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NEWS&CULTURE FACELESS IN EL SALVADOR Former Charlotte resident Pedro Salmeron struggles with life after deportation
BY VICTORIA BOULOUBASIS
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NEWS
EDITOR’S NOTE
LIFE WITHOUT PEDRO New reporting paints a bleak picture for a former Charlottean BY RYAN PITKIN
I’LL ALWAYS REMEMBER the panic in
read a story like this is a comment on a past story I wrote about immigrants and refugees Carmen Salmeron’s voice. Sitting in Salmeron’s living room in north in Charlotte. This person, who aptly named himself Charlotte in February 2016, she was beside herself with fear that her son, Pedro, would “Some Guy” simply for the sake of writing his soon be deported. Pedro was one of the NC6, comment, scoffed at the idea that immigrants a group of young men who arrived in the and refugees should be looked at as humans. “Anytime the immigration debate comes up, United States as teens fleeing gang violence in Central America, only for each to be arrested the main narrative is always centered around in a series of early-2016 raids that took place humanizing some little boy with a dream, or throughout North Carolina and the Southeast. some victim fleeing a burning village,” Some Carmen tried to remain strong in front of Guy wrote. “This sort of feel-good story line her daughter, an 8-year-old Charlotte native, always attempts to personify immigration into but couldn’t hold back her tears as she spoke the U.S. as a virtue, but no one has the courage about Pedro, who was being held at the to attempt to talk about this complex issue from the bigger picture.” infamous Stewart Detention Facility in I was taken aback but Lumpkin, Georgia. He had recently not surprised at this line of told her that he had lost 20 thinking. God forbid we pounds in his first month at try to look at the human Stewart. side of a story about … “I wanted to die when I humans. Now, under a heard about my son [being president who pushes a detained],” she told me false narrative about the through a translator. “I criminality of immigrants felt that half of my life was by calling them rapists taken away from me. From and murderers, and that day, our lives have not sharing news stories about been the same; my life, my RYAN PITKIN undocumented people who husband’s life, my daughter’s commit crimes, the Some Guys life.” of the world are coming out of the Two years later, Salmeron’s worst shadows. Their dehumanization of the fears have come to pass. Her son was deported to El Salvador after spending nine “other” has become mainstream. So let’s take a look at that bigger picture months in Stewart. He had lost 40 pounds by that Some Guy was compelled to bring up. the time he left. In this week’s cover story, on page 8, Stats have long shown that there is no truth to reporter Victoria Bouloubasis visits Pedro in the narrative that undocumented immigrants the small, rural village where he now lives. create an economic drag on our economy, He’s eating now, but not much has improved showing up and wanting benefits without since he fled El Salvador in 2014 after the working for them. In fact, immigrants and refugees are more likely to be small business brutal murder of his cousin. Pedro tells Bouloubasis in this story — owners than native-born Americans. According to a recently published Inc. our second partnership with the Trianglearea Indy Week — that gang members have article by Adam Bluestein, “From 1996 to approached him again since his return. He 2011, the business startup rate of immigrants recalls that about a month after he was back, increased by more than 50 percent, while he was met by four men wearing masks as the native-born startup rate declined by 10 he tended to cows about a mile from his percent, to a 30-year low.” Despite making up just 13 percent of grandmother’s farm, where he lives. “They said they knew I was in America the population, immigrants start more than 25 percent of new businesses in the U.S. It and assumed I had money,” Pedro says. As I read Pedro’s story, I can’t help but seems as if the folks who would leave behind think of the pain that Carmen and her everything they know and risk their lives to husband, Daniel, are feeling as they now reach the U.S. just to make a better life for face the revocation of Daniel’s work VISA. their children are the exact types of people we They face a decision of “whether to stay here want in this country. But we don’t even need the do-gooder illegally for the sake of their 10-year-old daughter, an American citizen, or pick up and stories and economic stats to know that’s leave for a native land now considered the the right call. One only needs to spend an murder capital of the world,” as Bouloubasis afternoon with a family like the Salmerons. Because in the end, they are human. We writes. Another thing that strikes me anytime I are human. No matter what Some Guy says. RPITKIN@CLCLT.COM
CLCLT.COM | MAR. 8 - MAR. 14, 2018 | 7
NEWS
FEATURE
FACELESS IN EL SALVADOR Former Charlotte resident Pedro Salmeron struggles with life after deportation BY VICTORIA BOULOUBASIS The following is the product of a partnership between Creative Loafing and the INDY Week in the Triangle.
I
’M A YOUNG person with a sort of old mind. Does that make sense in English?” Pedro Salmeron says this in Spanish with an easy Salvadoran lilt, one that curls up at the ends of words into a quick tempo, like a song. But he articulates most with his eyes. They are dark and round, widening underneath thick, straight eyebrows that frame his face. Despite a 5-o’clock shadow emerging as a patch on his chin, the 20-yearold barely looks like an adult. But he speaks in a mature cadence, deliberate and sincere, with a deep, calm voice, like someone who has lived a thousand lives. “We’d say you have an old soul,” I tell him. “Yes, exactly. And, I don’t know, I feel like I’m a little boring,” he laughs, explaining how he passes the time watching Charlie Chaplin films and reading Greco-Roman myths. We’re having this conversation in September, outside of a supermarket in the province of San Miguel in El Salvador. The sun begins to set. A couple of boisterous men walk through the sliding doors into the store. On their way in, their laughter grows louder, even mischievous. They’re a few yards away from us. One of them stares. Pedro looks over his shoulder at them. We’re sitting at a table by the doors, next to an ice cream outpost. But he doesn’t want to stick around for ice cream. The sky is getting darker. “I should go home,” he says. Pedro has been back in El Salvador for a year, but he doesn’t leave his house much. It’s too risky. The dangers that prompted him to leave for the United States, eventually landing in Charlotte with his family at age 16, have only gotten worse. As he puts it, “The gangs are growing and cannot be tamed. They are completely out of control.” In November 2016, Pedro was deported from the Stewart Detention Center in Georgia, one of the harshest immigrant prisons in the country (three inmates have died there in less than a year, according to immigrant-rights advocates), where he’d been detained for nine months. Before that, he lived for nearly three years in Charlotte with his family — his parents (who arrived more than 10 years ago), his U.S.-born sister, and an uncle. When Pedro was detained, 8 | MAR. 8 - MAR. 14, 2018 | CLCLT.COM
Pedro Salmeron spends much of his time in his home since being deported, as he’s afraid to venture outside.
PHOTOS BY JONATAN FUNES
“El Salvador is a country that offers absolutely nothing.” PEDRO SALMERON his case became part of the so-called NC6 — six Central American youths living in North Carolina who were rounded up by ICE in January 2016. All of them said they had fled gang violence in their home countries. To date, two have been deported — including Pedro — both to El Salvador. Since those arrests, gut-wrenching stories of youths detained and families broken apart have mobilized communities into action, documenting the men and women fighting to stay here. But what happens to those immigrants plucked from U.S. high schools and sent back to an increasingly dangerous Central America alone? Pedro left behind a life he was just beginning to build, one hopeful with opportunity despite his undocumented status. His parents remain in Charlotte, in a house they bought with money earned in construction and housekeeping. But soon, they’ll face a difficult decision. Next year, the Trump administration will end the temporary protected status program for Salvadorans that has kept Pedro’s father in the country legally for a decade. Pedro’s parents will have to decide whether to stay here illegally for the sake of their 10-year-old daughter — a United States citizen — or pick up and leave for a native land now considered the murder capital of the world. “The problem with being an immigrant is that you can’t enjoy the same rights as everyone else,” Pedro says. “And unjust things
happen to you. But despite all that, so many people still live that way.” The Salmerons were never disillusioned by the promise of an American dream. They just want a future free from danger, free from fear.
CURRENTLY, 700,000 Salvadorans live in
the United States. They left what is considered the deadliest country in the world outside of a war zone. But it isn’t just a recent surge of gang violence that has mangled a society of just over 6 million people. Blood and poverty, corruption and desperation are threads that link Salvadorans’ stories through generations. From 1980 to 1992, a civil war ravaged the small nation, claiming at least 75,000 lives. Amid increasing poverty, the leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front fought the military-led government, which formed death squads in retaliation. By war’s end, the United Nations Truth Commission found that more than 85 percent of the deaths, kidnappings and torture were attributed to the Salvadoran government, which was backed by the United States. In the early ‘80s, President Reagan directed billions of dollars to El Salvador to fight communism. By 1990, despite a U.N. agreement on human rights signed that July, the government’s U.S.-trained paramilitaries, death squads and army units had only gotten more vicious, massacring entire communities and wreaking havoc on a struggling nation. The war left behind a generation of trauma in a country that President Trump recently called a “shithole.”
Pedro’s parents, Daniel and Carmen, who are in their 40s, remember the war well. Daniel says his brother was murdered by guerillas who assumed that his closeshaven hair meant he was working with the government. Ironically, perhaps, his brother had hoped his clean-cut look would help him stay alive, because the military targeted anyone it deemed delinquent in appearance as a member of the FMLN. Daniel Salmeron was able to flee shortly after his son’s birth through TPS, a visa program implemented in 1990 for migrants from countries that suffered long-term effects from natural disasters and violence. El Salvador was one of the first countries to receive TPS, due to its civil war and, later, earthquakes. TPS protects migrants from deportation and affords people like Daniel a work permit. But on January 8, the Trump administration announced the program would soon end for the estimated 262,000 Salvadoran TPS visa holders in the U.S. It’s common for Salvadoran parents who survived the war and are still struggling to survive its aftermath to leave. Many Central Americans migrate north ahead of their kids and determine what to do for their families once they arrive in the States. Daniel and Carmen left Pedro, then a toddler, with his grandparents and aunt, hoping to earn enough money in the United States and maybe come back to a better El Salvador. “My father felt what it was like to be at war,” Pedro says. “And from that war, the gangs were
created. Our economy was so low that, instead of finding dignified work, because there wasn’t any, it was easier for some people to just steal the very little that others had.” Today, much of El Salvador is controlled by these gangs, mainly Barrio 18 (or Calle 18) and Mara Salvatrucha (or MS-13), both of which have their roots in Los Angeles. In 2016, The The New York Times reported that gangs extort at least 70 percent of the country’s businesses. Business owners could be killed on a whim if they didn’t abide by the gangs’ demands. The gangs also collude with the police and the government, which have turned a blind eye to much of the mayhem. The Wilson Center’s policy forum estimates that 95 percent of the gang crimes reported in Central America go unpunished. Before he left for the United States at 16, Pedro reported a gang threat. Young men who knew him from school, possibly recent gang recruits, approached him on the walk home one afternoon. “Join us or we will kill you,” they told him — a chilling but common refrain among Central American migrants. A few days earlier, Pedro’s cousin’s body had been found decapitated and castrated in a nearby town. The cousin, a carpenter, refused to give in to extortion. He was murdered at night, his body discarded in a cul-de-sac so that neighbors would find him in the morning. “I had to leave immediately,” Pedro says. “He didn’t even make it to his cousin’s funeral,” says Carmen. She worried about him crossing the border alone at such a young age. It wasn’t part of her plan. She and her husband wanted to bring their son in through a legal channel as a refugee. But after the cousin’s murder, they knew it was time.
THE DRIVE FROM San Salvador to Pedro’s
village starts at 3:30 a.m. on a humid day in late September. As the sun begins to rise, our truck jolts; the driver hit the brakes to avoid a cluster of rustcolored cows lazily crossing the highway. The road cuts through a jungle of banana trees that becomes a string of little towns bustling with morning foot traffic. Women carry baskets of masa on their heads, walking carefully through
the streets and darting into storefronts, where they pound dough into pupusas. As we drive into the villages, I notice something jarringly familiar: the mustard yellow and blood-red Wells Fargo logo jutting out of a worn building spruced up by fresh turquoise paint. The only modern sign among hand-painted calligraphy signals an ATM, where people can pull out their remittances from the U.S. in cash. According to the International Organization of Migration, 17 to 18 percent of El Salvador’s gross GDP comes from remittances. Of that, 30 percent comes from people holding TPS in the United States. The further we drive, the more worried my driver becomes. He starts making calls to his family. “My brother-in-law is from here,” he says. “It’s pretty bad.” I ask which gang was in charge. He says he’s not sure, but in the last few months, youths have increasingly come under threat. The highway crosses the Lempa River, one of Central America’s largest rivers, which also serves as part of the border with Honduras. The border is a fount of trafficking, says Salvadoran journalist Lourdes Quintanilla. “Gangs, contraband,” she explains. “The young population is especially vulnerable. There’s nothing to do, no sports leagues, no community activities to center all the youths spread out in the villages.” She recalls a recent news story in which a schoolteacher tried to warn his students to stay out of trouble. Gangsters came into his classroom during the school day and murdered him in front of the class, just hours after killing his daughter. Quintanilla says poverty perpetuates the cycle of violence. “It’s super cliché, but the gang becomes a support system, especially financially, that we can’t otherwise create within communities,” she says. “And the same parents worried for their children are sending them to cross the border as a result.” We arrive at a town near Pedro’s home during a holiday procession. Students dressed in military green and crisp hats practice an armed salute and hold rifles across their chests, while others form a drum line.
Photos of Pedro’s rural village in San Miguel, El Salvador. Cell phone service is shaky out in the country, so we inquire at the mayor’s office of the family’s whereabouts. A secretary recognizes Pedro’s name; she flips through a large tome of handwritten birth records from the 1990s, finding him within a couple of minutes. We are escorted into a small shopping center and up a narrow flight of stairs, where a woman selling pupusas from a takeout window becomes our accidental fixer. She insists on calling her nephew, who drives a mototaxi, to safely get us to Pedro’s remote village. For a half hour we ride through foot traffic and a police caravan until the sound of cadets banging on the drum line become a faint thump in the distance. We putter through a forest of banana trees, its slick foliage darkening our rocky path. We arrive at the Salmerons’ home, which is high on a hill, and find the doors wide open, leading into a living room painted in sherbet hues of orange and pink. Pedro’s childhood portraits are featured in giant-
sized, lacquered prints that hang high, almost touching the ceiling. Pedro’s grandmother points to a neighbor’s house a few yards away, just past the tall coconut trees that flank their hammocks. A couple of months earlier, she says, police raided it and arrested two young men — kids she’s known their whole lives — for being involved in gangs. Danger is ever-present here. A recent report by Amnesty International pegs the murder rate in El Salvador at 108 per 100,000 inhabitants; for comparison, the murder rate in the U.S. in 2016 was 5.3 per 100,000 inhabitants. The report says that “the spike in migration and asylum claims is directly connected to this violence.” It also lays out statistics from a survey of 747 Salvadoran adults who had migrated abroad and were then deported back. Fortytwo percent said they were fleeing threats, crime, danger, and extortion; 23 percent said they were seeking a better economic status. CLCLT.COM | MAR. 8 - MAR. 14, 2018 | 9
Those two factors — poverty and violence — are often connected. In 2016, the World Bank reported that while “economic growth in El Salvador reached 2.4 percent,” the country remained “the slowest growing economy of Central America.” “El Salvador is a country that offers absolutely nothing,” says Pedro. “For someone who studies or was born in the United States, it would be difficult to live in a country like El Salvador. The economy is very low. It’s very difficult to find an adequate job.” Compounding matters, because he turned 18 in the States, Pedro lacks proper identification in El Salvador, where people obtain a new ID card after becoming adults. That ID is needed to obtain a work permit. He is, in a sense, undocumented in his homeland, too. Pedro fears going to school in El Salvador. He goes once a week to turn in homework, lamenting this is the third time he’s repeated 10th grade. He worries about finding work. El Salvador simply isn’t equipped to manage the increasing number of deportees — or retornados — like Pedro, especially in rural areas. San Salvador is more blatantly sullied by gang violence, but community and professional organizations offer support and jobs for the deported, such as call-center gigs for English speakers. But while Pedro risked the journey to the U.S. alone, his parents were on the other side, waiting for him. To move to San Salvador would mean he’d be completely on his own. Many Salvadoran children are left fending for themselves while their parents migrate or work jobs away from home to barely make ends meet. And without parents or vocational options to climb out of poverty, some kids join gangs willfully. 10 | MAR. 8 - MAR. 14, 2018 | CLCLT.COM
“A young guy may say, ‘I can get used to this and I’ll be taken care of here,” says Daniel. “And once they’re in, they can’t leave. If they do, they leave dead or end up in prison.” The Salmerons are subsistence farmers, living off the milk and cheese products their dairy cows produce. Pedro slipped back into his old lifestyle after returning to El Salvador, helping his family while he figured out how to get more viable work. But about a month after he returned, Pedro says, he was taking the family cows out to a pasture about a kilometer from home. Four men wearing masks ran up to him. They said they knew him, though Pedro did not recognize their voices. They gave him an ultimatum, the same one that prompted him to flee in 2014: join us or else. “They said they knew I was in America and assumed I had money,” he recalls. Pedro ran home as quickly as he could. He filed a police report, but he hasn’t heard anything about his case since.
THE ARRESTS OF the NC6 led to a public campaign that resulted in the eventual release of four of the young men. Among them was Wildin David Guillen Acosta, a Durham high school student whose case sparked national interest. With his deportation ordered and a team of lawyers and activists fighting to stop it, Acosta, now 21, lives in limbo in Durham. According to the United Nations, an estimated 500,000 migrants cross Mexico’s southern border each year. The majority comes from Central America’s northern triangle: Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Each year, at least 20,000 of them vanish and presumably die on the journey to the United States.
In summer 2014, President Obama ordered an emergency response at the border for what was labeled an unaccompanied-minor crisis. The number of youths who entered the country had spiked from 16,000 in 2011 to more than 68,000 in 2014. Pedro was one of more than 1,000 so-called unaccompanied minors who settled in Charlotte in 2014, according to The Charlotte Observer. When he crossed into Texas in the summer of 2014, Pedro was detained for about a month, a normal procedure for Customs and Border Patrol. During the 2014 fiscal year, the Border Patrol apprehended 68,541 unaccompanied children at the U.S.-Mexico border; many, like Pedro, were given a date to show up in court — though, despite looming deportation orders, ICE usually doesn’t pursue unaccompanied minors until they turn 18. As soon as they were notified of his detainment, Pedro’s parents found a lawyer to begin seeking asylum. But they soon learned that migrants like Pedro don’t have much of a chance in the American system. The criterion for asylum is to demonstrate a credible fear of persecution based on one’s “race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” Despite the harrowing statistics about violence in Central America’s northern triangle, judges rarely factor gang carnage in their decisions. “Pedro’s claim was, ‘I am scared to go back to El Salvador, I will get killed,’” says Bradley Banias, the last lawyer to represent Pedro. “The merits of an asylum based on persecution from a gang for a teenage male in El Salvador are very difficult if not impossible.” The current denial rate for Salvadorans seeking asylum in the U.S. is almost 83 percent, with Hondurans (about 80 percent)
and Guatemalans (about 77 percent) not far behind. In January 2016, ICE’s Operation Border Guardian targeted anyone who had entered the country illegally after January 2014 — the very same youths deemed a humanitarian crisis less than two years earlier. Once the minors turned 18, ICE was ordered to place them in adult detention centers, where they lost their unaccompanied-minor status. According to ICE spokesman Bryan Cox, the agency does not collect data based on age, so there’s no telling how many 18- to 20-year-olds were detained in 2016. “A person may have come in as a juvenile,” says Cox, “[but] as a legal adult that comes into ICE’s custody, that’s irrelevant.” As Operation Border Guardian was ramping up, Pedro was coming of age in Charlotte. Reunited with his parents and meeting his American-born sister for the first time, he felt a sense of relief he’d never had before. He joined his father, fellow Salvadorans, and new Mexican friends in playing music on the weekends. By the time he turned 18, Pedro knew how to play nine instruments. By the end of 2015, rumors of ICE raids began circulating through the immigrant community. The Salmerons decided that school wasn’t safe and pulled Pedro from his classes. That didn’t protect him. On January 26, 2016, ICE agents arrested Pedro. He was riding in a truck on the way to a construction job with his father and other workers. The agents said they had a warrant for Pedro’s arrest. The Salmerons had long feared this would happen; they say Pedro’s first lawyer had accepted a voluntary departure during the asylum-application process, without advising the family beforehand. (The family hired a lawyer from the the law offices of Stefan Latorre, a firm based in Charlotte, and accuses the firm of malpractice. A lawyer from the firm said it does not comment on its cases.) When officials pulled Pedro out of the car, Daniel says an ICE agent spoke to him in Spanish: “‘Don’t worry,’ he told me. ‘I’m a father, too, and I’ll make sure he’s fine.’” Pedro remained quiet and polite, looking at his father as the officers yanked zip ties around his thin wrists. “They were out hunting them,” Carmen says. “They were being hunted.”
THE COURTS “REFERRED to Pedro, a
noncriminal, as a high-priority case,” Banias says. “Basically, they were going to deport him no matter what.” Banias handled Pedro’s last case, a plea to get him out of the detention center. He also worked for Bilmer Pujoy Juarez, another of the NC6 detained at Stewart. The boys’ court hearings were scheduled back to back. Banias filed habeas petitions for each, trying to prove that they were held in detention for an unlawful and unconstitutional amount of time. Banias argued Pedro could not be deported in the foreseeable future because of his pending asylum case, which would require him to stay in the country. But then, during a September 16 court hearing in Columbus, Georgia, the prosecutor revealed a key clerical error. Banias had in his possession the official asylum interview notice mailed to the Salmeron family to prove that Pedro’s asylum claim was indeed still pending. But the prosecutor stated that the “computer system erred and sent out these notices.”
This mistake discredited Banias’s argument. Because asylum can only be granted to someone on U.S. soil, Banias thought that, with a pending application, he could get Pedro out of detention and at least buy him some time. The public outcry for Pedro’s release reached U.S. Representative Alma Adams, a Democrat whose district includes Charlotte. She wrote the director of ICE in March 2016 — the same month Creative Loafing originally wrote about Pedro’s plight — on Pedro’s behalf and followed up with a phone call that May. In August, she visited Pedro at Stewart and released the following statement: “As a mother and as a former educator, Pedro’s case is personal for me. No young person should be ripped away from their family and their community and thrown into a broken immigration system.” Despite the Salmerons’ appearances at rallies and on local television news, Pedro’s case slipped from the public eye. As Mayra Arteaga of the Charlotte Legal Advocacy Center explains, “He had already dropped out of school, so he didn’t fit into the student narrative. His story just didn’t become popular enough.” Bilmer, who lives in Greenville, was freed. Pedro didn’t have the same luck. “We basically gave the government a hard enough time that they just gave in on that one,” Banias says. “We got Bilmer out. They gave up on Bilmer and doubled down on Pedro.” While he was detained at Stewart, ICE agents dragged Pedro out of his cell on two separate occasions in the middle of the night and threw him into a van, leaving him to wait in the dark, thinking he was about to be deported, before returning him to his bunk an hour or so later. Pedro assumes that the first time was meant to be a form of psychological manipulation; such reports out of Stewart are common, according to immigrant advocates. The second time, though, “the plane literally broke down. So they took the deportees back.” The third time wasn’t a joke or a mistake. Pedro was deported on a commercial airline in November 2016. Two ICE agents bought him a plane ticket, escorted him to the gate, and waited until it was time to board. He flew
unaccompanied to El Salvador on a flight full of tourists and Salvadorans returning home from the States. Pedro wasn’t allowed to call his mother or anyone in El Salvador before he left, and no one from ICE or Stewart notified the family of his deportation. But Carmen had missed a scheduled call from him that day and instinctively sent for her sister and parents to make the four-hour drive to San Salvador to pick him up. From her kitchen table in Charlotte, she arranged for everything. His family was there within 45 minutes of his arrival. They met him at the cafe outside of the exit door.
THE SALMERONS AND thousands of similarly situated families — mixed immigration status, separated — are caught in the limbo of a legal system that often feels arbitrary and feeds on income inequality. “This is a system set up by and administered by human beings,” says Maureen Abel, a staff attorney at the Immigrant Justice Project, a program of the Charlotte Center for Legal Advocacy. “This means all of our human failings are going to seep into it. It’s inevitable. Unless we have institutional safeguards against it, it’s going to happen.” According to the American Immigration Council, just 37 percent of immigrants facing removal and 14 percent of immigrants in detention secure representation. And though undocumented immigrants are being imprisoned, immigration is a civil matter, not a criminal one, meaning detainees have no Sixth Amendment right to an attorney. Even if they did, it’s often cost-prohibitive for immigrants who work low-paying jobs without legal status. Daniel Salmeron works six days a week as a construction worker; Carmen works the same amount of time for far less money as a domestic worker. She says they spent $2,800 on the first lawyer and about $5,000 on Brad Banias. But the costs and the physical risks won’t deter Central American immigrants from trying to cross the border, Abel says. “People get [to this stage] fleeing for their lives because they are confused or don’t have the money to go through the process, or
because they are afraid that they will lose,” Abel says. “They legitimately believe they will die going home, so they prioritize being alive over going through legal status.” “These are brave people,” Quintanilla says, “and there’s nothing [in El Salvador] pushing them to stay.” Even a year after Pedro’s deportation, Banias remains tenacious on his behalf. Earlier this month, he filed a last-ditch appeal arguing that, because Pedro’s unaccompanied-minor status wasn’t explicitly revoked on paper by another agency — as legally required — upon his detainment as an adult, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services “is instructed to assume he’s still an unaccompanied minor and not look beyond the issue.” That, he says, “would have gotten him that asylum hearing that was scheduled.” If Banias’s argument prevails, Pedro’s case would set a precedent. And if Pedro is granted an asylum hearing, Banias says, that would legally require him to return to the U.S., where he could “live a normal life” while the asylum process plays out, perhaps over two or three years. “If the best I can do is create chaos and get them to answer these questions, I’m going to do that,” says Banias. “I think in front of the right judge, it’s a strong argument. We’ve been fighting for Pedro for so long—this is it, there’s no other avenue. Any time you have an argument that hasn’t been heard in any other part of the country, you’ve got a shot.”
EVERY SUNDAY FOR the nine months Pedro was at Stewart, the Salmerons traveled seven hours roundtrip to see him for an hour. Throughout those visits, Carmen watched 40 pounds dwindle from her son’s already-thin frame. That “malnourished” image is etched in her memory. Her one consolation these days is seeing Pedro through video chats, his face plumper, well-fed by her own mother. He calls her on the rare occasions when he leaves this house: “I’m going shopping, Mama. Want to tag along?” “It’s the only way we can still feel close,” Carmen says. “It’s like I’m walking through the streets with him. I get to see the mountains.”
The family will face a tough choice in the coming months, and they’re not sure what to do. As with most migrants, their lives have been transient and unpredictable. But now there’s a deadline: they have less than 18 months before Daniel’s TPS visa expires. “The truth is, here we have a lot. But in El Salvador, we have Pedro,” Carmen says, smiling through tears. “We can’t take away our daughter’s future. We would do anything for her.” Some 3,000 miles away from his family’s home in Charlotte, Pedro says his only choice is to remain hopeful, to look at what’s in front of him and not get wrapped up in long-term goals. “Life without papers in the United States isn’t easy, but my life was relatively good,” he says. “Here, I’m missing so many things. It’s like I’m back in my infancy.” His immediate plan is to finally graduate from high school. His dream is to play music for a living, but he says that lifestyle won’t earn him much respect in El Salvador. He likes drawing and computers; if he can afford it, maybe he’ll go to school for graphic design. Collectively, the family has survived a brutal civil war and crushing poverty in El Salvador and imprisonment in the U.S. In both of their homes, they’ve lived with uncertainty, fearful that anything they’ve earned can be taken away.
THE DAY I visited in September, Pedro’s
grandmother set a pot of beans on the kitchen table, waiting for Pedro to come back from an appointment, part of his effort to obtain a work permit. The family’s dairy profits have diminished since gangs took over the area, but fresh cheese and homemade tortillas serve as beautiful remnants of what is still possible in a country with deep scars. She walked out to the back porch to water a pot of herbs, her silhouette framed by green hills and bright blue sky. Unprompted, she told me that Pedro is “fighting to simply get ahead.” “Freedom is what he doesn’t have,” she added. “He just has bad luck.” Reporting for this story was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation. VBOULOUBASIS@INDYWEEK.COM
CLCLT.COM | MAR. 8 - MAR. 14, 2018 | 11
12 | MAR. 8 - MAR. 14, 2018 | CLCLT.COM
NEWS
NEWS
BLOTTER
BY RYAN PITKIN
LOOSE LIPS With students speaking out
against gun violence like never before, it was not a good time for a South Mecklenburg student to bring a gun on campus during baseball practice last week. The student said he forgot that the gun was in his car, and his real mistake was apparently telling people it was there, because officers responding to an anonymous tip pulled him from the field and searched his vehicle, seized his Smith & Wesson nine millimeter and arrested him for possession of a firearm on school property.
UNPLUGGED Scam me once, shame on you.
Scam me twice, shame on me. A man living in the Freedom Park area was conned twice by a stranger whom he tried to hire off the internet to do some electric work at his house. The victim told police that he found the would-be electrician on Thumbtack.com and hired him to see if anything was wrong with his electrical outlets. He paid the man $200 upfront, but he never showed up, so the victim did what any sane person would do and paid him another $200. According to the report, it was only after paying the suspect twice that the victim realized he had been defrauded.
POP A RADIATOR CAP We’ve all had
bad days at work, but rarely do any of us have to deal with a gun being pulled on us when we have disagreements with coworkers or customers. That’s exactly what happened to an employee at Advance Auto Parts on North Tryon Street last week. The 23-year-old employee told police he got into an argument with the suspect over auto parts (what else?) and the suspect “became aggravated and pointed a gun” at him, according to the report. The suspect was arrested on the scene and police took his loaded handgun and holster.
COLOR EXPLOSION A woman woke up to a
newly painted driveway at her south Charlotte home, and it was not painted well. The woman called police and reported that at some point overnight, some unknown suspects poured pink, blue and green paint all over her driveway. The artistic vandals weren’t done, however, as they also poured orange paint on the bumper of her gray Hyundai Sonata.
FIERY REDHEAD Kids can be mean to each
other, but one student at Harding High School in west Charlotte took things to another level last week and ended up in trouble with the law for it. According to the report, the suspect lit one of their fellow students’ hair on fire. The victim, a 16-year-old girl, suffered minor pattern burns to her scalp but was not treated by Medic or hospitalized.
CAPTAIN OBVIOUS Police are often forced
to state the obvious in criminal reports, such as when they include in most armed robbery reports that the suspect “did not have permission” to take whatever items were stolen at gunpoint, and such was the case in an odd
report about an assault that led to a car accident in Plaza Midwood last week. The officer reported that police responded to an assault call at the intersection of Central Avenue and The Plaza to find a 34-year-old man who told them he had been bitten by the suspect, but you won’t believe the weapon that was used. According to the report, “The listed victim stated that he was bit (with the suspect’s teeth) by the listed suspect, on his right forearm, before a vehicle wreck.” Well that clears that up.
POKE ON THE BACK The line between a
poking and a stabbing can be slight, but it can also mean the difference between whether or not a crime actually occurred. Such was the case in the Fourth Ward area of Uptown last week, when police responded to an assault call and found a 35-year-old man who claimed to have been prodded against his will. The man told police that “the suspect ‘poked’ him on the back with an unknown knife during an argument” the two were having on West 10th Street, according to the report. The man did not have any visible signs of injury, however, and several witnesses told police that no assault took place. Police later determined that no crime had occurred.
ABOVE AND BEYOND A thief in southeast
Charlotte was overdoing it last week when they took drastic measures to break into someone’s car for not much of a return. A 26-year-old woman told officers she went out to her Chevy Malibu one morning last week and found that someone had broken not one but two windows to gain access to the vehicle, and all they stole was a single dollar bill she had inside.
WHERE’S THE LOVE Some person with
apparent Hulk-like strength took out their frustrations on a tennis court in south Charlotte last week. Police responded to the Reavencrest clubhouse after an HOA member there found that someone tore apart the tennis court nets — which would mean somehow tearing through the metal cables inside the net — and then dislodged multiple posts that were cemented into the ground.
CAN’T HELP YA A woman thought her bank
was being helpful when she lost her debit card last week, only to find quite the opposite had occurred. The woman reported to police that she had misplaced the card, but then got a call from her bank saying that someone had found it and turned it into them. When she went to retrieve it, she was told she couldn’t because “everyone was in a meeting.” She then cancelled the card and ordered a new one, but not before finding out that someone had used the lost card to get money out of several ATMs and to place orders at 7-Eleven, Walmart, Harris Teeter, Food Lion and CookOut. All stories are pulled from police reports at CMPD headquarters. Suspects are innocent until proven guilty. BACKTALK@CLCLT.COM
NEWS OF THE WEIRD
WAIT, WHAT? Police in Mainz, Germany, responded to an apartment building after cries were heard from one unit early on Feb. 17, The Associated Press reported. When they arrived, officers found two men, the 58-year-old tenant and a 61-year-old visitor, “hopelessly locked up” with a mannequin dressed as a knight and a large remotecontrolled car. The men were too drunk to explain how they had become entangled. PEOPLE DIFFERENT FROM US Metro News reported on Feb. 20 that travelers “remained silent” for 20 minutes while a fellow passenger on a Ural Airlines flight from Antalya, Turkey, to Moscow used the air vent above her seat to dry a pair of underwear. Witnesses reported that the woman showed no shame and that “everybody was looking with interest and confusion.” Debate raged later, however, after video of the woman was posted online, with one commenter speculating that “maybe the takeoff was sort of extreme, so now she has to dry those.” LEAST COMPETENT CRIMINALS (1) Shanghai, China, police posted a video on social media of two men trying to break into a business on Feb. 14 by using bricks to shatter the glass storefront. But as United Press International reported, when Suspect A’s brick bounced off the glass, he bent to retrieve it and ended up squarely in the path of Suspect B’s brick, which struck him in the head and apparently knocked him out. In the video, Suspect B can be seen dragging Suspect A away from the store. Police remarked: “If all burglars were like this, we wouldn’t need to work overtime.” (2) A drug smuggler from Brazil apparently didn’t know he was under investigation by the National Anti-Narcotics Trafficking Unit in Portugal when he arrived on a flight Feb. 12 wearing a set of false butt cheeks filled with 2.2 pounds of cocaine, reported United Press International. The 32-year-old unidentified man was detained at the Tax and Customs Authority and searched, where his unusual derriere aroused suspicion. An accomplice, waiting for him at a Lisbon train station, was also arrested and charged with drug trafficking. THE LITIGIOUS SOCIETY Crestline, California, resident Claudia Ackley, 46, has teamed with “Discovering Bigfoot” filmmaker Todd Standing to sue the state of California, requesting on Jan. 18 that state agencies acknowledge the existence of a Sasquatch species. Ackley and her daughters, 11 and 14, say they were hiking a trail at Lake Arrowhead in March 2017 when they spotted a large figure braced in a pine tree. “I ran into a Sasquatch — a Bigfoot. We were face to face,” Ackley told the San Bernardino Sun. Forest rangers insisted at the time that Ackley and her daughters had seen a bear, and Ackley fears that by not acknowledging the presence of the legendary creatures, the state is putting the public at risk. “People have to be warned about these things,” she said. “They are big.”
INEXPLICABLE Firefighter Constantinos “Danny” Filippidis, 49, from Toronto, was the subject of a weeklong search by more than 250 people using drones, dogs and helicopters starting Feb. 7, when he disappeared from Whiteface Mountain ski resort in New York’s Adirondacks. When he finally turned up in California at the Sacramento International Airport on Feb. 13, he was still dressed in his ski pants and ski boots, and he still had his helmet, along with a new iPhone and a recent haircut. But, according to the Syracuse Post-Standard, Filippidis couldn’t tell officers anything about how he had traveled across the country, other than he rode in a “bigrig-style truck” and “slept a lot.” The truck dropped him off in downtown Sacramento, but he was unable to explain how he got to the airport. He was taken to an area hospital.
COMPELLING EXPLANATION A woman
claiming to be on a mission from God led a Kentucky State Police trooper on a chase at speeds up to 120 mph on Feb. 10, stopping only when another trooper pulled in front of her car. According to the Elizabethtown NewsEnterprise in Kentucky, Connie Lynn Allen, 52, of Goodlettsville, Tennessee, told officers that she was Mother Mary, en route to pick up Baby Jesus, and that God had given her permission to speed. She also said that she had died six years ago. She was charged with several offenses and is being held in Hardin County.
AWESOME! Staffers at a Bangor, Maine,
day care called Watch Me Shine were happy to receive Valentine’s cookies made by a parent — until those who ate them started to feel high. “Within 15 minutes, teachers were reporting they had concerns about those cookies,” Tiffany Nowicki, director of the center, told the Bangor Daily News. About 12 staff members felt the effects of the treats, which were confiscated by the police and are being tested. The day care has instituted a new policy that no outside food can be brought in for the children or staff.
WEIRD HISTORY Union College in
Schenectady, New York, excitedly announced on Feb. 13 that a librarian flipping through the brown pages of a 1793 almanac found a real historical treasure: a lock of President George Washington’s hair. Librarian John Myers came upon an envelope with “Washington’s hair” written in script on it, and inside, tied with a thread, were several strands of grayish hair. Keith Beutler, associate professor of history at Missouri Baptist University and the author of a book called “Washington’s Hair,” told The New York Times that in Washington’s day, it was not uncommon to exchange locks of hair as remembrances. “Exchanging locks of hair were like the selfies of the day,” Beutler said. Experts are examining the almanac and its provenance to determine whether the hair likely belongs to our first president, but in the meantime, college officials are learning how to preserve it. COPYRIGHT 2017 ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION
CLCLT.COM | MAR. 8 - MAR. 14, 2018 | 13
Brooks’ famous double cheeseburger, made “All the Way.”
FOOD
PHOTOS BY ALEXANDRIA SANDS
FEATURE
ALL THE WAY THROUGH The light rail is set to pass by Brooks’ Sandwich House, but the restaurant is no stranger to change BY ALEXANDRIA SANDS
A
LOT HAS CHANGED in NoDa — or North Charlotte, as it was once known — over the last 50 years. As many longtime Charlotteans are aware, North Charlotte began as a textile town; a place defined by its warehouses and mills, but more by the workers who made those warehouses run and lived in the homes that now serve as a hipster haven. But this isn’t the story of how NoDa came to be. It’s the story of the little red house on the corner of North Brevard Street, where those hard workers wrapped around the building to wait for an “All the Way” burger on lunch breaks or some livermush to start the day, and how Charlotte’s new light rail extension will soon bring about more change to a local gem that’s remained the same as the neighborhood around it has transformed. The restaurant, Brooks’ Sandwich House, has always been known for its burgers and hot dogs — some call then the best in the world. In the ’70s, breakfast started at 6 a.m., and workers from Highland Manufactoring 14 | MAR. 8 - MAR. 14, 2018 | CLCLT.COM
Co. Mill — the factory across the street that made gingham — ordered egg sandwiches with smoked sausage, livermush, bologna or country ham. Some carried out and others sat at the nearby picnic tables in a gravel lot. At any time of day, you could buy a hot dog for 15 cents or a hamburger for a quarter. To really top it off, you had to go “All the Way” by adding the mustard, onions and homemade chilli, which dripped down the sides of the burgers onto your fingers as you chomped in — that’s what made Brooks’ famous. The restaurant’s founder, Calvin Teal “CT” Brooks, Jr., tried out his chili recipe on his twin sons for the first 13 years of their lives until he got it exactly right. “Dad was one of those type of people that could make something good out of nothing,” says Scott Brooks, Calvin’s son who now runs the restaurant with his twin brother David. We’re standing with him outside the burger shack on a recent rainy afternoon. Despite the weather, the outdoors-only restaurant is pulling in regular, steady business.
Scott Brooks outside of Brooks’ on a recent rainy afternoon. Calvin was known as a great cook, and friends regularly suggested he should open a restaurant. By the time he perfected his recipe, he still owned auto body shops on 16th Street and in Mount Pleasant. He sold them and used the money to open Brooks’ in 1973. In August, Calvin passed away at 90 years old, but his legacy still lives on today. Besides the opening time, which was pushed from 6 to 7 a.m. — since they no longer cater to the same early-rising industrial workers they did in the ’70s — not much has changed at the neighborhood burger spot. Of course, the prices at the stop — where only cash is accepted — have risen since back in the day, but the concise, simple menu and highquality ingredients have remained the same. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” Scott says. It’s a cliche heis more than comfortable referencing because he lives by it. And Brooks’ doesn’t need fixing. Despite the crowds, the cash-only policy, and the fact it’s closed on weekends, customers keep coming back, pulling up anywhere they can park in the unstructured, gravel lot on weekdays. What brings them back? The brothers give most of the credit to the food, but camaraderie might play a role as well. No one in the Brooks family has met a stranger. As I stand with David at one of the picnic tables, orders clamor through the loudpseaker and we’re greeted by multiple customers who have become lifelong friends. One yells over to let me know he’s been coming here since the ’70s. Another holds up his brown bag to tell Scott he got off just in time to make it before the 3 p.m. closing. He says he loves the hot dogs and rubs his considerable belly as if to prove it. “You can tell I do enjoy it,” the customer says. To a conspiracy theorist, the guy would seem like a paid actor, planted there just to make my article. Scott turns back to me. “That’s what it’s all about,” he says. The restaurant still carries a hometown feel, but the Brooks family once worried the small shack had lost its small-town appeal. The textile mills shut down soon after Brooks’ opening and the area became known as a “bad neighborhood.”
“Nobody knew what NoDa was when we first came over here,” Scott said. “It’s a good place to go get in trouble. You might not even come back. I don’t know. It was that bad.” In the ’90s, artists recognized the beauty in the mills’ historical architecture. They transformed the area, slowly, into the art and entertainment district it is today, although even that has now tranformed into more of a bars and entertainment district. The years of constant change created a diverse clientele for the hamburger joint. Uniforms and suits mingle in line for Brooks’ burgers; beat-up trucks and shiny luxury cars park at random angles in the lot. Former Gov. Jim Hunt was a friend of Calvin’s, a relationship built solely on Hunt’s love for the restaurant’s food. As humble as the burger shack’s origins are, Scott is not modest about the restaurant’s well-deserved popularity. “As far as taste is concerned, value is concerned, I’ll take on all comers,” he says. “It doesn’t make any difference who it is. You can go out and pay eight, 10, 12 dollars for a hamburger if you want to. You won’t find one that taste any better than that.” Another thing that hasn’t changed: the secrecy of the famous chili recipe. Brooks’ staff has never leaked its recipe, to the chagrin of Guy Fieri, who has been wanting to visit Brooks’ to film an episode of his Diners, DriveIns and Dives show on the Food Network, but under a condition that Scott won’t meet. “He had his people call me three or four times,” Scott says. “I told that girl, ‘If you’re as pretty as you sound, I’m sure you’re a nice person, but I’m not going to show him how to make that chili.’” They don’t need the publicity anyway. They’ve been on Carolina Camera three times and John Boy and Billy’s radio show. They’ve won countless awards and made multiple publications’ “Best Burger” lists, including CL’s list. They’ve even had requests to ship their chili all the way to New Zealand, to which they obliged. “To be honest with you, I don’t really need anymore business,” Scott says. “This place here is designed to do about a third of
what it does. Everything else, it pretty much overworks you. But what are you gonna do ... I’ll take my good fortunes as I can get them.” Nearing 60 years old, Scott and David are considering the future of the restaurant amid explosive development in the area. A new extension of the LYNX Blue Line, its tracks sitting high on a bridge across from the hamburger joint, with a station right down Brevard Street, is set to open on March 16. With that development comes endless possibilities for NoDa, and developers are well aware of it. The Brooks brothers say people have tried “devious ways” to get his land. “You’d be surprised some of the things that people tried to get me out of here, to get my property,” David says. On a walk around the corner from Brooks’, you can see townhomes being built with prices starting at $500,000. The houses nearby are valued at over $700,000. “That’s wanting to live next to the hamburger place real bad, isn’t it?” Scott says, laughing.
BROOKS’ SANDWICH HOUSE Open Monday-Friday, 7 a.m.3 p.m. Closed weekends. 2710 N. Brevard St. 704-375-7808. brookssandwichhouse.com
The brothers hafe been offered “a lot of money” to move, Scott says, but not enough yet. He has explored potential options with developers but says he’d like to leave it the way it is, for now. However, he’s not sure that’s being realistic in the long run. Whatever happens, he wants to keep the restaurant running where it is. “I don’t know how long I’ll be here after this, but I hope the hamburger place will stay here,” he says. “We’ll see what happens.” Lots of folks, including us, will be rooting for him — “All the Way.” BACKTALK@CLCLT.COM CLCLT.COM | MAR. 8- MAR. 14, 2018 | 15
THURSDAY
8
FRIDAY
9
THINGS TO DO
TOP TEN
‘Waitress’ TUESDAY
PHOTO BY JOAN MARCUS
FRIDAY
9
SATURDAY
10
SATURDAY
10
BOOZE & NUDES
NAHKO BEAR
REPURPOSED
ARTPOP POP-UP
What: We remember when Winston-Salem singer-songwriter Caleb Caudle’s little country-rock combo played the back room at Pura Vida, when the NoDa art shop was still in Plaza Midwood. Caudle, his brother and their band the Bayonettes delivered stunningly great Americana songs even then. These days, Caudle gets props from Rolling Stone, American Songwriter and NPR. It was just a matter of time. Go see him. The Muse is the perfect venue for Caudle’s intimate songs and stories.
What: Alcohol and getting naked go hand in hand, so what makes this BYOB painting event so unique? For starters, instead of painting the standard, bowl-of-fruit still life, budding artists will be painting a naked man. We’re pretty sure they won’t be painting directly on the naked man; rather they will be rendering his likeness on canvas. But you never can tell what will happen when people start hitting the booze. The event is open to women and open minded gentlemen.
What: Last time we spotted folk singer Nahko Bear and his tribe, they were parading through San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, dancing, singing and playing instruments with no amps. A crowd of followers danced and sang along as Nahko offered up his selfdescribed medicine for the people. Nahko is America circa 2018: part Apache, part Puerto Rican, part Filipino and all social justice. He’s America’s great hope — and Trump Nation’s biggest nightmare.
What: We’ve got two fashion shows on the same day for you trendsetters out there, and you can conceivably make it to both if you hurry. The first one is at Warehouse 242, where local designers have been tasked to create stylish outfits out of so-called garbage, redefining what it means to dress trashy. Attendees will be able to bid on their favorite selections to benefit local, environmentally friendly nonprofits. Add DJ SPK on the ones and twos and you’re in for a guaranteed good time.
When: 7:30 p.m. Where: The Evening Muse, 3227 N. Davidson St.. More: $10-$12. eveningmuse.com
When: 6 p.m. Where: Dupp and Swatt, 2521 The Plaza More: $40 - 45. duppandswat.com
When: 8 p.m. Where: Underground, 820 Hamilton St. More: Sold Out. fillmorecharlottenc.com
When: 5-7 p.m. Where: Warehouse 242, 2307 Wilkinson Blvd. More: $15-30. tinyurl.com/repurposedCLT
What: Meet the arists responsible for all the colorful art that’s popped up on billboards and in other public spaces around the Charlotte area at this ArtPop Street Gallery pop-up event. Buy ’em a beer or a glass of wine, munch on hors d’oeuvres with them and enjoy some live music at this quarterly get-together that lands at Evoke this time. You’ll see artists Casey Cline, Carmella Jarvi, Gary Abramov, Amanda Foshtag, Pauline Lamal and a houseful of art afficionados. You might even get a hankering to buy some local art while you’re there..
CALEB CAUDLE
16 | MAR. 8 - MAR. 14, 2018 | CLCLT.COM
When: 6-9 p.m. Where: Evoke, 555 S. McDowell St. More: Free. artpopstreetgallery.com
Royal Peasantry Fashion Show SATURDAY
Jeezy SUNDAY
NEWS ARTS FOOD MUSIC ODDS
Nahko FRIDAY PHOTO COURTESY OF THE FILLMORE
SATURDAY
10
ROYAL PEASANTRY FASHION SHOW
PHOTO COURTESY OF NAHKO
PHOTO COURTESY OF ROYAL PEASANTRY
FRIDAY
9
SUNDAY
TUESDAY
SUNDAY
11
11
13
SINCERELY, IRIS
BELLA’S BARTOK
JEEZY
‘WAITRESS’
What: Two of Plaza Midwood’s most eccentric spots became one on February 27 when Royal Peasantry launched its new operation in Haylo Healing Arts Lounge on February 27. Now they’ll be celebrating that launch with a fashion show featuring RP’s signature ritual creations, relics of self worth and ethical fashion wardrobe options. Stop by Haylo between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. to let RP founder and lead designer Daniella Miller help you upgrade your personal wardrobe.
What: He plays slide on a cigar-box guitar made from plywood and an old Colorado license plate. He also plays a regular Martin acoustic. But whatever Todd Murray plays, it’s gonna sound great. The Charlottebased singer-songwriter who once lived in Colorado and goes by the name Sincerely, Iris, mixes up dirty blues and folk in his poignant song-stories about life in America, circa now. To get a taste of his music, check out Sincerely, Iris’ performance of “Trouble” on local video series Tiny Stage Concerts.
What: Klezmer originated with Jewish musicians who played raucous music for shtetl celebrations and ghetto get-togethers. That means Klezmer’s been pretty punk all along, so it makes perfect sense that the brand of Klezmer punk Bella’s Bartok creates is a thing. This sextet’s energetic rock sounds like a New Orleans brass ensemble running breakneck through a gypsy circus. The name comes from the Hungarian composer Bela Bartok, who dared to incorporate folk melodies into classical music.
What: Not many people can be identified simply from saying, “Yeah,” but raspy rapper Jeezy has turned his signature voice into a $15 million net worth ... oh, and he’s got bars too. The Atlanta native will be putting on for his city in CLT on Sunday. The CEO-turned-rapper is bringing the heat on his Cold Summer Tour, so lace up the “Air Forces” and get ready for a party, with Detroit rapper Tee Grizzley batting lead off and Jeezy closing things out.
What: With the Trump administration wanting servers to share their tips with their greedy bosses, it seems like servers could use a little love. Enter Waitress, an empowering musical featuring songs by six-time Grammy nominee Sara Bareilles, who first made waves in 2007 with “Love Song,” her sneakily sarcastic take on radio-friendly music. Waitress tells the story of Jenna, a server and master pie-maker who longs to escape her small town. And remember, if you go out for coffee after the show, always tip your waitress!
When: 7 p.m. Where: Haylo Healing Arts Lounge, 11 Central Ave., Suite 100 More: Free. royalpeasantry.com
When: 10 p.m. Where: Primal Brewery, 16432 Old Statesville Road, Huntersville More: Free. primalbrewery.com
When: 7 p.m. Where: Petra’s, 1919 Commonwealth Ave. More: $10. petrasbar.com
When: 7 p.m. Where: The Fillmore, 820 Hamilton St. More: $45 and up. fillmorenc.com
When: 7:30 p.m. Where: Belk Theater, 130 N. Tryon St. More: $25 and up. blumenthalarts.org
CLCLT.COM | MAR. 8 - MAR. 14, 2018 | 17
MUSIC
FEATURE
‘SNACKMEAT’ FOR EVERYBODY James Lee Walker II obliterates boundaries between rock, theater and politics BY GREY REVELL
O
N THE FOURTH FLOOR of a high-rise apartment building in Uptown Charlotte, the concierge is plotting a revolution fueled by art, theater, rock ’n’ roll and God only knows what else. James Lee Walker II doesn’t just work at the Vue; he also lives here. One of the Queen City’s more wildly creative minds, Walker, 38, is an actor and singer who blends both forms into a character that fronts a popular local Charlotte band, Crackers and Snackmeat. When he’s not acting like a concierge at the Vue, Walker is wailing out Who or Billy Idol covers, or doing improv comedy, or winning local theater awards for his parts in plays like The Day They Shot John Lennon. His band Crackers and Snackmeat has been performing around town together for the past decade, stretching musical boundaries with its pounding funk grooves, laid-back blues and hard-hitting, hard-rock hooks. Fearless in exploring different genres, from jazz to rock to metal, the band will celebrate its 10th anniversary on Saturday, March 10, with a party at the Rabbit Hole in Plaza Midwood. The peformance will serve as a greatest-hits retrospective of sorts, with folk-punk singer Felly and the experimental metal group Venus Invictus sharing the bill. In any given Crackers and Snackmeat set, the group’s influences simmer in a sonic stew of original songs with well-picked covers slipping in and around each other like samples in a tasty hip-hop mix. At the center of the madness is Snackmeat, a chaotic soul singer from outer space, wearing steampunk goggles or whatever else he chooses, navigating the Crackers’ musical universe like Buckaroo Banzai in the fourth dimension. Snackmeat is, of course, Walker, who was born in a military family in Okinawa, Japan, in 1980. He’s the son of a Vietnam vet; his mother Leslie was an Army nurse, and his sisters, Olena and Aldrezia, are also military vets who saw action in the Middle East. “Everyone was a veteran except me,” Walker says with a chuckle. The family is an amalgam of Southern Baptist spirituality, military pragmatism and progressive politics, best exemplified by the fact that they voted for Barack Obama as 18 | MAR. 8 - MAR. 14, 2018 | CLCLT.COM
Walker (at right, as Snackmeat) wails away with his Cracker band mates, guitarist Phil Black (from left), drummer Colin Ray and former bassist James French. proudly as they support the NRA. But James is by far the weirdest of the Walker clan. Spending his earliest years on the Japanese archipelago gave him an appreciation for Japanese culture that flowered into full-blown otaku. His mind moves like a Shinkansen bullet train from one subject to another, as he darts from a discussion of classic anime such as Go Nagai’s 1970s Devilman series to modern Japanese TV shows like Gurren Lagann, before slipping easily into a dissertation on Howard Zinn’s one-man 1999 play Marx in Soho. In the early ’80s, the Walkers moved to Beaufort, South Carolina, where at age 8 James had what he called his “Bernie Sanders moment” — watching a man who looked like himself, Jesse Jackson, run for president. It woke something up in Walker. “Most kids growing up have a favorite sport,” Walker says. “Mine became politics.” Walker was simultaneously inspired by another dynamic black performer: MJ. “I was trying to watch Kung Fu Theater one day and my sisters were watching music videos, and I thought music videos were stupid and pointless,” he remembers. “Then Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ came on and I was like, ‘What the hell is this?’ They were just in a movie theater, and now — oh crap! — there’s a zombie? What?” Walker was floored. “I asked my dad who was that and he said, ‘That’s Michael Jackson.’ “‘What’s his job?’ “‘He’s a multimedia superstar.’” From there on out, when Walker’s teachers would ask him and his classmates what they wanted to be when they grew up, Walker would say, “I want to be multimedia superstar.”
LIKE MANY ARTISTS with far-flung,
often contradictory passions, Walker found a home in rock ’n’ roll. He fell in with some punk rockers in Beaufort who lived together in communal houses, and eventually moved in with them. He joined various punk bands, including one called the Hitchcock Blondes. As with most punk scenes of the late 20th century, political activism was never far away. “I had a friend named Roger who would read from The Communist Manifesto,” Walker remembers. “He would drift off to sleep saying things like, ‘You, James, will be my general.’” When the time came for Walker to start seriously pursuing his theatrical ambitions, he thought about moving to Atlanta or Nashville, but settled on Charlotte, whose creative scenes were growing fast. “I liked the blank-slate quality of [Charlotte],” Walker says. “You could literally do anything.” It didn’t take him long to find some allies. Keli Semelsberger, director of the Charlotte Comedy Theater, immediately recognized Walker’s brilliance. “I remember saying to James once, ‘You’re so smart that you’re damn close to being insane,’” she recalls. Within a few years, Walker’s acting spilled over into activism. After watching the Occupy Wall Street movement take form on TV in 2011, he heard that a similar movement was happening in Charlotte. So on the night of October 14, 2011, he showed up at the Occupy encampment in front of Charlotte’s old city hall, tent in hand and wearing a suit. As luck would have it, this was the same night as that year’s Metrolina Theatre Awards, and Walker had been nominated for his performance in The Day They Shot John Lennon and as part of
PHOTO COURTESY OF JAMES LEE WALKER II
the cast of Rent. “I walked up to city hall and asked the [Occupiers] if it was cool to set up my tent,” Walker remembers with a laugh. “Then I said, ‘Well cool, I’ll be back in a little while. I need to go see if I’ve won something.’” For the next four months, Walker lived in his tent, occupying the former city hall and establishing himself as a liaison between the Occupiers, the Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department and the media. He earned the nicknames “Black Moses” and “The Human Megaphone,” a play on the movement’s term, “human microphone,” for people who delivered speeches at Occupy sites. But speaking to authorities was hard for Walker. “I get frustrated with speeches,” he says. “We’d have Mondays where we’d have to go speak to the City Council, and I’d throw my suit on, and we’d be in front of the City Council with my written statement, and halfway through it, I’m off the page.” He laughs. “The others would be like, ‘You’re doing poetry slam again, James.’ I would get pissed off.” City officials worked hard to figure out ways to catch the Occupiers breaking a law, and once it was able to evict the group, Walker exchanged contact info with many of his fellow Occupiers, with whom he remains friends. It’s the day-to-day activities during the occupation that Walker remembers most fondly. “I would take a coffee pot all the way to the bus station,” he remembers, “make coffee, and then walk with a full pot of coffee back to ‘Excalibur,’” — the Occupy Charlotte command center. He shakes his head and smiles wistfully.
Walker (at left, in wig) with J.R. Adduci in the indie short ‘Twisted Minds: Boozers & Losers.’ “Ah, those were the days,” he says, grinning. In the seven years since Occupy broke down its campsites around the country, Walker has remained passionate about activism and moving Charlotte’s agenda toward more socialist ideals. He also incorporates it into his art. “I’m obsessed with the concept of the commune,” he says. “Anyone can sneer at socialism all they want, but it’s just taking care of each other. Fuck Ayn Rand.” He shakes his head, referring to the ice queen of the Libertarian movement. “That selfserving nonsense is just detrimental to a society. Period.” Walker would like to see his ideals manifested as art centers where kids can realize their own creative visions. “A place where, instead of being bored or doing heroin, a kid can go and watch someone in the corner of the building work on choreographing a dance routine with three other buddies, while another kid, who would otherwise be doing something worse, is in another corner painting or drawing a picture of that.” When asked what he thinks of activist communities that have sprung up in Charlotte since the Occupy movement, Walker pauses, uncharacteristally silent for a moment. “It’s not loud enough,” he says, finally, “All thanks and respect to Charlotte Uprising and Black Lives Matter, but it’s just not loud enough.”
IF LOUD IS what he craves, Walker gets his fix fronting Crackers and Snackmeat. Phil Black, the musical director, says the group came together by chance to serve as the backing band for actors Rodney Keith and Nikki Frank’s improv sketch project Habitual Ritual. But the creative chemistry between Black and Walker was immediate. “We set out to bastardize every musical genre,” Black, 44, says. In the band, Snackmeat is the mad master of ceremonies, a character that lets Walker get loose and not have a care in the
PHOTO COURTESY OF JAMES LEE WALKER II
CRACKERS AND SNACKMEAT 9 p.m. March 3, The Rabbit Hole, 1801 Commonwealth Ave. $8. therabbitspot.com
world. “I’m an arts person and performer — period. My ego is larger than any planet in the solar system,” Walker says. But he’s also a singer, he adds, who “was trained by people that actually care about singing. If it wasn’t for this band, I’d be singing raffish R&B and putting absolutely no effort into it.” He laughs. “So thanks to these guys, I’m incredible.” Walker’s favorite thing in the world is watching and singing to musicals, he says, citing The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Lyle, Lyle Crocodile. “The fact that people in this country don’t just randomly break into song at any given moment is seriously stifling our development.” Ultimately, Walker does what he does because it’s fun — and because he likes to take care of people. “It takes a community, that’s all,” he says. “Any issue we have — nationally or whatever — needs to be dealt with city by city, county by county. That’s how you fix anything. If the states want to govern themselves, well cool, but within those states, you need mad socialism. That’s the only way it’s gonna work.” He breaks into characters again: “‘I grow tomatoes.’ ‘Cool. I bake bread.’ ‘Awesome.’ It’s as simple as that. And anyone making it more complicated is just someone who’s trying to get something over on you.” His friend Semelsberger couldn’t agree more. “Brilliant people like James are always in danger of falling through the cracks,” she says, “having to take jobs that they’re way too smart for, unless someone just says, ‘Hey, you’re going to MIT and I’m going to pay for it,’ you know? But we’re a tribe, and James is definitely one of our own.” BACKTALK@CLCLT.COM
CLCLT.COM | MAR. 8 - MAR. 14, 2018 | 19
MUSIC
SOUNDBOARD MARCH 8 BLUES/ROOTS/INTERNATIONAL Enter The Haggis (Evening Muse)
COUNTRY/FOLK Caleb Caudle Band, Matt Minchew & the Highbinders (The Evening Muse) Kane Brown (Coyote Joe’s) Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder (Don Gibson Theatre, Shelby) Summit Coffee Songwriters Showcase: Rob McHale, Isabel Taylor, Wyatt Espalin (Summit Coffee Co., Davidson)
DJ/ELECTRONIC Le Bang (Snug Harbor)
POP/ROCK Carmen Tate Solo Acoustic (Eddie’s on Lake Norman, Mooresville) Open Mic for Musicians (Crown Station Coffeehouse and Pub) The Boron Heist, Tongues of Fire, The Emotron, Bitter Inc., Sunday Boxing (Milestone) David Archuleta (Visulite Theatre) Get The Led Out-Led Zeppelin Tribute (Neighborhood Theatre) Jordan Middleton & the Low End Duo (RiRa Irish Pub) Karaoke (Hattie’s Tap & Tavern) LP, Noah Kahan, Kat Cunning (The Underground) Mike Strauss Trio (Comet Grill) Monthly Songwriter Showcase (Summit Coffee Co., Davidson) Shana Blake and Friends (Smokey Joe’s Cafe) Steve & Chuck (Tin Roof)
MARCH 9 BLUES/ROOTS/INTERNATIONAL Nahko And Medicine For The People (The Underground)
CLASSICAL/JAZZ/SMOOTH Charlotte Symphony: Ravel Piano Concerto in D (Belk Theater)
COUNTRY/FOLK Josh Brannon Band, Tyler Hatley & the Little Mountain Band (Free Range Brewing Company) Kane Brown (Coyote Joe’s) The Lenny Federal Band (Comet Grill) 20 | MAR. 8 - MAR. 14, 2018 | CLCLT.COM
DJ/ELECTRONIC Player Made: An Ode To Southern Rap of All Eras (Snug Harbor)
HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B Soul Sessions with Gena Chambers (Morehead Street Tavern)
POP/ROCK ABACAB-The Music of Genesis (Visulite Theatre) An Archaic Agenda (Hattie’s Tap & Tavern) Becca Mancari, Liz Cooper & The Stampede (Evening Muse,) Commander Keen, Moderneverything, Joules, Ennie Arden, The Felons (Milestone) Dropkick Murphys, Agnostic Front, Bim Skala Bim (The Fillmore) High Up (Crown Station Coffeehouse and Pub) High Up, Whispertown, Jake Bellows (Crown Station Coffeehouse and Pub) Hiss Golden Messenger (Neighborhood Theatre) Jay Taylor (Tin Roof) Larkin Dodgen, Chosovi (Petra’s) Larkin Poe (Stage Door Theater) Larry Keel Experience (The Rabbit Hole) Mo Lowda & the Humble, Pierce Edens (Evening Muse) Standing Room Only (Smokey Joe’s Cafe) Strong Maybe (RiRa Irish Pub)
MARCH 10 COUNTRY/FOLK Chris Trapper (Evening Muse)
CLASSICAL/JAZZ/SMOOTH Charlotte Symphony: Ravel Piano Concerto in D (Belk Theater)
DJ/ELECTRONIC DJ Method (RiRa Irish Pub) Tilted DJ Saturday’s (Tilted Kilt Pub & Eatery)
POP/ROCK Amigo, Sinners & Saints, The Menders, Philip K. Dixie (The Courtroom, Rock Hill) Ancient Cities, Quiet Hollers, Manolamb (Visulite Theatre) Bill Noonan Band (Comet Grill) Bless These Sounds, Mystery Plan, Maggie Aldridge (Petra’s) Corey Hunt, Sam Tayloe (Evening Muse) Crackers & Snackmeat, Venus Invictus, Felly (The
SOUNDBOARD Rabbit Hole) Dirty Art Club, Don Telling’s Island Mysteries, Zodiac Lovers, Blank Ocean (Snug Harbor) Harm, Arborlea, Recover The Satellite (Milestone) Hipshack (RiRa Irish Pub) Interstellar Overdrive-A Saucerful Of Pink Floyd (Sylvia Theatre, York) Nightwish (The Fillmore) Pluto for Planet (Tin Roof) The Rockaholics (Smokey Joe’s Cafe) Sincerely, Iris (Primal Brewing, Huntersville) Stateline Crossing (Hattie’s Tap & Tavern)
MARCH 11 BLUES/ROOTS/INTERNATIONAL An Afternoon of Irish Fiddle & Piano: Jon Singleton, Jon Hill, David Gilliland (Davidson College Tyler-Tallman Recital Hall, Davidson) Celtic Woman: Homecoming (Belk Theater)
HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B Jeezy, Tee Grizzley (The Fillmore) Bone Snugs-N-Harmony (Snug Harbor)
POP/ROCK Bella’s Bartok, Chris Kasper (Petra’s) Displace (Heist Brewery) A Fun Afternoon with The Jolly Lollies (Evening Muse) The Hunna, Coasts (The Underground) Wild Domestic, Falling Through April, Lost Stars (Evening Muse) Omari and The Hellhounds (Comet Grill)
MARCH 12 CLASSICAL/JAZZ/SMOOTH Jazz Mondays (Crown Station Coffeehouse and Pub)
POP/ROCK Find Your Muse Open Mic featuring Larkin Dodgen (Evening Muse) Iron Chic, Late Bloomer, TKO Faith Healer (Milestone) Locals Live: The Best in Local Live Music & Local Craft Beers (Tin Roof) Music Bingo (Tin Roof) Music Trivia (Hattie’s Tap & Tavern, Charlotte)
HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B
#MFGD Open Mic (Apostrophe Lounge) Knocturnal (Snug Harbor)
MARCH 13 HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B Eclectic Soul Tuesdays - RnB & Poetry (Apostrophe Lounge) Soul Station (Crown Station Coffeehouse and Pub)
COUNTRY/FOLK Red Rockin’ Chair (Comet Grill)
POP/ROCK Brzowski, Uncommon Nasa, Jon Notty, Red Jesse, MC Stealth (Milestone) Coast Modern, Netherfriends, Trash Panda (Visulite Theatre) Drugstore Ghost, Apartment Club, Apricot Blush (Snug Harbor) Keith Harkin (RiRa Irish Pub) Uptown Unplugged with Jon Linker (Tin Roof) Open Jam with the Smokin’ Js (Smokey Joe’s Cafe) Open Mic hosted by Jarrid and Allen of Pursey Kerns (The Kilted Buffalo, Huntersville)
MARCH 14 HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B ¡Mayday!, Little Stranger (Neighborhood Theatre) Free Hookah Wednesdays Ladies Night (Kabob House, Persian Cuisine)
BLUES/ROOTS/INTERNATIONAL March Residency: Chócola, Phat Lip, Astrea Corp (Snug Harbor)
DJ/ELECTRONIC Karaoke with DJ Alex Smith (Petra’s) Cyclops Bar: Modern Heritage Weekly Mix Tape (Snug Harbor)
COUNTRY/FOLK
CITIES 3/8 DAVID ARCHULETA 3/10 QUIETANCIENT HOLLERS &MANOLAMB 3/9 AN EVENING WITH ABACAB THE MUSIC OF GENESIS 3/13 COAST MODERN 4/4ROGUE WAVE 4/13MIPSO 4/14TOUBAB KREWE 4/17 WOLF ALICE 4/18 THIRD STORY 4/20The OLD 97s 4/21 SCOTS 4/26 LYDIA LOVELESS 4/28 ATLAS ROAD CREW 5/2 TAUK 5/6 (the) MELVINS 5/19 The CLARKS 5/15 TANK AND THE BANGAS 5/31 Justin Townes Earle
COMING SOON Jessica Lea Mayfield (March 15, Neighborhood Theatre) Radio Lola, MollyWops (March 17, Evening Muse) The English Beat (March 17, Fillmore) K Flay (March 23, Fillmore) Ellis Dyson and the Shambles (March 23, Evening Muse) Caleborate (March 24, Neighborhood Theatre) Miguel (March 28, Fillmore) Wishbone Ash (April 4, Neighborhood Theatre) John Craigie (April 5, Evening Muse) The Eagles (April 11, Spectrum Center) Davina & The Vagabonds (April 15, Evening Muse) Lindi Ortega (April 22, Evening Muse) Minus The Bear (April 22, Neighborhood Theatre) The Darkness (April 27, The Underground) Blue October (May 3, Fillmore) Carbon Leaf (May 5, Neighborhood Theatre) David Bromberg Quintet (May 16, Neighborhood Theatre) St. Vincent (May 21, Fillmore) Khalid (May 23, Charlotte Metro Credit Union Amphitheare) Bishop Briggs (May 25, Fillmore) Foreigner (July 4, PNC Music Pavilion) Sam Smith (July 6, Spectrum Center) Barenaked Ladies (July 5, Charlotte Metro Credit Union Amphitheare) Weezer, Pixies (July 25, PNC Music Pavilion) Alan Jackson (Sptember 15, Spectrum Center) Maroon 5 (October 4, Spectrum Center)
LOVES CHILDREN
&OTHER PETS...
FOR DINNER
Open Mic/Open Jam (Comet Grill)
POP/ROCK The Bones of J.R. Jones (Evening Muse) Open Mic & Songwriter Workshop (Petra’s) Pluto for Planet (RiRa Irish Pub) Trivia & Karaoke Wednesdays (Tin Roof)
NEED A PET SITTER?
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MUSIC
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SATURDAY, MARCH 17
FRANK FOSTER WITH SPECIAL GUEST
DENNY STRICKLAND LIMITED ADVANCE $10 ALL OTHERS $12
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SATURDAY, MARCH 24
LANCO
WITH SPECIAL GUEST
ADAM SANDERS LIMITED ADVANCE $15 ALL OTHERS $18
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SATURDAY, APRIL 14
THE CASEY DONAHEW BAND LIMITED ADVANCE $12 ALL OTHERS $15
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SATURDAY, APRIL 21
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CLCLT.COM | MAR. 8 - MAR. 14, 2018 | 21
ARTS
FEATURE
SHOW US YOUR CANS NoDa Brewing showcases local artists BY RYAN PITKIN
WHEN YOUR namesake neighborhood is known as Charlotte’s arts district, there’s a certain expectation you have to live up to, and NoDa Brewing Company co-founder Suzie Ford is happy to do so. It was Ford, co-founder and co-owner of NoDa Brewing, who recently decided to create an homage to the countless great artists in the neighborhood and city as a whole. “We wanted to turn part of the room into NoDa and keep in that feel,” says Ford. She put out a call for local artists to paint exclusive artworks based on different cans of NoDa beer on a 36x24 canvas. After narrowing 60 responding artists to 15, she assigned them a can, gave them a canvas, and let them do as they wish. On Tuesday night, after Creative Loafing’s press deadline, Ford and the artists unveiled the 15 paintings. Before that, CL got a first look at the art and reached out to each artist to tell us about what their work.
STEPHEN LURSEN: CAVU
My intention was to create a celebratory work of art that hearkens back to the era established by the original CAVU can design and story. Most of my current work is 90 percent abstract with 10 percent illustrative imagery. I blend this percentage of color and material with imagery to bridge the gap between purely non-representational work, which tells no story, and an image that has the potential to trigger an imagined story within the mind of the viewer. 22 | MAR. 8 - MAR. 14, 2018 | CLCLT.COM
ALLAN POTTER: HOP EXPERIMENT SESSION ALE
ANDREW ROCCO: MONSTRO
HENRY SCHREIBER: GORDGEOUS PUMPKIN ALE
JERRY KIRK: HOP CAKES
I gravitated toward the Hop Experiment, because I immediately felt the inspiration to paint a mad scientist. That idea evolved as I thought more about the “hop” aspect, and rabbits seemed like a natural fit given that they are sometimes used as test subjects in lab environments. This gave me the opportunity to turn the whole idea on its head and produce something original.
Having lived in and around NoDa for the past 7-plus years, I thought it would be awesome to do one last local project before I moved to Charleston, South Carolina. I picked my can because I liked NoDa Brewing’s play on the word ‘Gorgeous.’ I had a lot fun painting it and I am looking forward to seeing what everyone else made.
I’ve always been kind of obsessed with the imagery of space and astronauts and stuff like that. I love the colors that you can use with that kind of stuff. I think it compliments the style of art that I’m doing, where it’s a little more graphic and digital looking. I thought about what I wanted to do for a while, before I knew what can I was getting, and I thought that was a cool idea to sort of be reaching out for it.
The can already looked like an illustrative piece of art, and I wanted the challenge of building my painting around that and incorporating it in an imaginative way. I ultimately chose the landscape of NoDa for my background because, not only is it the brewery’s namesake, but it’s where my career as a painter took off. Also, visually, it offers so many cool and colorful images. I had so much fun creating it.
ASHLEY GRAHAM: GOOD WILL HOPPING
I used my drawings and digital imagery to collage into the painting, making it look more pixelated and pieced together to emulate the grainy effect that chalk makes on a chalkboard. There are hidden things throughout the painting that pay tribute to the movie, but mostly the IPA that the artwork represents and the formulas that NoDa Brewing utilizes to create it.
MIKE WIRTH: HOP DROP ‘N’ ROLL
I wanted to capture the thematic spirit of ‘50’s teenage angst that [NoDa Brewing co-owner] Todd and [head brewer] Chad imagined when they collaborated on Todd’s recipe, but also honor Chad’s late father, who was an Elvis impersonator. My goal was to adapt the can art into an Elvis jumpsuitstyled sequins pattern. I obscured the face to allude that this is an Elvis-looking individual as homage to Chad’s late father.
BRIAN HESTER: PAR 4
I’m a school teacher at Myers Park High School. What I teach my kids is, go outside of the box. Don’t conform to that space that everyone knows is cliché. Make the spectator pick apart what’s in that composition. Then also make them believe that that shit can happen. I’m going to make the irrational become rational. I try to pick things apart. I create new light sources. I tried to make people believe like I know what the hell’s happening under water.
HALE TROTTER: HOPPY HOLIDAYS
A friend suggested I do the project, and by the time I got word about it, the seasonal holiday brew “Hoppy Holidays” was about all that was left to choose. But that actually made it fairly easy for me, since I love painting snow scenes and am an avid snow skier! “A ski holiday ... sure.” That was the idea that came to me. I had just gone skiing in Taos, New Mexico, and done some painting out there as well.
CARLA GARRISON-MATTOS: JAM SESSION
DINK NOLEN: COCO LOCO
I love water towers. I lived beside one when I was a child and imagined it was my giant robot friend. I initially had a different idea, but the idea didn’t touch me emotionally. My wife suggested making the can a water tower and putting it against a colorful sky. Selecting the water tower as a subject has inspired me to start an acrylic paint series I’m calling Water Giants, which will be water towers from my travels and locally.
PHIL GIBSON: ROARING RIOT
REID BRAMHALL: STOP, COLLABORATE & GLISTEN
STEPHANY TEMPLETON: NODAJITO
TERSIA BROOKS: PACIFIC REIGN
I have been working for NoDa Brewing Company for about 3 years, and when this project came up I was overjoyed. I chose JAM Session because for years we have referred to Lady JAM, featured on the can itself, as resembling our own Lindsay Sprick. I wanted to slightly reimagine the can with Lindsay as Lady JAM. It’s a lighthearted piece painted with love (and acrylics) that I think captures our fun loving attitude here at NoDa.
I’m a huge fan of Star Wars and have recently done Star Wars-inspired paintings and thought, “What if I did a hip-hop Storm Trooper?” and the rest is history. I try to create paintings with bold, bright colors with a sort of fun and whimsical twist that some times tell a story. I want to bring a smile to people and bring the kid out of them cause I’m a big kid at heart.
In coming up with my design, I just expanded on the [existing] face of the can. I made the can top look like water and added three more playful divers. I wanted to show that anyone diving into a Nodajito would love some company. In the background, it is important to note the gold trophy indicating that at the Great American Beer Festival, Nodajito won the gold award, proving it’s delicious!
I was one of the last to come by and pick out my beer can, so I was pretty thrilled to see Roaring Riot was still in the mix. As soon as I saw the can was available the first thing that sprung to mind was the Teen Wolf beer biting scene. I’d like to think I honored the legacy of Scott Howard and his teenage lycanthropy or at the very least, Stiles [from the MTV version].
Making the beer can the focus was my main aim, and after 1,001 ideas of what else I wanted to express, two happy thoughts came to mind: an endless stream of beer being supplied and old rusty things. It was mere luck that the old water pump looks kind of majestic and ties in with the name Pacific Reign. I am happy with the fact that I could do something I love that doesn’t take away from that sexy beer can. CLCLT.COM | MAR. 8 - MAR. 14, 2018 | 23
Creative Loafing: Where did you study theater? April Jones: I graduated from North Carolina Central University in 1989 with a theater degree and got my MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. Actually, I spent my freshman year at Spelman in Atlanta, but I couldn’t afford to go back, because it’s pretty expensive. You know, Spelman is a historically black college for African-American women and is the sister school to Morehouse, which is the men’s college where Martin Luther King went to school. [laughs] See what I did there? Yes [laughs], you just connected it with your current play. So let’s talk about that play. The Mountaintop was written in 2009. What makes this story resonate for today’s audiences? Gun violence. Martin Luther King was killed by a gun. Bobby Kennedy was killed by a gun. John Kennedy was killed by a gun. Malcolm X was killed by a gun. So this play just seems to be holding up a mirror to society in terms of how many lives have been lost to gun violence, even before these current events. This happened 50 years ago! It’s hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that we haven’t done anything about it and it’s even more prevalent now because guns seem to be easier to get. It’s easier to get a gun now than it is to get a driver’s license.
ARTS
ARTSPEAK
BACK IN BLACK Actor and director April Jones scales ‘The Mountaintop’ BY MARK KEMP
WHEN APRIL JONES walked off stage
in March of 2016 after a spectacular performance in Actor’s Theatre of Charlotte’s production of Father Comes Home from the Wars, she was feeling a little off kilter. “I’d been feeling off for about a week, and I went to the doctor and told him I didn’t feel right,” Jones remembers. “And then on March 10, after the show, I felt really weird and asked one of the actors to take me to the hospital.” Jones had suffered a debilitating hemorrhagic stroke. “That’s the last thing I remember for a month,” she says today. “So that’s what I’ve been dealing with for the past two years.” On March 8, Jones returns to Actor’s Theatre to direct playwright Katori Hall’s 2009 piece The Mountaintop, a two-actor play set in the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, featuring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and a hotel worker talking on the night before King’s assassination in April of 1968. King 24 | MAR. 8 - MAR. 14, 2018 | CLCLT.COM
had just delivered his fiery “Mountaintop” speech, and the two characters’ discussion shows the civil rights leader’s humanity. Jones, 55, grew up in an iconic North Carolina African-American family steeped in important civil rights activity. Her mother was a pediatrician — the only black female intern at Charlotte Memorial Hospital (now Carolinas Medical Center) when April was a little girl. Her grandfather, J.J. Hanibal, was a general practitioner in Kinston, where her grandmother, Alice, was instrumental in desegregating the schools. Today, a building in Kinston is named for Alice Hannibal, who was the city’s first African-American councilwoman. We sat down with Jones recently to talk about her recovery from the stroke, the plague of gun violence in America, and why The Mountaintop still matters.
The play features King and a motel worker talking on the night before his assassination. What does the play say about King that hasn’t been said in other literary or theatrical works? It’s about his humanity. You know, there were rumors about King being a philanderer, and I don’t know if those rumors were ever verified. But it doesn’t matter to the legacy of the man. And that’s one of the things I realize about any public figure that we put on pedestals. They are only human; they have feet of clay. So we have to be careful about elevating public figures or anybody who does great work to the status of being godlike, because once they are revealed to be only human, it shouldn’t take away from the great work they did. It’s like when I found out about Bill Clinton — when that whole Monica Lewinsky thing came out — I was like, ‘Well I hope it’s not true, but if it is true, does it take away from the good work he’s done?’ And for me, it didn’t. As a child, I put my parents on a pedestal and thought they could do no wrong, and then when I started seeing cracks in the veneer, their imperfections, I was disappointed. But then I realized they were only human and it wasn’t fair for me to have higher expectations of them than I had for other people. They had weaknesses and strengths, just like everybody else. Once I could look at my parents through a different lens, I could appreciate them more. So do these characters talk about those issues — of humanity, of human weaknesses and strengths? Yes. And that’s the thing about this play — it makes you think of King as a man. He smokes, he drinks, he drops an F-bomb or two. We see him through a lens of being a man, not the guy who did the “I Have a Dream” speech or “The Mountaintop” speech that he gave
THE MOUNTAINTOP $25-$44. March 8, 7:30 p.m.; March 9, 8 p.m.; March 15 (official opening). Hadley Theatre, 2211 Wellesley Ave. for later dates, go to atcharlotte.org.
the night before his assassination, but just a man, with all the conflicts and struggles that entails, you know. He was concerned about his family, he was concerned about the time he spent away from his children. He was concerned about missing birthdays and anniversaries. He was concerned about the people who were caught up in the struggle and the people who died in the struggle. He was concerned about the black man in America, he was concerned about the war in Vietnam. He was concerned about the sanitation workers’ rights. And these were things he was struggling with, because a lot of his aides — like Andy Young and Jesse Jackson and Ralph Albernathy and a lot of the other guys around him at the time — there was some concern about him splitting the movement and trying to deal with too many issues. But he had the attitude that we have to attack this stuff from all sides. [pauses] He was actually concerned about gay rights, too. Really? I didn’t know that? How does that come up in the play? There’s a line when the maid he’s talking to says, ‘Oh, you rooting for the fruits?’ And his response is, ‘Yes. [pauses] And don’t call them that. Don’t say that. Don’t refer to them in that way. Don’t use that kind of language.’ I’m paraphrasing, of course, but that’s the gist of it. You’ve been involved in Charlotte theater for years. You directed Fuddy Meers for Actor’s Theater in the early 2000s, wrote and directed ’Twas the Night Before for Children’s Theater, and played in Father Comes Home from the Wars. What’s life been like for you since the stroke? I’ve been back on stage with Storefront Theatre in Waxhaw. I’ve been participating in the cold reads run by the fabulous George Grey over there. So I’ve been back on stage, but as a reader, because you know, Storefront Theatre is script-in-hand, reading stuff. Judy Simpson Cook was gracious enough to ask me to participate in that about a year ago. But The Mountaintop is the first time I’ve directed since the stroke. So this is a really big deal for me. It’s a big deal for us, too. Thanks for talking to me, April. And tell me: What, more than anything else, do you hope people take away from this production? Well, one of the many things I hope people will take away from the story is: Be careful of elevating people to godlike status, because if you do that, they’re going to disappoint you every time. Accept them for the good they do as human beings. MKEMP@CLCLT.COM
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EVENTUALLY, a movie will emerge that will exemplify the #MeToo movement in all its righteous fury and cathartic representation, but that moment hasn’t arrived yet. The ability of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri to capture a slice of this zeitgeist is largely what has enabled its ascension as an award winner, yet controversy in other regards (chiefly, its hazy take on racism) has prevented it from serving as any sort of definitive poster child. Still, it’s a far better bet than Red Sparrow (*1/2 out of four), which has appeared on the scene promising to topple the patriarchy but choosing to cut a backroom deal with it instead. Reuniting with director Francis Lawrence (he of the three Hunger Games sequels), Jennifer Lawrence stars as Dominika Egorova, a Russian ballerina whose career ends abruptly following a mishap during a performance. Fearful that she and her ailing mother (Joely Richardson) will be left homeless once the dance company kicks them out of the apartment it has provided for them, she reluctantly accepts the aid of her uncle Ivan (Matthias Schoenaerts), a mid-level government official. Ivan is convinced that Dominika has the making of a first-rate spy; his superiors (Jeremy Irons and Ciaran Hinds) aren’t so sure, but they opt to give her the benefit of the doubt. Ivan sends his niece to an academy that trains its agents to give themselves completely to whatever ugly task is on hand, usually of a sexually deviant nature (a “whore school,” as Dominika calls the joint). One female agent is expected to blow a confessed pedophile; another must allow a male trainee to rape her. Enter Nate Nash, who, despite the alliterative name, shouldn’t be confused with the Bond villain Nick Nack. Nate Nash (played by Joel Edgerton) is a CIA agent and the only man who knows the identity of the Russian mole who’s been feeding him secrets. Despite Dominika’s understandable difficulties at “whore school,” the Moscow brain trust decides that she would be the best spy to use her feminine wiles on Nate Nash and convince him to reveal the mole’s identity. For his part, Nate Nash is certain he can turn Dominika into an American asset. As a straightforward spy thriller, this adaptation of Jason Matthews’ novel (with Justin Haythe handing scripting duties) is awfully turgid, with a plot that never builds much momentum and zero chemistry between Lawrence and Edgerton. The entire endeavor plays out with even less believability than any given Spy vs. Spy cartoon from MAD’s golden age. Indeed, Red Sparrow contains little of the
Jennifer Lawrence in ‘Red Sparrow.’
FOX
wit and wisdom of the best of yesteryear’s spy flicks — that gathering includes last summer’s unjustly ignored Atomic Blonde, an espionage caper as stylish as this one is stuporific. And like other exemplary films of this genre, Atomic Blonde chose to wear its danger on its sleeve — Red Sparrow, on the other hand, is content to merely shove it into its jockstrap. In short, this is an ugly movie that thinks nothing of repeatedly placing its female characters in degrading positions. As one example, it’s not enough that Dominika gets raped by a creep — he has to still be thrusting inside her as he’s strangled from behind, with his blood splattering her body like a wayward ejaculation. One could argue that this is the way the world operates. Or one could cut the filmmakers additional slack and contend that they mean the entire picture to be a commentary on the cozy relationship between Trump and his Russian comrades, and how they all get aroused by the humiliation and brutalization of women (indeed, watching Dominika’s lecherous uncle sexually respond to her recalls Trump’s nauseating statements regarding his desire to date and bang his daughter Ivanka). But that’s an awful lot of slack — enough, in fact, to circle the globe twice. It’s hard to feel like a movie is striking a blow against misogyny when its camera leers as obsessively and as attentively as a virginal frat boy at a strip club. There isn’t any abuse endured by Dominika and her fellow female agents that isn’t captured in loving detail (male agents, on the other hand, have it comparatively easy). Of course, our heroine gets her revenge on (most of) her abusers, but it’s hardly compensation for the nastiness doled out over the majority of this picture’s punishing 140-minute run time. #MeToo? Nope. Just hashtag this one #NoneForMeThanks.
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the gaming experience. (300 N. College St. WHEN I WAS growing up, my mom #104, luckycharlotte.com) and I used to go to a local laundromat at least once a week. Naturally, a child gets ABARI GAME BAR stir crazy in a space like that. Luckily, our Charlotte’s first true game bar. Let’s laundromat had a PAC-MAN arcade game. be real, most of y’all bit off owner Zach My mom would even join in the fun, using Pulliam’s innovative idea. If you remember, the extra quarters we had to play one of her I interviewed him before the spot opened fav games: Galaga. Two decades later, I’m and got the inside scoop. Three years later, obsessed with playing Galaga every time I notice it in a room. this intimate arcade and game bar is the Recently, The Corner Pub — one of my preferred choice for gamers when overhearing constant hangouts for you non-readers — conversations between true gaming geeks. got rid of a Golden Tee game and replaced Pros: Memberships are $1 (bring cash). it with a multicade machine complete with Private parking. You can get cash back at Galaga! Enter: the resurgence of my passion. the bar by using your debit card. You put Usually, I’m a person who hates games. quarters, not tokens, in the machines so Anytime someone mentions playing you can take home the extra cash at beer pong, flip cup, cornhole, etc., the end of the night and actually I’m always the one that rolls my use it. They serve craft beer, eyes and opts out. That’s why cheap domestics and liquor. my boo was shocked that I This venue is perfect for was flipping out over this experienced gamers. new discovery. Check out all of their Next thing you know, games — including rare we were creating our machines like 10-player own tour of a handful of Killer Queen — on their arcade game bars in the website. Queen City. A couple I’d Cons: No food, womp been to before, and I visited womp womp. Even Joe’s AERIN SPRUILL one new one. Check out three Doughs next door is officially of my go-to arcade bars instead closed, although a food truck of hitting up your usual spots this is sometimes parked out front on weekend. busier nights. While the small space is cozy, the game space can feel a bit congested. (1721 N. Davidson St., abarigamebar.com) LUCKY’S BAR AND ARCADE Lucky’s is your best choice for gaming if you’re looking to stay Uptown. It’s conveniently PALMER ST. located where the old BAR Charlotte was in This was the only arcade bar that I hadn’t North Side Station. This spacious venue has been to yet. I was in South End and the boo been open for almost two years. thang suggested we go try our hand at pinball Pros: Convenient location. Unlike some and arcade games at a different spot. The of the divier arcade bars across the city, latest addition to the arcade scene, this spot Lucky’s has plenty of space for you to move is an underrated choice for gaming in the Q.C. around. While I’m not a huge fan of the taste Pros: Memberships are $1 (bring cash). of the cocktails I’ve tried, their drink menu Private parking. No cash back at the bar for features “interesting” drinks like the martini games. But all vintage games are FREE. Yes, with a piece of Nerds rope. While you can’t I said free.99! And pinball is only 50 cents. get food direct from Lucky’s, you can order Not to mention, the setup of the venue food from Flight Beer Garden & Music Hall. leaves plenty of elbow room while you’re You can check out some of their games playing. They do have a food menu, however, online before you visit. Also, the ‘90s pop it’s not the one you’ll find on Yelp: pretzels, culture mash-up murals adorning the walls pretzel bites, corn dogs and chips. alone make it worth at least one trip Cons: There weren’t any corn dogs left Cons: There’s a minimum purchase upon when we went and I left my card. *insert entry. Instead of quarters, you get tokens, sad face* Game selection was limited to 40 so you’ll have to hang onto them and hope machines. While vintage games were free, you don’t lose them before your next visit. there were only a few. Other than that, based Most people avoid the specialty cocktail on the time we went on a Saturday until menu. Also, on several occasions multiple 6ish, I have no complaints. (412 W. Palmer games have been out of order during a visit. St., facebook.com/palmerstgamebar) Overall, I’d argue most patrons are more Now get your game on, Queen City! interested in the “clubby atmosphere” versus BACKTALK@CLCLT.COM
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1 Pres. Lincoln 4 Bar mitzvah officiant 9 Placed a burden on 14 Broke, as a horse 19 Fake signatures 21 Billy Joel’s “-- Extremes” 22 Rock’s Cooper 23 “The Golden Girls” costar being a rascal? 25 Bit of gossip 26 Conical-bore woodwinds 27 Winslet and Middleton 28 Source of great wealth 30 Make juice of 33 Mean beasts wearing disguises? 35 Burg 38 Life story, for short 40 Suffix with cloth or cash 41 With 45-Down, place for paternity testing 42 “Sad to say ...” 43 Record of the years 47 Serpentine fish 49 Unearthly 53 Stared creepily at a group of wolves? 56 Long deli sandwiches 58 Pretend to be 59 Mythical man-horse 60 Red chapter heading, e.g. 62 Ancient French region 64 In re 67 Minerva, to the Greeks 69 Comes out on top 70 “Make no edits to those script lines!”? 76 Sleek, informally 77 How some freelancers work 78 Bellyache 79 Iditarod Trail animal 81 Very spirited 84 Swiftly 89 Brand of fruit drinks 90 Notion, to Luc 92 Heavy work shoe filled with currants? 95 Comedian Smirnoff 97 Apr. clock setting 99 Countdown expression 100 Manila money 101 Lively spirit
103 Smidge 105 Phys ed class 106 Epochs 107 Airport area that’s only an illusion? 114 Stair unit 116 Mexican revolutionary Zapata 117 Oasis beast 119 Capital of the Beaver State 123 Poe’s bird 124 Evil poet Nash? 128 Belgian port 129 Wise up 130 Aggressively defiant 131 -- Domingo 132 Unable to relax 133 Composer Erik 134 “Prob’ly not”
DOWN
1 “Hair” style 2 -- tube (TV) 3 Therefore 4 Actress Witherspoon 5 Equip for war 6 Razor brand 7 Radio host Glenn 8 Koran’s faith 9 Tablecloth material 10 Tennis great Andre 11 Shout on “The Simpsons” 12 Curio display stands 13 Giving type 14 Late state 15 Female grads 16 Copy closely 17 Low-cost, in product names 18 Freedom from govt. control 20 Brown-and-white cow 24 Get from -- B 29 ‘60s drug 31 Blind as -32 Ho Chi -34 Golf peg 35 New Mexico ski spot 36 Bond girl Kurylenko 37 Drawer Disney 39 Burdensome 44 Storekeeper on “The Simpsons” 45 See 41-Across 46 Try to harm with claws 48 Angola’s capital
50 Cosine, e.g. 51 Cake topper 52 JFK guesses 54 “Blast!” 55 Kin’s partner 57 Linda of “The Exorcist” 61 “-- -ching!” 63 Hole tool 65 Stomached 66 Used a tool to grab, as an ice block 68 Engraved work of art 70 Screenwriter Ephron 71 Big name in vacuums 72 “Yes” signal 73 EMS skill 74 Tune in to 75 On -- with (similar to) 76 Pasty 80 Enters headfirst, as a pool 82 Cup edge 83 “So far -- know ...” 85 Any of six pontiffs 86 Wine ripener, e.g. 87 House, south of the border 88 Son of Seth 91 Female hormone 93 Van --, Calif. 94 Cellar, in apt. ads 96 Luxurious 98 Piper’s cap 102 School gp. 104 Kitchen choppers 107 Arctic floaters 108 Large city in Nebraska 109 Established fact 110 -- Gay (warplane) 111 Tot watcher 112 Latin “I love” 113 Some jabs 115 Suffix similar to -like 118 Pre-euro Italian money 120 Security claim 121 Italian peak 122 Tall tale 125 “Gimme --!” (rude demand) 126 Granola bit 127 Here, in Lyon
graB Your copy today
SOLUTION FOUND ON P. 30.
CLCLT.COM | MAR. 8 - MAR. 14, 2018 | 27
ENDS
SAVAGE LOVE
WATCH IT Your different porn preferences are OK BY DAN SAVAGE
I’M AN 18-YEAR-OLD cis hetero girl from Australia, and I’ve been listening to your podcast and reading your column since I was 13. Thanks to you I’m pretty open minded about my sexuality and body. Having said that, I do have a few questions. I started watching porn from a youngish age with no real shame attached but I have some concerns. 1. I get off really quickly to lesbian porn but it never feels like a “good” orgasm. My guess is that subconsciously I think it’s inauthentic and therefore degrading. 2. I really enjoy and have the best orgasms to vintage gay male porn and trans FTM porn, which seems odd to me because I’m so far removed from the sexual acts that these kind of porn movies portray but I always feel satisfied after getting off to them. 3. I get off to tit slapping videos but it screws with me morally. I understand why I like these kinds of videos. I have quite large breasts and I feel resentment towards them. It seems both morally wrong towards the progress I’ve made towards accepting my body and also to the message being sent about violence towards women. Care to weigh in? CONCERNED ABOUT PORN PREFERENCES
1. There are gay men who watch straight porn, lesbians who watch gay porn, and 18-year-old hetero girls in Australia who watch lesbian porn and vintage gay porn and trans FTM porn. So many people get off watching porn that isn’t supposed to be for them — so many people fantasize about, watch, and sometimes do things that aren’t supposed to be for them — that we have to view these quote/unquote transgressions as a feature of human sexuality, not a bug. 2. Lesbian porn gets you off, vintage gay porn and trans FTM gets you off, but you feel conflicted after watching lesbian porn because it seems inauthentic. That’s understandable — a lot of so-called lesbian porn is inauthentic, in that it’s made by and for straight men and features non-lesbian women going through the lesbian motions (often with long and triggering-for-actuallesbian fingernails). Some gay porn features gay-for-pay straight male actors, of course, but most gay porn features gay actors doing what they love; the same goes for most trans FTM porn, which is a small and mostly indie niche. I suspect your orgasms are just as good when you watch lesbian porn, CAPP, but the sense — suppressed when you were turned on, surfacing once you’re not — that the performers weren’t really enjoying themselves taints your lesbian-porn-enhanced orgasms 28 | MAR. 8 - MAR. 14, 2018 | CLCLT.COM
in retrospect. The solution? Seek out lesbian porn featuring actual lesbians—authentic lesbian porn is out there. (I found a bunch with a quick Google search.) 3. Sometimes we overcome the negative messaging our culture sends us about our identities or bodies only after our erotic imaginations have seized on the fears or self-loathing induced by those messages and turned them into kinks. Take small-penis humiliation (SPH). Before a guy can ask a partner to indulge him in SPH, CAPP, he has to accept (and kind of dig) his small cock. So the acceptance is there, but the kink — a turn-on rooted in a resolved conflict — remains. It can be freeing to regard a kink like SPH or your thing for tit slapping as a reward — as the only good thing to come out of the shitty zap the culture put on the head of a guy with a small cock or, in your case, a young woman with large breasts. So long as we seek out other consenting adults who respect us and our bodies, we can have our kinks — even those that took root in the manure of negative cultural messaging — and our selfacceptance and self-esteem, too.
younger women lack confidence and aren’t comfortable in their own skins. The same I’m a 32-year-old male. I recently met a culture that put the zap on CAPP’s head [see hot older woman, age 46, who has told previous letter] for having large breasts — me she finds me equally hot. I’ve always her breasts attracted unwanted attention preferred older women. I just love their and she resented them and now gets off confidence and their comfort in their on erotic images of breasts being punished own skin. They’re just so much (even though she now knows her sexier than my age cohorts. breasts weren’t the problem) — The problem is that I take put the zap on your head. Men, a serious interest in young and old, are supposed feminism. I think I do to be attracted to younger pretty well with the women. You’re not attracted overt stuff: I don’t to younger women, you’re mansplain, I call out attracted to older women; peers who ignore instead of accepting that, you sexism, and I don’t feel compelled to justify it by objectify women, even comparing younger women when I do find them to older women and declaring DAN SAVAGE attractive. (Small steps, — again, by implication — that but steps nonetheless.) there’s something wrong with But when I see this woman younger women. You sound like one and we flirt like mad, my brain of those gay men who can’t tell you why just shuts off and all I can think he’s attracted to dudes without also (or only) about is her hot bod and the many hours telling you what he dislikes about women. I want to spend with it. However, I worry As for objectification, MILF, the problem that she’s spent her whole life relying with objectification is when the person on her looks to gain validation from doing the objectifying isn’t capable of men, and that my brain-dead, loinssimultaneously seeing the object of their alive attraction is only perpetuating her affections as a three-dimensional human objectification. Is that so? Or am I just being with desires, fears, and agency of their overthinking things? own. Technically, MILF, we are all objects MAN, I LOVE FEMINISM — “a material thing that can be seen and touched” — but unlike, say, Fleshlights or At the risk of dansplaining… vibrators, we feel joy and pain and have There’s nothing feminist about slagging wants and needs. You can’t help being drawn off younger women to justify your attraction to this woman’s externals; there’s a huge to older women. You like what you like and visual component to human attraction and, you can own that without implying that as your thing for older women demonstrates,
Real hot chat now. 30 MINUTES FREE TRIAL 704-731-0113
18+ Vibeline.com there isn’t one universal standard of beauty. So long as you’re can objectify someone while at the same time appreciating their full humanity — so long as you can walk that walk and chew that gum — you don’t have to feel like a bad feminist for objectifying someone. (Particularly when that someone is clearly objectifying you!) On the Lovecast — Finally! Porn that makes consent SEXY: savagelovecast.com; follow @ fakedansavage on Twitter; mail@savagelove. net; go to ITMFA.org.
CLCLT.COM | MAR. 8 - MAR. 14, 2018 | 29
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SOLUTION TO THIS WEEK'S PUZZLE
WHERE WE ALL REFUSE TO WEAR SOCKS.
ARIES (March 21
to April 19) With your practical side dominant this week, it’s a good time to reassess your finances to see what expenses you can cut. Aspects also favor mending fraying relationships.
TAURUS
(April 20 to May 20) Your Bovine-inspired determination to follow matters through from beginning to end pays off in a big way. Enjoy a well-earned weekend of fun with a special someone.
GEMINI (May 21 to June 20) Aspects favor reestablishing business relationships you might have neglected. A family member’s request needs to be given more thought before you make a decision. CANCER (June 21 to
July 22) While you might appreciate the avalanche of advice coming from others, keep in mind that the intuitive Moon Child is best served by listening to her or his own inner voice.
LEO (July 23 to August 22) The Lion’s social life whirls at centrifugal speed this week as you go from function to function. Things slow by week’s end, giving you a chance to catch up on your chores. VIRGO (August 23 to
September 22) Don’t let your stand on an issue cause a rift with a colleague. Insist on both of you taking time to reassess your positions while there’s still room for compromise.
LIBRA (September 23 to October 22) An opportunity you’d been hoping for finally opens up. But read the fine print before you make a commitment, especially where a time factor might be involved. SCORPIO (October 23 to
November 21) Your need to know what’s going on behind the scenes leads you to make some bold moves. Be prepared with a full explanation of your actions if necessary.
SAGITTARIUS (November 22 to December 21) A lot of details need tending to during the early part of the week. The pressure eases midweek, allowing you to get back to your major undertaking.
CAPRICORN (December
22 to January 19) A friend asks you to act on their behalf in a dispute. Be careful. You might not have all the facts you need in order to make a fair assessment of the situation.
AQUARIUS
(January 20 to February 18) A new development might require you to cancel some of your plans. But you adapt easily, and by week’s end, you could receive welcome “cheering-up” news.
PISCES
(February 19 to March 20) Your recent workplace accomplishments boost your self-confidence just as you’re about to consider a potentially rewarding, although possibly risky, career move.
BORN THIS WEEK Your love of the arts is equaled only by your strong sense of justice. People can depend on you to always try to do what’s right. 30 | MAR. 8 - MAR. 14, 2018 | CLCLT.COM
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