Sept.

4 after committing suicide by decapitating himself with a chain saw. According to the Daily Mail, Russian media reported the teen’s single mother had bought him a computer, at which he “spent hours,” said one unnamed source. “This is what killed him.”

operator Beyel Brothers Crane & Rigging. No one was inside the home at the time, and no one on the roofing crew was injured, but the house has been declared unlivable.

A SEAT AT THE TABLE University of

Houston student Jehv M. looked at a blank wall in his local McDonald’s and saw opportunity.

Hoping to boost Asian representation in the burger chain’s advertising, Jehv created a poster featuring himself and a friend touting McDonald’s french fries. They bought used McDonald’s uniforms at a thrift store as disguises, then boldly hung the poster in a Pearland, Texas, location as customers ordered and ate around them.

United Press International reported that 51 days later, the poster still hung on the wall unnoticed, as shown in a photo on Jehv’s Twitter feed. As of Sept. 4, it was not clear whether management at McDonald’s knew of the poster’s origins.

INEXPLICABLE On Sept. 3, as an unnamed woman drove through Columbia Park, Washington, she witnessed a beaver being struck by a car. She stopped and tried to help the animal, wrapping it in a towel before

going home to find a container to put it in. When she returned to the scene about 30 minutes later, YakTriNews.com reported, she found 35-year-old Richard Delp sexually assaulting the dying beaver.

Unsurprisingly, Delp was also found to be in possession of methamphetamine; police charged him with possession and animal cruelty. The beaver didn’t survive.

QUESTIONABLE

JUDGMENT Billy Warren Pierce Jr., 44, an inmate of the Pasco County (Florida) Jail, already awaiting trial on charges of capital sexual battery of a child, compounded his problems by trying to hire a fellow inmate to kill his victim and her family. WFTS reported the unnamed inmate told detectives Aug. 22 that Pierce offered him $9,000 and instructed him about how to get into the house, even suggesting using a gas line fed through a window as the murder method. Jail staff also obtained a contract signed by Pierce, detailing the targets of the killing and the agreed-upon price. When told on Sept. 4 he would be charged with solicitation of murder, Pierce objected, “But I haven’t paid him any money yet.”

COPYRIGHT 2018 ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION

DON’T READ THE COMMENTS Monica Walley of Holden Heights, Florida, wrote a negative online review Aug. 20 about the Daybreak Diner in Orlando, accusing the restaurant of refusing service to her disabled mother. The negative review didn’t sit well with the diner owner’s son, Michael Johnson, or his housemates, Jesse Martin and Norman Auvil, reported WFTV. That evening, as the three sat drinking beer, Martin looked up Walley’s address, then they drove to her home, where Auvil, 42, shot three rounds into the house.

“I actually could feel the air from the bullet as it passed by me,” said Ken Walley, Monica’s father. “I didn’t think anybody was crazy enough to do something like this over something so small,” Monica Walley said.

Auvil was arrested Aug. 30 and charged with shooting into a dwelling, according to the Orange County Sheriff’s Office.

DECONSTRUCTION WORKERS An Orlando, Florida, home will need more than roof repairs after a crane parked outside tipped over on Sept. 4, splitting the house in half so cleanly daylight could be seen through it.

United Press International reported the roof was under construction when the machinery fell over, likely because the ground underneath it was wet, said Ivan Fogarty, corporate safety director for crane CLCLT.COM | OCT. 4 - OCT. 10, 2018 | 7

PHOTO BY MICHAEL HERNANDEZ

NEWS

FEATURE

PEDAL TO PORCH Free (RSVP suggested); Oct. 6, 4-8 p.m.; LATIBAH Collard Green Museum, Mosaic Village, 1635 W. Trade St.; tinyurl.com/Porch2PedalCLT

A WEST SIDE RIDE FOR HISTORY Pedal to Porch aims to connect new residents with historic neighborhoods

BY RYAN PITKIN

W

HEN I MET with Dianna Ward in a conference room at the Neighboring Concepts office in west Charlotte’s Mosaic Village on a recent afternoon, she jokingly told me I should sit at the other end of the table.

As usual, Ward had been hard at work, spending hours on a hot afternoon going door-to-door in a number of neighborhoods in the 5 Points area, hanging flyers on door knobs and letting people know about an upcoming event she hopes will help connect newcomers with a rapidly changing area of the city.

Pedal to Porch is a bike ride through the neighborhoods along the Beatties Ford corridor near Johnson C. Smith University.

Riders will take off from the LATIBAH Collard Green Museum at Mosaic Village on Saturday, October 6. While Ward has helped organize many rides like it in the area, this one will be the first of its kind, as it includes storytelling at stops along the route, educating folks about the history of west Charlotte. The ride is then followed by a community meal in the open space around LATIBAH. The idea originated in Detroit with Cornetta Lane, a community organizer who became interested in the power of storytelling as a healing process after her father was murdered in 2015. The following year, she hosted the first Pedal to Porch event in Detroit, creating a route for a bike ride with stops along the way where local residents told stories from the porch of their homes or other meaningful locations.

Earlier this year, Charles Thomas, program director at the Knight Foundation, approached Ward about holding a similar event in west Charlotte. Ward, executive director of the Charlotte B-Cycle bikesharing program, had held similar bike rides through the corridor in the past, including the back-to-school ride, an annual event in which JCSU students and others took B-Cycle bikes around the neighborhoods surrounding the school.

While Ward has seen plenty of success with those events — more than 100 people usually show up for the back-to-school ride — she had been contemplating ways to get surrounding community members more involved. Pedal to Porch seemed to be the 8 | OCT. 4 - OCT. 10, 2018 | CLCLT.COM

Dianna Ward (above, in blue shorts) gets ready to leave during a recent back-to-school ride at Johnson C. Smith University. The Leave Fear Behind bike group (below) shows up for all of Ward’s rides, and will be at Pedal to Porch on Saturday.

PHOTO BY MICHAEL HERNANDEZ

“THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN HERE FOREVER AND NEW PEOPLE COMING IN AND THEY DON’T TRUST EACH OTHER, THEY DON’T KNOW EACH OTHER’S STORIES.” DIANNA WARD

perfect way to do that.

Ward approached neighborhood associations up and down the corridor, including Wesley Heights, Seversville, Biddleville, Smallwood, Historic Washington Heights, McCrory Heights and Oaklawn Park.

The ride will also stop along Beatties Ford Road and at Mosaic Village.

Renee Pride-Dunlap, president of the Oaklawn Park neighborhood association, was one of two people in charge of finding speakers for the route. In the end, she was able to sign up nearly 20 people, business owners and residents from throughout the aforementioned neighbors.

Speakers include Dorothy CountsScoggins, who famously integrated Harding

High School in 1957; and Wallace Pruitt, known as the “Mayor of Seversville” and for whom the Wallace Pruitt Rec Center is named.

Two guests Pride-Dunlap wanted to be sure to include come from Oaklawn Park: Anna Hood, a community organizer and political activist whom Pride-Dunlap calls “the strength and backbone of Oaklawn Park;” and Bob Johnson, publisher of The Charlotte Post.

Pride-Dunlap grew up in Oaklawn Park and eventually moved back as an adult. She’s watched as the city’s growth has resulted in urban sprawl, gentrifying some of the historically black neighborhoods near Uptown.

“There’s people here that don’t know their

history,” she said. “The new people that’s coming, it’s rich history here on the west side that a lot of people are not aware of, and I really wanted to get involved with that. I’m big on saving the character of some of these neighborhoods, so that’s how I got involved, because if you know Charlotte, they are wiping out all the history, so I really wanted to let people know and be an advocate for saving the character of some of these places.”

Ward has also seen the faces of these neighborhoods begin to change, and she hopes Saturday’s bike ride can begin to build connections between some of the neighborhood’s most important leaders and new residents.

“We have these neighborhoods where there are people who have been here forever and new people coming in and they don’t trust each other, they don’t know each other’s stories,” she said. “So why don’t we make it such that we get to know each other by bringing them bikes, food and storytelling?”

Despite the larger issues that gentrification brings — issues like displacement — Ward said she’s optimistic that the folks who are moving into the area want to help their new communities preserve their history while progressing into the future.

In her eyes, it’s just a matter of bridging the communication gap.

“Sometimes when we see people that don’t look like we do, or have backgrounds that are unlike our own backgrounds, sometimes it’s intimidating to have conversation, and what I like about this is it’s going to give people more background about a neighbor that they might have wanted to know,” Ward said. “Sometimes we make up stories in our head about our neighbors — both the ones that are moving in and the ones [that have been there]. What we’re finding out is the people all just love this neighborhood, whether they’ve been here or whether they are moving in here.

“I think that they all share the vision, they all want to see progress, they can come together on that point,” she continued.

“Now, what progress looks like, I think that there’s probably work to be done on that.”

But if Ward can get people starting those conversations while also encouraging them to learn more about the city’s cycling infrastructure, that’s a step worth taking.

As for Pride-Dunlap, she’ll be bringing her bike to the event Saturday, enjoying the storytelling that she helped curate while taking part in her first group ride, because it’s not just the new residents who have something to learn.

“There are some stops on there that even I really don’t know the history of,” she said.

“So I’m going to ride as well.”

RPITKIN@CLCLT.COM

CLCLT.COM | OCT. 4 - OCT. 10, 2018 | 9

FOOD

COVERSTORY

An array of ciders from Red Clay.

PHOTO BY DANA VINDIGNI

DRIER SIDE OF CIDER True cider continues to carve out its own space in the craft industry

BY COURTNEY MIHOCIK

Y

OU BREW BEER, you brew

coffee, you brew tea, but you don’t brew cider. You just have to make it.

Cider has the alcohol content of a beer, but it’s made like a wine. It exists in the in-between of having the carbonation and alcohol by volume of brews but with the essential ingredients and simplicity of wine.

But for semantics’ sake, categorically and legally, it is a wine.

Made only from pressed apples (or pears) and yeast, when the fermentation process of cider is completed, it is usually dry and sits around 6 to 7 percent ABV. Ciders can be back-sweetened after fermenting with more apple juice to yield sweeter results or with other fruit juices to adjust the color and flavor profile of the drink.

And ciders are rising in popularity in the Charlotte area. Over the past few years, Charlotteans have begun opening their palates to this potion of fermented apples, and breweries and restaurants have taken notice, many of them setting aside a tap or two reserved solely for cider.

Because Charlotte is a city that prides itself on locality and its focus on small businesses and Charlotte-based operations, cideries like Good Road Ciderworks and Red Clay Ciderworks have demanded the attention of Charlotteans.

While most hold the misconception that cider is a sickly sweet drink, Jay Bradish, owner of Red Clay, and Brian Beauchemin, owner of Good Road, work to churn out batches of true cider that don’t make customers balk at the overwhelming sweetness and provide a little something for everybody’s palate.

“If you can get somebody to try something here, and their only experience is [New York-based cider company] Angry Orchard, and they hated it because it was so sweet, it’s hard getting that person to try something here. But once you do, we almost always have something that appeals to them,” Bradish stated. “We have a couple on the sweeter end and more than half of those are in the semi-dry to dry [range].”

Beauchemin and Bradish both have a background of homebrewing and fermenting their own libations.

Bradish was stationed in Sicily when his interest in making wine began. After returning stateside in 1997, he decided to 10 | OCT. 4 - OCT. 10, 2018 | CLCLT.COM

IT CAN BE EXTREMELY FLAVORFUL, EXTREMELY DIVERSE, WITH A BROAD ARRAY OF DRYNESS AND SOME SWEETNESS. IT IS A PRODUCT THAT’S NOT MANUFACTURED. IT’S TRULY HANDMADE IN SMALL BATCHES. BRIAN BEAUCHEMIN, GOOD ROAD CIDERWORKS begin making apple wine with his wife at her parents’ home in Michigan. The two apple trees in the front yard provided them with an opportunity, and they took it to turn apples into 10 gallons of apple wine in 1999.

With a case and a half of apple wine in tow, they moved to Charlotte in 2000. Bradish isn’t sure what happened — whether it was the bustling move or the warmer climate here in the South — but the wine re-fermented.

This resulted in a carbonated drink, very similar to a cider. So they continued playing with that process, eventually opening Red Clay in July 2015.

“We did that for several years but people kept drinking it more like a beer because it was really refreshing, but it was 12 percent so it wasn’t very compatible for pounding it like a beer,” Bradish said.

Instead of back-sweetening the cider, which raises the alcohol content, he decided

to skip that step so the cider would result in a lower ABV, birthing the recipes that Red Clay uses today, like Red Clay’s Queen City Common and The South End ciders.

Beauchemin started in 1994 as a homebrewer before he first tried making a cider about 10 years ago. After creating an English dry cider, he fell in love. Beauchemin and his wife knew that they wanted to be in the craft industry and saw that Charlotte’s rise in craft beer left much to be desired in the cider category.

With only one other cidery in town, Red Clay, Beauchemin and his wife saw the opportunity to join the craft industry and opened Good Road in March 2017.

“We looked at a couple different things, and of course a brewery was always an option, but we decided to do something different,” Beauchemin said. “The rise of cider was just starting to take off, studies have shown it’s

probably about four or five years behind the beer market. So we thought that the timing was good to make an entrée into the cider world.”

Good Road is a play on Beauchemin’s family name. A translation of the French family name means “beautiful path,” but he believed that morphing it into Good Road sounded better.

The stories of the two cideries are similar, but the focus of the two are markedly different.

Red Clay ventures out into the fruited cider varieties and puts out crafts such as jalapeño-and-pineapple-infused cider and a watermelon with cucumber cider. But Bradish still keeps the core Queen City Common and The South End flagships that are “straight-up apple ciders.”

On the other hand, Beauchemin focuses on the apples. Single varietals and apple blends that draw their flavor profiles from

(From left) The Stayman, Newtown Pippin and Lumbertwig ciders of Good Road.

PHOTO BY DANA VINDIGNI

Two of Red Clay’s custom-made wooden flight paddles.

Brian Beauchemin pours up at Good Road Ciderworks.

PHOTO BY DANA VINDIGNI

PHOTO BY COURTNEY MIHOCIK

PHOTO BY DANA VINDIGNI

certain types of apples dominate the tap list.

He hardly back-sweetens them with another fruit, but you can still taste the difference between the hard apple ciders.

For example, the very popular flagship Newtown Pippin is 6.3 percent ABV and has a lemon-y and acidic taste to it while hanging dry on the tongue. The Limbertwig settles in at a whopping 8.2 percent, is apple-forward and reminiscent of a pinot grigio. But Good Road still dabbles in the fruited flavors, with blueberry ciders, flavored meads and barrel programs to infuse flavors of dark liquors in the drink.

Last year, Good Road created a cranberry cider and aged it in a rum barrel, which Beauchemin said reminded him of his college and post-grad go-to mixed drink, cranberry juice and rum.

When referencing cider, it’s important to discuss the variety of apples that contribute

to the different flavor profiles. While there are approximately 2,500 apple varieties in the United States, Beauchemin explained what a true cider apple is.

They’re called “bittersweets,” and with the high levels of tannins that occur naturally in the skins of fruits like grapes, pears and apples, consumed raw leaves a bitter taste in the mouth, he said.

“But when they are pressed and fermented they make wonderful ciders,” Beauchemin added.

Good Road sources its cider apples from Perry Lowe Orchards in Taylorsville (see page 12), but also has forged relationships with orchards in Virginia, Michigan and New Hampshire. The variety of cider apples in New Hampshire brings the New England-style flavors in Good Road’s North Meets South cider.

Red Clay sources apples from the Bradishes’ home state of Michigan and from

Windy Hill Orchard & Cidery in York, South Carolina.

This past year, Mother Nature has affected the cider apple yield in North and South Carolina orchards. Bradish saw these affects in his own cidery, as he had to source most of his apples from Michigan, the apple blossom state.

“As it keeps getting warmer, it’s harder down here in North Carolina because everything is so dependent on us not having a warm mid-winter,” he stated. “And the past couple of years, it has not been an easy time for growers for sure.”

It’s important for apples to be picked at certain times, when the composition is optimal. Beauchemin wants pressed apples when they’re harvested at the right time, but weather is always affecting this.

“In a perfect world, we would like apples picked when the sugar content is at its highest

and that doesn’t always mesh with the orchard growers. They have to make a living, and they’ll make a lot of money selling whole apples to the public,” Beauchemin stated. “So it’s that balance of working with the orchard growers with what Mother Nature has given them.”

He continued, stating that when hail storms hit orchards, the apples are left with brownish welts on them, making them unsellable to the public. Cider makers are happy to take wholesale apples with some bruises on them and press them, as appearances only matter in the final product.

But weather that affects the harvest of apples also affects the taste, so small shifts in the final product of year-round ciders occur.

“Our first batch of Newtown Pippin, which was from the 2016 harvest, was pineapple [with] spicy notes and low acidity,” Beauchemin said. “Last year’s was very citrusforward, heavy on the lemon, high acidity.

CLCLT.COM | OCT. 4 - OCT. 10, 2018 | 11

Perry Lowe Orchards

FOOD Good Road owner Brian Beauchemin.

Same apples from the same orchard, it’s just based on the weather that Mother Nature gave us. Same yeast, same process, so the only thing that has really changed is the harvest and what those apples have gone through in that time.”

Cider-happy drinkers may notice this taste if they’ve been swimming in the apple cider scene. The rise in popularity of cider in Charlotte created a culture, much like the yeast Bradish and Beauchemin add in their apple juices, resulting in flowing delicious cider.

Both cidery owners attribute the newfound interest in the drink to a change in the population’s curiosity of options and diets.

“We definitely capture people that don’t like beer at all, and people that need to be gluten-free or are choosing to be glutenfree,” Bradish said.

Whether someone is looking for a lower alcohol content in their drink of choice with a lighter mouthfeel, or wants to change their diet for medical or personal reasons, cider seems to be the way to go.

“Ciders and meads are both gluten-free and that is becoming a more popular trend, for lack of a better term,” Beauchemin added on the subject. “Some of it is out of necessity and some people are choosing to go that direction, but some of our larger accounts are actually breweries, so people are looking for options in today’s world.”

Breweries, bars and restaurants that boast a wide selection of beer set aside 10, 15 or 30-plus taps full of American IPAs, German hefeweizens, Belgian witbiers and popular pilsners. Among those taps, there may be only one or two taps reserved for a cider. Sometimes, it’s not Good Road or Red Clay on the list; in some cases, Angry Orchard holds the reign on the only cider tap in establishments.

To fix this, Beauchemin believes education on what true cider is a good road to take.

“The big guys, the Angry Orchards of the 12 | OCT. 4 - OCT. 10, 2018 | CLCLT.COM

PHOTO BY COURTNEY MIHOCIK

APPLES TO APPLES Family-owned North Carolina orchard grows apples you won’t see in stores

RED CLAY CIDERWORKS

BY COURTNEY MIHOCIK

245 Clanton Rd. (980) 498-0676 redclayciderworks.com

PERRY LOWE ORCHARDS is nestled

world, are a double-edged sword in that they put a ton of money into marketing, which helps get the cider world out there,” he said.

“But then their product is something that is watered down and back-sweetened with sugar.”

Watering down a cider due to using concentrate or back-sweetening it artificially with sugar is a no-no if a cider maker wants a fresh and flavorful result with a natural color.

Beauchemin shared his disdain for Angry Orchard, and stated that he’s seen on their bottle labels that caramel coloring is added.

The watered-down nature of the cider leaves it without a light golden color, making it no longer appetizing, so the artificial coloring corrects this.

“It’s an education on what true cider really tastes like, in that it can be extremely flavorful, extremely diverse, with a broad array of dryness and some sweetness,” Beauchemin said. “It is a product that’s not manufactured. It’s truly handmade in small batches, and just getting that education out to the marketplace [is important].”

Cideries outside of Charlotte — and North Carolina — are starting to move into the

SEE

because more stores carrying just three or THREE-COURSE SPIEL four varieties. We’re also known in this area for having wonderful taste in Honeycrisp.

117 Southside Dr. (980) 237-7225 goodroadciderworks.com

GOOD ROAD CIDERWORKS

STORY P. 13 u

COURTESY OF PERRY LOWE

in the Brushy Mountain region of North Carolina, a couple hours north of Charlotte.

Apple farming is a family business, as the legacy of caring for and harvesting an orchard goes back six generations.

The farm itself spans over a hundred acres in the foothills of North Carolina and the orchard grows about 30 different varieties of apples. Some are popular and are organic versions of what you’d find in every grocery store chain, while others are native to North Carolina.

In the spirit of cider and fall, Creative Loafing caught up with Perry Lowe and talked about the harvest conditions, family traditions and most importantly, apples.

Creative Loafing: What are some apple varieties that you grow that we don’t normally see in stores?

Perry Lowe: We grow over 30 varieties.

There’s one that it’s origin is in this county, and it’s called the Brushy Mountain Limbertwig. Very late [harvest] apple, it is a small apple but its used in cider or hard cider — it’s a very good apple for that. And it keeps all winter, almost without storage.

That’s one that you probably never hear about, it’s not one of our more popular ones, but it one that we grow.

Some of the new varieties that you don’t [see in stores] is an apple called the Suncrisp, that’s a really good yellow apple that comes in usually about the first or second week of October. We also grow Crimson Crisp, which is a tart red apple. You won’t see that in stores

How has the harvest been this year with the amount of rainfall and Hurricane Florence?

Well we had something that hadn’t occurred to us in a long time — we had a devastating hail storm this year, July 21, and since July 21, we’ve had numerous and numerous rain [storms]. Florence wasn’t the most rain that we had, but from just that, we had extremely cloudy weather.

So all this combined has made this a pretty difficult year. I always like to talk about the bright years, we’ve had very, very good years in the past. This is one that for most growers in the state has been a very complicated harvest from the rainfall.

Does Perry Lowe Orchards have any plans for pick-your-own apple programs or other apple-related family traditions?

One thing about our operation: we don’t pick apples for chain stores. We grow apples and sell most of our crop at a roadside stand, so we try to uphold the family tradition here.

Now, when you said we don’t do pick-yourown, that is correct, but we do organized school tours. We’ve been doing that for 25 years, where schoolkids come out and tour the farm and pick a bag of apples and do a hayride.

This is the first year that we planned to do a full pick-your-own, but unfortunately the weather just didn’t create that circumstance for us. The hail storm and the rain, so I think there’s a lot of pick-your-owns that have really struggled this year because of the weather. So I think when you talk about apple harvest, I didn’t say this, but pickyour-owns have been very difficult to do. But what might’ve stopped us, was one storm that lasted 10 minutes that prevented us from doing pick-your-own ‘cause it did tear up the block that we were going to use for pick-your-own, basically got wiped out from the hail storm. Mother Nature did dictate whether we could do pick-your-own [this year]. But we are starting a pick-your-own operation and that will be starting next year.

CMIHOCIK@CLCLT.COM

PHOTO BY DANA VINDIGNI

A flight of cider from Red Clay.

The thousand-gallon tanks that ferment cider at Good Road.

FOOD

PHOTO BY COURTNEY MIHOCIK

COVERSTORY

STORY FROM

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t

Charlotte market, as they are recognizing the hotbed of cider activity happening in the city.

“Gone are the days where it’s just us and Good Road, unfortunately. Not only do we have, I think 15 or 16 cideries in North Carolina, now all these other areas of the country have looked for the next place that cider is hot and it’s here — it’s between here and Raleigh.”

It’s a catch-22 for Good Road and Red Clay. Beauchemin and Bradish welcome a rise in cider’s popularity in the Queen City if it means people are more interested in their craft, but across the country, larger cider makers have more resources and are starting to move into North Carolina.

When Red Clay opened in 2015, Bradish experienced trouble distributing any other cider except for the sweeter stuff — The South End, which is back-sweetened with natural juice. No one in the market felt that customers would want anything dry and wine-like. But he saw a different story in his taproom.

“We had a hard time placing anything but The South End in an account around Charlotte because everybody thought people only wanted something sweet and we were

seeing in our taproom from day one that is not the case,” Bradish stated. “We were seeing people were drinking drier and drier stuff.”

But the sweeter stuff still reigns over the drier side of cider, despite the boom in Charlotte’s taste for dry hard apple cider.

“No doubt, the fruited ciders are more popular and that’s an industry standard, that’s how it’s going,” he continued. “So we see the Cherry [Bobbin’ Trolls], the Ginga Blue, the Holla Piña, the [Red Clay] Rosé, those are pretty much dominating keg sales off-premise. What I’m happy about the scene, is that people are going away from the sweeter stuff and more toward dry, which is what I prefer.”

Hard cider’s non-alcoholic sibling, apple cider, is the family-friendly drink of fall.

While the South shifts from the 80- and 90-degree weather to the 50s and 60s and the leaves begin to change color, both Red Clay and Good Road have the cider recipes to respond.

At Red Clay, Bradish stayed true to the desire for pumpkin that falls upon the drinkers of the world and created a pumpkin chai spice cider for the fall season.

On the other hand, Good Road decided

Good Road Ciderworks’ spacious interior. to add a subtle flavor of fresh orange peel to their Waymaker ginger cider while also fermenting a maple orange blossom mead, which is a honey wine, in tandem for the holiday season.

The diverse flavor profile of cider coupled with it’s light mouthfeel and varying degrees of dryness and sweetness is what makes this in-between category of drink so appealing.

When done right, the simple ingredients of yeast and pressed apples allow drinkers to rest assured that their cider is health-

PHOTO BY COURTNEY MIHOCIK

conscious, won’t ruin their diets or fill them up too quickly.

That’s what’s swinging Charlotte to be hip with the cider game, it’s increasing to the same caliber of popularity as beer, so open up more taps for rotating craft ciders and don’t buy the $15.99 variety pack of Angry Orchard at the grocery store.

Instead, opt for the true ciders that Charlotte cider makers offer to the altar of the craft industry. You won’t regret it.

CMIHOCIK@CLCLT.COM CLCLT.COM | OCT. 4 - OCT. 10, 2018 | 13

THURSDAY

4

LIL BABY What: Not to be confused with Charlotte rapper Da Baby, Lil Baby comes from down I-85 in Atlanta, where he came up alongside a generation of rappers like Migos, Young Thug and Lil Yachty that brought ATL back to the top of the hip-hop charts. After dropping quarterly mixtapes throughout 2017, Baby finally dropped his debut album, Harder Than Ever, in May 2018. The album debuted at No. 3, proving that the 23-year-old rapper can hang with the aforementioned big dogs from his city.

When: 7 p.m.

Where: The Fillmore, 820 Hamilton St. More: $45-58. fillmorenc.com

THURSDAY

4

SOLSTICE YOGA EXPERIENCE

THINGS TO DO

TOP TEN

Moon Hooch FRIDAY

PHOTO BY KENNETH KEARNEY

THURSDAY

THURSDAY

4

4

5

MAROON 5

QUEEN CITY MUSIC FEST

MOON HOOCH

What: Release the stress of the work week with a yoga session — but not just any yoga session of a pre-determined flow of downward-facing dog into warrior pose. SOLSTICE Yoga Experience is promising a night of meditation, music and free-form movement.

Even if all you know is child’s pose, you can find cathartic release with 200 other people, led by yoga expert Jaimis Huff. It’s BYOM, and don’t forget water.

What: Heartthrob Adam Levine leads the seven-piece band we all know and love, Maroon 5. Since they cancelled their Queen City stops on the Maroon V Tour during the HB2 debacle, Charlotte has received its second chance to see the prolific group in town. It’s not always rainbows and butterflies, from debut album Songs About Jane to 2017’s Red Pill Blues, but the sound of Maroon 5 has evolved, and they’ve always kept a place on music charts both at home and worldwide.

What: You know the backstory — and if you didn’t, you learned it in all the recent made-for-TV biopics about New Edition and Bobby Brown — and now it’s time to see the happy ending in real time. RBRM — or Robby, Bobby, Ricky & Mike — marks the rejoining of Bobby with his three former groupmates, who formed Bell Biv DeVoe after he left the group. Not enough nostalgia for you? Also playing this oddly named festival full of national acts is Dru Hill and Doug E. Fresh.

What: Moon Hooch invented “cave music,” a rollicking blend of house, dubstep and jazz played on drums and a pair of wailing, squawking saxophones. The group got banned from NYC subway platforms because their jagged free-flowing interplay started too many dance parties.

It also landed them a residency at the Knitting Factory, NYC’s ground zero for eclectic and crowd-pleasing music. Their debut record, The Moon Hooch Album, serves up grooves with a reckless and giddy edge.

When: 7:30-8:30 p.m.

Where: Camp North End, 1824 Statesville Ave More: $25. tinyurl.com/SolsticebyJaimis

When: 7:30 p.m.

Where: Spectrum Center, 333 E. Trade St. More: $49.50 and up. spectrumcentercharlotte.com

When: 8 p.m.

Where: Bojangles’ Coliseum, 2700 E. Independence Blvd.

More: $52.50. bojanglescoliseum.com

When: 8 p.m.

Where: Neighborhood Theatre, 511 E. 36th St. More: $12-15. neighborhoodtheatre.com

Local Vibes drops episode 59 this Thursday, featuring Jimmy Turner of It Looks Sad. discussing the band’s debut full-length album, Sky Lake, and how the band name can sometimes be misleading compared to the actual music.

14 | OCT. 4 - OCT. 10, 2018 | CLCLT.COM

FRIDAY

Maxwell TUESDAY

SOLSTICE Yoga THURSDAY

Lil Baby THURSDAY

NEWS ARTS FOOD MUSIC ODDS

PHOTO COURTESY OF SWEATNET

PHOTO BY HORATIO HAMLET

SATURDAY

6

GREAT GRAPES! WINE & FOOD FESTIVAL What: It’s strange that mashed grapes and a little fermenting magic yields a drink that’s been imbibed for thousands of years. Great Grapes! is celebrating the beauty of wine with a wine and food festival. If you like wine and food that pairs well with it, or even just one or the other, then this is the festival to hit. Sample hundreds of wines and “uncork the fun” while you lounge on the lawn of Symphony Park, like a real wino would.

When: 11 a.m. - 6 p.m.

Where: Symphony Park, 4400 Sharon Rd. More: $33 and up. uncorkthefun.com

SATURDAY

6

KALI UCHIS What: With a lush and resonant alto that has drawn comparisons to Billie Holiday and Brazilian chanteuse Flora Purim, and trenchant lyrics about class and corruption that harken to MIA, Columbian-American Uchis is not your average pop-soul songbird. With collaborators ranging from Snoop Dog to Gorillaz, Uchis draws from an eclectic grab bag of reggaeton, funk, R&B and Brazilian jazz to craft catchy tunes that are breezy, melancholy, empowering and sultry — often in the space of a single song.

When: 8 p.m.

Where: Fillmore, 820 Hamilton St. More: $27. fillmorenc.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE FILLMORE

TUESDAY

SUNDAY

9

7

AFRICAN PRINT FASHION NOW What: This exhibit, subtitled “A Story of Taste, Globalization, and Style,” showcases a dynamic and diverse dress tradition. The boldly-colored cotton textile prints that have gained in popularity with Africa’s newest generation of couturiers is spreading across the world, and four women have curated a new exhibit that will be stopping through Charlotte for six months to help spark the inspiration of New South fashionistas.

When: Opening, runs through April 28, 2019 Where: Mint Museum Randolph, 2730 Randolph Road More: $10-15. mintmuseum.org

TUESDAY

9

FUCK UP NIGHT

MAXWELL

What: When Advent Coworking recently hosted its popular Fuck Up Night, during which local business and community leaders discuss the biggest mistakes they’ve learned from during their careers, a few Davidson students were in the crowd. The proactive pupils took the idea back to campus, and now they’ve invited Advent up north to hold an event there featuring Davidson grads Braxton Winston and Brian Helfrich, as well as Katy Kindred, who helped put Davidson on the culinary map.

What: Maybe it because he’s been so consistently cool and confident, but Maxwell has never gotten the props that fellow neo-soul founders Erykah Badu and D’Angelo received. With his creamy croon and lyrics revealing a commitment to monogamy, Maxwell became a romantic R&B icon who can set hearts a flutter without breaking a sweat. Released last summer, “We Never Saw It Coming” is his first new song since 2016’s *blackSUMMERSnight*, and is as chill and elegant as ever.

When: 6:30 p.m.

Where: The Hurt Hub@Davidson, 210 Delberg St., Davidson More: Free. adventcoworking.com

When: 7:30 p.m.

Where: CMCU Amphitheater, 1000 NC Music Factory Blvd.

More: $30 and up. charlottemetrocreditunionamp.com

Local Vibes drops episode 59 this Thursday, featuring Jimmy Turner of It Looks Sad. discussing the band’s debut full-length album, Sky Lake, and how the band name can sometimes be misleading compared to the actual music.

CLCLT.COM | OCT. 4 - OCT. 10, 2018 | 15

MUSIC

FEATURE

THE KEEPER OF SOUL Calvin Richardson comes home

BY PAT MORAN

S

OMETIMES YOU HAVE

to leave home in order to make an impact,” Calvin Richardson says. “You have to find what you’re looking for, in order to make your way back home.”

Richardson, who splits his time between his primary residence in Louisiana, and a house in South Carolina, is talking about the hard work and sacrifices he endured to make it in the music business, and how that has culminated in his induction in the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame. Along with John Tesh, Chris Daughtry, Dolph Ramseur, The Hoppers, Luther Barnes and Blind Boy Fuller, Richardson will be honored on Oct. 18 at the Gem Theatre in Kannapolis.

Richardson, who is scheduled to perform at the ceremony, says he was floored when he heard he made the list.

The 41-year-old singer-songwriter is no stranger to recognition and awards.

Since launching his solo career in 1999, the Monroe native has captivated audiences with his soulful brand of R&B, a deft and heartfelt balance of rolling gospel delivery and urban hip-hop grit.

He’s garnered three Grammy nominations, and in 2010, he received an ASCAP Rhythm & Soul Music Award for writing and publishing the song “There Goes My Baby,” which topped the R&B/Hip-Hop Music Charts. But this show of respect from Richardson’s home state is different.

“For me it’s bigger than the Grammys,” Richardson says. “I love North Carolina, and to be recognized to this degree means everything.

No one will be able to take my name off that honor. The history will always be there.”

Richardson’s history starts with his immersion in music at an early age. His mother’s gospel group, The Wondering Souls, had a seismic impact on Richardson.

He started singing at the age of 4, hitting the Carolinas’ gospel circuit with his brothers in the quartet, The Willing Wonders. When he was 13, he befriended and started performing occasionally with Cedric and Joel Hailey, who subsequently found fame as Jodeci and as K-Ci & JoJo. “We’ve been like brothers ever since,” Richardson says of K-Ci & JoJo. “They’re a part of my history from that point on until forever.”

Inspired by his good friends’ example, Richardson launched the urban contemporary group Undercova. He secured a record deal with Tommy Boy Entertainment in 1994 and the group’s song “Love Slave” landed on the 16 | OCT. 4 - OCT. 10, 2018 | CLCLT.COM

“I AM TODAY’S KEEPER OF YESTERDAY’S SOUL MUSIC” CALVIN RICHARDSON Soul Prince Calvin Richardson in a contemplative mood soundtrack to the 1995 film New Jersey Drive.

But Undercova’s ride proved to be anything but smooth, Richardson remembers.

“With the other members, the group wasn’t their passion,” he says. Nurtured by producer Todd Ray — who performed as T-Ray with the rap group the White Boys — Richardson learned the ins and outs of record production. While he and T-Ray put in long hours to perfect the record, the other members of Undercova often wouldn’t even show up at the studio. “The group never really got out of the gate,” Richardson says, adding that the label shelved the deal.

Richardson rebooted his career as a solo artist, releasing his debut Country Boy in 1999.

Richardson’s oeuvre continued in a semiautobiographical vein with 2:35 PM, named for the time when his son Souljah was born.

For his 2009 release, Facts of Life: The Soul of Bobby Womack, Richardson paid tribute to one of his influences and inspirations, in the process earning two Grammy nominations.

Around this time, Richardson also discovered that he had acquired the title of The Soul Prince.

“That came from an article somebody overseas wrote about me,” Richardson says.

The impromptu title derives from Marvin Gaye’s nickname, The Prince of Soul, Richardson continues. “[The Soul Prince] kind of stuck for me,” he says. “So I figured I’ll keep it and try to live up to that standard.” It made sense, since Richardson had already been honoring classic soul with his body of work. His most recent album, 2017’s All Or Nothing has received nearly universal praise as an accomplished return to classic soul. Richardson cites Al Green and Bobby Womack as early influences, and he feels their music is both timeless and relevant today.

“I am today’s keeper of yesterday’s soul music,” Richardson proclaims. When a classic soul song comes on the radio, Richardson says that he has to stop what he’s doing and just listen. “Not only can I hear it, I can feel it,” he explains. “That’s what soul music is supposed to do. It touches into something that’s below the surface level and gets into your heart.” While Richardson’s commitment to the old-school groove of Donny Hathaway and The Gap Band is unquestioned, he’s equally at home with a modern hip-hop vibe. Richardson says he has no difficulty in reconciling the two schools of music.

COURTESY OF CALVIN RICHARDSON

“A lot of artists sample from back in the day, that classic soul era, and turn it into hip-hop,” he maintains. “Although soul and hip-hop are different, I don’t think they’re that far apart.” For his part, Richardson strives to imbue whatever kind of music he makes with an innate soulfulness that stems from his personality. “Whatever it is, it’s still coming from the same source.” Richardson applies the same approach to create material that has been performed by other artists including Angie Stone, Charlie Wilson and Raphael Saadiq. Richardson stresses that he just writes songs, and that it is up to each individual artist to put their stamp on them.

“I got into writing for other people through Kay Gee of Naughty By Nature, “ he explains. “[Kay Gee] had a lot of projects he was working on [where] people wanted songs.” Even “There Goes My Baby,” which was recorded by Charlie Wilson and subsequently went to No. 2 while garnering a Grammy nomination, was not developed with any specific performer in mind, Richardson maintains.

Even though the song had a dramatic effect on Wilson’s career, Richardson says that he and Babyface originally recorded

Calvin Richardson will be honored by the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame the song for an album that never came out. While Richardson came into the music business a performer and writer, he has also placed equal emphasis on producing.

“It’s been very rewarding,” he says.

“I went in that direction because I had a particular sound in my head. It was where I wanted to go.”

Richardson credits his current love for producing to his days of learning the craft from T-Ray. “He knew how to tap into who an artist was and try to bring that out. He’d nurture the artist.” After Richardson’s label bought out T-Ray to get him out of the picture, they started moving Richardson around from producer to producer, he remembers. “[The producers] weren’t interested in nurturing anything,” he continues. “They were all about what they brought to the table — what was on their resume. So I had to learn to produce in order to get back to me.”

Richardson bought his own gear and taught himself how to record and engineer his own sessions. It’s all part of becoming selfsufficient, he believes, a practical strategy for succeeding in the music business.

“To be a successful artist, once you’ve honed your craft, you have to learn the

COURTESY OF CALVIN RICHARDSON

NORTH CAROLINA MUSIC HALL OF FAME 10TH ANNUAL INDUCTION CEREMONY Thursday, October 18, 7 p.m.

Gem Theater, 111 W 1st St, Kannapolis northcarolinamusichalloffame.org

business,” he maintains.

He believes his career did not truly flourish until he got a handle on the ins and outs of the music business and was able to chart his own course forward. It may well be the integral piece of the puzzle that has allowed him to create a body of work that has drawn the attention of the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame.

“It’s a great thing to have talent and be able to produce and perform,” Richardson concludes. “But you’ll be in a much better position if have all of those things plus be on top of your business.”

PMORAN@CLCLT.COM

CLCLT.COM | OCT. 4 - OCT. 10, 2018 | 17

Courtney Lynn Russell (left) and Jocelyn Quinn Henderson.

MUSIC

PHOTO BY WENDY HOGGARD

Courtney Lynn & Quinn play Queen City Social Club on Oct. 5

PHOTO BY WENDY HOGGARD

MUSICMAKER

QUEEN CITY OVER MUSIC CITY Courtney Lynn & Quinn establish themselves in the growing Charlotte music scene

BY COURTNEY MIHOCIK Editor’s Note: After Creative Loafing first ran this story last week, Courtney Lynn & Quinn reached out to us about how they felt misrepresented in the article. The editorial staff discovered that, through a series of miscommunications, the true voice of the band and the connection between Courtney and Quinn was lost unintentionally.

THEIR WORLDS WERE always meant to

collide, they just needed to find a new world to call home.

Courtney Lynn Russell and Jocelyn Quinn Henderson originally met in Los Angeles.

Henderson was already performing music and also pursuing dance and acting, while Russell was just trying out her hand in music, writing songs in her bedroom from a journal she’s kept since she was 16 years old.

After reconnecting in Phoenix, Arizona, Henderson convinced Russell that it was time to give music a try, altering their lives forever.

They moved to Charlotte while keeping an eye on Nashville.

However, the accepting and welcoming music scene here allowed them to grow and experiment with their music, and they stayed in the Queen City instead.

Playing separately at open mic nights, Russell pursued her blossoming music career as a solo indie-folk singer/songwriter, releasing solo debut album, Wander Years, in 18 | OCT. 4 - OCT. 10, 2018 | CLCLT.COM

2017. Henderson was in another band while also singing harmonies for Russell until they met Steven Cornacchia at Smokey Joe’s and formed the trio they are today.

Creative Loafing caught up with Courtney Lynn & Quinn on a recent Sunday night in Henderson and Russell’s apartment a couple weeks before the two planned to marry to talk about the appeal of the Charlotte over the Music City, looking toward the future and the evolution of their sound over the past two years.

Creative Loafing: What was it about the music scene that made you settle here instead?

Courtney Lynn Russell: It’s an overgeneralization but Charlotte is a community, Nashville is a competition. It’s so oversaturated that you have to compete. Here, there’s not that same pressure so it’s just more of a community, it’s more of this warm, welcoming space that everybody wants everyone else to thrive and that feels good, especially when you’re starting out.

Jocelyn Quinn Henderson: I think there was a little bit more of an appeal to Charlotte, too, because it feeling more welcoming there wasn’t so much pressure here in general. So people were more accepting.

“Let’s collaborate, let’s see what you’ve got, come to this open mic, come to that.” And sharing the community rather than, there’s

a lot of competition. And that’s how I felt Nashville was the last time we visited.

out on the moments in between because we’re so focused on this long-term goal.

How has the sound of Courtney Lynn & Quinn evolved?

Russell: This is what I tell people: just think about your life. I was writing those songs from the time I was 16 until the last one I wrote was just a couple years ago, but that’s a decade’s worth of material. And that’s why I titled it Wander Years, because it was truly this coming-of-age album. When I listen to that, I think about a bulk of my life.

All the songs are very personal, they’re all about some heartache or falling in love or just some kind of experience that I had in my life.

And especially having Quinn’s influence and Steve’s influence, it’s gone from this sweet journal to a really raw combination of a little bit more gritty, soulful sound.

How has the Charlotte music community change since you arrived?

Steven Cornacchia: It’s feels like that second before an explosion hits, it’s just all of a sudden rising very, very quickly and it could go off at any moment. And I think when I first moved here, people just seem a little down on it, but when you go out and do some investigating and see the amount of talent and enthusiasm and people who are very passionate about making it something that really matters.

Henderson: I think there’s always this pendulum with cities and Charlotte grew really fast. It really did, it just blew up as a city.

It just got really, really big really quick and it’s still doing that it’s still progressing into this larger, larger metropolitan area but I think what happened was with all that, it was very business-oriented, very corporate, banking city orientation, and the arts scene that was here kind of fell a little behind but I do feel like it’s coming back to the center.

I feel like there are so many talented artists in Charlotte. I feel that just from two years, and maybe it’s because we’ve grown into it, but I still feel like from the time that I started going to the open mics at Smokey Joe’s to now, that there is this movement you can feel it.

Where do you see the band in the next five or so years?

Russell: We do have goals, we try not to get too wrapped up in them. So what we try to do is take tangible goals and pursue those goals, but we don’t want to be a band that’s like, “We need to famous,” or “We need to make $5 million a year.”

Whatever the goal is, we wanna do what we love. We wanna play music. We want to be able to live off of that, and we don’t want to miss

CMIHOCIK@CLCLT.COM

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CLCLT.COM | OCT. 4 - OCT. 10, 2018 | 19

MUSIC

SOUNDBOARD OCTOBER 4

Underground)

COUNTRY/FOLK

POP/ROCK

Open Mic with Lisa De Novo (Temple Mojo Growler Shop, Matthews)

DJ/ELECTRONIC DJ Matt B (Tin Roof) Le Bang (Snug Harbor) Dende (Salud Cerveceria)

HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B Lil Baby (The Fillmore) Queen City Music Fest: RBRM, Dru Hill, Doug E. Fresh, Silk (Bojangles’ Coliseum)

POP/ROCK

OCTOBER 6

Bless The Dead w/ Black Ritual, Kairos. & Butterfly Corpse (The Milestone) Karaoke (Hattie’s Tap & Tavern) Kerry Brooks (Comet Grill) Labia Minor with Kit n Thunder (Petra’s) Lovely World (Tin Roof) Maroon 5 (Spectrum Center) Pink Talking Fish, Little Bird (Neighborhood Theatre) Ryan Montbleau (Solo) Ross Livermore (Evening Muse) Shana Blake and Friends (Smokey Joe’s Cafe) Open Mic for Musicians (Crown Station Coffeehouse and Pub)

CLASSICAL/JAZZ/SMOOTH

OCTOBER 5

Cardi B Vs Nicki Minaj (The Underground) DJ Duplex (Tin Roof)

CLASSICAL/JAZZ/SMOOTH Charlotte Symphony: Beethoven’s Fifth (Belk Theater) Jazzy Fridays (Freshwaters Restaurant)

COUNTRY/FOLK Lady Antebellum & Darius Rucker (PNC Music Pavilion) Steven James (Cabarrus Brewing Company, Concord) Town Mountain w/ Coddle Creek (Visulite Theatre) The Lenny Federal Band (Comet Grill)

HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B Electric Relaxation f. DJ Skillz (‘Stache House Bar & Lounge) Moon Hooch, Downtown Abby & The Echoes (Neighborhood Theatre) Young Nudy, Slime Dollaz and SG TIP (The

20 | OCT. 4 - OCT. 10, 2018 | CLCLT.COM

76 and Sunny (Tin Roof) Appetite for Destruction (The Fillmore) Gasp w/ Gardeners, Space Heater (The Milestone) Heather Mae, Sarah Clanton (Petra’s) Machine Funk Widespread Panic Tribute (The Rabbit Hole) Scarves, Today Junior (Evening Muse) Seth Bend Band (Hattie’s Tap & Tavern) Spirit System, Pullover, Beach Bath (Snug Harbor)

Charlotte Symphony: Beethoven’s Fifth (Belk Theater)

BLUES/ROOTS/INTERNATIONAL Kali Uchis, Gabriel Garzon-Montano (The Fillmore) Latin Night In Plaza Midwood w/ Ultima Nota (Snug Harbor)

COUNTRY/FOLK Jobe Fortner (Coyote Joe’s) Taplow (Cabarrus Brewing Company, Concord)

DJ/ELECTRONIC

HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B Bush Fest: Seph Dot, Blk Doggy, Nige Hood, SideNote, Ebz the Artist, Bleu, Ahmir the King and Autumn Rainwater (The Shed Amphitheater) Watsky, Feed The Biirds, Chukwudi Hodge (Neighborhood Theatre) Weekend Excursion Unplugged (Evening Muse)

POP/ROCK Blue Monday (Tin Roof) Delux Motel (Smokey Joe’s Cafe) Jr Jr (U.S. National Whitewater Center) Maggie Aldridge (Cabarrus Brewing Company, Concord) Radio Lola (Hattie’s Tap & Tavern) The Relics (Comet Grill) VEAUX, Starboarders (Evening Muse)

10/4 CHRISTINA TAYLOR

SOUNDBOARD OCTOBER 7 BLUES/ROOTS/INTERNATIONAL

CLASSICAL/JAZZ/SMOOTH

DJ Steel Wheel (Snug Harbor) GLBL: DJ AHuf (Snug Harbor)

DJ Boss Austin (Tin Roof) Hazy Sunday - October Edition (Petra’s) More Fyah - Grown & Sexy Vibes (Crown Station Coffeehouse and Pub)

HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B The Love Again Tour Featuring Hi-Five And Soul For Real (Ovens Auditorium,) Tamia (The Fillmore) Bone Snugs-N-Harmony (Snug Harbor)

POP/ROCK Big Bad Voodoo Daddy (Neighborhood Theatre) EmiSunshine & The Rain (Evening Muse) In Real Life (The Underground) Metal Church (The Milestone) Omari and The Hellhounds (Comet Grill) Patois Counselors w/ Marbled Eye, Konvoi (Snug Harbor) Sunday Music Bingo (Hattie’s Tap & Tavern)

OCTOBER 8 CLASSICAL/JAZZ/SMOOTH

COUNTRY/FOLK Red Rockin’ Chair (Comet Grill)

DJ/ELECTRONIC

HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B Eclectic Soul Tuesdays - RnB & Poetry (Apostrophe Lounge) Maxwell, Marsha Ambrosius (Charlotte Metro Credit Union Amphitheatre) Soulful Tuesdays: DJ ChopstickZ, DJ JTate Beats (Crown Station Coffeehouse and Pub)

POP/ROCK Open Jam with the Smokin’ Js (Smokey Joe’s Cafe) Alice Cooper (Ovens Auditorium) Phil Cook, Andy Jenkins (Neighborhood Theatre) Red Rockin’ Chair (Comet Grill) Send Medicine, Uncle Buck, Business People (Skylark Social Club) Tosco Music Open Mic (Evening Muse) Uptown Unplugged with Spencer Rush (Tin Roof) Welshly Arms w/ The Glorious Sons & Charming Liars (Visulite Theatre, Charlotte)

OCTOBER 10 Hackensaw Boys (Neighborhood Theatre) Open Mic (Comet Grill)

HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B

DJ/ELECTRONIC

#MFGD Open Mic (Apostrophe Lounge) Knocturnal (Snug Harbor)

Bass Physics & Eliot Lipp (Visulite Theatre) Cyclops Bar: Modern Heritage Weekly Mix Tape (Snug Harbor)

Brangle (Smokey Joe’s Cafe, Charlotte) Captured! By Robots w/ Green Fiend & Morganton (The Milestone) Fall Residency with Calibre Rock Night w/ Alex Mattey (Petra’s) Find Your Muse Open Mic welcomes back Tomás Gorrio (Evening Muse) Nothing But Thieves, Grandson, Demob Happy

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POP/ROCK Emit Radio’s Open Mic/Music Trivia Night (Dixie Pig, Tega Cay) Goo Goo Dolls (The Fillmore) October Residency: Astrea Corpw/ Jabr Jaw, Zodiac Lovers, Dsrtdbch (Snug Harbor) Paul Loren, Vanessa Peters (Evening Muse) Quincey Blues (Smokey Joe’s Cafe)

SAT, OCTOBER 20

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COUNTRY/FOLK

Jazz Jam (Crown Station Coffeehouse and Pub)

POP/ROCK

10/9WELSHLY ARMS 10/10 BASS PHYSICS x ELIOT LIPP 10/11 YO MAMA'S BIG FAT BOOTY BAND 10/12 BIG SOMETHING 10/18 BLACK JOE LEWIS ! 10/20 THE BREAKFAST CLUB 11/3 BOY NAMED BANJO 11/4 NICKI BLUHM 11/7 WILL HOGE 11/10 THE NIGHT GAME 12/12BAYSIDE

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OCTOBER 9

DJ/ELECTRONIC

TOWN MOUNTAIN

(The Underground) Open Mic with Lisa De Novo (Legion Brewing)

Charlotte Blues Society Band Challenge: Chris Clifton Band, Tom Dowd Band, Pat Mother Blues Cohen (The Rabbit Hole) Roots of a Rebellion w/ Little Stranger & Jahlistic (Visulite Theatre)

Charlotte Symphony: Beethoven’s Fifth (Belk Theater)

10/5

+ CODDLE CREEK 10/7 ROOTS OF A REBELLION + LITTLE STRANGER & JAHLISTIC CAROLINE KELLER BAND & SUGAR & STEEL

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MUSIC

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ARTS

FEATURE

CREATING A WAY OUT R Creative Collective uses art as a tool for recovery RYAN PITKIN

F

OR THOSE WHO find it hard to wear their heart on their sleeve, sometimes it can help to wear it on their back for a morning, just to see how it fits.

That was the scene on a recent Saturday morning in a cafeteria at A Dove’s Nest, an addiction treatment center for women in west Charlotte, when a group of about 20 women stirred about the room — slowly at first — each wearing a piece of purple construction paper on their back.

The idea was for the women to go around the room writing on each other’s backs, expressing kind sentiments about one another that they might not otherwise have any reason to say. While still wearing the papers, the women were later assigned to write positive thoughts about themselves on smaller pieces of paper they could stick into a mason jar to take with them.

One woman loudly asked to whomever would listen, “What if I can’t think of anything good to say about myself?”

Sara Jordan, a volunteer with R Creative Collective, jumped at the chance to explain.

“You use your table,” Jordan replied, suggesting that a woman’s tablemates could help them come up with positive thoughts.

“One of the coolest things about recovery is that you’re not alone anymore. You don’t have to shoulder everything by yourself.”

Throughout the exercise, Lauren Kestner, co-founder of R Creative Collective, sat back watching, sometimes distracted by her 2-year-old daughter, Greylyn, who also wore a small piece of construction paper on her back.

Since launching R Creative Collective — originally called Artist Recovery Movement — in 2016, Kestner has run or participated in countless workshops like the one at A Dove’s Nest. While seemingly elementary, the exercise the women carried out that morning clearly helped the participants connect with one another and express thoughts that may have been buried deep during their time drinking or using.

When the women finally removed the papers from their backs, gasps and appreciative sighs could be heard throughout the room. One woman stood and exclaimed, “I didn’t really think y’all felt that way about me, but it really touched my heart.”

As they wrapped up, a few women became interested in hearing the story behind RCC, an organization that uses the arts to help people in recovery from 22 | OCT. 4 - OCT. 10, 2018 | CLCLT.COM

Lauren Kestner (center, holding baby) at a summer workshop with students from School of Jai, a local grassroots organization. addiction or struggling with mental health, homelessness or any number of other issues.

Kestner stood and addressed the group, recalling how she had moved to Charlotte to live in a sober living home as she fought her addiction with alcohol and heroin. She didn’t know anyone in the city, and was constantly turned away from the one passion that helped her cope: art.

“As someone in recovery who spent a lot of time in treatment and jails and hospitals, we don’t get a lot of reprieve,” said Kestner, an illustrator by trade. “So I was always really frustrated because I wanted to draw and I couldn’t draw because they said I was distracting or trying to escape something that I needed to face.

“I understood that I needed to focus on my wellbeing and my health and my recovery, but I needed that. That was my program before I had a program; color and creativity and passion allowed me to survive some really, really dark places I was in over the course of my life. And that was what I wanted to offer to the community. And that was it.

That was all I know. And here we are.”

To be fair, there was a little work that went into it between then and now. After having the idea for ARM while “in a very meditative place” driving to a meeting one day while pregnant with Greylyn, Kestner shopped it around a bit.

She discussed the idea with other creatives in the recovery community, and eventually launched the organization with the help of cofounders Hillary Belk, J.R. Rocky and Chelsea Schmidt.

Two years later, the name is different, two of the founders have left to pursue other ambitions and Kestner has stepped down from her leading role, but the organization is as busy as ever. RCC currently runs workshops

with treatment centers like A Dove’s Nest and its counterpart for men called Rebound, both subsidiaries of Charlotte Rescue Mission, as well as The Blanchard Institute and On Ramp Resource Center at The Relatives. Volunteers also travel to Greensboro to run workshops at Fellowship, an alcohol and drug treatment center there.

EARLIER THIS YEAR, when Kestner

took a full-time position with the Center for Prevention Services, volunteer Amber Irvin took over as executive director.

Irvin also works as a teacher at ALC Mosaic, an alternative learning center in east Charlotte.

She uses her experience teaching abstract art and creative expression to kids ranging from 7 to 15 years old in her work with RCC, but she doesn’t consider herself an artist.

“Everyone’s creative in everyday life,” she said. “We’re creative in how we get to work, and what we’re going to eat, and just how we’re going to navigate the different pressures that we are having, so in that way, definitely, every day of my life I’m an artist. But don’t trust me to draw a circle or a straight line.”

Jordan can relate. While she doesn’t consider herself an artist, per se, she said she has a passion for interior design, and that’s how she expresses her creativity. Once she gets in the positive headspace that results from designing a room, she’s more able to face the struggles that she still faces more than five years after getting sober.

The idea that it doesn’t take an artist to use art as a healing process is an important message that RCC volunteers try to pass onto participants, as well.

“We walk into these workshops and people are like, ‘Oh, I’m not creative,’ and ‘Oh, I don’t know how to do this, and I don’t do this and

PHOTO COURTESY OF LAUREN KESTNER

I don’t do that,’ but the truth is that art is in everything,” said Kestner. “It takes vision to create anything and that’s what we really try to drive home with these workshops is that you don’t have to be able to draw or paint or sculpt something. You are creative and you have passion, it’s just going to look different for everybody.”

Irwin said it’s those reluctant folks that Kestner described who usually get the most out of a workshop.

She described how she watches participants walk into a workshop only because it’s part of a program they’re a part of or because they might be bored with whatever else is going on in the building.

Time after time, it’s the people who are most resistant to the workshop who come out feeling the most invigorated by it.

“No matter what it was — whether it was listening to music and talking about how it made you feel, painting or collaging — those are always the people that are like, ‘I feel so much better. I didn’t come into this thinking it was going to be anything. I thought I was just going to BS my way through it, but once I actually just did it, and just allowed myself to be, I feel so much better,’” Irwin said. “That’s the thing that always sticks with me.”

RCC workshops range from confidencebuilding exercises like the one recently held at A Dove’s Nest to more artistic ventures.

One of Irwin’s favorite exercises is called the “collaborative canvas,” in which participants split into groups of three or four and paint on a canvas together for 10 to 15 minutes. At the end of that time, the groups rotate canvases and begin work, picking up where their neighbors had left off.

Of course, they can also just paint right over their neighbors’ work, and participants have to come to terms with the fact that

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A work station at an earlier RCC workshop.

Kestner (left) collages with RCC co-founder Hillary Belk.

RCC volunteers (from left) Sara Jordan, Amber Irvin and Lauren Kestner at a recent workshop at A Dove’s Nest. someone might be doing the same to the work they just left. Reminiscent of the exquisite corpse method, the activity can result in beautiful works of collaborative art, but it’s also an exercise in letting go, said Irwin.

“You just spent 10 minutes working on this picture with your group, and now someone else can come along and completely change it,” she said. “It’s about what it feels like to let go of things, and not just hold so tightly to the idea of control.”

Other exercises include music therapy, designing art around mantras — sometimes on pocket-sized canvases so that participants can bring them around in their daily lives — and intuitive painting. Sometimes, a volunteer will see a new activity on Pinterest and try it out with a new group.

Irvin said she noticed that even an activity as simple as finger painting can open up new avenues of expression and coping for participants who haven’t considered the value of such a nostalgic exercise.

“You won’t believe how many adults are like, ‘This makes me feel childish, like a kid,’ or, ‘It takes me back, because putting my

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PHOTO COURTESY OF LAUREN KESTNER

PHOTO BY RYAN PITKIN

fingers in paint is something I was told not to do after 7,’” she said. “You just have to kind of let go of that simple wall, just put your finger in the paint and feel it and make it. It’s amazing.”

It’s not just recovering addicts who benefit from the work of RCC. When the organization was called Artist Recovery Movement, the word “recovery” included in the title confused many would-be funders.

Kestner said that, in order to get grants, the organization would have to pigeonhole itself into a being a substance abuse program, a mental health program or some other thing that didn’t define the broad range of people they wanted to reach.

It also chased away would-be participants.

“Some people were like, ‘I don’t want to have to necessarily identify with something to be a part of the club,’” Kestner said.

“That’s why we removed it. R now stands for recovery, or resilience, or rebirth, or renew.

You name it, you can put whatever you want to it, and it’s a collective because we want everybody to find their own voice.”

For example, while Irwin said she has gone through “phases” of substance abuse,

she said her main struggle is with managing her borderline personality disorder. Kestner and Jordan have both battled alcoholism, but Kestner has also dealt with mental health issues and heroin addiction, while Jordan is a survivor of domestic violence and breast cancer.

“There are so many facets; it’s not as narrow as people try to make it,” Jordan said. “Whatever you’re healing from, that’s recovery. It doesn’t have to be a substance.”

As the women filed out of the room at A Dove’s Nest on that Saturday morning, mason jars full of praise in hand, many stopped by the volunteers’ table to thank them, asking that they return and offering to help clean up.

After hundreds of workshops over the last two years, about 97 percent of participants

have said they would “love to do this again,” according to surveys that volunteers hand out after each workshop.

Despite those high numbers, Irwin remained realistic about the effects of her work.

“I’m not a therapist coming in to tell you that all you need to do is paint and your life will get better tomorrow,” she said. “I’m a real person letting you know that this is something that I’ve enjoyed, that’s helped me stay on the path of recovery, and maybe it will be helpful for you. There’s no illusion that every single person that does every single workshop is going to be like ‘Wow, my life is changed,’ but 97 percent is pretty good.”

You can’t argue with that.

RPITKIN@CLCLT.COM

CLCLT.COM | OCT. 4 - OCT. 10, 2018 | 23

UNIVERSAL

Tiffany Haddish and Kevin Hart in ‘Night School’

ARTS

FILM

Janelle Dunlap in fornt of an unfinished piece of the Manifest Future mural she’s working on in west Charlotte.

ARTS

PHOTO BY RYAN PITKIN

ARTSPEAK

FAKING THE GRADE

RECLAIMING HER TIME

School’s out for Hart and Haddish

Janelle Dunlap takes a temporal look at Afrofuturism with Time Camp 002

BY MATT BRUNSON

RYAN PITKIN

TIFFANY HADDISH broke out last year with her terrific turn in the box office hit Girls Trip, while Kevin Hart has proven himself to be a comic force in such endeavors as Central Intelligence and Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. A movie that unites the pair sounds like a proposition that can’t miss, but Night School (** out of four) squanders their talents in a limp endeavor that’s anemic even by contemporary comedy standards.

While the poster (with both their names plastered across the top) makes this look like a co-starring venture, the opening credit sequence (with his name before the title and hers following it) is more accurate in establishing their roles as leading man and supporting player. Hart stars as Teddy Walker, a high school dropout who nevertheless enjoys a rich life with his beautiful girlfriend Lisa (Megalyn Echikunwoke) and the promise of future ownership of the BBQ grill store where he presently works as a salesperson (he’s been “Employee of the Month” since time immemorial). But a mishap results in Teddy suddenly finding himself unemployed, and without a high school diploma, he can’t even accept the lucrative job being offered by his best friend (Ben Schwartz) in the financial sector.

In order to receive his GED, Teddy therefore has no choice but to attend night school, where he and various other latebloomers — a doofus dad (Rob Riggle), an anti-tech eccentric (Romany Malco), an unappreciated housewife (Mary Lynn Rajskub), and so on — find themselves under 24 | OCT. 4 - OCT. 10, 2018 | CLCLT.COM

the watchful eye of Carrie (Haddish), the stern but fair instructor who refuses to put up with her students’ nonsense.

After a promising beginning, Night School devolves into a series of gags that are more desperate than funny. With a pathological zeal, the movie repeatedly bypasses clever gags relating to its setup in favor of juvenile jokes involving bodily injuries, perpetual puking, and pubic hairs in cheesecake. And with a script credited to no less than six writers (including Hart), it’s perhaps no surprise that the pacing is clumsy and the narrative is sloppy (can someone who ends up seeing this explain to me how they all got off that roof?).

Perhaps the picture’s greatest flaw, however, rests in the mismatch between its stars. An ideal movie starring Hart and Haddish would make them comedic equals along the lines of Cheech & Chong or Laurel & Hardy. Instead, they’re more like Martin & Lewis, Abbott & Costello and Groucho/ Chico/Harpo & Zeppo, with Hart receiving the lion’s share of the humorous interludes and Haddish mostly relegated to playing straight man (or straight woman, in this case). In fact, virtually every performer is provided more comic opportunities than Haddish, who’s primarily required to give motivational speeches about the importance of education. Thanks anyway, but for that sort of inspirational entertainment, I’ll stick with Stand and Deliver and To Sir, with Love over this sophomoric effort.

BACKTALK@CLCLT.COM

WHEN YOU THINK about the Afrofuturist

art movement, what immediately comes to mind?

For many people, it’s a cosmic aesthetic involving spacecraft, intergalactic travel and perhaps even an alien or two. For Janelle Dunlap, it goes deeper than that.

Last year, Dunlap began exploring Afrofuturism as a new angle from which to approach the work she’s been doing around gentrification and displacement. She thought of her great-grandmother, Ida DeShields Moore, part of the first class of black registered nurses to work in Good Samaritan Hospital, the first private hospital in North Carolina built exclusively to treat black patients.

“For me, the original Afrofuturists were Southerners; Southerners that escaped slave plantations, who left during the Great Migration to create a new life for themselves and their families,” said Dunlap. “I started thinking about myself as the descendant of an Afrofuturist. It’s not necessarily jumping in spaceships, but when you think about what Afrofuturism might have meant to someone back in the ’30s, for a black woman in the South like my great-grandmother, Afrofuturism was really getting a college education,” she continued. “It was thinking of her descendants, her daughters’ daughters being graduates of universities.”

Dunlap’s thought process was inspired by her trip to Time Camp 001, a two-day workshop hosted by Black Quantum Futurism in Philadelphia in October 2017 that explored time, alternative temporalities, time travel,

and temporal shifts from various frameworks, disciplines and cultural traditions, according to the website.

When Dunlap returned to Charlotte, she learned that her fellowship with the League of Creative Interventionists would be expanded for a second year and her funding increased. She immediately began planning Time Camp 002, a continuation of the Philly event that would focus on reclaiming the time of her ancestors with an Afrofuturist focus.

I met with Dunlap while she worked on another LCI project, a sprawling mural called Manifest Future that she’s been working on with fellow artists Sloane Siobhan and Georgie Nakima in the parking lot of the former A&P Grocery Store across from Mosaic Village in west Charlotte. We talked about Time Camp, the spreading popularity of Afrofuturism in Charlotte and why science and art aren’t as separate as some may think.

Creative Loafing: What was the experience at Time Camp 001 like?

Janelle Dunlap: It was a mixture of workshops and performances. Think about something like a Bla/Alt [Music Festival in Charlotte] with workshops and with a more specific focus on something. So this focus was on time and all aspects of time. It wasn’t necessarily a huge emphasis on Afrofuturism, but I thought that it was important if I were to bring it down to Charlotte that it have that, because essentially that’s what it is.

And I think that people have a misconception about Afrofuturism just being

technology-focused or being heavily focused on aesthetics, when it’s actually a practice.

How quickly did you realize you wanted to bring a Time Camp to Charlotte?

I think it was probably at the end of day one, and I was journaling and I had an epiphany that the connection for me with Afrofuturism was that I needed to move away from focusing solely on gentrification and displacement, which has been a subject area that has been the focus of my work for a year and a half. I was at a point where it was odd because I was frustrated because I felt like I wasn’t getting supported by the institutions I was working with. Sometimes talking about gentrification, there’s a lot of hopelessness in it. So I needed to figure out how could I bring myself out of my own frustrations with my work, my art, and really project myself into the future.

When I started to really pull it all together was when, luckily, my fellowship with the League of Creative Interventionists got extended for a second year, which was huge. We were the only chapter to get a second-year extension, and from what I hear that was due to people seeing what we were doing. People kind of roll their eyes at social media making an impact, but it’s really the thing that got us [an extension], because people were watching. They may not have been liking, but they are always watching.

What inspired the themes you’ll be bringing into this year’s Time Camp?

I thought about a conversation I had with Judge Shirley Fulton, who’s the first AfricanAmerican female judge in the state of North Carolina. She shared with me her perception of what’s really caused gentrification, and it was that we’ve lost sense of home because we’re chasing concepts of success that existed outside of our communities. We went to the suburbs, or we sold our grandmother’s homes, or we left these neighborhoods to decay essentially on their own because there was no longer a black middle class, so she said, “What we really need to do is reclaim our neighborhoods.” And then learning more about her, that’s essentially what she did with Wesley Heights.

It just kind of came to me, “Alright, so the theme has to be reclamation.” She was really the one that inspired that.

Because I understood, I got it. I’ve seen it happen and I’m watching it happen to my grandma’s neighborhood in Spartanburg, [South Carolina]. I’ve seen it happen to my godparents’ neighborhoods in the south side of Chicago. People just get this concept that success means distance and isolation in the suburbs, and that’s kind of like a trick I feel that was pulled on us.

So I thought about what is it that I’m trying to reclaim, thinking about time, Time Camp. I was like, “So maybe that’s it, maybe that’s how I pull Time Camp here, for one of the [LCI] projects be Time Camp and I’m reclaiming time. Then pulling in this whole concept of Afrofuturism and sharing and expressing all the different forms that Afrofuturism exists in.

It does seem like Afrofuturism has been popping up as a theme in more arts events around Charlotte recently. Why is that?

TIME CAMP 002 Free; Oct. 5-7; Goodyear Arts, 1720 Statesville Ave.; facebook.com/ TimeCamp002

It’s odd. Like, I don’t want to take credit, of course, for bringing Afrofuturism here, but I did notice when I started mentioning it, it started to pop up or sow into other brands, which I’m really grateful for, because Afrofuturism is a brand and it’s a virus that needs to spread.

But we have to understand, we cannot use it solely for capitalist gain. It’s a philosophy. The intention behind it also needs to be elevation.

It needs to be to inspire vision and not just get money or party. I’m protective of Afrofuturism in that sense, because it’s not just a commodity.

You’ve got science workshops booked for Time Camp, which you just don’t see at arts events. Tell me about that.

There’s this dope person, she’s from Denver, Kendra Krueger, and to this day, I haven’t heard Neil DeGrasse Tyson or Bill Nye break down quantum physics to social justice as well as Kendra has. She was able to break down the science behind entropy and portals and help connect that with an everyday experience so that people understand science in a different way.

People usually see art and science on two different sides of the spectrum, the subjective and the objective. Would you like to see folks working to bridge that gap a little more?

That’s why I wanted to collaborate with people like Georgie, because she’s a scientist, and you see how the science is expressed in her art.

What I really want to see in Charlotte, I need people to stop saying they’re not creative, or that they don’t have a creative bone in their body. Human beings, we’ve been creative in our environment. You create the paths you take in life. You create things to make your life easier. So it might not necessarily be in a visual sense, but everyone is creative.

What I’m hoping the embracing of Afrofuturism or the arts does in Charlotte is really to awaken that creative vibration in people. And I hope that things like Time Camp — the presentations on quantum physics or the facilitations on poetry, or even creating a new Bible, which is what Pierce Freelon [of Blackspace Durham] will be talking about Sunday — I hope that provides access for people to understand that everyone is creative, but you have to have your vision inspired in you, though.

Oftentimes we don’t have enough in Charlotte to inspire vision.

What else can we look for coming from you after Time Camp?

Well I guess this is kind of a spoiler alert, but I’ll be doing more of this work in collaboration with the Arts & Science Council in the next couple of months, with a primary focus on west Charlotte. Public art, museum art, a little bit of historical context but with a Afrofuturist lens. So that’s coming soon to the Levine Museum, Johnson C. Smith and ASC. RPITKIN@CLCLT.COM

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HELP YOURSELF TO SOME SUDS Pouring my way through the Queen City and sat down with my bestie.

AS OF LATE, I’ve been so preoccupied In between pours, my friend — who’s with my thoughts that I haven’t taken much way more of an extrovert than myself — time to try new things or venture out from made another friend. Turns out, Brooke my watering hole. Instead, I’ve been heading Martin had the pull to take us behind the to the place I’m most comfortable and trying to take my mind off of being an adult. scenes. As always, my girl was looking out.

I’ve started a new job. Two jobs in fact.

Martin took us into the back room where I’ve restored my trust in love again. And I’m we could see what’s behind the scanners. The happier than I’ve been in a very long time. answer: 118 tap lines. That’s right, Pour is But you know what they say? With great the largest self-pour venue of its kind in the power comes great responsibility. So, here’s United States! to the season of change.

And the roomy space is definitely a Nevertheless, this past week I forced reflection of that. Not to mention, they myself outside of my current comfort zone to actually indicate what type of beer you’re check out the new self-pour spot in Plaza drinking. Perfect for the sour snob Midwood called Pour Taproom. like me.

One of my close friends has As I mentioned in my been occupied with adulting previous column, the tabs of her own, and as such, we at Hoppin aren’t organized haven’t had much time to by beer type, nor do they hang. So when she hit me have as many beers to up after I’d sat cooped up choose from. in the house all day with Don’t get me wrong, an HVAC technician, I I’m not poo-pooing the couldn’t resist. originators in Charlotte, If you remember, I’m just saying, before last December I discussed we get all like, “Why do we AERIN SPRUILL my experience at a similar need another self-serve bar?” concept in a previous column just know that there are some about about a self-pour taproom differences worth noting. called Hoppin’ in South End. My In addition to a QR scanner, increased biggest compliment? The fact that an organization, a larger selection and a huge introvert like myself can get to drankin’ space, they have a “WTF Wall” that is sure without having to endure an awkward to grab your attention when you pass the interaction with a person or bartender. As front counter — it certainly caught mine. you can imagine, the same goes for Pour Taproom.

It features three unique, rotating taps for Located next to Pint Central — the you to try. front parking lot is shared, but there‘s more Other than that, if you’ve been to parking in the back — Pour is a great addition Hoppin’, you know what to expect overall; to the Plaza Midwood nightlife scene.

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If you’re lucky, you’ll run into Brooke or I entered the door and proceeded to another member of their team who’s willing the counter where I was greeted with one give you a private tour. But even if you don’t, of the warmest welcomes I’ve felt in an it’ll still be worth your trip. establishment in a long time.

For me, I’ll be waiting until next month A friendly guide proceeded to take me on to go back. Why? I’m committing to Sober a quick tour after handing me a plastic card October again this year! That’s right, I’m connected to a necklace with a QR code on it. laying off the spirits for a solid month. Hold Instead of scanning the wristband tech me to it. like you do at Hoppin’, you’ll scan the QR In the meantime, I’d love to hear your code on your tag by holding it in front of thoughts on the the new self-pour spot. Is a camera, while Pour’s licensed technology there anything different you’d like to see in does the rest. the next version? As Smokey the Bear says, After pointing out that I loved sours, my “Only we can prevent terrible nightlife.” He guide led me straight to where I’d find the says that, right? beverage of my choice. I poured my first glass BACKTALK@CLCLT.COM

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CROSSWORD

CRADLE OF THE MIDEAST ACROSS

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34 Big and oafish 36 Riddle, part 2 42 Small Aussie parakeet 43 Variety 44 Small, for short 45 Ending for baron 46 Plum lookalikes 47 Diner cuppa 49 Warms up, as leftovers 53 Riddle, part 3 59 Fighter with Fidel 60 Neighbor of Egypt 61 Retina locale 62 Italian farewells 63 Baseballer Aparicio 65 Clark of “Hee Haw” 66 Original “Hee Haw” airer 67 A fire sign 70 Threaded fastener 71 Pop singer Goulding 73 Gunky stuff 74 Perm parlor 76 Ph.D. hopeful’s test 77 Riddle, part 4 83 Pedal for a floor loom 84 Domain 85 11 hours before noon 87 Lead-in to Magnon 90 “I’m -- loss” 91 Bikini part 92 Acting unthinkingly, informally 93 End of the riddle 100 Cry to a good dog 101 18-wheeler 102 “I -- Say No” (show tune)

103 Cheese-topped chip 104 Help to do wrong 106 Jiggly treat 108 Real heel 111 Torino locale 113 Riddle’s answer 117 Stop, legally 118 “Seinfeld” gal pal 119 Via E! or FX 120 Will concern 121 Prison boss 122 Harmful flies

DOWN

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37 Hilo dance 38 “Modern Family” actor 39 Sofa type 40 Writer Paton 41 Grades K-12 47 Karate relative 48 “Scram!”

49 Light units 50 Vegas-to-Denver dir.

51 Tic- -- -toe board 52 Peeved state 54 “-- Mutual Friend” 55 Football’s Tim

56 Ensnarl 57 Concert itinerary detail 58 Bone: Prefix 59 Musical score symbol 64 River buildup 66 Manage 67 Not on time 68 Lioness in “Born Free” 69 “How lovely!”

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87 Whodunit poison stuff 88 Goes around 89 One rejected 91 Seek alms 92 Cincinnati citizens, say 94 Mexican bloom 95 Certain reed player 96 Ring of the iris 97 Build-it-yourself auto 98 Rights group, for short 99 Actor Lyle or actress Nita 105 Percolate 106 Mrs. Jetson 107 Idyllic garden 108 Airport waiters?

109 Fit for the job 110 Hair colorers 112 Gobbled up 114 Lad or lass 115 Road hazard 116 Belfry animal

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HEARTS AND MINDS Picking up where you left off

BY DAN SAVAGE Is it even possible for a couple that stopped having sex to start back up again? My girlfriend and I (we’re both women) have been together for four years, and we haven’t had sex for two.

I thought the sex was good before it stopped, but apparently she was going through the motions.

She’s a sex worker, and it took her a while to figure out she was not being present, and she wanted to stop having sex with me until she could figure out how to change that. I get that and respect it.

We have an open relationship, so I started having more sex with other people. And while it’s fun, I do find myself wishing I could have sex with someone I actually care about — and I only care about her.

She says she wants to start having sex with me again, but we don’t really know how to do that. Everything is kind of terrifying and awkward.

She said it’s hard to go from sex with zero intimacy into sex with the intimacy turned up to 11. We’re very romantic with each other, and there are other forms of physical affection like kisses and snuggling, but no making out or humping. I love her more than I knew I could love a person, and if we never do figure out how to have sex together, I’ll still stay with her. But for two people who are both highly sexual and want to have sex with each other, we sure are perplexed at how to make this work.

SEX OR ROMANCE DILEMMA

“Let’s cut to the chase: Yes, it is possible for a couple that has stopped having sex to start having it again,” said Dr. Lori Brotto, a clinical psychologist and a sex researcher at the University of British Columbia.

You ended on a note of despair, SORD, but Brotto sees two good reasons for hope: You and your girlfriend are completely open and honest with each other, and you’re committed to staying together whether or not the sex resumes. Your communication skills and that rock-solid commitment — neither of you are going anywhere — are the bedrock on which you can rebuild your sex life.

“There are two aspects of SORD’s question that jump out at me: One, the reference to wanting to be present for sex, and two, the description of the situation as terrifying and awkward,” said Brotto. “SORD’s girlfriend likely perfected the practice of ‘going elsewhere’ during sex while at work, which meant that it became almost automatic for her to do this while having sex in her relationship. This is classic mindlessness, and it is why mindfulness — the state of full awareness to the present moment in a kind and compassionate way — may be a tool for 28 | OCT. 4 - OCT. 10, 2018 | CLCLT.COM

her to consider implementing.” otherwise may believe that their minds are Mindfulness is the subject of Brotto’s new incapable of staying still can effectively learn book, Better Sex Through Mindfulness: How to fully engage their attention to sex and the Women Can Cultivate Desire. person(s) with whom they are having sex.

“Mindfulness has a long history in It doesn’t matter if you are skeptical about Buddhist meditation, and it allowed monks whether mindfulness works or not — if you to sit with their present experience, including are willing to learn the skills and apply it to pain and suffering, for hours or days — sex, you’re likely to benefit.” or sometimes weeks and months,” said Dr. And if you’re nervous or scared that it Brotto. “In more recent years, mindfulness won’t work or that you’ll never reconnect has been reconceptualized as a tool that sexually with your girlfriend, SORD, anyone can use and benefit from. It Brotto wants you to know that doesn’t rely on having a Buddhist those feelings are perfectly orientation or a cave to retreat normal. to.”

“The uncertainty So how does this ancient surrounding what will mindfulness stuff work happen when they try where modern girl-on-girl to reintegrate sex can sex is concerned? be terrifying for some “The practice is simple,” couples,” said Brotto. said Brotto. “It involves “What if it doesn’t work? deliberately paying attention What if neither of them to sensations, sounds and has desire? What if the sex DAN SAVAGE thoughts in the present is just plain bad? If SORD moment — and noticing when and her partner are worrying the mind gets pulled elsewhere about the anticipated sex, or and then gently but firmly guiding it even catastrophizing over it — a back. Mindfulness is also about not berating jargon-y term meaning they imagine it ending yourself for finding it challenging or judging in disaster — that can make it damn near yourself for the thoughts you have.” impossible to remain in the present. The good In her practice, Dr. Brotto has seen news is that mindfulness can help with the research subjects successfully use mindfulness tendency to get lost on the thought train.” to cultivate and/or reignite sexual desire, calm So here’s what you’re going to do, SORD: anxiety and relieve the awkwardness and fear Order a copy of Dr. Brotto’s new book and read that some people experience with sex. it with your girlfriend. And while you wait for “Suffice it to say,” she said, “there is an the book to arrive, you’re going to try a mindful impressive body of research that supports touching exercise called “sensate focus.” the practice of mindful sex, and people who “She will invite her girlfriend to touch her

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from head to toe, minus the genitals, for 15 minutes — without the goal of triggering arousal or desire,” said Brotto. “SORD’s role is to pay attention to the sensations emerging, and curtail any thoughts by redirecting attention to the here and now.

And relax. After 15 minutes, they switch roles so SORD becomes the giver and her girlfriend is the receiver. This is not foreplay.

It is not manual sexual stimulation. It is a mindfulness exercise designed to teach a person to remain in the present while receiving sensual touch.”

There are solo mindfulness exercises, SORD, and some good, commercially available apps out there that can walk you through them. But if your goal is reconnecting with your girlfriend, Brotto strongly recommends that you two work on mindfulness together.

“My view is that a couple-based mindfulness exercise like sensate focus will get them to their goal of mind-blowing, mind-knowing sex,” said Brotto.

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LIBRA (September 23 ARIES (March 21 to April 19) A bid for you to step in and take over an incomplete project could prove to be an excellent learning experience that you can take with you when a new opportunity opens up.

TAURUS (April 20 to

May 20) It’s a good time for socializing, both with family and with friends. Your aspects also favor developing new relationships, any or all of which might become especially meaningful.

GEMINI (May 21

to June 20) Your success in handling a recent difficult situation prompts a request to handle another workplace problem. But this is one you should accept only if you get all of the relevant facts.

CANCER (June 21 to July

22) New information about a past decision raises some unsettling questions from an old friend. Be prepared to explain your actions fully and, if necessary, make adjustments.

LEO (July 23 to August 22) This is not a good time to share personal secrets, even with someone you’ve known for a long while. What you don’t reveal now won’t come back to haunt you later.

Playmates and soul mates...

VIRGO (August 23 to

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September 22) Pushing yourself to meet a project deadline is admirable. But be careful not to leave out important details in your rush to complete your work and send it off.

to October 22) Watch that you don’t take on more than you can handle when offering to help someone with a personal problem. There might be hidden factors you weren’t told about.

SCORPIO (October 23

to November 21) That major move you’ve been considering could come sooner than you expected. Make sure you’ll be ready with the facts you need when decision time arrives.

SAGIT TARIUS

(November 22 to December 21) Languishing relationships can benefit from a break in routine. Get out of the rut and do something new and maybe more than a little unpredictable this weekend.

CAPRICORN (December 22

to January 19) Although you don’t think of yourself as a role model, your ability to make a tough decision at this time sets an example for others, who admire your courage.

AQUARIUS (January 20 to February 18) You need to move any remaining obstacles out of your way before you can take on a new challenge.

Seek advice from close, trusted friends and associates.

PISCES

(February 19 to March 20) A career change appears increasingly likely to happen during the next several weeks.

It’s a good idea to start now to prepare, so you can be ready to make the move when the time comes.

BORN THIS WEEK: You have a strong sense of obligation to justice, which inspires others to follow your example and do the right thing.

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