INDY Week 12.18.19

DURHAM | CHAPEL HILL December 18, 2019

PEOPLE OF

2 01 9 L IA EC SP

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Politicians and poets.

Athletes and activists.

Victims and villains.

They changed the Triangle this year.

G IN IS RT VE AD

N IO CT SE

E D SI IN

2 | 12.18.19 | INDYweek.com

WHAT WE LEARNED THIS WEEK DURHAM • CHAPEL HILL VOL. 36 NO. 49

DEPARTMENTS

7 On December 2, Mary-Ann Baldwin became the third woman to hold the title of Raleigh mayor, and she took office with almost exactly the council she wanted.

6 19 People of 2019 34 What to Do This Week 37 Music Calendar

12 “You shall not do this to democracy in North Carolina, Mr. Speaker,” Deb Butler shouted at House Speaker Tim Moore on September 11.

41 Arts & Culture Calendar

21 NC Courage player Crystal Dunn faced criticism at the start of the World Cup. By the end, she was one of ten players singled out for praise by the FIFA Technical Study Group.

28 Duke evolutionary anthropologist Jenny Tung is upending our ideas about the links between social status and life expectancy.

30 Vivica C. Coxx didn’t know they’d gone viral until a friend texted, “Girl, you are on The View!”

33

Raleigh Little Theatre’s annual budget increased from $800,000 to $1.4 million under the leadership of Charles Phaneuf.

Vivica C. Coxx is one of the INDY’s 19 People of 2019 (see page 30).

PHOTO BY JADE WILSON

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backtalk

INDY VOICES

Silent Sham

HOW I BECAME A PART OF THE STORY (OR, WHY YOU SHOULD SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL MEDIA)

Rumors

I

n response to last week’s profile of former Raleigh mayor Nancy McFarlane, former city council member Stef Mendell says “there are so many factual errors in this piece,” then begins with one of her own: “rumors” she heard that the INDY is “propped up” by McFarlane.

Let’s start there. No, McFarlane isn’t “propping us up,” nor is she a member of the INDY Press Club. (We encourage McFarlane—and everyone else—to join today at KeepItINDY.com. Consider it a holiday gift to your community.) We’ll also note that Mendell did not respond to our request for an interview for that story.

Mendell writes: “There was no last-minute coup led by Russ Stephenson about committee assignments after the 2017 election. Russ had been discussing committee assignments with Nancy for weeks. He begged her not to announce anything until agreements were reached, but she refused to listen. She said David Cox would serve on GNR over her dead body. She could never forgive him for successfully representing neighborhoods in the Publix rezoning case. She preferred to portray herself as a victim rather than continue negotiating.

“As far as Ron’s assault on Kay Crowder, Kay was nervous that night—she was never comfortable speaking in public. She was given Nancy’s remarks to read. Because the remarks had been written for Nancy, they did not include an acknowledgment of Nancy’s role. However, the next speaker, Kate Pearce, did acknowledge Nancy’s role. But that wasn’t enough for Ron. Not only did he attack Kay physically and verbally, he also shouted at Kate. Nancy and her allies keep trying to excuse Ron’s behavior because he was angry and upset, as if that justifies violence toward women.

“When I spoke with Nancy about it a few weeks later, I told her I thought it was imperative that Ron issue an apology to Kay. Nancy said she would get him to do that, but added, ‘I don’t want to drag you into my marital shit, but my husband does have anger management issues.’”

“I’m sorry to see this,” Nancy McFarlane replies.

“It is unfortunately filled with inaccuracies. The election is over. We need to move on.”

Want to see your name in bold?

Comment: indyweek.com Email: backtalk@indyweek.com Facebook: @IndependentWeekly Twitter: @indyweek

BY T. GREG DOUCETTE T. GREG DOUCETTE is a local attorney, criminal justice reform advocate, a pain in the UNC System’s ass, and host of the podcast #Fsck ’Em All. Follow him on Twitter @greg_doucette.

I

n the spring, when the INDY offered to let me write an occasional opinion column, it seemed like a cool opportunity to talk about the (many) systemic failures of our justice system. I imagined what would basically be a longer version of what I was already doing most days on Twitter. But I never imagined I’d end up as part of a story.

On December 1, as I was sitting down to eat dinner while cat-sitting for my significant other, I got a call from a reporter with The Daily Tar Heel.

“What do you think of the specific terms of this consent judgment?”

He was referring to a settlement that the UNC System’s public-relations flacks had announced the Wednesday before Thanksgiving—deliberately timed to minimize media coverage—giving the North Carolina division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans the toppled statue known as Silent Sam, plus an extra $2.5 million in education money to build a Mausoleum and Klubhouse for it.

I told him I’d have to call him back because I hadn’t seen the judgment (also, dinner). I pulled up the university’s website but couldn’t find any court documents. Likewise with our local newspapers. And the television stations.

And literally everywhere else.

About a half-dozen news stories in, trying to find the text of this judgment, I read through The New York Times’ write-up on the settlement. Still no documents, but also a curious entry in the story: the head of the SCV, a Chatham County probation officer named R. Kevin Stone, “did not know specifically when his group had sued the university.”

Now, I’ve litigated cases where one party or the other is a bit clueless about what’s going on. I don’t expect a plaintiff to know the day, hour, and minute when their attorney filed a lawsuit. But I certainly expect them to have at least a ball-

park idea when they’re a law enforcement officer talking with a national news outlet about a multimillion-dollar settlement that dwarfs the group’s annual budget by a couple of orders of magnitude.

So I decided to find out for Stone. The courts were still closed for the holiday weekend, but, like many litigators, I also have remote access to the civil lawsuit information system. And it turned out the lawsuit was filed, served, answered, and settled on the same day. (When the court reopened, we learned it was even faster: Everything was done in seven minutes.)

Same-day shenanigans, timed to fall before a four-day holiday weekend, smelled like a scandal. So I tweeted about it. And then things got downright crazy.

A member of the SCV—the group getting $2.5 million—sent me the text from a lengthy email Stone distributed the day the settlement was announced, gloating about how he had worked with legislators and judges to engineer this sort of outcome even though everyone knew their lawsuit was garbage. So I tweeted that, too. A reporter suggested converting it to a PDF since it was so long. So I did, and uploaded it to Dropbox. Then the SCV filed a fraudulent complaint under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, claiming it owned the copyright to the email—shutting down my ability to share things on Dropbox, but also confirming the authenticity of the contents.

I demanded the SCV use the $2.5 million to set up a scholarship fund for black students, or I’d sue the organization for violating the DMCA. Then, I did.

Meanwhile, so many people have discovered problems with the case that it looks like the legal equivalent of a recursive dumpster fire. The SCV? Never had standing to sue in the first place. The United Daughters of the Confederacy, which had “assigned” its “rights” to SCV to bring the lawsuit? Never owned the

statue. That assignment of UDC’s rights?

Violated state law.

UNC’s president? He signed the settlement the day before it was voted on. The Board of Governors chairman? He signed it five days before the vote—and a day before the UDC assigned its rights to the SCV. The lawsuit the plaintiff filed? A former general counsel at UNC told me he’s certain it was drafted by Womble Bond Dickinson, the firm representing UNC. And that’s not even getting into the connections between the judge and that law firm, or reports of the SCV’s leadership— being involved in embezzlement, gang activity, and pulling guns on dissenters when questions were asked.

This is all just a toe-in-the-water of the chicanery that’s been unearthed in the #SilentSham scandal so far.

Discovering it is the sort of thing local media excels at, but in this case, the entire story went undetected until its public announcement—likely because local newsrooms have shrunk so dramatically over the last few years. And if your government can get away with giving $2.5 million in education money to a neo-Confederate group without anyone noticing until it’s done, imagine what other corruption it can facilitate behind closed doors.

Whether you join the INDY Press Club at KeepItINDY.com, subscribe to your local newspaper, or do something else entirely, we need your help to keep government officials accountable. Get caught up on the sheer breadth of this #SilentSham scandal, then pitch in to join the fight. backtalk@indyweek.com INDY Voices—a rotating column featuring some of the Triangle’s most compelling writers—is made possible by contributions to the INDY Press Club. Visit KeepItINDY.com for more information. Greg wants you to.

INDYweek.com | 12.18.19 | 5

TABLE OF CONTENTS 7 Mary-Ann Baldwin

By Leigh Tauss 9 Steve Schewel

By Jeffrey C. Billman

PEOPLE OF

2 01 9 Politicians and poets.

Athletes and activists.

Victims and villains.

They changed the Triangle this year.

11 Tallman Trask III

By Jeffrey C. Billman 12 Deb Butler

By Leigh Tauss 13 Z’yon Person

By Thomasi McDonald 14 Pierce Freelon

By Thomasi McDonald 15 Satana Deberry

By Thomasi McDonald 16 Kanautica Zayre-Brown

By James Michael Nichols 17 Javiera Caballero

By Thomasi McDonald 18 Bob Phillips

By Jeffrey C. Billman 20 Carol Folt

By Jeffrey C. Billman 21 Crystal Dunn

By Lucas Hubbard 24 Ashley Christensen

By Layla Khoury-Hanold

F

or our last issue of 2019, we decided to try something different.

Instead of recapping the year’s biggest stories or listing our favorite records, we’re revisiting this revolution around the sun through the prism of nineteen (OK, technically twenty) people whose lives have been enormously consequential to the Triangle—and North Carolina—over the past twelve months, either through their own actions or, in some cases, because of circumstances beyond their control.

They’re not all heroes, though many deserve to be lauded. We’ve folded our 6 | 12.18.19 | INDYweek.com

annual Indies Arts Awards into this special issue, so we’re honoring arts presenters and a renowned poet and the best chef in the country.

But others featured in these pages have more ambiguous legacies: politicians who’ve made promises they’ll now have to keep and university officials at the center of major controversies. Whether their impact was for better or worse is a matter of opinion, or maybe something for the history books to decide.

We also have profiles of a little boy who will never grow up, a man stepping out

from his parents’ considerable shadow, and an imprisoned woman trying to force the state to see her for who she really is, as well as a world-champion soccer player, a potentially world-changing scientist, and a crusader whose two-decade battle against gerrymandering bore fruit this year.

And that’s just scratching the surface.

This year has been a long, strange trip—at times tragic, often infuriating, and, at rare moments, if you squinted just the right way at just the right moment, almost hopeful.

Let’s remember it together. And then let’s do better next year. —Jeffrey C. Billman

28 Jenny Tung

By Jeffrey C. Billman 29 Sulaiman and Lesleigh Mausi

By Thomasi McDonald 30 J. Clapp/Vivica C. Coxx

By James Michael Nichols 31 Emil Kang

By Brian Howe 32 Jaki Shelton Green

By Sarah Edwards 33 Charles Phaneuf

By Byron Woods

1 9 P EO P L E PHOTO BY ALEX BOERNER

Mary-Ann Baldwin Raleigh’s notorious new mayor has a big agenda and a council champing at the bit. Now she has to deliver. By Leigh Tauss

T

he wave was coming, but even Mary- in a committee. (It would linger there Ann Baldwin didn’t see how strong another year.) In her absence, the council’s it was. new majority focused on protecting She thought—or at least hoped—that neighborhoods. It saw growth as a threat she’d edge out former Wake County and fought bitterly over rezoning cases and Commissioner Caroline Sullivan and newfangled things like electric scooters survive the first round of voting in October. and short-term rentals.

After all, she’d won the endorsements of Baldwin watched, chiming in with her both the INDY and The News & Observer, dissent on Twitter. It didn’t go unnoticed.

In June 2018, the council’s majority which she’d never expected. The question was by how much she’d trail attorney abruptly removed Baldwin from the Charles Francis, who’d run for mayor in GoTriangle Board of Trustees. No one 2017 and lost to Nancy McFarlane. If talked to her about it first. the margin was a few points, she could One morning nine months later, probably catch up. If he was close to 50 Baldwin—prone to insomnia, though she percent, it might not be worth a runoff.

But the ground had “They are going to want to shifted in Raleigh. do everything all at once, As the returns came in, it became apparent that and we can’t do everything voters had turned on the anti-development city all at once. It has got to be council they’d elected two at the right pace.” years earlier. They were done with the infighting and toxicity, done with endless arguments slept well that night—awoke to her phone about picayune details. They wanted buzzing with news: McFarlane had just Raleigh to build its future, not fight the announced that she wouldn’t seek a fifth battles of its past. term. Baldwin doesn’t remember the first Stef Mendell got wiped out in District person to call her, but they all had the E. Kay Crowder was behind in District D. same question: Was she running?

Russ Stephenson was losing his at-large Baldwin was instinctively drawn to the race. David Cox was neck-and-neck in race, but until the last second, she had District B (he would ultimately prevail). her doubts. She was set to announce her And Mary-Ann Baldwin, the outspoken candidacy on Wednesday, March 27. She former city council member, wasn’t clinging recorded an interview with the INDY the to second. She was out front, 38–31. previous Friday making her announcement, Unlike two years ago, Francis didn’t but only with the caveat that she might bother calling for a runoff. He could see change her mind over the weekend, maybe the writing on the wall: The Notorious even on Monday. She didn’t.

MAB was not only ahead, but she was also McFarlane endorsed Sullivan, whom likely to take the lion’s share of Sullivan’s she’d recruited. Sullivan, who had little 21 percent. It was over. name recognition but access to a lot Baldwin had stayed on the sidelines of money, pledged to build consensus since leaving the council in 2017, scolding between the anti- and pro-growth camps. her colleagues on her way out for keeping Baldwin, pugnacious and unapologetic in a plan to legalize accessory-dwelling units her vision of Raleigh as a big city rather INDYweek.com | 12.18.19 | 7

than a small town, was ready to bulldoze the NIMBYs, who, in turn, cast their lots with Francis.

Then there were the council races, which took on similar contours, with aggressive, often millennial pro-development candidates putting the anti-development incumbents on their heels.

Their views tended to align with Baldwin's. They wanted Raleigh to become a dense, walkable city—a place to live, work, and play, with a downtown that could accommodate all three—and promised to go big on affordable housing

to protect vulnerable residents amid unavoidable growth.

The incumbents, on the other hand, tried to make the airport authority’s decision to lease property to a quarry company the election’s central issue. That didn’t work.

On December 2, Baldwin became the third woman to hold the title of Raleigh mayor. And she took office with almost exactly the council she wanted: young, likeminded, energetic, ready to get stuff done.

Its first meeting was a blaze of activity, a rush to correct what it saw as its

predecessor’s missteps on ADUs and short-term rentals, among other issues.

But Baldwin knows that’s the lowhanging fruit. On the more difficult stuff, the onus is on her to deliver.

“We are willing now to move forward on some big ideas,” Baldwin says. “We need to lead on big issues like housing affordability, and I’m hoping that our residents are with us and that they support us to do these big things.”

What that will mean is an ambitious housing bond on the 2020 ballot, perhaps something akin to what Durham

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passed last month. Of course, the devil’s in the details, and the fine print has yet to be determined. More recent discussions have included the feasibility of universal free bus service, which Kansas City recently passed.

Baldwin’s colleagues are champing at the bit. Her biggest challenge, she says, might just be “reining them in.”

“They are going to want to do everything all at once, and we can’t do everything all at once,” she says. “It has got to be at the right pace.” ltauss@indyweek.com

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1 9 P EO P L E PHOTO BY JADE WILSON

Steve Schewel The Durham mayor pushed through the biggest housing bond in North Carolina history. Now comes the hard part. By Jeffrey C. Billman

I

n February, in an expansive State of the City address, Durham Mayor Steve Schewel laid out an ambitious, wide-ranging vision for a “prosperous city,” touching on criminal-justice reform, immigrant rights, and light rail (which ignominiously died soon thereafter), among other things.

But the highlight of the speech—and the biggest news of the night—was Schewel’s proposal for a $95 million bond to fund the city’s affordable-housing plans.

If passed, it would be the largest housing bond in North Carolina history, by far. And though Schewel didn’t say it, it would also be his legacy project—the thing that would define his tenure in office, for better or worse.

“If we do the affordable-housing work we are doing now, funded at the same level, we will not significantly alter the future of downtown as the province of upper-middleclass white people while people of color are pushed to the margins, farther and farther from good jobs and the public transit to get them to those jobs,” said Schewel, who founded and first published what was then called The Independent Weekly in 1983.

The bond, he continued, would fill a funding gap in the city’s five-year housing plan and build and preserve more than 2,500 affordable units; move at least 1,700 homeless households into permanent housing; create at least 190 homeownership opportunities for low-income households; and help the Durham Housing Authority, which had recently announced plans for 2,500 new affordable and market-rate units, redevelop its downtown properties.

This was part of a multipronged attack on the gentrification and displacement that have eaten away at working-class communities as newcomers poured in.

Another piece was Expanded Housing Choices, an effort to boost the housing supply by increasing density in singlefamily neighborhoods near downtown.

The bond went on the November ballot, but no one knew what to expect. There was

no polling—not by candidates or interest groups or news organizations. Durham is a reliably liberal city, but the bond still required a tax increase. More important, it required the city’s voters—many of whom remembered the destruction of Hayti and the broken promises of urban renewal—to trust their government.

Schewel, a worrier by nature, wasn’t concerned about his own re-election.

But he was nervous about the bond. He thought it would probably pass—maybe with 55 percent, not a lot of wiggle room.

But there was no way to be sure. At community forums, the loudest voices were vociferously against it, accusing city leaders of renovating outdated public housing as a pretense for moving poor people out and making way for more shiny condos. They could promise that this wasn’t the case, that federal law didn’t allow them to do that even if they wanted to, but who knew if that message was getting through?

So Schewel spent the fall on the stump, meeting with anyone who would listen.

This was the city’s defining issue, he told them. The bond was the only thing that would keep Durham from turning into a “Disney version of itself”—a playground for rich white people, its black heritage slowly erased, its communities of color pushed to the hinterlands.

Council member Charlie Reece was more confident. He told the mayor that the bond would get upward of 80 percent of the vote.

As it turns out, he was very nearly right.

On November 5, 76 percent of the 34,000 Durham voters who came to the polls backed the measure. The bond had majority support in all of the county’s precincts. It was a resounding show of support, which Schewel says he found “so gratifying.”

Now things will get more difficult.

For city officials, the hardest part will be managing the logistics, which are legion.

There are construction bids to solicit, an implementation-oversight committee to INDYweek.com | 12.18.19 | 9

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appoint, individual projects to evaluate and vote on, nonprofit partners to work with, municipal bonds to purchase, and, bit by bit, taxes to raise. It won’t all happen at once: It will take time to secure the bonds and get the money out of the door, and more time for construction to get underway. And at each step, there’s the potential for something to go sideways— for money to be misspent, for a project to go over budget or be delayed, even, perhaps, for a scandal to emerge.

Durham has generally been viewed as a well-managed city, but it takes only one misstep for perceptions to change. And much remains outside the city’s control— the timing and ultimate price tag of DHA renovations, for instance, depend on fickle state tax credits.

With this many moving parts, Schewel acknowledges, “There are going to be bumps in the road.”

For Schewel, however, the biggest challenge might be managing expectations.

The bond won’t change state laws that prevent the city from requiring developers to include affordable housing in their projects or controlling rents. Nor will it halt market forces: It won’t stop people from moving to Durham, looking for housing downtown, driving up housing costs, and causing displacement and gentrification.

If the bond succeeds, it will mitigate those things. Politically, of course, that sort of counterfactual can make for a difficult argument; even in a progressive city, people tend to be skeptical that the government is spending their money well.

“We can’t stop the bleeding, but we can put a tourniquet on it,” Schewel says.

“The market forces are what they are.

Displacement will continue. But we can make a big difference.”

The city will also have to contend with African American residents afraid of the city’s intentions—and that a sordid history might repeat itself.

“The trust issue is so powerful,” Schewel says. “There’s just very significant distrust in the black community of anything that seems like urban renewal. We have to do it differently. We have to do it right. We have to prove it.”

In February, Schewel will give another State of the City address, detailing how the city will proceed and asking residents for their trust and patience. This won’t be easy, he’ll say. It won’t happen overnight.

But Schewel believes Durham has the opportunity to do something special—to begin to wrap its arms around a seemingly untenable problem that cities all over the country haven’t been able to figure out. jbillman@indyweek.com

1 9 P EO P L E

Tallman Trask III Duke’s soon-to-retire executive VP helped kill Durham’s light-rail dreams. But is really he the villain in this play?

By Jeffrey C. Billman

T

allman Trask III made for a convenient villain.

His name smacks of the sort of wealth and privilege you can’t help but imagine inhabiting Duke University’s C-suite. Then there’s the scandal that made that name infamous—the time, in 2014, that Trask allegedly struck a parking attendant with his Porsche (of course) and then called her a “dumb, dumb, stupid [n-word].”

So when negotiations between Duke and GoTriangle collapsed over light rail’s route and Duke bailed on the project at the end of February—dooming a plan two decades and $158 million in the making— Trask and other top Duke officials bore the brunt of Durham’s ire.

Trask, Duke’s point-person on the negotiations, had been the guy—according to a timeline that GoTriangle supplied to the media—who suggested moving the line away from Duke’s medical facilities on Erwin Road and closer to a black neighborhood.

When that didn’t happen, Duke refused to sign the cooperative agreement that GoTriangle needed to move ahead.

As one local official bitterly told the INDY, “they didn’t want the inconvenience.”

But the story isn’t quite that simple.

No doubt, Duke played dirty pool. It was hardly a secret that light rail was coming down Erwin Road. In fact, according to GoTriangle, Trask asked GoTriangle to put a station on Erwin in 2015 to “reinforce the Campus gateway,” and the route was set by 2016.

And while Duke had legitimate concerns—mainly about light rail interfering with medical equipment—the university didn’t raise them until 2017. The increasingly desperate GoTriangle would have done anything to accommodate those concerns—there were plausibleif-difficult workarounds—but Duke was content to string things along.

Put simply: Duke didn’t want to be bothered by light rail. But it also wanted

to avoid sticking in the knife, hoping instead that the problem would resolve itself.

Eventually, though, it saw no other choice.

There were lots of fingerprints on the murder weapon, however. Begin with the General Assembly, never a fan of mass transit. It drew first blood in 2018 when it imposed an arbitrary deadline on the project that forced GoTriangle to press the pedal to the metal or forgo state funding.

The Durham-Orange Light Rail Transit project also had self-inflicted wounds: GoTriangle hadn’t raised the money it needed or reached agreements with the railroad companies that controlled the tracks it planned to use. Both of those could have been deal-killers by themselves.

By early 2019, you could’ve made the argument that light rail was asking to be put out of its misery. After all, it was forging ahead, knowing that Duke University or the railroads could kill the project on a whim.

Who thought that was a good idea?

After light rail’s demise, GoTriangle commissioned a postmortem from the American Public Transportation Association. Its report drove home that point: “Agencies should be very cautious before undertaking costly work in advance of specific and enforceable commitments from key stakeholders, or at a minimum, without conscious and defined assessments regarding the state of stakeholder consensus,” the report says. “Here, GoTriangle believed that the Railroads and Duke University were in fact fully committed to advancing the DOLRT and resolving key engineering issues. … [As] demonstrated here, advancing work on the basis of broad promises and commitments in the hope of future specificity and enforceable agreements is risky and substantially enhances the negotiating position of the stakeholder.”

Another takeaway from the APTA report was that no one really thought GoTriangle was capable of pulling off a project as big

PHOTO BY BLYTH MORRELL / COURTESY OF DUKE UNIVERSITY

and complex as light rail. That allowed Duke, the railroads, and other business interests to “defer, delay, and disengage”—they figured the whole enterprise was destined to fail anyway—while GoTriangle officials engaged in wishful thinking: “Hope and optimism tended to trump frustration and concern. Many were willing to move forward on the assumption that the organization could successfully deliver the project, even as they questioned whether it really would.”

With light rail’s failure in the rearview, a few reality checks: One, as the APTA report highlights, a $3.3 billion, 17.7-mile light-rail line from Durham to Chapel Hill was probably beyond GoTriangle’s capacity—and might not have been the most efficient use of transit funds in the first place.

Two, the DOLRT was likely dead the second the legislature imposed what was, in retrospect, an impossible deadline.

And three, yes, Duke screwed us.

But in a perverse way, maybe it saved us

from ourselves, albeit in the most elitist way possible.

Of course, try telling that to the folks who worked for nearly twenty years to make light rail a reality, only to see it all vanish because, well, Duke had a veto and felt like using it.

In October, Duke announced that Trask will retire next year, following a quarter-century at the university. A press release touted his contributions to the revitalization of downtown Durham, including the resuscitation of the American Tobacco Campus, championing the Durham Performing Arts Center, and moving some three thousand Duke employees into the city’s core.

“Tallman will rightfully be remembered at Duke for his steady transformation of our campus,” Duke President Vincent Price said.

Maybe that’s how he’ll be remembered at Duke. But that’s probably not how he’ll be remembered in Durham. jbillman@indyweek.com INDYweek.com | 12.18.19 | 11

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Deb Butler A year that began with unimaginable grief ended in the national spotlight after the state rep called out GOP chicanery By Leigh Tauss

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eb Butler knew something was amiss the second she took her seat on the House floor.

The day before, Democratic leaders had informed their caucus not to expect a vote that morning, September 11.

The Wilmington representative’s side of the room was nearly empty; Governor Cooper was scheduled to be at a remembrance ceremony, and many of her colleagues were busy preparing for other meetings. But nearly every Republican seat was full.

A lump formed in her throat.

It had already been a hellish year for Butler, who had suddenly lost her wife, Anni Parra, to an aneurysm three days after Christmas. After getting a call at work, Butler sped to the hospital, where doctors informed her that Parra had no hope of any quality of life. A few years ago, life-and-death decisions would have been left to Parra’s parents or siblings. But because of a 2014 N.C. Supreme Court ruling overturning the state’s ban on gay marriage, the burden fell to Butler.

“It made me keenly aware that what I do as a lawmaker matters,” she says.

She was only the second openly LGBTQ member of the General Assembly when she was appointed in 2017. She entered the arena facing a Republican supermajority that had rammed through HB 2 and stripped Governor Cooper of his power before he’d even taken office.

But the GOP’s grip had loosened in 2018, when Democrats won enough seats to break the supermajority and give Cooper a veto, which he had used in budget negotiations.

He wanted to force Republicans to come to an agreement on Medicaid expansion along with higher teacher raises.

Republicans wanted nothing to do with it, especially Medicaid. There was gridlock.

The long, hot summer dragged on without a resolution.

Republicans blamed the governor for holding teachers’ pay hostage over Medicaid. The governor blamed Republicans for holding teachers’ pay and poor people’s health care hostage over corporate tax cuts. There was no end in sight.

And then Republicans played dirty. Or, at least, that’s the Democrats’ version. The Republicans certainly don’t see it that way. By their lights, they merely exploited the rules of the game. It’s not their fault that the Dems let their guard down and took them at their word. What kind of sucker would do that?

Either way, here’s what went down: On September 10, GOP leaders informed the Democratic caucus not to expect any meaningful votes the next morning. At 8:30 a.m., House 12 | 12.18.19 | INDYweek.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF DEB BUTLER'S CAMPAIGN

Speaker Tim Moore called the session to order. Then, just minutes before the eighteenth anniversary of when the first plane struck the North Tower, he began to call the motion to override the governor’s budget veto.

Of the House’s 120 members, only 64 were present; of them, only nine were Democrats.

Republicans had the supermajority they needed.

At first, Butler was terrified. Then she was furious. She stood. A microphone was in her hand. She started to yell.

“You shall not do this to democracy in North Carolina, Mr. Speaker,” she shouted.

A police officer stepped closer to her as Moore instructed her to yield the floor.

“I will not yield! I will not yield, Mr. Speaker! You shall not usurp the process, Mr. Speaker. How dare you subject this body to trickery, deceptive practices, hijacking the process.

We have been here day and night for months defending what we believe.”

Her male colleagues formed a human shield around her, and she continued to cry out.

“It is so typical of the way you conduct yourselves. How dare you do this, Mr. Speaker!”

Her plea fell on deaf ears. The House quickly voted to overturn Cooper’s veto.

There were no news crews there that morning, but a colleague captured the scene on a camera phone. The video went viral, resonating on a national stage: one woman

standing up to injustice; one powerful voice, even in a moment of futility, trying to make a difference.

Even when the odds are hopeless, you keep fighting.

After Butler lost her wife, she ended up in the hospital with a back injury. All of the world’s unluckiness was crashing down upon her. But she remembers one constituent, who had also lost her spouse, offering this: “You know, Deb, there’s just no way through this but through it.”

“I don’t know why, but it made me remember to just keep putting one foot in front of the other,” Butler says.

Republicans won that battle, but they didn’t win the war. The state and national media pilloried the GOP’s tactics, and, with Democrats on full alert, Republicans in the Senate were unable to muster enough votes to override the veto before the General Assembly adjourned for the year. Instead, the legislature passed a handful of “mini-budgets,” while Republicans and Cooper failed to come to terms on Medicaid and teacher pay.

“Long before Rep. Butler stood up against the assault on our democracy on 9/11, she had already made a name for herself as a sparkplug for progress,” Governor Cooper told the INDY. “When she spoke out on the floor that day, she wasn’t just advocating for herself or her colleagues in the legislature—she was standing up for our fundamental rights as North Carolinians.” ltauss@indyweek.com

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PHOTO COURTESY OF Z’YON PERSON’S FAMILY

Z’yon Person In a year of high-profile shootings, the nine-year-old’s murder shocked Durham’s conscience By Thomasi McDonald

n a late-summer night, nine-year-old Z’yon Person on his end-of-third-grade tests. was fatally shot in North Durham.

“He was a child that didn’t need a whole lot,” his He was one of five kids riding in a Ford Escape driven grandmother says. “It didn’t take much to make him by his aunt, Danyell Ragland, who was taking the kids happy. He loved everyone. He was a hugger.” for snow cones.

Thanksgiving was a difficult time for his grandmother, “They all had little chores they had done over the who remembered his happy presence at past family weekend, and she had promised she would take them gatherings. out,” Z’yon’s grandmother, Sandra Person, told the INDY. “He would come through the door, say, ‘Hey Grandma!,’ “They said they wanted to go to Pelican’s.” give me a hug, and ask, ‘You got my ham? You got my It was a Sunday—August 18. Z’yon’s mother, Ashley greens, too? You put vinegar on it? You got my potato Ragland, was going to take him and his siblings back-to- salad? You got my sweet potato pie?’ The girls would be school shopping the next day. Z’yon was going to start in the kitchen with me, so he’d tell me, ‘Grandma, when the fourth grade a week later. you finish, let me know so I can get the garbage.’ He would Sandra Person says that, as the Escape approached sit up under me. He was a beautiful child.” the intersection of Duke and Leon Streets, a burgundy In the weeks after Z’yon was shot, Person says it Honda Accord rolled up beside them. Someone inside was “really, really hard” for her. It’s been even tougher fired gunshots through a rear-side window of the SUV. for the children who were in the SUV with Z’yon the “My granddaughter said, ‘They shooting,’” she says. night he was killed. After he was shot, his ten-year-old “Y’all get down!” Danyell Ragland yelled at the kids. In cousin, who was in the front seat of the SUV, couldn’t the barrage of gunfire—“fifteen to twenty-two bullets,” stop crying.

Sandra Person says—Z’yon was struck in the back of “For weeks, she walked around with Z’yon’s sneakers,” the head, near his left ear, the bullet exiting through Person says. his forehead. His head slumped in his sister’s lap.

Z’yon’s cousin, who was sitting in “It didn’t take much to make him the rear of the SUV, told his aunt that happy. He loved everyone.”

Z’yon was bleeding. Instead of waiting on an ambulance, she sped to the nearby Duke Hospital. His cousin, who had just turned The cousin who was shot, whom Sandra Person eight, had been struck by a bullet that went through his describes as an “outgoing” youngster, became withdrawn. forearm, but it wasn’t life-threatening.

“All he wanted to do was sleep,” she says. “He stayed Z’yon died just after 2:00 a.m. the next morning. to himself and separated himself from everybody. He “The doctors said if Z’yon would have made it, he wouldn’t eat, not even his favorite food.” would have been brain dead,” Sandra Person says. “The His sister “saw her brother dying in front of her face,” detective said Z’yon’s spirit went through that car and Person adds. “She became really angry, snappy, and mad protected everyone.” because her brother was gone.”

Three young black men have been charged in connection The children, along with their aunt, are all undergoing with Z’yon’s death. counseling, while Z’yon’s mother is also seeking therapy.

Z’yon’s death shocked the conscience of a city where Person holds on by looking after her family, especially the murder of young black men by other young black men her octogenarian mother, and by literally holding onto her is a common occurrence, serving as an avatar for all that grandson’s memories. She still has a video on her phone has gone wrong amid Durham’s growth and prosperity. of Z’yon and her other grandkids tickling her feet, and The little boy with a big smile and bigger dreams was his daily text messages to her that all begin with “Good the collateral damage of an undeclared war among the morning, Grandma.” hopeless and the impoverished. As of early December, the “He was such a sweet child,” she says. “So lovable city has seen three-dozen criminal homicides, according to and helpful.” the police; most of the victims and those charged with Person says she’s angry about the rash of gun violence their deaths have been young black men. in Durham. Last year, Z’yon’s godfather was abducted and At a press conference after his death, Durham County presumably killed over two kilos of stolen cocaine; police District Attorney Satana Deberry captured the sentiment believe his body, which has never been recovered, was fed of an entire city when she said, “Z’yon belongs to all of us.” to hogs, according to search warrants.

Z’yon wasn’t fighting anyone’s war. He was a little boy “We got lives being taken for no reason at all,” Person with a mass of cute dreads that stopped just below his says. “There are plenty of other people out here whose ears, the starting quarterback for the Tri-City Panthers lives are hurting. I’m just sitting here talking about it, football team, which had just started practice, and went and it hurts down to my soul.” undefeated without him this year. He scored high marks tmcdonald@indyweek.com INDYweek.com | 12.18.19 | 13

1 9 P EO P L E PHOTO BY JADE WILSON

Pierce Freelon With his father’s passing, the opening of NorthStar Church of the Arts, and a bid for state Senate, Freelon has become the public face of one of Durham’s most public families

By Thomasi McDonald

14 | 12.18.19 | INDYweek.com

T

his year has taught Pierce Freelon to put his faith not in mere things, but in eternal things.

It also made the acclaimed musician, professor, community organizer, and now, budding politician his storied family’s public face after his father, the legendary architect Phil Freelon, passed away in July.

Phil Freelon designed many of the nation’s high-profile museums honoring the black tradition, including the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, and the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture in Charlotte. Pierce’s mother, meanwhile, is the renowned, Grammy-nominated jazz vocalist Nnenna Freelon.

Those are big shoes to fill—and, as Pierce Freelon acknowledges, it’s a big charge to keep.

“The charge that I have inherited is really an instructional manual,” Freelon says. “And there’s a lot of things in there.

‘Lift as you climb’—that’s one instruction. ‘Never forget where you came from.’ ‘Keep an attitude of gratitude.’

I’m always aware of my blessings. ‘Bloom where you are planted.’ Some of the things in the manual came from my parents, and some from my grandparents. ‘If you plant a seed in the community, don’t just leave it. Nurture the soil. Leave something for future generations. Fruit. Lay the foundation so your people can eat.’”

Earlier this year, Freelon told the INDY that caring for his father before his death at age sixty-six after a threeyear battle with ALS inspired him to run for the state Senate. He says he promised Phil that he would fight to ensure that all residents have access to health care.

His bid for the seat left vacant by longtime senator Floyd McKissick marks Freelon’s second foray into politics, following a respectable but unsuccessful bid for Durham mayor in 2017. (He now has the endorsement of the mayor who defeated him, Steve Schewel.) A central plank in his campaign is the expansion of Medicaid, which the General Assembly has refused to do. He also wants to decriminalize marijuana and build the state’s investments in renewable energy.

To date, the tall, lithe, dreadlocked, and eminently likable Freelon has put his energy into building Durham’s community. After making his name as the emcee for the hip-hop-and-jazz ensemble The Beast, Freelon started a number of organizations that aim to address social-justice issues through arts activism: Blackspace in downtown Durham, which supports youth arts; a hip-hop and spoken-word after-school program that has partnered with the city’s schools and crime prevention council; and Beat Making Lab, a program that has traveled the globe.

He’s also the artistic director at the red-brick Gothic church that his parents transformed into an arts-andculture space in February.

At the corner of North and West Geer Streets, NorthStar Church of the Arts is the elder Freelons’ legacy

project, a building they bought in 2017 and designed as a place where the arts could be elevated as a sacred practice, where creativity could deepen relationships.

It’s a safe space for those who have been marginalized because of race, economic status, or gender identity, and it venerates the city’s “patron saints” who are now with the ancestors: the dance titan Baba Chuck Davis; the brilliant writer and attorney Pauli Murray, who was the first black woman ordained as an Episcopalian priest; and the public-schools-integration pioneer Ann Atwater.

NorthStar’s website poses a compelling question in a community where artists often don’t make a living wage, despite their considerable contributions to the city’s life: “What if church was a place where artists were praised and poets were prophets?”

Since it opened, NorthStar has hosted more than one hundred events that highlight the arts but also serve as a sanctuary for local activism.

“It’s been quite a lot,” Freelon says. “The highlights for me have been an emergent-strategy training for the city’s activists. Even before NorthStar opened, it “If you plant was a sanctuary for the Durham activists a seed in the who tore down the community, city’s Confederate monument [in 2017].” don’t just leave Another highlight for Freelon was the it. Nurture the “Gospel According to Baba Chuck” service, soil.” which was held on July 21 to honor a man he calls his mentor. Triangle puppeteer-extraordinaire Jeghetto built a giant puppet bearing Davis’s likeness. Days before the event, Freelon saw Jeghetto’s finished work and exclaimed, “Yo, man, this is going to be incredible. A puppet of Baba Chuck! Jeghetto was like, ‘Naw, man, this is an avatar for Baba Chuck’s spirit to join us.’”

On the day of the service, Freelon listened intently as the NorthStar celebrants read quotes from Davis.

“Then the drums started, the dancers started praises, and the puppet came alive,” Freelon recalls. “There were children underneath manipulating his hands, body, and shoulders, and I broke down in tears. It was one of the most powerful experiences I have ever had. I felt his presence, and it was a really deep experience for me. It was in the weeks after my dad had passed, and I understood that the veil between this world and the next is thin.

“I have the most beautiful, wonderful, and detailed script, and I’m lifting while I’m climbing,” Freelon continues. “I’m leading with love, especially for those who are not as fortunate as I have been. I am a child of the city of Durham.” tmcdonald@indyweek.com

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Satana Deberry In her first year, Durham’s DA set out to overhaul the county’s approach to criminal justice—and she’s just getting started

W

PHOTO COURTESY OF SATANA DEBERRY

hile campaigning last year to become Durham County’s district attorney, the reform-minded defense lawyer Satana Deberry promised to overhaul the way the criminal justice system operates by addressing mass incarceration, jail overcrowding, and racial disparities.

In late July, Deberry released a six-month report touting her office’s successes, noting nearly twenty policies designed to limit county residents’ involvement with the justice system, freeing it up to focus on serious crimes that harm community members.

The Ivy Leaguer and Duke Law graduate remains adamant about not using the jail to warehouse low-level offenders, the homeless, and those who are struggling with substance abuse or are unable to post bond.

“Keeping people out of prison who don’t belong there, prosecuting violent crime, and using our limited resources to address poverty, substance abuse, and helping to make Durham a safe place to live for all of us are at the heart of my policies,” Deberry says.

Deberry came to office amid a surge of reformist DAs across the country, including Rachael Rollins in Boston and Larry Krasner in Philadelphia—the latter of whom Deberry held up as a model—who argued that a system born from reactionary zero-tolerance, tough-on-crime policies was intrinsically racist and counterproductive, producing a carceral state that had ripped apart communities of color.

Of course, these efforts haven’t come without resistance.

In Philly, for example, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania—a Donald Trump appointee—has attacked Krasner for fostering “lawlessness” and a “new culture of disrespect for law enforcement.”

Shortly after taking office in January, Deberry revamped a pretrial-release policy that has led to fewer residents spending time in jail before their trial. That measure resulted in a 12 percent decline in the county-jail population. Her office also resolved twenty-two homicide cases, an increase from the same period in 2018.

She attends monthly meetings with Durham police to review the results of sexual-assault evidence kits in an effort to bring closure to cases, many of which have gone unresolved for years. Her office waived unpaid traffic fines and fees for more than two thousand residents who lost their licenses at least two years ago, enabling them to once again become legal drivers. She refused to accept court referrals for school-based incidents, with rare exceptions for serious crimes, and she stopped threatening criminal charges against parents of students who miss school.

Deberry says that since late July, her office has focused on providing more resources for crime victims,

By Thomasi McDonald

particularly victims of domestic violence, sexual abuse, and human trafficking.

“They are the most vulnerable people in our community, and oftentimes, we forget about them,” Deberry says. “We know that research has shown that when you get a decline in gun violence, you still have homicides, and those victims tend to be the past victims of domestic violence. Victims of domestic violence are not random, and they have suffered before they have been killed. Domestic violence victims often grow up in homes where family violence is pervasive.

They have witnessed violence in their own homes.”

Well over 90 percent of Durham’s homicide victims this year have been black men, often allegedly killed by other black men. Still, Deberry is concerned with the perception that black men are violent.

“There are plenty of young and black men who contribute to our community, who care about people in our community, and who are in the struggle to make our community better,” she says. All too often, stereotypes dictate “how we talk to them and how we deal with them. Oftentimes, they are victims themselves, but they are reluctant to come forward because they are perceived as hyper-masculine and hyperviolent, and I just don’t believe that about black men.”

Deberry says that, though the decline in the county’s jail population has “held pretty steady,” since her office’s reforms, “the numbers are up a little bit, but that’s because there have been some more folks charged with violent crimes.”

Indeed, Durham saw a rash of high-profile shootings this summer and fall, with at least thirty-six through the week of December 7, according to the Durham Police Department. That number is higher than the total for all of last year (thirty-one) and nearly double that of 2017 (nineteen). In one forty-eight-hour period in late October, two people were killed and eight others were wounded in a series of shootings at four locations, an outbreak of violence that became a flashpoint of the city’s November elections, with critics deriding the city council’s decision not to fund the additional officers Police Chief C.J. Davis had requested. (The incumbents won re-election.)

Next year, Deberry says, she’ll press ahead, prioritizing prosecutions that keep people safe rather than putting small-time offenders behind bars, emphasizing victims’ rights, and implementing reforms that stem from the Raise the Age law, which took effect December 1 and made North Carolina the last state in the U.S. not to automatically prosecute sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds as adults.

“We’re looking at different ways we can protect children in Durham County,” Deberry says. “We want to focus on getting kids what they need instead of locking them up.” tmcdonald@indyweek.com INDYweek.com | 12.18.19 | 15

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Kanautica Zayre-Brown The state Department of Public Safety wouldn’t move a transgender inmate to a women’s prison—until she and a coalition of advocates fought back By James Michael Nichols

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n February, The News & Observer published a story that sounded alarms within North Carolina progressive circles: “Transgender woman has asked to be moved from a men’s prison. So far, NC has said no.”

Kanautica Zayre-Brown, whom the N&O identified as “the state’s only post-operative transgender prisoner,” was incarcerated at Harnett Correctional Institution in Lillington, a men’s facility, though she was legally recognized as a woman.

This was, in a word, unconstitutional.

Zayre-Brown’s pleas to the Department of Public Safety for a transfer to a women’s facility had been denied. She faced daily threats of physical and sexual violence while living in an open-dormitory-style facility with men. And someone was trying to do something about it by taking her story to the press.

The article and a subsequent interview on WRAL shined a light on the circumstances that transgender women of color can face while incarcerated.

After they learned about Zayre-Brown, Durham-based organizer Tommi Hayes, along with a handful of other activists, formed the House of Kanautica, a virtual coalition committed to black queer and trans liberation. The group used social media to bring visibility to Zayre-Brown’s plight and generated public pressure by calling the Harnett County Sheriff's Office, the Department of Public Safety, and the Department of Public Health. It also published Zayre-Brown’s prison address so that community members could write letters of support.

The House of Kanautica grew, eventually comprising activists and organizers of many different backgrounds and affiliations, with Zayre-Brown’s voice at the center of the conversation.

Zayre-Brown, who faces up to nine years in prison after being convicted of insurance fraud and obtaining property by 16 | 12.18.19 | INDYweek.com

false pretenses in 2017, also wrote letters and released statements through the House of Kanautica to raise awareness about her situation.

“Kanautica was lit. She was ready to work with and alongside and to trust this group of people who she didn’t know, but who were there to support her,” Hayes says. “And, of course, the organizing work couldn’t have been done without Kanautica. She’s been at the helm and at the front of this organizing. Whatever she has asked us to do, we have tried to do to the fullest and best of our abilities.”

Following public pressure, Harnett Correctional placed Zayre-Brown in solitary confinement—a move that exposed her to a host of other risks. Then the ACLU of North Carolina took on her case. In March, it sent a letter to the NCDPS asking that Zayre-Brown be moved to a women’s facility: “Every day, she is housed among men,” the ACLU wrote, “forced to shower in group showers for men, and subjected to the constant indignities and threats to her health and safety that come with being stripped of her core identity.”

According to the ACLU's letter, in January, after a review of Zayre-Brown's request for a transfer, an assistant warden at Harnett said that “she did not care what Zayre-Brown ‘was thinking in her head’ about what gender she wanted to be and that she will be treated just like everyone other ‘male’ housed at Harnett CI.” Correctional officers refused to identify her as female and continued to call her by her birth name rather than her legal name, which had been changed, and a prison nurse denied her medical treatment, citing “religious beliefs,” the ACLU wrote.

Eventually, Zayre-Brown was transferred, albeit to a different men’s facility rather than a prison aligned with her gender identity. By this point, the coalition of groups working to help Zayre-Brown had ballooned. In June, Equality NC executive

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY SHAN STUMPF

director Kendra R. Johnson mentioned her name at the first Pride reception ever hosted in the Governor’s Mansion. The Root published a story about the mistreatment of trans women in the criminal-justice system that centered on Zayre-Brown’s incarceration.

In August, the NCDPS buckled and moved Zayre-Brown to a women’s facility in Polkton, Anson Correctional Institution.

“I am just so happy and feel so much better,” she said in a statement released by the ACLU. “I don’t feel like I’m in a monstrous cage anymore. I feel safe.”

Zayre-Brown’s transfer is a testament to the power of organizing, Hayes says: “It's not individual work; it can only be done collectively. And when we're called to do it, like when we read a newspaper article about something, and we feel called to support it, we should do it.”

But the real legacy of Zayre-Brown’s journey lies in the larger truth it exposes: Systems of power ignore threats to black and brown trans folks and treat their experiences as invalid. In a world that often forgets that the most vulnerable members of the LGBTQ community are still fighting for survival, well after the right to marriage was won, people like Zayre-Brown are an important reminder of who progressives still need to work to protect.

“I believe that when black transgender women are free—free, like when factual, material liberation as defined by them is reality—I think that that will be when every single one of us is truly free,” Hayes says.

“And that’s why we should be invested in being a part of the community of people who love and support and understand and lift up Kanautica.” backtalk@indyweek.com

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Javiera Caballero After a campaign marred by divisions between the Bull City’s black and brown political communities, Caballero became the first Latinx person elected to the Durham City Council By Thomasi McDonald

J

aviera Caballero made history in November by becoming the first Latinx person elected to the Durham City Council, topping challenger Joshua Gunn for the third at-large seat by fewer than four hundred votes.

From the outset, her road to a narrow victory was a trial by fire, paved with personal and xenophobic attacks. The campaign exposed uncomfortable, sometimes ugly rifts between the city’s African American and Hispanic political communities.

Caballero—who was first appointed to the council in January 2018 to fill the remainder of Steve Schewel’s term after he became mayor—makes particular mention of one social-media troll whose

Those challenges were summarily rejected, although, facts be damned, Peterson is pressing on with her claims that Caballero has committed voting fraud.

Last week, she told the INDY that she will appeal the State Board of Elections’ decision in Superior Court.

“Maybe you don’t know it’s going to happen,” Caballero says, “but when it does, you’re not surprised. It’s unfortunate that it happened, and there was a lot of stress on my part. I was threatened throughout the election, but I was not shocked by it.”

Caballero says she was surprised such bigoted accusations come from a black woman. Then again: “It was a sentiment I heard over the whole election, and not just from her.”

Caballero’s critics also accused of her being a weak candidate who pulled across the finish line because of her alliance with fellow incumbents Jillian Johnson and Charlie Reece; the three ran under the People’s Alliance-endorsed slate Bull City Together.

The debate within the PA around endorsing Caballero over an African American candidate—Gunn—prompted Durham filmmaker and fellow Chilean émigré Rodrigo Dorfman to send a fiery missive to fellow Latinx activists accusing “elements” of the black political community of being against “any” Latinx representation on the council.

In Dorfman’s view, the city’s Latinx community, which consists of many immigrants, didn’t have the clout to win a seat on its own; Caballero’s appointment gave them the opening they needed, and support from Schewel, Reece, Johnson, and the PA was essential to maintaining that voice. He took the argument by some black PA members for endorsing another African American candidate as an attack on Latinx residents.

“It’s a story of who belongs in America and who doesn’t.” attacks she likens to Donald Trump telling four congresswomen of color to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crimeinfested places” they came from.

“It’s a story of who belongs in America and who doesn’t,” she says. “I understand my role. It’s not about me. It’s about opening up [opportunities] for others.”

After the October primary, failed candidate and community activist Victoria Peterson sought to invalidate Caballero’s campaign with challenges to the county and state boards of elections, arguing— without evidence—that Caballero, whose family immigrated from Chile when she was a child, had not proven her citizenship, though records show that Caballero has been a registered voter in North Carolina since at least 1986 and has voted in Durham since 2010.

PHOTO COURTESY OF JAVIERA CABALLERO

At the time, Caballero took a levelheaded approach to the controversy: “This firing squad right now is not useful. It gets us nowhere in the long run,” she told the INDY. “Eyes on the prize, people.”

During the campaign, Caballero pointed out that Latinx residents make up nearly 20 percent of the city’s population and 36 percent of students in public schools.

While Mexican-Americans “have been here for a minute,” she says, that’s not the case with immigrants from Central America who are fleeing gang violence and drug wars.

“There is so much trauma,” Caballero says.

The soft-spoken mother of three has been on the front lines of Latinx issues, in the city and across the state, since her appointment to the council. Among her priorities has been advocating for a better U visa policy, which grants immigration

protections to victims of crimes who can aid in prosecutions. She championed the city’s language-access plan, which was unveiled in May. It ensures that residents whose first language isn’t English receive the same quality service as everyone else.

And she helped mobilize elected officials across the state when the General Assembly introduced a bill requiring sheriffs to honor ICE detainers— an attack on newly elected black urban sheriffs, including Durham’s Clarence Birkhead, who had declined to do so.

Caballero was not the only local candidate to knock down barriers this year. Raleigh elected its first two openly gay city council members in October, Jonathan Melton and Saige Martin. The latter is also Raleigh’s first Hispanic council member, as well as its youngest. tmcdonald@indyweek.com INDYweek.com | 12.18.19 | 17

1 9 P EO P L E PHOTO BY JADE WILSON

Bob Phillips The Common Cause executive director helped give North Carolina the closest thing it’s had to fair legislative and congressional districts in a decade By Jeffrey C. Billman

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t would take a flowchart to keep track of all of Phillips says he gave up in 2016, when, following a court the gerrymandering lawsuits that have been filed order, lawmakers were redrawing the state’s congressional in North Carolina over the last decade—federal lines. The lightbulb moment came when Lewis—the same lawsuits, state lawsuits, racial gerrymandering, partisan guy who had sponsored reform legislation five years gerrymandering, state Supreme Court decisions, U.S. earlier—declared: “I propose that we draw the maps to Supreme Court decisions, new maps, special elections, give a partisan advantage to ten Republicans and three canceled special elections, new lawsuits, more new Democrats, because I do not believe it’s possible to draw maps. It hasn’t stopped. a map with eleven Republicans and two Democrats.”

“It’s almost like you need to be a PhD,” says Bob Phillips, To Lewis, this was a hyperbolic way of signaling the executive director of Common Cause. that Republicans were engaged in partisan, not racial, For almost twenty years, Phillips has been on the front gerrymandering. To Phillips, this meant that there was lines of the gerrymandering fight—back when Democrats “no point in doing anything legislatively on this issue.” controlled the legislature and fiddled with the lines to Later that year, Common Cause filed a federal lawsuit their advantage while Republicans screamed bloody challenging the now-admittedly partisan gerrymanders murder, and now while the reverse is happening. as unconstitutional. This was a new idea, that to His organization was behind one of the state lawsuits— explicitly and egregiously draw congressional districts to and was connected to the other—filed in Wake County disadvantage one’s political opponents—a practice as old Superior Court that forced lawmakers to redraw districts as parties themselves—was unconstitutional. The Court this year. had already ruled that doing so on the basis of race wasn’t Heading into next year’s election—and, in 2021, the allowed, and, especially in the South, race and party were next round of redistricting—Phillips sees an opportunity. If nothing else, lawmakers are on notice that extreme “I was crushed. But you pick yourself racial or partisan gerrymandering is up. There’s more fight to be had.” illegal. Depending on how things shake out, they might even be willing to talk about creating an independent redistricting board. so intertwined that the intent was often irrelevant to That’s what he really wants. Phillips thought he was the end result. As Common Cause’s case wound through close to it in 2011, after the Republicans broke the the federal system, the Supreme Court voiced reluctance Democrats’ stranglehold on the General Assembly. For to decide what was and was not an acceptable level of years, they’d been in the wilderness, victims of districts partisan gerrymandering. drawn to minimize their power. Many of them had called Then, in 2018, Justice Anthony Kennedy retired. He for reform, but the ruling Democrats weren’t listening. was replaced by the right-wing Justice Brett Kavanaugh, With the tea-party wave, the tables turned. Just like that, just in time for Common Cause to make oral arguments.

Democrats got religion. And just enough Republicans stuck Even so, Phillips says, he was hopeful. He shouldn’t have to their guns that Phillips thought there was a chance at been. In a 5–4 decision, the Court ruled, in essence, that real reform. In 2011, the bipartisan HB 824—with David there was nothing it could do.

Lewis, a future gerrymanderer-in-chief, and Rick Glazier, “I was crushed,” he says. “But you pick yourself up. now head of the NC Justice Center, among the lead There’s more fight to be had.” sponsors—passed the House of Representatives 88–27.

He went down to the legislative building right after the Senate leader Phil Berger sent it to the Rules Committee decision came down, where Lewis was telling reporters to die. that the Court had vindicated them. Phillips told him he Over the next two sessions, after the General Assembly wasn’t going away. crafted radically GOP-oriented districts and the lawsuits He had another card to play. started coming, Phillips kept searching for a legislative Last November, immediately after the elections, solution. But the legislature wouldn’t budge. Even when Common Cause sued in Superior Court. Democrats had bills were introduced with bipartisan support, he says, they won more votes, and while they’d broken the GOP’s were consigned to committee and left there to languish. legislative supermajorities in 2018, they had not come 18 | 12.18.19 | INDYweek.com

anywhere close to claiming a majority.

Common Cause argued that this reflected an extreme partisan gerrymander that was prohibited by the state constitution.

That case was heard weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision, and it produced a bombshell. A woman named Stephanie Hofeller contacted Phillips, who put her in touch with Common Cause’s lawyers. Her late father, Thomas Hofeller, had helped the Republicans draw districts in North Carolina and other states; she had his files and wanted to turn them over.

They contained a trove of information.

“We were blown away by what Hofeller was doing,” Phillips says. “It was breathtaking.”

Not only did the files suggest that lawmakers had lied to a federal court in order to delay a special election, but they also provided clear evidence that the Trump administration’s effort to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census was an attempt to aid Republicans in elections.

The Superior Court struck down the legislative districts. Surprisingly, the General Assembly didn’t try to appeal. It was unlikely to get a friendly ruling in the state Supreme Court, which Democrats control, but Phillips expected Republicans to try to run out the clock until it was too late to redraw districts yet again.

In retrospect, he thinks that this was canny. In a time crunch, the state Supreme Court might have taken the job upon itself.

This way, Republicans could maintain some control. The districts they passed all but guaranteed that they’d keep the House, and probably the Senate. At the court’s urging, they also passed congressional districts likely to lead to an 8–5 GOP split, which the Superior Court grudgingly approved earlier this month, as candidate filing was about to begin.

For Phillips, what happens next is a question mark. If there’s a big Republican year, there will be little incentive to change the rules. If there’s a blue wave big enough to give the Democrats one chamber, maybe that’s the best scenario for a compromise.

But what if, somehow, there’s a blue tsunami, and Democrats take complete control of Jones Street—will the same people arguing for reform today sing a different tune tomorrow?

“If they cut and run,” Phillips says, “they would be paying a big price with the public, and we would be leading the parade.”

No matter what, he adds, “I hope we are in a different place than we were ten years ago. They have all supported this at one time or another. The trick is getting everyone on the same page at the same time.” jbillman@indyweek.com

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1 9 P EO P L E

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Carol Folt The day she quit, UNC-Chapel Hill’s chancellor tried to put the Silent Sam controversy to rest once and for all. It didn’t work, and her legacy is far from settled. By Jeffrey C. Billman

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PHOTO COURTESY OF UNC-CHAPEL HILL

20 | 12.18.19 | INDYweek.com

arol Folt came from Dartmouth to Chapel Hill amid UNC’s academic scandal and almost immediately found herself thrust into a no-win scenario, navigating a poisonous political atmosphere increasingly dominated by right-wing goobers on the Board of Governors who thought little of higher education and less of intellectuals.

Then came Silent Sam. It’s easy for those of us on the outside to say that Folt should have acted sooner—that, right after Charlottesville in 2017, she should have had the monument ripped down and melted, instead of wringing her hands and letting everything fester.

And maybe she should have. Maybe, as activists charged, her inaction was complicity.

But such open defiance of her bosses and state authorities, not to mention the law, would have cost her her job—and, perhaps, any chance of leading a major university in the future. Moral stands like that come with consequences.

Folt had no love for the stupid statue. Its presence was an embarrassment, and the furor surrounding it had to be the source of more than one tension headache. In August 2018, when demonstrators felled the statue, Folt dutifully called their action “unlawful and dangerous,” but you could tell that her heart wasn’t in it.

“The monument has been divisive for years,” she said, “and its presence has been a source of frustration for many people, not only on our campus, but throughout the community.”

In this context, “divisive” is public-relations code for “racist AF,” by the way. And “source of frustration” means “everyone wants this thing gone.”

Everyone, that is, except the Board of Governors. On their side was a 2015 state statute that required the monument to be placed right back where it was—or, if that was impossible, somewhere equally prominent. Folt did not want that to be McCorkle Place, Sam’s former home.

At first, she and UNC-CH’s Board of Trustees pitched a $5 million “history and education center” to house Silent Sam in “context,” which went over like a lead balloon.

Students called it a racist shrine; Confederacy-lovers wanted Sam back in his former glory.

The Board of Governors told Folt to shelve that plan and start over. Folt was over it.

On January 14, Folt told the BOG that she was resigning at the end of the semester. Then she immediately had Sam’s base torn from the ground and thrown into

storage. It would never again sit in McCorkle Place. She’d see to that.

Enraged, the BOG told her to leave by the end of the month. Off she went to head the University of Southern California—which is now enmeshed in a college-admissions scandal—with the Silent Sam matter presumably settled once and for all.

But, of course, it wasn’t.

The day before Thanksgiving, the Board of Governors announced that it had reached an agreement with the North Carolina division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans to give the neo-Confederate nonprofit the Civil War participation trophy as well as $2.5 million to build a home for it. The local media—including the INDY—has covered this issue considerably in the last month, so there’s no need to delve into the details. The highlights: The BOG settled a lawsuit before it existed, knowing full well that the SCV had no case and didn’t even have the standing to sue. Then, the BOG hid from public scrutiny, refusing to even hold its meetings in person for fear of encountering pissed-off students and inquiring journalists.

The fallout is only beginning: Last week, we learned that The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation pulled a $1.5 million donation to UNC over the SCV mess—and, as UNC law professor Eric Muller noted on Twitter, the university stands to lose black faculty and students as well.

Everything about Silent Sam and the SCV deal has been a disaster, equal parts hilarious, pathetic, and infuriating— made possible by white supremacy so ingrained and internalized that we barely recognize it when it’s staring us in the face.

Folt was a lot of things in this story: a flawed protagonist, a well-paid cog in a machine, someone who moved here unaware that she was sticking her head in a political wood chipper.

She also tried to begin reconciling the university’s troubled history with modernity. In 2015, for example, UNC-Chapel Hill’s Board of Trustees changed the name of Saunders Place to Carolina Hall. But state politics made further steps in that direction all but impossible.

She’d either have to live with Silent Sam, or she’d have to leave. Ultimately, Folt left, and she took Sam with her.

It was an imperfect solution for our story’s imperfect hero, but it drove the Board of Governors—not to mention neo-Confederates and white supremacists— nuts. And that made it a beautiful thing to watch. jbillman@indyweek.com

PHOTO COUR

1 9 P EO P L E

Crystal Dunn The UNC grad was one of four NC Courage players who won the World Cup with the U.S. Women’s National Team, then won the NWSL Championship By Lucas Hubbard

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PHOTO COURTESY OF NC COURAGE

good left back is hard to find.

Any soccer team worth its salt is a collective. But at a glance, some players seem more crucial than others.

There’s the creative midfielder, clothed in the number 10, which reflects a distinguished lineage from Pele to Marta; the keeper, the last protector against the opponent’s onslaught; and the star striker, a graffiti artist trying to sully the referee’s scorecard each match.

Then there’s everyone else—and finally, perhaps at the very bottom rung of the ladder, is the left back.

For the U.S. Women’s National Team last summer, this thankless job belonged to Crystal Dunn.

It was a far cry from her duties in the spring and fall for NC Courage in the National Women’s Soccer League, where she notched nine goals and four assists as the pacesetter of the local team’s attack. But across all seasons, she was a champion of adaptation—and a champion, full-stop, bringing home a World Cup trophy for the USWNT with her indefatigable defense and helping claim an NWSL Championship for the Courage with goals in both playoff matches.

Moreover, Dunn amplified her and her USWNT teammates’ advocacy, delivering a message that highlighted not only their victories but also their continuing off-field battle with U.S. Soccer for equal pay. USWNT members earn less for making the team and receive smaller performance bonuses than members of the men’s national team.

“It's important that people realize that, yes, we play soccer for a living, but we're so much more,” Dunn said in July. “It's important that we make our statement very loud and clear and allow everybody to feel that they are unified with us and our team.”

Dunn, who played at UNC-Chapel Hill from 2010–13, was one of four Courage players who traveled to France and returned as world champions: Midfielder Sam Mewis, defender Abby Dahlkemper, and forward Jessica McDonald also made the trip. However, none had a task quite like Dunn, who transitioned from offensive focal point to defensive role player in the quest for gold this summer.

This was no small sacrifice. After she was the last player cut from the national team prior to the 2015 World Cup, Dunn went on to lead the NWSL in goals, claiming the league’s MVP trophy. She’s one of eight USWNT players ever to score five goals in a single match. Even on the starstudded 2019 roster, featuring stalwarts Carli Lloyd, Alex Morgan, and Megan Rapinoe, Dunn’s twenty-four career

goals for the national team ranked sixth. With her speed and her inimitable capacity to shake defenders, she’s a terror on the front foot.

But this summer, manager Jill Ellis, calling Dunn “the most versatile player I’ve ever coached,” enlisted her at left back. It’s a role that promises no glory, offers few ventures forward, and harbors many handicaps: The player must confidently deploy a solid left (and often non-dominant) foot against the opponents’ deftest right-wingers, which, especially in women’s soccer, includes some of the best players in the world. As such, the leftmost defender is often a target, the potential weak point of the operation.

At the World Cup’s start, Dunn faced criticism. Her performance in the tournament was lackluster while she found her comfort level, and as Ellis’s personnel decisions continued to perplex fans, Dunn’s dodgy transition to the backline provided a tangible opportunity to second-guess.

But under heavy pressure in the knockout rounds, no one was better. Dunn repeatedly thwarted French star Kadidiatou Diani in the quarterfinals, in perhaps the U.S.’s toughest match in the tournament; she was a similar pest against England in the semifinals, contributing to methodical 2–1 victories in both. By the final, the Netherlands barely bothered to attack Dunn’s wing, yet her interception of the ball in midfield managed to set the stage for Rose Lavelle’s trophy-clinching goal.

At tournament’s end, Dunn was one of ten players—and one of just two defenders—to earn praise from the FIFA Technical Study Group for her performance.

In sports and in life, the egalitarian ideal can falter, diminished and buried under the desire to craft stars and narratives. Conventional and tautological thinking asserts its blinkered self: Some roles are more equal than others.

But this view ignores complexities. It doesn’t comprehend the links between a team’s fullbacks, midfielders, and strikers—that one section can’t succeed without the contributions of all the others. Likewise, it misses the reality that, without proper recognition and support from the USWNT and professional women’s leagues, soccer in America won’t ever succeed.

Perhaps 2019 could represent a turning point, a chance to appreciate that left backs are important and that the USWNT, besides being on the right side of history, is wonderfully fun to watch.

Above all, we can appreciate a player like Crystal Dunn. backtalk@indyweek.com INDYweek.com | 12.18.19 | 21

business spotlight business spotlight

OAK CITY AMARETTO

STARRLIGHT MEAD Meadery and Tasting Room

$24.95 at NC ABC Stores

130 Lorax Lane, Pittsboro StarrlightMead.com | 919.533.6314

Product Code: 66700

oakcityamaretto@gmail.com www.oakcityamaretto.com | 443-852-3991

O

ak City Amaretto is a twist on Grandma Scalabrino’s original authentic Sicilian amaretto recipe. Grandma crafted this special treat at Christmas for family and friends.

Everyone waited eagerly all year in anticipation for the large gatherings around Grandma’s table to participate in a toast of amaretto. “To good health and relationships” would often be the sentiment echoed. At the completion of the evening Grandma Scalabrino would gift bottles of her special amaretto to her guests.

Thankfully you don’t have to wait until Christmas each year to enjoy Grandma Scalabrino’s special amaretto. Our founder, Anthony Scalabrino, is a Navy Veteran who traveled around the world exploring the amazing opportunities each country, city, and culture offered. His family ended up falling in love with North Carolina and brought a piece of Grandma Scalabrino to the community in the form of Oak City Amaretto. Oak City Amaretto vows to be an integral part of the community by giving back each month by donating a portion of their earnings to local non-profits, charities, and other organizations in need. We live by the Golden Rule “treat others how you want to be treated”.

Oak city Amaretto understands your concerns that craft beverages can be overpriced and of inconsistent quality. We source all-natural and American ingredients providing you a smooth flavor without the burn. Oak City Amaretto is an affordable craft liquor that delivers on taste.

Our amaretto pairs well with coffee, eggnog, cider, or by itself over ice. See our website and social media for other ways to use it with your favorite liquor.

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all it mead or honey wine. At Starrlight Mead, we invite you to discover your new favorite drink.

Maybe you’ve heard of mead from literature (Beowulf, Shakespeare, Harry Potter…) or maybe you remember it from your history books. Whatever you may already know, now is the perfect time to explore mead: wine made from honey.

Refined, refreshing, and far from the sticky sweet you might expect, our award-winning meads will open up a whole new category for you. Let us introduce you to honey wine varieties as engaging, diverse, and exceptional as you would find in the world of traditional wine made from grapes.

At Starrlight Mead, we’ve been making mead since 2010 with local NC wildflower honey. Try our meads that span traditional tastes, similar to white wine, to fruit-infused choices like spiced apple and blackberry. Venture into our subtle herb-infused wines, seasonal favorites like our spicy “Kickin’ Cranberry Orange” with chipotle peppers and wines made with varietal honeys that highlight the unique flavors of the honey.

Join us at our winery in Pittsboro for a tasting, behind-thescenes tour, or just sit by the fireplace and enjoy a glass. Save the date with friends for our special events, like our Solstice Celebration Dec 21 or Sounds of the Season Dec 22. Become a member of our Mead Club and pick up a bottle or two from us, at a local NC bottle shop, or on our website.

Wherever your journey takes you, we welcome you to Starrlight Mead.

Oak City Amaretto makes a great holiday gift! Buy us now at your local North Carolina ABC Store. Need help finding a store? Use our intuitive product locator: oakcityamaretto. com/product-locator

Visit us in the Chatham Beverage District Monday through Saturday 12-6 and Sunday 1-5 at our Tasting Room and Event Space. Meads also available online for shipping to 35 states. Makes a unique gift!

Follow us on social media for cocktail and baking recipes. Instagram: @oakcityamarettoco and Facebook: @oakcityamaretto

May the Starr’s be your guide as you discover your new world of honey wine!

22 | 12.18.19 | INDYweek.com

THE GLASS JUG BEER LAB Founded by husband and wife team, Chris and Katy Creech, The Glass Jug Beer Lab is a casual, comfortable, and community-focused taproom and brewery in South Durham with an unbeatable selection of craft beer, unique wines, and a growing selection of craft cider, mead, and non-alcoholic beverages.

5410 NC-55 Suite V Durham, NC 27713 www.glass-jug.com | 919-813-0135

Local Brewery The Glass Jug Beer Lab is the first retail beer and wine shop in the Triangle to add an on-site brewery. The award-winning small-batch brewery produces a new beer almost every week with styles ranging from hazy IPAs to fruited sours and imperial stouts. These experimental small-batch brews can only be found at The Glass Jug and a handful of select bars and bottle shops across the Triangle. Stop by on Wednesdays to catch the latest releases and pick up freshly-filled 32-ounce crowlers to take home and share.

Bottle Shop Since 2014, The Glass Jug has offered one of the widest selections of craft beer in the triangle. Over 500 different products are available at any given time. And, it’s not just craft beer. The selection includes unique wines, cocktail mixers, hard ciders, and mead. Mix and match to create your own 6-pack, grab some cold cans from the cooler, or snag a variety pack at an unbeatable price.

Community Taproom The taproom at The Glass Jug is the hub of South Durham.

Swing by on a Friday evening where you can enjoy a drink in the beer garden while snacking on eats from the rotating list of delicious food trucks. Compete in team trivia on Wednesday, go on a social jog with the run club on Tuesdays, or listen to live music Saturdays in the summer. Whether it’s a Harry Potter theme night or pairing beer with Girl Scout Cookies, there is always something fun on the calendar.

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BELLTREE

SPOTLIGHT

We are a bar inspired by prohibition-era speakeasies and influenced by modern cocktail culture.

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100 Brewer Ln, Carrboro, NC 27510 belltreecarrboro@gmail.com | 919-234-0572

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elltree Cocktail Club opened quietly in late 2016 in classic speakeasy fashion. Tucked behind a car wash in an old airplane hangar, owner Nick Stroud had a vision of a true-to-form prohibition-era speakeasy that could eventually turn into something more, but only after his staff had the basics down. Learning how to stir a drink properly and how to use different sugars and shrubs (instead of just simple syrup) were both a big focus at the beginning. The staff then moved on to expanding their knowledge of pre-prohibition era vermouths, tonics, bitters, and liqueurs. The idea was to start simply, then slowly twist (pun intended) their knowledge into something more creative. As their skill-set grew, so did their faithful audience, who enjoy the drinks and company as much as the speakeasy ambience.

Now, after three years, Belltree has morphed into a fullfledged cocktail factory. With their extensive seasonal menus ranging from classic cocktails done right, to Wonka-esque creations that you’ve never seen before, there truly is something for everybody. There are cocktails that are flavorful and refreshing, and cocktails so potent that they could blind a horse; but all the while, the staff aims for quality, consistency, and presentation.

While attracting customers from around the world, Belltree strives to be as community focused as possible, sourcing ingredients as locally or as sustainably as possible. Every mixer or ingredient is made fresh, in-house, or purchased from local vendors.

Weekly specials and recurring events are always on the menu. These events include a monthly Yacht Rock party (last Friday of the month) and a full Bloody Mary and Mimosa bar on Sundays, along with original live music and a food truck. Once you experience this intimate, yet lively speakeasy for yourself, you’ll be hooked!

JEDDAH’S TEA Tea to the People, For the People!

123 Market St., Suite A, Durham, NC 27701 919-973-3020

Publication Date:

January 22, 2020

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eddah’s Tea is a dream realized for Morgan Siegal and Wael Suliman, who wanted to create an inclusive and educational space for their community to enjoy both worldclass tea and conversation. With over 40 beverage offerings, they aim to shine a light on geographies underrepresented in the American tea market, and to showcase the dynamic varieties of camellia sinensis offered globally.

Jeddah’s Tearoom is an intimate, cozy tea space nestled in the heart of downtown Durham. Boasting a minimalist Middle-Eastern aesthetic, you can be sure that you’ll have an experience unlike any other in the Triangle. Proud to have direct-trade relationships with all of her tea suppliers, Siegal also carries a variety of offerings on the retail shelf, including candles from up-and-coming kidtreprenuer venture, Maha’s Candle Co. (@mahascandleco). The cherry-on-top is that coffee lovers can also rejoice – they can have a pristinely made pour-over courtesy of Black & White Coffee Roasters, as well as a rotating menu from other local producers.

Jeddah’s Tea recently began canning their well known Bissap: a Senegalese hibiscus brew with notes of orange blossom, cinnamon, and vanilla. If you’re looking for a complex, yet refreshing ready-to-drink beverage, stop by for a 4-pack!

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1 9 P EO P L E PHOTO BY JADE WILSON

Ashley Christensen Raleigh’s own badass won the James Beard Award for Outstanding Chef while her protégés spread their wings By Layla Khoury-Hanold

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t’s 4:30 p.m. on a Thursday, and two lines, facing each other, stretch both ways down South McDowell Street: one to get into Poole’s Diner, the other to get into Poole’side Pies, neither of which open for half an hour. Both restaurants are helmed, of course, by Ashley Christensen, who also owns three other popular downtownRaleigh eateries—Death & Taxes, Beasley’s Chicken + Honey, and Chuck’s—as well as Fox Liquor Bar. The lines are a testament to the warm hospitality and consistently great food on which Christensen has built her reputation.

This year, Christensen won the James Beard Award for Outstanding Chef, cementing her status as an industry leader.

Raleigh’s then-mayor, Nancy McFarlane, commemorated the win by officially declaring October "Ashley Christensen Bad Ass Month,” citing, among other things, her commitment to fostering community through food.

For her nearly three hundred employees— aka badasses—Christensen has fostered an inclusive, safe, and sustainable work environment. Until recently, such an ideal would have been regarded as lofty in an industry plagued by grueling hours, low pay, systemic harassment, and substance abuse.

More than Christensen’s famed macaroni au gratin, this is the work that will be her legacy.

Christensen’s leadership has paved the way for the next generation to continue her work.

She’s a mentor to many, including three former employees who now (or soon will) have their own Raleigh restaurants: Sunny Gerhart, who opened St. Roch Fine Oysters + Bar in 2017; Andrew Ullom, who opened Union Special in August; and Matt Fern, who will open (ish) Delicatessen in The Longleaf Hotel in 2020. When an AC protégé opens up shop in Raleigh, the name and pedigree follow, as does a responsibility to leave their own positive mark.

“Ashley is one of those souls that you

24 | 12.18.19 | INDYweek.com

just rarely, if ever, come across,” says Ullom, who served as Christensen’s executive pastry chef for seven years. “She’s incredibly intelligent, and her ability to hold onto information as a way of multitasking is kind of mind-blowing. It’s very easy to say she’s the most ambitious person I’ve ever met.”

Given Christensen’s success, it’s hard to imagine a time when lines didn’t stretch down the block. But Gerhart, who worked with Christensen for seven years, recalls the early days of Poole’s Diner, when he and Christensen worked brunch shifts on the heels of dinner service. Exhausted, they’d set up their stations and then go nap in their cars, instructing servers to wake them if diners showed.

“You sort of forget the struggles,” Gerhart says. “It wasn’t given to her or anybody. You have to earn it.”

Still, Gerhart says he never saw Christensen sweat things like making payroll. But these days, Christensen says that the last thing she wants to do is make running a restaurant look easy. For her, making the restaurant industry sustainable hinges on financial transparency.

When Christensen was coming up, she was only privy to a profit-and-loss statement detailing her part of the operation; looking back, she realizes how frustrating it was to be asked to make changes without knowing the end goal.

Part of setting up employees for success has been putting infrastructure in place to share the big financial picture.

For Gerhart, this was revelatory. It showed him how he could contribute to the restaurant’s success and prepared him to strike out on his own when he was ready.

“I don’t hold anything to my chest,” Gerhart says. “I want [my managers] to know exactly what’s going on for their own benefit in trying to help manage this business, and for their own personal growth.”

Christensen saw that Gerhart was motivated by learning financial operations,

but what makes a mentor great is knowing what makes each individual tick.

As Fern—who worked with Christensen for eight years, most recently as AC Restaurants’ beverage director—works to make (ish) a reality, Christensen has helped him make connections, suggesting an intrinsic generosity that underscores one of her personal mottos: “Don’t forget kindness.”

“She’s stern when she needs to be,” Gerhart says. “She’s never yelled or put anyone down. It’s more, ‘Let’s talk and boost each other up and have an environment to have fun, but also be serious and execute work to a high level.’”

In the wake of #MeToo, fostering a welcoming workplace culture has become paramount, forcing the industry to reckon with other systemic issues that have precluded it from being sustainable, including low wages, inadequate benefits, and a lack of support for navigating substance abuse and mental health.

Within her organization, Christensen is testing tip pooling at Poole’side to eliminate the wage disparity between the service and kitchen staff. Next year, she plans to roll out an employee assistance program that will provide free emergency counseling and access to online resources to help with matters such as quitting smoking or personal finance.

For Gerhart and Ullom, sustainability starts with paying employees above the minimum wage of $7.25. Gerhart’s lowestpaid employees make $12 per hour, and Ullom’s start at $13.

But investing in people isn’t just about money. When Ullom and his wife welcomed their first child, Christensen gave Ullom an unprecedented five weeks of paternity leave. One of his biggest takeaways from that experience was the value of meeting people where they are and giving them what they need to succeed as a person.

“We’re helping out a few employees [who] need to get some things sorted out legally. To me, that investment is going to stay here for a long time,” Ullom says.

This drives home a fundamental Christensen principle: The future of a community depends on what you put back into it.

Though Fern has yet to open (ish), it’s something he’s put considerable thought into.

“The goal is to have people do what I’m doing, from a company that I’ve started, and either do something with me or something that brings up this city,” Fern says. “I want to be an Ashley to somebody.” backtalk@indyweek.com

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indyweek.com INDYweek.com | 12.18.19 | 25

THE INDY PRESS CLUB LIST OF

N o n p r o f i t s Yo u S h o u l d K n o w We emailed members of our INDY Press Club and asked them who their favorite local nonprofits are. We’ve listed some of them below for you to consider for your end-of-year giving.

(Want to know more about becoming a member of the INDY Press Club? Find out more are KeepItIndy.com.)

A Place at the Table

Concert Singers of Cary

Good Hope Farm

P.O. Box 26205, Raleigh, NC 27611 tableraleigh.org

c/o Cary Arts Center, 101 Dry Avenue, Cary, NC 27511 concertsingers.org

Provides community and good food for people of all means, A Place at the Table is a “pay what you can” restaurant.

Seeks to enrich the community and support the performing arts through choral music.

c/o Piedmont Conservation Council 201 E. Main Street, 5th Floor, Durham, NC 27701 goodhopefarm.org

Activate Good 1053 E. Whitaker Mill Road, Suite 115, Raleigh, NC 27604 activategood.org

Works to activate volunteers and inspire a culture of helping others to ensure that local causes get the help they need to serve our community.

Democracy NC 1821 Green Street, Durham, NC 27705 democracync.org

Haven House

Help North Carolinians achieve meaningful pro-democracy reform through research, organizing and training.

600 W. Cabarrus Street, Raleigh, NC 27603 havenhousenc.org

Durham Crisis Response Center

AnimalKind

206 N. Dillard Street, Durham, NC 27701 durhamcrisisresponse.org

P. O. Box 12568, Raleigh, NC 27605 animalkind.org

Works with the community to end sexual violence through advocacy, education, support, prevention.

Working to end unnecessary euthanasia of adoptable cats and dogs.

Cary Playwrights Forum

Works to increase the community’s access to farmland and connect its residents to local, healthy food. License plots up to two acres to new and expanding farmers.

Durham Habitat for Humanity 215 N. Church Street, Durham NC 27701 durhamhabitat.org

Provide youth and their families options for therapy, skills training, learning resources, and alternative positive social activities.

Healing Transitions 1251 Goode Street, Raleigh, NC 27603 healing-transitions.org

Offers innovative peer-based, recovery-oriented services to homeless, uninsured and underserved individuals with alcoholism and other drug addictions.

Provides playwrights with opportunities to develop as writers.

Seeking to put God’s love into action, Habitat for Humanity brings people together to build homes, communities and hope.

Institute for Southern Studies

CASA

Girls on the Run NC Triangle

P.O. Box 12545, Raleigh, NC 27605 casanc.org

1415 West Hwy 54, Durham, NC 27707 gotrtriangle.org

A nonprofit research and media center that exposes injustice, strengthens democracy and builds a community for change in the South.

caryplaywrightsforum.org

Provides access to stable, affordable housing to people who are homeless or at risk of being homeless.

Inspire girls to build confidence through running games and activities as well as discussion.

Community Empowerment Fund

Girls Rock NC

208 N. Columbia Street, Suite 100, Chapel Hill, NC 27514 communityempowermentfund.org

401 West Geer Street, Durham, NC 27701 girlsrocknc.org

Focused on enabling and sustaining transitions out of homelessness and poverty.

26 | 12.18.19 | INDYweek.com

Works to empower girls, women, and folks of marginalized genders through creative expression and music to be more confident and engaged members of their communities.

P.O. Box 531, Durham, NC 27702 southernstudies.org

Inter-Faith Food Shuttle 1001 Blair Drive, Suite 120, Raleigh, NC 27603 foodshuttle.org

Recovers and distributes 6 million pounds of food per year, and teaches skills for self-sufficiency including culinary job skills, shopping and cooking healthy on a budget, and how to grow food.

Kidznotes P.O. Box 200, Durham, NC 27702 kidznotes.org

Engages students pre-K through 12th grade in an intense out-of-school musical program that includes instrumental instruction, choir, music theory, general music, orchestra, and band.

Lucy Daniels Center 9003 Weston Parkway, Cary NC 27513 lucydanielscenter.org

The largest nonprofit provider of social, emotional, behavioral, and mental health services exclusively for children in the Triangle area.

NC League of Conservation Voters P.O. Box 12671, Raleigh, NC 27605

Connects and engages people to protect our natural environment and promote the well-being of our communities.

NC Warn P.O. Box 61051, Durham, NC 27715 ncwarn.org

Tackling the accelerating crisis posed by climate change by building people power for a swift North Carolina transition to clean power, and by promoting energy and climate justice.

Oak City Cares 1430 S. Wilmington Street, Raleigh NC 27603 oakcitycares.org

Hub for connecting individuals and families at risk of, or currently experiencing, homelessness to coordinated services that create a path to stable housing and renewed hope.

Raleigh Community Kickstand c/o Oaks and Spokes P.O. Box 28726, Raleigh, NC 27611 sites.google.com/view/raleigh-community-kickstand

Volunteers who repair bicycles, teach bicycle maintenance, and connect community resources in order to enable access to safe, reliable, self-sufficient transportation to those in need.

SAFE Haven for Cats 8431-137 Garvey Drive, Raleigh, NC 27616safehavenforcats.org

A no-kill animal shelter dedicated to finding homes for homeless cats and kittens.

The Marian Cheek Jackson Center 512 W. Rosemary Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27516 jacksoncenter.info

Honor, renew, and building community in the historic Northside and Pine Knolls neighborhoods of Chapel Hill.

Transplanting Traditions Community Farm transplantingtraditions.org

Provides refugees access to land, healthy food, and agricultural and entreprenurial opportunities.

514 S. Duke Street, Durham, NC 27701 triangleland.org

Safeguards clean water, protects natural habitats, and supports local farms and food.

Urban Ministries of Durham

P.O. Box 51235, Durham, NC 27717 pyopportunity.org

Connect with the community to end homelessness and fight poverty by offering food, shelter and a future to neighbors in need.

Works to address the growing “opportunity gap� resulting from the chronic disconnection of Durham youth from economic and educational opportunities.

USCRI-NC 2231 Crystal Drive, Suite 350, Arlington, VA 22202 refugees.org/field-office/north-carolina/

Piedmont Farm Animal Refuge 7236 NC Hwy 87 N, Pittsboro, NC 27312 piedmontrefuge.org

To protect the rights and address the needs of persons in forced or voluntary migration worldwide and support their transition to a dignified life.

Provides lifelong care to rescued farm animals, educates people about the realities of animal agriculture, and promotes veganism by offering knowledge, support, and community.

WakeUP Wake County P.O. Box 6484, Raleigh, NC 27628 wakeupwakecounty.org

Planned Parenthood plannedparenthood.org

Assisting and educating people about pregnancies and other sexual health topics.

TO BE FEARLESS. TO HOLD THE POWERFUL ACCOUNTABLE. TO BE A VOICE FOR THE VOICELESS.

FREE TO TELL THE TRUTH. TO CELEBRATE AND CRITICIZE. TO ADVOCATE FOR THE MARGINALIZED.

Triangle Land Conservancy

P.O. Box 249, Durham, NC 27702 umdurham.org

Partners for Youth Opportunity

FREE

WakeUP Wake County promotes good growth planning and sustainable, healthy communities through education, advocacy and civic engagement, advancing a higher quality of life for all.

FREE TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE. FROM CORPORATE INFLUENCE. NO PAYWALLS, NO SUBSCRIPTIONS.

FREE BECAUSE OF YOU. KEEP IT FREE. KEEP IT INDY.

Join the INDY Press Club at KeepItINDY.com

INDYweek.com | 12.18.19 | 27

1 9 P EO P L E PHOTO BY JADE WILSON

Jenny Tung The Duke evolutionary anthropologist and Genius grant recipient is revolutionizing our understanding of the biological connections between health and social status

By Jeffrey C. Billman

28 | 12.18.19 | INDYweek.com

T

here’s no way to spend half an hour talking with These things were often studied from the perspective of Jenny Tung and not come away with the unmistakable social sciences, she thought. Why not study them through sense that you’ve encountered one of the smartest people the lens of life sciences? you’ll ever meet. She’ll speak quickly, words forming in “If there are direct relationships between social conditions a rapid-fire progression, explaining what are, to her, and how our organs and tissues and cells function, then that’s rudimentary concepts, but, to you—if you’re a journalist a biological function,” Tung says. “That’s the framework. The whose academic background is in social science—are how and the why.” strange and foreign ideas.

Unlike social sciences, life sciences allowed for Yet you grasp the gravity of what she’s saying. It’s not experimentation and the manipulation of social environments so much the granular details that matter. What matters is (albeit not with humans). Here, baboons proved especially the fact that the work Tung and her colleagues are doing useful. They are social animals that don’t live nearly as long could fundamentally change how we understand societies as humans—about eighteen years, on average. But that’s and health and longevity. long enough to track changes in lifespan. And the baboon In September, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation “Social adversity is toxic named Tung, a thirty-seven-year-old evolutionary anthropologist at Duke to all kinds of systems.”

University, one of twenty-six 2019 fellows, an honor that comes with an unrestricted $625,000 “Genius” grant. (Tung was one of two group in Kenya has been monitored by scientists for decades, North Carolinians to become a fellow this year; the other is which made it ideal for this kind of generational research. an artist in Yancey County.)

What she’s discovered is that baboons born into early-life The foundation said it awarded Tung the fellowship adversity—during droughts, or whose mothers died, or who because her research has “important implications for were socially isolated—tend to live ten years less than their human health. While associations between socially peers. In most cases, the cause of death isn’t clear, nor is it induced stress and negative health outcomes have long clear whether the baboons died for the same reason. been observed in humans, her findings suggest there is But what is clear, Tung says, is that “social adversity is a causal link between social and environmental adversity toxic to all kinds of systems.” and poor health.”

The rhesus monkeys might provide a hint as to what’s To explain: We know that, on average, wealthier people going on. In lower-status and socially isolated monkeys, live longer than poor people. There are a lot of potential genes that are involved in the defense against viruses causes: They have better health care. They smoke less. crank up, leading to molecular inflammation and eventually They’re more likely to exercise and have access to more obliterating cells—a “defense mechanism gone wild,” as Tung nutritious foods. They’re less likely to live in environmentally puts it. hazardous neighborhoods.

“The work we’re contributing to helps clarify a lot about Tung’s work flips our notions of causality on their heads. how social interactions could be causal to the outcomes we Sure, those factors matter. But, in studies of baboons living care about,” she says. in the wild in Kenya and rhesus monkeys in captivity, she There are many questions still to be answered, and and her team have shown that poverty—diminished access the practical implications of Tung’s work still need to be to resources—and lower social status actually affect us on developed. the genomic and cellular level.

A utopian future in which there are no social stressors In essence, the research indicates that those on lower seems unlikely, Tung says, but improving children’s social rungs of the socioeconomic ladder tend to have poorer environments could have a significant effect on their longimmune systems, rendering them more susceptible to term health. She’s also looking at the UK’s recent decision to adverse health conditions and early death. And research add a Minister of Loneliness, aimed at giving isolated elderly with captive monkeys suggests that the health effects can people someone to talk to. be reversed by assigning the lower-ranking monkeys to a And she hopes her research might eventually help higher status. explain why some people seem more vulnerable to adverse That’s part of the reason why the MacArthur Foundation conditions than others. sees so much promise in her work.

As for what she plans to do with the Genius money?

Tung started out as an undergraduate at Duke in 1999.

“My immediate plan is to try to finish this semester She planned to be a doctor, but those plans were derailed without drowning,” she told the INDY earlier this month. early on, when she took a course on evolution and social “[The grant] comes with this onus to do something. I need behavior. She was drawn to genetics and their role in quality- to think about it.” of-life determinants. jbillman@indyweek.com

1 9 P EO P L E

Sulaiman and Lesleigh Mausi Depending whom you ask, The Art of Cool Festival’s new owners either saved or ruined Durham’s homegrown music fest.

But they kept it going. By Thomasi McDonald

I

n its second year being run by The DOME Group, Durham’s homegrown The Art of Cool Festival brought neo-soul doyenne Jill Scott and hip-hop legacy acts RunDMC and Big Daddy Kane to town. This followed a 2018 festival that featured the likes of Erykah Badu, Nas, and the surprise reunion of North Carolina’s own Little Brother.

What you didn’t see a lot of? Jazz, the genre the festival was built on. There were crowd-pleasing chart-toppers galore, but jazz accounted for only about 15 percent of the lineup. Critics took notice, accusing the new owners, The DOME Group’s Sulaiman and Lesleigh Mausi—a married couple from Detroit—of abandoning the eight-year-old festival’s roots in pursuit of the almighty dollar.

On Facebook, Larry Reni Thomas, a Triangle native and one of the country’s preeminent jazz critics, derided “a clear-cut, revealing reflection of our blood-sucking, moneymaking music and entertainment industry’s feeble, historic

“If jazz isn’t selling, or hip-hop isn’t selling, you better put some countrywestern up there.” effort to dumb down the public and to foolishly ignore the importance and signficance of American Classical Music, commonly called ‘jazz.’”

Thomas went on to describe the first AOC Festival, in 2011, where he watched Nnenna Freelon, the NCCU Jazz Ensemble and Big Band, Kenny Garrett, and others perform.

“I thought to myself, ‘This is too deep for Durham. It ain’t going to last.’ Turns out I was right.”

Al Strong, a trumpeter and a jazz professor at N.C. Central who cofounded The Art of Cool Project with Cicely Mitchell, laments the loss of their version of the festival’s “artistic, curatorial approach” but says they intentionally never called it a jazz festival. While they sought to create an event where jazz musicians could push the envelope, they also wanted the freedom to cross genres, and they didn’t want to turn people off with narrow definitions. Even so, they couldn’t make it work financially, and Strong and Mitchell sold the festival to the Mausis last year.

Sulaiman Mausi says he’s “super excited about what has happened” since The DOME Group began producing the

festival in 2018. He describes it as a learning process and says he’s working to expand the festival’s scope to make it a travel destination for Durham. And he’s proud to have snared the headliners.

“We got Run-DMC here; that was once in a lifetime,” Sulaiman says. “They hadn’t been in North Carolina in thirty years.”

The Mausis are mindful of the criticisms that have been leveled at them. Lesleigh says they’re trying to strike a balance that maintains the integrity of what the founders intended while expanding the festival to make it accessible for more people.

That includes presenting artists at smaller venues like The Pinhook, Motorco, Beyu Caffe, and the Durham Armory.

And while Erykah Badu and Nas grabbed headlines, the festival has also given stages to underground talents like Emotional Oranges and Flint Eastwood, and presented a few jazz artists, including North Carolinians Marcus Anderson and Yolanda Rabun.

“We had more local artists performing than any other festival that I’m aware of in recent history,” Sulaiman says.

In September, Sulaiman told the INDY that the AOC’s jazz offerings are something he’d like to improve, but he also noted that folks who claim to love jazz aren’t necessarily buying tickets.

And Sulaiman isn’t shy about keeping his eye on the bottom line.

“If jazz isn’t selling, or hip-hop isn’t selling, you better put some country-western up there,” he said.

Though they hail from Detroit, the Mausis have considerable legacies in Durham. Sulaiman’s greatgrandfather owned and managed the Garrett’s Biltmore and Garrett Parker pharmacies on Black Wall Street, which was destroyed by the urban renewal programs of the 1960s and ’70s. And his grandfather, Nathan Garrett, was the first black licensed CPA in North Carolina.

Sulaiman attended N.C. Central, where he promoted parties and club events. The Mausis married in 1999 and started a family in Durham. Lesleigh taught at Githens Middle School and was later recognized as Durham Public Schools’ assistant principal of the year during her tenure at Jordan High.

They lived in Durham for sixteen years but cultivated their promotional skills during summers in Detroit, where they programmed entertainment for the city’s riverfront venue. In 2008, their company, The DOME Group, booked smooth-jazz saxophonist Najee for a concert at The Carolina Theatre. Soon after, they were recruited to

PHOTO BY JADE WILSON

handle urban programming at the newly opened Durham Performing Arts Center and started booking big-name acts, including Mary J. Blige, Anthony Hamilton, Big Sean, and Al Green.

The Mausis say that purists like Thomas shouldn’t give up on American Classical Music again being prominently featured at the festival.

“One of the things that makes The Art of Cool so attractive is it offers a nice blend,” Lesleigh says. “We have jazz, but there’s also jazz-influenced music. So much of modern music has been influenced by jazz. Listen to the bass lines, listen to the instrumentals or the guitar riffs.

The jazz influence is employed by all music genres. It’s an honor to carry it on.” tmcdonald@indyweek.com INDYweek.com || 12.18.19 12.18.19 || 29 29 INDYweek.com

1 9 P EO P L E

J. Clapp/Vivica C. Coxx After an anti-bullying forum went viral, Durham’s favorite drag queen and LGBTQ leader turned their spotlight back on their community By James Michael Nichols

J.

PHOTO BY JADE WILSON

30 | 12.18.19 | INDYweek.com

Clapp isn’t used to being in the spotlight.

That privilege is usually reserved for Vivica C. Coxx, J. Clapp’s enigmatic drag persona—a fixture in both Durham’s LGBTQ community and the Triangle at large, the beloved mother of the House of Coxx and a cultural force who revitalized the city’s drag nightlife.

Clapp, on the other hand, is one of a handful of people who straddles leadership roles in different cultural institutions centered around LGBTQ people, someone uniquely positioned to push the culture of their city forward.

They’re the interim executive director of the LGBTQ Center of Durham, and they chair Pride: Durham, NC. Together, these positions have enabled Clapp to cultivate a queer community in the Bull City in an unparalleled capacity.

“I was raised to believe that to whom much is given, much is expected,” Clapp says. “But I was also taught over time that, even though I have a big personality, it doesn't mean I’m always the right person to solve something. So it’s given me a sense of knowing exactly when I should step in and exactly when I should step out. When Pride came around, and when Vivica was an opportunity, and when the center had an opening, in each of those examples, I knew I was the right person to step in.”

This year’s Pride was a massive success, with at least fifteen thousand people in attendance—more than double what the festival’s organizing committee expected. For Clapp, the biggest victory came in the form of people from all walks of LGBTQ life seeing themselves reflected in Pride.

“We created a space where queer and trans kids felt comfortable showing up, where queer parents and their children felt comfortable showing up,” Clapp says. “Our elders felt comfortable showing up. And quite frankly, the often-forgotten queer and trans people of color felt comfortable and present, all while the broader community felt comfortable and present. It wasn’t Black Pride, it wasn’t Latinx Pride. It was the municipal Pride, and everyone felt comfortable.”

In May, the INDY ran an article in which Clapp talked about the importance of curating spaces for children to enjoy drag. That same week, Central Park School for Children in Durham invited Clapp and fellow performer Stormie Daie to speak to its student body, following reports of LGBTQ students leaving the school because of bullying.

Dressed in full drag, the pair sat on the stage and had an

open conversation about the nuances of LGBTQ life, the lived experiences of queer folks, and the opportunity to learn from those different than you.

Quickly, that moment went viral.

While driving away from Durham for an anniversary trip with their partner a few days later, Clapp got a text from a friend: “Girl, you are on The View!”

Following local news coverage, the anti-bullying forum broke into the national-media circuit, and Vivica’s face was everywhere, from The Today Show to CNN to, yes, The View.

“It was ridiculous,” Clapp says. “But what I knew was that we all can have a viral moment. It's about what we do with it.”

The attention brought Clapp an opportunity. They began receiving calls from agents and potential avenues to expand their work beyond Durham in ways that they had never previously considered. There was never a question, however, of what that attention should be directed toward: the LGBTQ folks who call Durham home.

“I don't have an agent,” Clapp says. “The reason I don’t have an agent is, I’m always going to be an entertainer. I’m always going to be a speaker. But my heart is in Durham, because there is nowhere else in the world that a nerdy, awkward, chubby, black trans femme gets to experience life to the fullest. I don't want to travel to little bars around this country and experience transphobia and racism in ways that I don't want to. I’m not afraid to travel. But I’m gonna set my own pace.”

That’s the thing about Clapp: For them, it’s always been about the work. From their roles with the LGBTQ Center and Pride to an unprecedented media opportunity they manifested simply by responding to a community need, it’s always about remembering the young queer and trans folks—particularly those of color—for whom they’re fighting to build a better world.

“When I was asked to speak [at Central Park School for Children], I had to tap into all of my traumas from middle school—what it was like to be the queer and chubby kid in middle school and all of the bullying I received,” Clapp says. “I didn't want to miss the opportunity to ensure that just one queer kid didn't take their life. If I could play a role in making sure fewer of those kids bullied one another and more of those kids saw that they were fully human, then I was going to take it.” backtalk@indyweek.com

1 9 P EO P L E

Emil Kang

PHOTO BY ALEX BOERNER

After fifteen years, the founder of Carolina Performing Arts leaves Chapel Hill with a program New York might envy By Brian Howe

W

hen I reflect on the most-unforgettable stage works I’ve seen in recent years, a striking number of them were presented by Carolina Performing Arts.

Some were by artists seldom seen in the U.S. outside of major cities, such as the Belgian experimental-theater director Ivo van Hove’s Antigone. Others were by artists seldom seen in the U.S., period, such as the FrenchCanadian choreographer Marie Chouinard. In the past few months alone, we got Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s postmodern dance classic Rosas danst Rosas, Sarah Cahill’s five-hour marathon of piano music by women, and Michael Keegan-Dolan’s visionary Irish remix of Swan Lake.

All were astounding; none, except maybe Rosas, were easy sells to patrons or stakeholders. If the goal were simply butts in seats, a university presenter could do well with less effort and imagination.

But, like Duke Performances, Carolina Performing Arts has been shaped by its director’s ambition, passionately idiosyncratic taste, and impatience with the old ways of doing things. As CPA’s Emil Kang departs from the organization he founded in 2005, when he became UNC’s executive director for the arts, he leaves Chapel Hill a performing-arts program that even New York might envy—one with a restive momentum toward the future.

Kang left UNC in October to become the program director for Arts and Cultural Heritage at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in New York City. Professionally, it was a chance to test his core conviction about arts presenting— that the ticketed show is just a stalking horse for more expansive relationships between artists, institutions, and locals—on a well-funded international scale.

But for Kang, everything is about personal relationships, and the clincher was his admiration for Mellon Foundation president Elizabeth Alexander. In this, his move to Mellon echoed his move to UNC fifteen years ago.

“It was Chancellor [James] Moeser, to be perfectly frank,” Kang says, explaining why he gave up a career in orchestra management—he was president of the Detroit Symphony— to become UNC’s arts leader.

Moeser, a musician himself, wanted to raise the stature of the arts at UNC, with Memorial Hall as a centerpiece— not just for campus, but for Chapel Hill. The auditorium had already seen its share of performers since the latenineteenth century—though the original burned down, with the one we attend today replacing it in 1931. Before there was any such thing as Carolina Performing Arts, Little Richard played there. So did Yo-Yo Ma. But this amounted to a handful of shows per year, funded through

student fees. With university staff and backing, Kang began to assemble robust fall-through-spring seasons.

He had to, after the gauntlet he had thrown down to get the job.

As a part of his interview process, Kang recalls, he had to give a public talk on campus. Someone asked what his vision was, and he came up with a spontaneous reply.

“I said that I wanted the arts to be as big as basketball, and everyone started to laugh,” he says. But that offhand comment set the tone for his ambitious—sometimes, wildly ambitious—tenure. A few years in, Carolina Performing Arts started experimenting with Memorial Hall, sometimes dropping the fire curtain and making people come in through the loading dock. Just recently, it booked rap artist Tierra Whack there for what was essentially an EDM tour stop. Some of it worked; some of it didn’t.

To Kang, that’s not the point.

“To me, the space shouldn’t be sacred. The work should be,” he says. “What I enjoyed was the constant reimagination of how we could work with artists in the community, never being satisfied with filling a house, or even with world premieres. It was much more about being at the forefront of how artists and communities should work together.”

Though Kang has inarguably burnished UNC’s credentials as a magnet for world-class artists, to him, that was almost incidental. He seems to care less about results than about process—less about succeeding than about trying. He created extended residencies not because it was efficient, but because he wanted to see what would happen. He commissioned new works not because they would sell, but because he trusted the artists to do something interesting.

“This might sound pollyannaish, but it’s not about high art or trying to keep up with the Joneses in New York and London and Paris,” Kang says. “It’s really been about sharing the relationships with artists I’ve accumulated over the years around the world with our community.

I struggle with the binary nature of liking or disliking a show. This is going to sound lofty, but I don’t know how else to say it: I’ve always believed in humanity, and that we can create more opportunities for intimacy and personal relationships, more humility and vulnerability and understanding and openness.”

Kang’s tenure also saw the opening of CURRENT ArtSpace + Studio last year, a flexible, inviting small venue and studio by the Target on campus. Not long ago, it hosted the aforementioned piano marathon by Sarah Cahill. It lasted five hours, at cafe tables in a lighted space, and you could come and go at will. It couldn’t have

happened at any other UNC venue, and it’s a lasting legacy of Kang’s drive to bring the arts out of the catacombs of tradition to meet people where they are.

“These temples of art and the rituals of art attendance have to change,” he says. “I really believe that the Eurocentric tradition of sitting in the dark and doing nothing and behaving quietly is the way of the past. We aren’t going to throw that away, but we needed more opportunities to engage more broadly with audience experiences.”

Kang’s vision is also writ large in Arts Everywhere, an ambitious and amorphous initiative to integrate the arts into students’ daily lives, which has had results both whimsical—an early gambit placed pianos in public spaces all over campus—and practical, such as the installation of a free painting studio in Morrison Residence Hall.

It all comes back to Kang’s challenge to UNC sports, a joke he was also serious about, demonstrating the kind of vaulting aspiration with which you can only fail upward.

“When students came to UNC, one of their top four mostcited activities in high school was arts participation, and then when they got to UNC, that participation plummets,” Kang says. “Two-thirds of our student body participate in some athletic activity. Wouldn’t it be great if two thirds also participated in creative expression in some form?” bhowe@indyweek.com INDYweek.com | 12.18.19 | 31

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Jaki Shelton Green North Carolina’s poet laureate is fostering a new generation of poets in the state's neglected reaches By Sarah Edwards

T

his spring, Jaki Shelton Green learned that she was one of just thirteen poets across the country to be named an Academy of American Poets Laureate. The distinction came with a $75,000 grant, part of an award funded by an unprecedented $2.2 million donation from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

North Carolina poetry, it seems, is having a moment. Another honoree was Fred Joiner, the poet laureate of Carrboro, who received $50,000, which he plans to use to revitalize the West End Poetry Festival.

The Academy recognized Green for her work as North Carolina’s State Poet Laureate, an appointment she has held since last summer—the first African American to hold the role in the state.

The grant, Green says, will help support her work, which takes her all over the state. Poetry, after all, is hardly a lucrative endeavor. Even the poet laureate of the U.S. receives just a $35,000 yearly stipend. As state poet laureate, Green receives $10,000 a year.

And Green has gotten to know North Carolina pretty well as she’s traveled from Brunswick County to Jefferson County and through the farthest reaches of Eastern and Western North Carolina.

Between August 2018 (shortly after her appointment was announced) and June 2019, she delivered 188 public presentations.

Some laureates have used the position to write or seek high-paying speaking engagements. Green sees it as public stewardship.

“I meet people where they are,” she says. “I have intentionally tried to be in those communities where people look at me and go, ‘You’re what? What’s that, I’ve never heard of that?’”

Born in Mebane in 1953, Green is nothing if not a populist. She’s the author of eight collections of poetry and has won major awards, including being inducted into the NC Literary Hall of Fame. But her vision for 32 | 12.18.19 | INDYweek.com

North Carolina poetry, long before these recognitions, has been to expand it beyond homogenous journals and MFA programs and make it accessible to marginalized communities and young people.

As Green tells it, during her time touring the state—leading workshops and delivering readings and lectures—she began to notice a gap: There weren’t any young people.

“I go to all of these festivals or conferences, but there’s nothing there for teenagers,” she says. “And yet when I meet young people in school settings, they’re very active in their communities. In some parts of North Carolina, even, we have high school poet laureates at the schools, but they’re pretty invisible. So I wanted to create a platform where their voices would be in the mix.”

Literary ChangeMakers, Shelton’s new initiative, is geared toward supporting emerging teenage poets who are engaged in “civic and community activism” in all onehundred N.C. counties. The project officially launched in August and is partnering with the filmmaker Saleem J. Reshamwala and the organization Blackspace Durham, as well as with Asheville’s Word on the Street. A symposium for the project is planned for April 2020 at the Student U office space in Durham.

“James Baldwin says the role of the artist is to agitate, and I take that very seriously,” Green says. “I believe that writing does free us to tell our truths. I’ve seen poetry save lives.”

A classroom visit that Green made earlier this fall illustrates this point. She’d gone to Asheville to give a reading and ended up instructing a classroom of high schoolers at an alternative school in Sylva.

At first, she wasn’t sure how receptive the class would be.

“About eleven or twelve strapping white mountain boys walked in, all in a row. And I’m thinking, how is this gonna go?” she says. “But the magic that happened in that room—the stories they told, [these] kids who are hanging on by a string.”

PHOTO BY JADE WILSON

She began with the exercise she likes to use in workshops: Choose an object that’s significant to you and introduce yourself from the perspective of that object. It’s a simple enough prompt, but the invitation to shift perspective and look at your life not just with new empathy, but as a thing worthy of poetry tends to get students to open up.

One student wrote from the perspective of a shirt that belonged to his nephew, who had been killed. Another student introduced himself from the perspective of his journals, which he said helped him process the deaths of several friends that year. He found a corner to write in every night, he told the class, and opened up his backpack to show that it was crammed with journals.

“I fill up about one of these at night,” he said. “And they keep me alive.”

Poetry is often perceived as a fusty luxury, an outdated art form maintained by industry gatekeepers. Green and Joiner’s recognitions shine a spotlight on the work that North Carolina poets are doing to change that on a regional level, by making it real to people’s actual experiences.

This year, Shelton will continue her work, which includes running the organization SistaWRITE, teaching a documentary poetry class at Duke University, and getting Literary ChangeMakers off the ground.

It’s an exhausting pace. But while these national recognitions are an honor and the award money helps defray costs associated with the work, her boots-on-the-ground approach to poetry isn’t new.

“All the things that I'm doing as poet laureate, I’ve been doing for over forty years,” she says. sedwards@indyweek.com

1 9 P EO P L E

Charles Phaneuf The director of Raleigh Little Theatre put the “community” in “community theater.”

Now he’ll try to do the same for the arts in all of Wake County. By Byron Woods

C

PHOTO BY JADE WILSON

harles Phaneuf has a lot to be happy about as he prepares to leave his position as executive director of Raleigh Little Theatre.

Since the Raleigh native came home in 2012 to manage the region’s oldest and largest community theater, the major metrics are up: The annual budget has increased from $800,000 a year to $1.4 million, and a successful capital campaign to renovate GaddyGoodwin Teaching Theatre concluded last spring. And in an era where theaters everywhere have struggled to hang on to patrons, RLT has added more than six thousand, for a total annual audience north of fortyfour thousand people.

All of those achievements are linked to something Phaneuf explored, interrogated, and ultimately revitalized during seven years of service. It can’t be fixed on a flowchart or read on a balance sheet—but it does show up, six times, in the theater’s revised statement of mission, vision, and values.

It’s community.

Most community theaters treat the word as a statement of location and nothing more. But upon his arrival at RLT, Phaneuf did something unexpected: He set out to closely examine the implicit and possible relationships in the term.

“I'm happy that during the time that [artistic director Patrick Torres] and I have been here, we've created a lot of points of entry for people,” Phaneuf says.

Strengthening or creating strategic partnerships has been a part of that. RLT has worked with other arts organizations on initiatives including the Wherefore: Shakespeare in Raleigh festival in 2015 and has co-produced shows with Bare Theatre, Actors Comedy Lab, and the Raleigh Symphony Orchestra.

Expanding entry points has also meant increasing the diversity of participants, not only in audiences, but backstage, on stage, and in the theater’s classes. Under Phaneuf’s leadership, RLT has pursued cultural diversity across all of these continuums.

“He came in and did all the right things,” says Beth Yerxa, executive director of the service organization Triangle ArtWorks. “He looked at what was going on at RLT, he looked at the community around him, and he went out and listened and helped the theater respond to the community.”

The theater has hosted sold-out season-preview showcases by Triangle Friends of African American Arts and The Black on Black Project. It has incorporated

“To be a community theater, you have to be inclusive.

You have to have diversity and equity.” disabled communities on stage as well as in the audience.

After installing Raleigh’s first hearing-loop technology to provide patrons with hearing loss a better-than-frontrow audio experience in Sutton Theatre, RLT partnered with Arts Access for “A Series of Fortunate Events,” showcases featuring the theatrical, musical, film, and visual works of artists with disabilities.

A partnership with the Autism Society of North Carolina resulted in sensory-friendly performances for each family-series production in the last two years.

Michael Larson, the lead actor in RLT’s upcoming production of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, has autism.

And with productions like The Curious Incident, Perfect Arrangement (about gay and lesbian government workers in the 1950s), What We’re Up Against (about workplace discrimination against women), and the world premiere of Mike Wiley’s Blood Done Sign My Name, RLT’s shows have also demonstrated a commitment to a broad bandwidth of stories that reflect the experiences of the communities it encompasses.

“To be a community theater, you need all of these things,” Phaneuf says. “You have to be inclusive. You have to have diversity and equity. And you have to do things that really represent the world; your programming choices have to be things that reflect the way the world is today.”

Now, Phaneuf’s efforts turn to an even larger community as he prepares to begin his new role as president of the United Arts Council of Raleigh & Wake County next February.

“What will it take for us to get a county-wide vision for the arts? Right now, Raleigh has an arts plan. But there hasn’t been a vision for a while about how all the different municipalities and the county work together,” Phaneuf says. “That’s going to be a conversation.” backtalk@indyweek.com INDYweek.com | 12.18.19 | 33

WHAT TO DO THIS WEEK SUNDAY, DECEMBER 29

SARAH SHOOK & THE DISARMERS This hometown show for Sarah Shook & the Disarmers comes while the road dogs take a break from their perpetual touring, tracking the follow-up to 2018’s terrific Years. Like the band’s breakthrough Sidelong, its sophomore LP walked the line between country and punk, marrying Shook’s deadpan delivery of unvarnished outlaw observations and bitter derision to a mix of honky-tonk shuffles and the trademark freight train chug of The Tennessee Three.

Even with the high regard both punk and country place on authenticity, Shook stands out for her straight-shooting tunes about personal demons and weariness. At its best, the quintet feels shot out of a cannon, as Eric Peterson and Phil Sullivan deliver electrifying live performances and trade twangy licks on electric guitar and pedal steel, respectively. Durham’s Severed Fingers opens, gracing Jesse Boutchyard’s raw and rowdy folk-punk with generous doses of gorgeous fiddle and golden harmonies. —Spencer Griffith MOTORCO MUSIC HALL, DURHAM 8 p.m., $15–$18, www.motorcomusic.com

34 | 12.18.19 | INDYweek.com

12.18–1.01 Sarah Shook & the Disarmers

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 20

PHOTO BY JOHN GESSNER

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 22

HAPPY HOUR WITH CHEETIE KUMAR

HARD TUCK

Walking into the downtown Durham boutique Vert & Vogue can feel like its own form of intoxication: racks and racks of linen jumpsuits and scarves and hats made by independent designers mingle with smells of cypress and cedar, and the experience of picking up a Rachel Comey clog can make one dizzy with shoewear lust. On a semi-monthly basis, Vert & Vogue elevates that experience by opening its doors for a one-hour happy hour “speaker series” with a special guest. In the past, guests have run the local gamut, from poets to politicians; this week, “rockstar chef” Cheetie Kumar pops by the shop for a cocktail and Q&A. Kumar’s nickname is aptly earned: she runs Neptunes and Kings, is the guitarist in Birds of Avalon, and owns and serves as a James Beard-nominated chef at Garland, to name just a few distinctions.

Drinks are on the house and admission is free, at this rock-and-rollmeets-the-kitchen conversation, but you should first visit Vert & Vogue’s website to put in an RSVP. —Sarah Edwards

Strap on some cowboy boots and don your Santa hats, because local supergroup Hard Tuck is playing its second annual winter formal. The country act is fronted by a trio of singer-songwriters (Chessa Rich, Kate Rhudy, and Libby Rodenbough) and backed by Alex Bingham on bass, Charles Cleaver on keys, Daniel Faust on drums, and Ryan Johnson and Joseph Terrell on guitars. Though Hard Tuck performances are few and far between, these are the very same musicians playing in popular acts like Mipso, Hiss Golden Messenger, Mandolin Orange, American Aquarium, and many others.

The band is known for its vast catalog of covers—past performances have included songs by Dolly Parton, Gillian Welch, Keith Whitley, and Ted Lucas, not to mention a stint as the Dixie Chicks at 2018’s “The Great Cover Up” event at Kings—and at this seasonally-themed performance, you can expect a handful of holiday classics with a few originals sprinkled in there, too. —Sam Haw

VERT & VOGUE, DURHAM 5:30-6:30 p.m., free, www.vertandvogue.com

KINGS, RALEIGH 8:30 p.m., $10, www.kingsraleigh.com

National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation PHOTO COURTESY OF WARNER BROTHERS

MONDAY, DECEMBER 30

AN EVENING WITH CHEVY CHASE He’s Chevy Chase, and you’re not. In an odd bit of scheduling, the controversial comedy legend will host a screening of his 1989 classic National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation several days after Christmas, with “a no-holds barred trip down memory lane.” That “no-holds barred” approach could go either way; Chase is one of the most notoriously prickly personalities in show business, as anyone who’s read the history of Saturday Night Live or was a fan of the sitcom Community can attest (his bizarre frenemy relationship with series creator Dan Harmon was at times more fascinating than the show itself). So, roll the dice and decide if you want to ask a few questions about the saucer-sled scene or Randy Quaid being…Randy Quaid as Cousin Eddie, or if you want to risk getting snapped at. Either way, you’ll at least get a chance to settle down in your seat and watch some nostalgic National Lampoon gags unfold on the screen.

—Zack Smith RALEIGH MEMORIAL AUDITORIUM, RALEIGH 7:30 p.m., $50, www.dukeenergycenterraleigh.com

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 22

DARKNESS EVERYBODY: A WINTER SOLSTICE SERVICE As the final winter solstice of the decade draws near, have you thought about how you’ll observe the momentous occasion? Mark your calendars for NorthStar Church of the Arts’ last Sunday service of 2019. Led by Black feminist visionaries and Mobile Homecoming co-founders Alexis Pauline Gumbs and Sangodare, this special service offers space for song and deep contemplation, as we welcome longer days and new possibilities. Sangodare, who hails from a long line of Black Baptist preachers, will lead the service with a love-filled sermon. Other celebrants include Alba Onofrio (aka Reverend Sex), poet Destiny Hemphill, and storyteller Sufia Ikbal-Doucet. Expect a gathering that redefines and revolutionizes definitions of holy and secular as celebrants invoke sacred Black feminist texts by Audre Lorde, Pauli Murray, Sangodare, Gumbs, and others. —Jameela F. Dallis NORTHSTAR CHURCH OF THE ARTS, DURHAM 11 a.m., $5–$20, www.northstardurham.com

WHAT ELSE SHOULD I DO? CAT IN THE BAG AT SHADOWBOX STUDIO (P. 44), A CHRISTMAS CAROL AT DPAC (P. 43), HOLIDAY WORD CLASH AT THE HAYTI HERITAGE CENTER (P. 42), THE LOVE LANGUAGE AT KINGS (P. 37), MINI PRINTED MATTER FEST AT SUPERGRAPHIC (P. 41)

Your Week.

Every Wednesday.

INDYweek.com | 12.18.19 | 35

Chocolate Lounge & Juice Bar

Wed 12/18 Fri 12/20 Sat 12/21 Fri 12/27 Sat 12/28 Tue 12/31

Free wine tasting 5-7pm Alice Osborn Michael Paris Rob Gelblum River Otters New Year’s Musical Extravaganza

Music Performed from 6pm to 10pm Beer & Wine Served Daily Timberlyne Shopping Center, Chapel Hill 1129 Weaver Dairy Rd • specialtreatsnc.com

RECENTLY ANNOUNCED: Tiny Moving Parts, Vundabar, Neil Hamburger, Paul Cauthen

12/27,28,29 CAT'S CRADLE 50TH ANNIVERSARY SHOWS! 40+ BANDS INCLUDING: THE BAD CHECKS, SUPERCHUNK, THE MAYFLIES USA, PIPE, KERBLOKI, THE SCARIES, DOVE LEGS, TORCH MARAUDER, BANDWAY, DEXTER ROMWEBER, MELLOW SWELLS, ZEN FRISBEE, SOUTHERN CULTURE ON THE SKIDS, WHAT PEGGY WANTS, MICKEY MILLS AND STEEL, SORRY ABOUT DRESDEN, THE WHITE OCTAVE, SOLAR HALOS, SPEED STICK, SOUND SYSTEM SEVEN, KAZE AND BUMRUSH, SOME ANTICS, BEN DAVIS & THE JETTS, FLYIN' MICE REUNION, ELLIS DYSON & THE SHAMBLES, THE VELDT

Get Tickets at our website or in person at the box office.

T&TH 11AM–2PM and Event Days 11AM–showtime.

4/3, 2020 SHOVELS & ROPE W/INDIANOLA ($25/$28)

TU 2/25, 2020 SHAUN MARTIN OF SNARKY PUPPY AND ELECTRIC KIF ($12/$15)

4/7, 2020 ATERCIOPELADOS AND LOS AMIGOS INVISIBLES ($32/$35)

WE 2/26, 2020 WISH YOU WERE HERE (JESSEE BARNETT OF STICK TO YOUR GUNS)

4/20, 2020 REAL ESTATE ($25/$28)

FR 2/28, 2020 PALEHOUND ($13/$15; ON SALE 12/6)

5/3, 2020 THE RESIDENTS ($30/$35)

FRI

12/20

SAT

ERIC ROBERSON

THE WUSSES

12/21 Beauty Operators SAT

12/28

Pierce Freelon Fundraiser & Birthday Bash

M8ALLA, G YAMAZAWA, THE BEAST & SPECIAL GUEST

1/18, 2020 AMERICAN AUTHORS AND MAGIC GIANT W/SPECIAL GUEST PUBLIC ($25/$28) 1/20, 2020 CRACKER AND

CAMPER VAN BEETHOVEN ($22/$25)

1/21, 2020 TOO MANY ZOOZ W/ BIROCRATIC ($18/$20) WE 1/22, 2020 MARCO BENEVENTO ($17/$20) 1/23, 2020 YOLA W/AMYTHYST KLAH ($20/$23)

SUN

12/29

SARAH SHOOK & THE DISARMERS with Severed Fingers

Raund Haus x Runaway NYE: TUE

12/31 FRI

1/3 SAT

1/4

WED

1/8

FRI

1/10 SAT

1/11

MADE OF OAK, KIR, OAK CITY SLUMS, CHAOS CONTROL, 2D WAVE, TONY G MARV KROWN AND MORE Crank It Loud presents

INTEGRITY

Fuming Mouth / Raw Hex / Joy / Blood Ritual SHIFT NC presents

FUNNY GIRL: A NIGHT OF FUNNY FEMMES! starring Hilliary Begley, hosted by Vivica C. Coxx and Lauren Faber, with Stormie Daie

ART ALEXAKIS OF EVERCLEAR (SOLO) Andrew Winter

SHRED FOR MUSIC ED 3:

Undrask, The Reticent, Stellar Circuits, Knightmare, Raimee Cat’s Cradle Presents

MAGIC CITY HIPPIES with Argonaut & Wasp

COMING SOON: Michal Menert, Late Night Radio, Carbon Leaf, Beth Stelling, Blackalicious, Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana, Grayscale, Hot Mulligan, Over The Rhine, Lost Dog Street Band, AJJ, Jason Ringenberg, Blockhead, We Were Promised Jetpacks, While She Sleeps, David Wilcox, Remember Jones, Gnawa LanGus, OM, Little People, Frameworks, Ellis Dyson & The Shambles, Against Me!, Asgeir, Mdou Moctar, Black Atlantic, Caspian, Deafheaven, Shannon & the Clams, Kevin Morby

36 | 12.18.19 | INDYweek.com

1/25, OLD2020 THE ROAD TO S OUT PODCAST ($35)

NOW

WE 1/29, 2020 ANAMANAGUCHI ($18/$20) 1/30, 2020 YONDER MOUNTAIN

STRING BAND/TRAVELLIN MCCOURYS ($25/$30) FR 1/31/2020 BEACH FOSSILS ($18/$20)

2/1, 2020 JAWBOX W/HAMMERED HULLS ($28/$30) 2/14, 2020 THRICE, MEWITHOUTYOU, DRUG CHURCH ( $26/$30)

TU 3/8, 2020 DAN RODRIGUEZ ($15)

5/11, 2020 BARNS COURTNEY ($22/$25)

TU 3/17, 2020 BAMBARA ($10/$12)

SU 12/15 LYNN BLAKEY'S CHRISTMAS SHOW FT. ECKI HEINS, FJ VENTRE & MORE. OPENING: DANNY GOTHAM ($12) WE 12/18 AN EVENING WITH SAM TAYLOE (TIME SAWYER) & MIKE RAMSEY ($10) SA 12/21 JON STICKLEY TRIO W/INTO THE FOG ($10/$12) FR 12/27 THE MERCH HOLIDAY PARTY : DJ VSPRTN FR 1/3, 2020 THE BLAZERS ‘HOW TO ROCK’ REUNION ($15/$18) SA 1/4, 2020 SUBLIMINAL SURGE / SNAKE SHAMING ($5) TH 1/9, 2020 SONG TRAVELER’S WRITER’S NIGHT W/SAM FRAZIER, ABIGAIL DOWD, AND WYATT EASTERLING ($20) SA 1/11, 2020 HEAT PREACHER & THE GONE GHOSTS W/TEXOMA ($7/$8) TH 1/16, 2020 QUETICO W/PHIL MOORE ($10) FR 1/17, 2020 MO LOWDA & THE HUMBLE W/ ARSON DAILY ($12/$15) SA 1/18 $ SU 01/19, 2020 CARRBORO DJANGO REINHARDT FESTIVAL

2/15, 2020 COLONY HOUSE THE LEAVE WHAT’S LOST BEHIND TOUR W/TYSON MOTSENBOCKER ($15/$18)

TU 1/21, 2020 TALL HEIGHTS W/ANIMAL YEARS ($15/$17)

2/17, 2020 KYLE KINANE THE SPRING BREAK TOUR($25/$28)

FR 1/24, 2020 ILLITERATE LIGHT W/CAMP HOWARD ($12/$14)

2/18, 2020 DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS ($26/$30)

FR 1/31, 2020 DAMN TALL BUILDINGS ($14/$17)

2/21, 2020 ARCHER'S OF LOAF ($25) OLD S OUT

TU 2/4, 2020 CHRIS FARREN, RETIREMENT PARTY, MACSEAL ($10/$12)

OLD S 2/19, 2020 YBN CORDAE ($20/$22.50) OUT

2/27, 2020 DAN DEACON ($15/$17)

2/29, 2020 OF MONTREAL W/ LILY'S BAND ($17) 3/11, 2020 DESTROYER W/NAP EYES ($20/$23) 3/14, 2020 RADICAL FACE ($25/$28) 3/21, 2020 BEST COAST W/MANNEQUIN PUSSY ($25/$27) 3/27, 2020 SOCCER MOMMY W/ TOMBERLIN ($18/$20)

SAT

WINTER BEACH BLAST FEAT. THE EMBERS

SA 2/8, 2020 SEERATONES ($13/$15; ON SALE 12/13) WE 2/11, 2020 BAY FACTION W/SUPERBODY ($12/$15) WE 2/19, 2020 BLACK LIPS ($15) TH 2/20, 2020 THE BROOK & THE BLUFF ($12/$14) SA 2/22, 2020 TIM BARRY ($15) SU 2/23, 2020 SLOAN ($25)

12.31

SU 3/1, 2020 HEMBREE

5/5, 2020 ANDY SHAUF W/ FAYE WEBSTER ($18/$20)

& MANY MORE...

Motorco and The Sol Kitchen present

NYE CELEBRATION WITH THE MIGHTY MESSENGERS OF SOUL, DJ HEAVY, STANLEY BAIRD & CONSTANCE PRINCE

ELECTRIC HOLIDAY TOUR W/BIG FAT GAP

& MANY MORE...

HISS GOLDEN MESSENGER W/LILLY HIATT ($26)

TUE

FR 12/20 @HAW RIVER BALLROOM

1/3,4,5, 2020 CAT'S CRADLE

FR 1/10 & SA 1/11, 2020 - TWO SHOWS

THE STRANGER BILLY JOEL TRIBUTE EXPERIENCE

CHATHAM COUNTY LINE

3/28, 2020 ANTIBALAS ($18/$22)

50TH ANNIVERSARY SHOWS! 40+ BANDS INCLUDING: THE BAD CHECKS, SUPERCHUNK, THE MAYFLIES USA, PIPE, KERBLOKI, THE SCARIES, DOVE LEGS, TORCH MARAUDER, BANDWAY, DEXTER ROMWEBER, MELLOW SWELLS, ZEN FRISBEE, SOUTHERN CULTURE ON THE SKIDS, WHAT PEGGY WANTS, MICKEY MILLS AND STEEL, SORRY ABOUT DRESDEN, THE WHITE OCTAVE, SOLAR HALOS, SPEED STICK, SOUND SYSTEM SEVEN, KAZE AND BUMRUSH, SOME ANTICS, BEN DAVIS & THE JETTS, FLYIN' MICE REUNION, ELLIS DYSON & THE SHAMBLES, THE VELDT

FR

12.20

TU 3/24, 2020 STEVE GUNN, MARY LATTIMORE & WILLIAM TYLER ($20/$22) MO 4/6, 2020 MIGHTY OAKS ($12/$14) TU 4/21, 2020 KATIE PUITT ($10) SU 4/26, 2020 SAMMY RAE & THE FRIENDS ($12/$15)

01.4

SAT

01.11 8PM

IN GRATITUDE A TRIBUTE TO EARTH, WIND & FIRE

LOCAL 506 (CHAPEL HILL)

1/18, 2020 BAILEN

ARTSCENTER (CARRBORO)

3/24, 2020 JAMES MCMURTRY W/BONNIE WHITMORE ($22/$25)

2020 CHAPEL HILL RD. DURHAM 1-984-219-1594 | RhythmsLiveNC.com

MOTORCO (DUR)

1/11, 2020 MAGIC CITY HIPPIES W/ARGONAUT & WASP ($17.50/$20) 2/11, 2020 WE WERE PROMISED JETPACKS ($15/$17) 3/6, 2020 ELLIS DYSON & THE SHAMBLES W/DOWNTOWN ABBY AND THE ECHOS ($10/$12) 4/14, 2020 DEAFHEAVEN W/INTER ARMA AND GREET DEATH ( $25/$28) RITZ (RAL)

(PRESENTED IN ASSOCIATION W/ LIVENATION)

1/25, 2020 THE DEVIL MAKES THREE W/MATT HECKLER ($25/$30) HAW RIVER BALLROOM

FR 12/20 CHATHAM COUNTY LINE ELECTRIC HOLIDAY TOUR W/ BIG FAT GAP ($20/$22) FR 1/31, 2020 G LOVE AND SPECIAL SAUCE W/JONTAVIOUS WILLIS ($25/$30) 2/22, 2020 GARZA FT. ROB GARZA OF THIEVERY CORPORATION

WHERE THE MOON HIDES TOUR 2020 ($20/$23) 2/27, 2020 TODD SNIDER ($25/$28) 3/24, 2020 JOHN MORELAND ($15/$18) 4/20, 2020 SHARON VAN ETTEN W/JAY SOM ($28/$31) 5/1,2020TENNIS W/MOLLYBURCH ($18/$20) THE CAROLINA THEATER (DUR)

4/15, 2020 ANGEL OLSEN W/MADIDIAZ DPAC (DURHAM)

4/14, 2020 CODY KO & NOEL MILLER; TINY MEAT GANG GLOBAL DOMINATION

CATSCRADLE.COM  919.967.9053  300 E. MAIN STREET  CARRBORO

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THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS

PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER

12.18–1.01

music

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 20

THE LOVE LANGUAGE With sole constant Stuart McLamb living in Los Angeles since 2017, Triangle shows from The Love Language have become a rarity, despite the project’s local roots and ties to Merge Records. Featuring longtime local associates Tom Simpson, Autumn Ehinger, and Eddie Sanchez, the crew will converge at Kings and bound between the band’s four albums of kaleidoscopic pop-rock imbued with yearning melodies; its lush, layered arrangements strewn with quirky orchestral and electro bits. The band will also flesh out some demos for the next record, which McLamb describes as “a return to more traditional songcraft” and his mellowest yet, influenced by the likes of Big Thief, Neil Young, and Arthur Russell. Raleigh sextet Black Surfer brings eighties post-punk washed in reverb and rife with shoegaze guitars and urgent rhythms. McLamb also plays a solo Sunday matinee at Wake Forest Listening Room with Reese McHenry opening; expect some more new material and perhaps a few covers. —Spencer Griffith KINGS, RALEIGH

10:30 p.m., $14–$16, www.kingsraleigh.com

DUKE CAMPUS: DUKE CHAPEL

Annual Christmas Concert

The Vocal Arts Ensemble, led

by Rodney Wynkoop, has been one of the leading chamber choirs in the triangle for over twenty-five years. “O Holy Night,” the ensemble’s annual Christmas program of music for choir, features pieces going back a few centuries alongside some well-known contemporary staples —Dan Ruccia [FREE, 8 P.M.] EDENTON STREET UNITED METHODIST CHURCH Raleigh Boychoir; $20. 7 p.m.

THE FRUIT Fresh Fruit: Ugly Sweater Edition; 10 p.m.

HAW RIVER BALLROOM

Chatham County Line

Stuart McLamb of The Love Language PHOTO COURTESY OF MERGE RECORDS

WED, DEC 18 ARCANA Julia Finch; 8 p.m.

CAT’S CRADLE BACK ROOM Sam Tayloe (Time Sawyer), Mike Ramsey; $10. 8 p.m.

THE CAVE TAVERN Upward Dogs; 9 p.m.

ENO RIVER UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST FELLOWSHIP Jazz Vespers for the Holidays; 7 p.m.

NEPTUNES PARLOUR Chris Boerner Redsidency; $8-$10. 8:30 p.m.

NIGHTLIGHT 919Noise Showcase; $7. 8 p.m.

POUR HOUSE MUSIC HALL Frances Eliza, Secret Pool; $5-$10. 8 p.m.

BLUE NOTE GRILL Reverend Billy C. Wirtz; $10-$15. 7:30 p.m.

THE RITZ Tyler Childers; SOLD OUT. 8 p.m.

DURHAM ARMORY Durham Community Concert Band; 7 p.m.

THE STATION Choo Choo Anoo, Geoff Clapp; 7 p.m.

THE DURHAM HOTEL Al Strong, Tamisha Waden; 7 p.m.

THU, DEC 19

THE CAVE TAVERN Eli Yacinthe, Beau James; 9 p.m.

KINGS Retro Candy, Augurs, Sonny Miles; $5-$10. 7 p.m.

ARCANA Catch Ann; 8:30 p.m.

LOCAL 506 20th Century Boy; $5. 8 p.m.

THE ARTSCENTER PopUp Chorus; $15. 7 p.m.

THE NIGHT RIDER Art Critic, Cheem, Origami Angel; 8 p.m.

NIGHTLIGHT Nick Klein, Liquid Asset, Rescinder, Housefire, Mille; $10. 9 p.m.

THE PINHOOK Mister Goblin, Pet Fox, Hammer No More The Fingers; $10. 8 p.m.

POUR HOUSE MUSIC HALL 4th Annual Holiday Rescue Jam; Donation suggested. 8 p.m.

THE RITZ Snoop Dogg, Warren G, RJMrLA, Trae The Truth; SOLD OUT. 8 p.m.

SLIM’S DOWNTOWN Darsombra, Damiyama, Magma Opus; $5. 9 p.m.

FRI, DEC 20 ARCANA Ally J, DJ Gemynii; $10. 8 p.m.

THE ARTSCENTER Songs From the Circle; $15. 8 p.m.

BLUE NOTE GRILL Five Easy Pieces; $8. 9 p.m.

THE CARY THEATER Joe Newberry, April Verch; $20-$25. 8 p.m.

THE CAVE TAVERN The Moon Unit, The Oblations; 10 p.m.

CENTER FOR DRAMATIC ART Yolanda Rabun; $25-$40. 7:30 p.m.

Raleigh bluegrass group Chatham County Lines embarks on its annual statewide Electric Holiday Tour.

This year, Jay Brown & Johnny Irion will join the group on stage. Its upcoming record, Strange Fascination, takes steps towards a more modernized sound by utilizing drums in a larger capacity. The Big Fat Gap opens. —Sam Haw [$20-$22. 8 P.M] KINGS The Dangling Loafer, Mike Mello, Tom Peters, Natalie Varkey, Robert Faires, Josh Rosenstein; $7. 8 p.m.

THE KRAKEN Too Much Fun’s 30th Xmas Extravaganza; Orange County All Stars, John Saylor, Sallie Scharding, The Honeys, Zach White & Friends. 8 p.m.

LINCOLN THEATRE Dillon Fence, The Balsa Gliders, Alex Lawhon; $15+. 8 p.m.

INDYweek.com | 12.18.19 | 37

POUR HOUSE MUSIC HALL Young Cardinals; 5 p.m.

POUR HOUSE MUSIC HALL 80s/90s Hip-Hop Party; 8 p.m.

SLIM’S DOWNTOWN Zeus Lee, Nun After Hours, Gnarley Nick, Unoumi, Manifest Beats; $10. 7 p.m.

WAKE FOREST LISTENING ROOM Stuart McLamb, Reese McHenry; $12. 4 p.m.

MON, DEC 23

THE MAYWOOD Echonest, Console Command; $8. 8 p.m.

MOTORCO MUSIC HALL Eric Roberson; $30-$45. 9 p.m.

NIGHTLIGHT

Fitness Womxn Record Release Party

From the get-go, it’s clear that “Kadzriff,” the lead single from Fitness Womxn’s second album, New Age Record, is something different. Alongside the group’s minimalist, no wave dance party beats (which sound heftier than before) is wave after wave of glittering synth squalls which cast the whole song in a deranged glow. I hope the rest of the record is as demented.

The release party promises experiments and art installations alongside the music.

—Dan Ruccia [$10, 9 P.M.] THE PINHOOK Dreamless, Object Hours, Maple Stave; $8. 9 p.m.

POUR HOUSE MUSIC HALL Friends Of The Shakedown: Lenny Kravitz Tribute; $8-$10. 8 p.m.

RHYTHMS LIVE MUSIC HALL The Stranger; $25. 8 p.m.

THE RITZ El Alfa; $48-$78. 8 p.m.

RUBY DELUXE DJ Signiff; 10 p.m.

38 | 12.18.19 | INDYweek.com

SLIM’S DOWNTOWN Pale Horse, Clothespins, Charlie Flowers; $5. 9 p.m.

THE STATION Shelles, Sunny Slopes; 9 p.m.

WAKE FOREST LISTENING ROOM Chatham Rabbits; $15. 7 p.m.

SAT, DEC 21 BLUE NOTE GRILL The Berlin Brothers Christmas Orchestra, The Irvettes; 3 p.m. & 8 p.m. showtimes. $8-$12.

CAT’S CRADLE BACK ROOM Jon Stickley Trio, Into The Fog; $10-$12. 8:30 p.m.

THE CAVE TAVERN Evil Wiener Christmas Show; 9 p.m.

CENTER FOR DRAMATIC ART Yolanda Rabun; 2:30 p.m. & 9 p.m. showtimes. $25-$40.

THE FRUIT The Floor: Foundations; 10 p.m.

KINGS Country Club Xmas Spectacular; The Dinwiddies, Dylan Earl, Paradise Motel Lounge. $10-$12. 8 p.m.

THE KRAKEN Zealotrous, Sneakers Award; 8 p.m.

LINCOLN THEATRE Yarn, The Dune Dogs; $14. 8 p.m.

LOCAL 506 P3 Winter Bash; $8.

8:30 p.m.

MEYMANDI CONCERT HALL Raleigh Ringers; $18. 4 p.m.

MOTORCO MUSIC HALL The Wusses, Beauty Operators; $10. 8 p.m.

THE NIGHT RIDER Ins Kino, King Moody, Staë; 8 p.m.

NIGHTLIGHT Sweatah Weathah Dance Party; Lady Fingers, Vitamin G, Reaubert, Mike D. $8. 10 p.m.

THE PINHOOK End Of The Year Dance Party; $10-$50. 10 p.m.

POUR HOUSE MUSIC HALL Church Of Dreams; 3 p.m.

POUR HOUSE MUSIC HALL Steve Celestini; 5 p.m.

POUR HOUSE MUSIC HALL The Vegabonds, Bennett Wales, The Relief; $10-$15. 8 p.m.

RHYTHMS LIVE MUSIC HALL Afro Soca Love; $5. 8 p.m.

RUBY DELUXE DJ Gay Agenda; 10 p.m.

SCHOOLKIDS RECORDS RALEIGH Chatham County Line, Johnny Irion, Jay Brown; $20-$40. 6 45 PM SLIM’S DOWNTOWN Henbrain, Shaken Nature, Salt Palace; $7. 8 p.m.

ST PHILIP’S EPISCOPAL CHURCH Servire Chorus Benefit Concert; 4 p.m.

THE STATION Angela Winter, Ruffin McCoy; 8 p.m.

WAKE FOREST LISTENING ROOM Wes Collins, FJ Ventre, Barry Gray, Scott Dameron; $10. 7 p.m.

THE WICKED WITCH Less Than Zero: Eighties Dance Party; $5. 9 p.m.

SUN, DEC 22 ELIZABETH KENAN PRICE THEATRE

Yolanda Rabun: Songs of Holiday Cheer

It’s hardly Yolanda Rabun’s first Christmastime: her 2012 album of that name collected intimate club jazz and sophisticated R&B takes on Yuletide standards, contemporary musings, and a frisky spin on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night song, “O Mistress Mine.” Her combo returns to Kenan Theatre, where she wowed us earlith is year with an August tribute to Nina Simone. —Byron Woods [$25–$40, 2 & 7:30 P.M.] BLUE NOTE GRILL 10th Annual Newtonanny; 5 p.m.

THE CAVE TAVERN Jim Watson’s 34th Annual Christmas Show; 9 p.m.

KENNEDY THEATRE Ariana Dubose; 8 p.m. & 10 p.m. showtimes.

SOLD OUT. MEYMANDI CONCERT HALL Raleigh Ringers; $18. 4 p.m.

NEPTUNES PARLOUR Rod Abernethy’s Annual Holiday Shindig; $10. 7:30 p.m.

THE PINHOOK Chanukah Party; 7 p.m.

CAT’S CRADLE Cat’s Cradle Turns 50; See website for all bands and showtimes. $50.

THE CAVE TAVERN The Sun God, The New Aquarian; 9 p.m.

TUE, DEC 24

KINGS Neon Queen: ABBA Cover Band; $12-$15. 8 p.m.

POUR HOUSE MUSIC HALL Terry Anderson, The Olympic Ass-Kicking Team; $5-$8. 7 p.m.

LOCAL 506 Split Type, The Old Laws, Needlemouse; $10. 8 p.m.

BLUE NOTE GRILL Bill Toms & Hard Rain, Good Rocking Sam; $10.

7:30 p.m.

HAW RIVER BALLROOM Donna The Buffalo; $25. 8 p.m.

WED, DEC 25 PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ARTISTS

SAT, DEC 28

NEPTUNES PARLOUR Sidecar Social Club Holiday with Friends; $10. 8 p.m.

RUBY DELUXE DJ Luxe Posh; 10 p.m.

The Vocal Arts Ensemble performs its annual Christmas concert at Duke Chapel on Friday, December 20.

THE STATION Ari Haney, Sadie Rock, Liz Reedy; 8:30 p.m.

THU, DEC 26 BLUE NOTE GRILL The Bondsmen; $10. 7 p.m.

NEPTUNES PARLOUR Tango in the Night: A Fleetwood Mac Dance Party; $5. 10 p.m.

RUBY DELUXE Ecstatic Trance Dance; $3. 10 p.m.

FRI, DEC 27 BLUE NOTE GRILL Josh Preslar Band; $8. 9 p.m.

CAT’S CRADLE Cat’s Cradle Turns 50; See website for all bands and showtimes. $50.

CAT’S CRADLE BACK ROOM Merch Holiday Party; 9 p.m.

THE CAVE TAVERN Sex Negative, Cyber Twin; 9 p.m.

THE FRUIT Nora En Pure; $25. 10 p.m.

LINCOLN THEATRE Laura Reed & New Reveille, Towne; $14. 8 p.m.

THE MAYWOOD No/Más, Organ Trail, Musket Hawk, Leachate, Junt; $10.

8 p.m.

THE PINHOOK Roseclouds, DM Rorschach, Distributed Systems, Sweet Homé; $8. 9 p.m.

POUR HOUSE MUSIC HALL Cosmic Superheroes, The Moon Unit, Awen Family Band; $6-$10. 9 p.m.

RUBY DELUXE DJ Jermainia; 10 p.m.

SLIM’S DOWNTOWN Malediction, Sacrificial Betrayal, Feral Spectra; $7 suggested. 9 p.m.

LINCOLN THEATRE Comrades and Nomads; $10. 9 p.m.

MOTORCO MUSIC HALL Pierce Freelon Fundraiser & Birthday Bash; M8alla, G Yamazawa, The Beast, & more. $15. 9 p.m.

POUR HOUSE MUSIC HALL Eric Chesson; 5 p.m.

POUR HOUSE MUSIC HALL Sons Of Paradise, Tumbao, Bubba Love; $10. 9 p.m.

SUN, DEC 29 ARCANA Freylach Time Klezmer Band; 8:30 p.m.

BLUE NOTE GRILL Mysti Mayhem; 5 p.m.

CAT’S CRADLE Cat’s Cradle Turns 50; See website for all bands and showtimes. $50.

THE CAVE TAVERN Soon, Swedish Wood Patrol; 9 p.m.

KINGS Dethcadence, Prise, Wishbone; $10-$12. 4 p.m.

LINCOLN THEATRE Big Something, Consider The Source; $20. 9 p.m.

THE NIGHT RIDER Changes In Latitude; Jimmy Buffett birthday party.

8 p.m.

POUR HOUSE MUSIC HALL Thomas McNeely; 3 p.m.

POUR HOUSE MUSIC HALL Young Cardinals; 5 p.m.

POUR HOUSE MUSIC HALL Brian Corum; 7 p.m.

POUR HOUSE MUSIC HALL Mike Wallace; 9 p.m.

MON, DEC 30

CARY ARTS CENTER

Celtic Christmas

In case your holiday season doesn’t have enough built-in mysticism—setting aside the idea of a fat man going down chimneys or all the pagan Yule

TEASERS 19th Annual New Years Eve Party Tuesday Dec. 31st Chatham County Line makes a stop on its “Electric Holiday Tour” at the Haw River Ballroom on Friday, December 20. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ARTISTS rites that make up the backbone of Christmas imagery— this performance may be for you. Tryon, NC, based fiddler Jamie Laval leads an evening of traditional Celtic songs, dances, poems, and stories celebrating winter, the solstice, and a little bit of Christmas, too. Winner of the 2002 US National Scottish Fiddle Championship, Laval has performed Celtic music all over the world, including a private concert for Queen Elizabeth II. —Dan Ruccia [$35-$40, 7 P.M.] LINCOLN THEATRE Big Something, Toubab Krewe; $20. 9 p.m.

QUAIL RIDGE BOOKS Mishpacha; 7 p.m.

TUE, DEC 31 ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE New Year’s Eve Video Dance Party; $20.

10 p.m.

ARCANA The Cat’s Meow New Years Eve Celebration; 7 p.m.

THE CAVE TAVERN Drunken Prayer, Dexter Romweber; 9 p.m.

THE FRUIT New Year’s Eve Party; 10 p.m.

HAW RIVER BALLROOM Clockwork Ball: A Steampunk Masquerade; $20. 9 p.m.

THE JUNCTION NYERaleigh’s New Year’s Eve Celebration; 9 p.m.

KINGS Royal New Year’s Eve Party; $10. 8 p.m.

THE KRAKEN Willie Painter Band; 8 p.m.

LINCOLN THEATRE Big Something, The Mantras; $33. 9 p.m.

THE MAYWOOD SLUGNUT, Dirty Remnantz, Uneasy Living; $10.

8:30 p.m.

MEYMANDI CONCERT HALL North Carolina Symphony: Vienna with a Twist; $25+. 8 p.m.

MOTORCO MUSIC HALL

Raund Haus x RUNAWAY

If you spent a significant chunk of 2019 mourning the closing of Durham apparel company Runaway, you likely lit up like Christmas lights when it was announced that, for three weeks, the adored brand would launch its “Run Home” line out of another downtown brick and mortar store as part of the PopUp @ American Tobacco Campus series. Three days after its ATC run, Runaway will pop-up again—this time for a New Year’s Eve bash in collaboration with local beat empire, Raund Haus. Usual suspect

Free buffet Free Free Party Favors Free Champagne Split Members in FREE 7-9

deck-wreckers Made of Oak, Oak City Slums, Tony G, and more will be dropping beats for the ball drop, so get in position early. Also with KIR, Chaos Control, 2D Wave, and Marv Krown. —Eric Tullis [$15-$18. 10 P.M.]

919-6-TEASER for directions and information

An Adult Nightclub

www.teasersmensclub.com 156 Ramseur St Durham, NC

@TeasersDurham

Open 7 Days/week • Hours 7pm - 2am

TeasersMensClub

THE PINHOOK Nana Grizol, Maggie Carson; $10-$12. 8 p.m.

POUR HOUSE MUSIC HALL Zack Mexico, 2 Slices, Acid Chaperone, Jooselord, Vacant Company; $15-$20.

9 p.m.

RHYTHMS LIVE MUSIC HALL The Mighty Messengers of Soul; $65. 8 p.m.

RUBY DELUXE The New Queers Eve Ball; 9 p.m.

SHARP NINE GALLERY Kobie Watkins; $50. 9 p.m.

THE WICKED WITCH The Doomsday Ball; $20-$30. 9 p.m.

YONDER: SOUTHERN COCKTAILS & BREWS New Year’s Eve Masquerade Ball; 7 p.m.

WED, JAN 1 THE CAVE TAVERN D&D Sluggers, Jaguardini, Heavy For Vintage; $5 suggested. 9 p.m.

YOUR WEEK. EVERY WEDNESDAY.

FOR OUR COMPLETE COMMUNITY CALENDAR

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OPENING

ONGOING

Astro Botanicals Garden of Light Illuminated sculptures. Starts at 4 p.m. both days. $11. Dec 28 & Dec 31, Moore Square Park, Raleigh.

Altered Chapel Hill Pop-Up Exhibit Interactive art piece.

Thru Jan 5. Gallery 109, Chapel Hill. chapelhillarts.org.

Joe Frank: At the Dark End of the Bar Radio shows. Dec 19-Feb 25.

Lump, Raleigh. lumpprojects.org.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 19

MINI PRINTED MATTER FEST Every so often, an unexpected creative space pops up in Durham, leveraging untraditional locations for new artistic communities.

Supergraphic Warehouse just established one of these spots at Durham’s Ample Storage Facility; the new alternative project space will open up on December 19 for the Mini Printed Matter Fest, a celebration of local innovation in physical media.

Transforming a storage unit into gallery, Durhamite designer Matthew Tauch will showcase original screen-printed film posters crafted for Movie Loft’s monthly indie film screenings.

The Concern Newsstand—a bookstore named by curator Orvokki Crosby for his concern over the state of printed media—will be on-site with books, comics, zines, and magazines. Add in Utilities Included (a Chapel Hill-based publishing program that centers around a Risograph machine), and you’ve got an unbeatable trifecta of creatives. If, for some reason, that isn’t enticement enough to attend, consider the space—who isn’t curious about an art festival in a storage container? —Rachel Rockwell

SUPERGRAPHIC WAREHOUSE, DURHAM 6–8:30 p.m., free, www.durhamsupergraphic.com

The new Supergraphic Warehouse project space PHOTO BY BILL FICK

Horse & Buggy and Friends Reception Art sale. Fri, Dec 20, 5 p.m. Horse & Buggy Press PopUp Shop, Durham.

Leanne Shapton: La Donna Del Lago Painting and photography.

Dec 19-Feb 25. Lump, Raleigh. lumpprojects.org.

Third Friday with Golden Belt Artists Artist talk and handmade ornaments. Fri, Dec 20, 6 p.m.

Golden Belt, Durham.

Jade Wilson: Trigger Warning Reception & Portrait Party Photography. Dec. 20, 6-9 p.m. Thru Jan 4. Golden Belt, Durham.

The World Around Us Reception Fri, Dec 20, 6 p.m. Bull City Art & Frame Co, Durham.

Lety Alvarez, Pepe Caudillo, Allison Coleman Paintings.

Thru Jan 25. Artspace, Raleigh.

Art for a New Understanding: Native Voices, 1950s to Now Contemporary Indigenous art.

Thru Jan 12. Nasher Museum of Art, Durham. nasher.duke.edu.

The Art of Giving Painting, sculpture, photography, glass art, jewelry, turned wood, pottery & fiber art.

Thru Dec 31. Hillsborough Gallery of Arts, Hillsborough.

HillsboroughGallery.com.

Art of Mental Health Mixed media. Thru Jan 24. Rubenstein Art Center Gallery 235, Durham. artscenter.duke.edu.

Art’s Work in the Age of Biotechnology Biotechnology: Shaping Our Genetic Futures With guest curator Hannah Star Rogers. Other exhibits at NC State Libraries and GES Center. Thru Mar 15. Gregg Museum of Art & Design, Raleigh. gregg.arts.ncsu.edu.

John James Audubon: The Birds of America Ornithological engravings. Thru Dec 31.

NC Museum of Art, Raleigh. ncartmuseum.org.

Scott Avett: INVISIBLE Paintings and prints. Thru Feb 2. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh. ncartmuseum.org.

John Beerman: The Shape of Light Paintings. Thru Jan 25.

Craven Allen Gallery, Durham. cravenallengallery.com.

Jaimon Caceres: Verdant Tranquility Colored pencil drawings. Thru Dec 31.

Gallery C, Raleigh.

Café Journaling Group Art Show Reception: 6-8 p.m. Thru Dec 31.

Johnny’s Gone Fishing, Carrboro.

Kennedi Carter: Godchild Thru Jan 31.

21c Museum Hotel, Durham.

21cmuseumhotels.com/durham.

Cosmic Rhythm Vibrations Art inspired by music and rhythm. Thru Mar 1. Nasher Museum of Art, Durham. nasher.duke.edu.

Stephen Costello: Places Sculpture. Reception: November 16, 5-7 p.m. Thru Jan 25.

Craven Allen Gallery Durham cravenallengallery.com.

INDYweek.com | 12.18.19 | 41

arts

page

CO NT’D

Rosana Castrillo Díaz: Trust me. You are t/here.

Mixed media. Thru Jan 12. CAM Raleigh, Raleigh.

Encantada | Enchanted Thru Dec 20. Duke Campus: John Hope Franklin Center, Durham.

Fantastic Fauna-Chimeric Creatures Thru Jan 26. Gregg Museum of Art & Design, Raleigh. gregg.arts.ncsu.edu.

Festive 5 Points Mixed media.

Thru Jan 13. 5 Points Gallery, Durham. 5pointsgallery.com.

A Few of Our Favorite Things Mixed media. Thru Dec 31.

Cary Gallery of Artists, Cary. carygalleryofartists.org.

Fine Contemporary Craft Craft.

Curated by Mia Hall. Thru Feb 1.

Artspace, Raleigh.

Coulter Fussell & Antonia Perez: Heirloom Quilts and mixed media. Thru Dec 28. Artspace, Raleigh. artspacenc.org.

Holiday Exhibit Mixed media.

Thru Jan 4. FRANK Gallery, Chapel Hill. frankisart.com.

Harriet Hoover, Vanessa Murray, Rusty Shackleford Thru Jan 5. Oneoneone, Chapel Hill. oneoneone.gallery

Momentum @ Hamilton Hill 2D and 3D art. Thru Dec 31.

Hamilton Hill, Durham.

NC Chinese Lantern Festival Lanterns. 6 p.m.-10 p.m. every day. Closed Mondays.

20. Thru Jan 12. Koka Booth Amphitheatre, Cary.

Cheryl Thurber: Documenting Gravel Springs, Mississippi, in the 1970s Photos. Thru Mar 31. UNC’s Wilson Special Collections Library, Chapel Hill.

New Orleans Second Line Parades Photos. Thru Dec 31. Love House and Hutchins Forum, Chapel Hill. southerncultures.org.

¡Viva Viclas!: The Art of the Lowrider Motorcycle Guest curator Denise Sandoval. Thru Feb 9. CAM Raleigh, Raleigh. camraleigh.org.

Nuevo Espíritu de Durham: New Spirit of Durham Personal stories and images. Thru Jan 5.

Museum of Durham History , Durham. cityofraleighmuseum. org.

What in the World Is a Grain Mummy? Egyptology and art. Thru Jan 8. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh. ncartmuseum.org.

Kelly Popoff: At Home With Our Histories Paintings. Thru Jan 3. UNC Campus: Hanes Art Center, Chapel Hill. art.unc.edu.

Portraying Power and Identity: A Global Perspective Thru Jan 31. 21c Museum Hotel, Durham.

21cmuseumhotels.com/durham.

Property of the People: The Foundations of the NCMA, 19241945 Photographs. Thru Feb 9.

NC Museum of Art, Raleigh. ncartmuseum.org.

Law and Justice: The Supreme Court of North Carolina, 1819- 2019 Artifacts, images, texts. Thru May 31. NC Museum of History, Raleigh. ncmuseumofhistory.org.

QuiltSpeak: Uncovering Women’s Voices Through Quilts Thru Mar 8. NC Museum of History, Raleigh. ncmuseumofhistory.org.

Maria Martinez-Cañas: Rebus + Diversions Mixed media. Thru Jan 12. CAM Raleigh, Raleigh.

Material/Process Mixed media. Thru Jan 3. Durham Arts Council, Durham.

Eleanor Mills: Wildflowers of Crested Butte, Colorado Photography. Thru Apr 18. Duke Campus: Lilly Library, Durham.

42 | 12.18.19 | INDYweek.com

Teens, Inspired: Home Poems, mixed media. Thru Jan 3. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh.

Neighbor to Neighbor: Disposable Diaries Photography. Thru Dec 28.

Artspace, Raleigh.

Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernism Paintings. Thru Jan 19. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh.

Lost and Found: Stories for Vernacular Photographs Photographs. Thru Jan 12.

Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill. ackland.org.

Doug Tabb: What Did I Just See? Sculpture. Thru Jan 13.

5 Points Gallery, Durham.

5pointsgallery.com.

Laura Lacambra Shubert: New Works Paintings. Thru Dec 29. Gallery C, Raleigh. galleryc.net.

Southbound: Photographs of and about the New South Thru Dec 21 at Power Plant Gallery, Durham. Thru Dec 29 at Gregg Museum of Art & Design, Raleigh.powerplantgallery.com, gregg.arts.ncsu.edu.

Sydney Steen: Fault Lines Vignettes. Thru Oct 25. 21c Museum Hotel, Durham.

21cmuseumhotels.com.

Dawn Surratt & Lori Vrba: (en)compass Mixed media.

Thru Dec 20. Horse & Buggy Press and Friends, Durham. horseandbuggypress.com.

Jade Wilson: Trigger Warning Photography. Reception & Portrait Party: Dec. 20, 6-9 p.m. Thru Jan 4. Golden Belt, Durham.

Wintertide Oil paintings.

Thru Feb 1. V L Rees Gallery, Raleigh. vlrees.com.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 21

HOLIDAY WORD CLASH Demetrius Noble

PHOTO COURTESY OF JAMBALAYA SOUL SLAM

READINGS & SIGNINGS Tim Barnwell Tide Runners: Shrimping and Fishing on the Carolinas and Georgia Coast. Sat, Dec 14, 11 a.m.

Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh. quailridgebooks.com.

Elaine Funaro The Harpsichord Diaries. Fri, Dec 27, 10:30 a.m.

McIntyre’s Books, Pittsboro. mcintyresbooks.com.

Carlie Sorosiak, Ali Standish I, Cosmo (Sorosiak), Bad Bella (Standish). Sat, Dec 21, 11 a.m.

McIntyre’s Books, Pittsboro. mcintyresbooks.com.

LECTURES, ETC. I’ll Be Home for Christmas Story and music. $20. Fri, Dec 20, 8 p.m. St. Matthews Episcopal Church, Hillsborough. stmatthewshillsborough.org.

Spoken word teams from Charlotte, Greensboro, and Durham, will gather this week at the Hayti Heritage Center for Jambalaya Soul Slam’s poetry slam competition. Hosted by Durham griot Dasan Ahanu, the slam poetry teams are squaring off for bragging rights and a little holiday cash. Nearing its fifteenth year, the monthly event has been a mainstay at the Hayti Heritage Center, bringing some of the state’s finest spoken-word poets to the stage. Entrants this year include Slam Charlotte, Xpressionz, Bull City Slam Team Rookies, and Bull City Slam Team Vets; the featured poet will be Greensboro’s Demetrius Noble.

—Thomasi McDonald

HAYTI HERITAGE CENTER, DURHAM 8 p.m., $8–$10, www.jambalayasoulslam. splashthat.com

stage OPENING WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 18–SUNDAY, DECEMBER 22

A CHRISTMAS CAROL

Little-known fact: DPAC’s first big-stage musical wasn’t some bus-and-truck version of a Broadway blockbuster, but the 2008 version of Raleigh Little Theatre’s perennial homegrown holiday show. Each December since 1974, adaptor, composer, director, and actor Ira David Wood III has updated his musical comedy version of the Dickens classic with old-school vaudeville, sight gags, slapstick, and topical takes on modern culture and politics, plus a generous helping of sanctimonious original songs to endlessly remind us that Christmas comes but once a year. Its endless popularity may be because most of us can remember something in childhood selves like the central character: a trickster Scrooge with the irrepressible id of a five-year-old, happiest when making mischief and cracking wise, before an inevitable late December transformation from chaotic evil to chaotic good. In this forty-fifth anniversary production, the show’s creator shares the lead role with his son, Ira David IV, in alternating performances; David Henderson returns as the ghost of Jacob Marley.

—Byron Woods

DURHAM PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, DURHAM Various times, $40+, www.dpacnc.org

Bizarre: A Drag Show Oddity Drag performance. $7. Sat, Dec 28, 10 p.m. Ruby Deluxe, Raleigh. rubydeluxeraleigh. com.

Alonzo Bodden Comedy. 8 p.m. & 10:30 p.m. showtimes. $39+. Tue, Dec 31. Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh. goodnightscomedy.com.

Chevy Chase Comedy followed by screening of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. $45+.

Mon, Dec 30, 7:30 p.m.

Memorial Auditorium, Raleigh. dukeenergycenterraleigh.com.

A Comedy Affair Comedy. $10. Fri, Dec 20, 7 p.m. The Cotton Company, Wake Forest. thecottoncompany.net.

Comedy In A Cave hosted by Michelle Maclay Comedy.

Fri, Dec 20, 7 p.m. The Cave Tavern, Chapel Hill. caverntavern.com.

Darkness Everybody: A Winter Solstice Service Song & service. Sun, Dec 22, 11 a.m. NorthStar Church of the Arts, City of Durham. northstardurham.com.

Shane Gillis Comedy. Thu: 8 p.m.; Fri & Sat: 7:30 p.m. & 10 p.m. $21-$29. Dec 19-21.

Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh. goodnightscomedy. com.

House of Coxx Drag performance. Thu, Dec 19, 7 p.m. Durham Arts Council, Durham. durhamarts.org.

House of Coxx Drag performances. $10-$20.

Tue, Dec 31, 8 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh. ritzraleigh.com.

Jambalaya Soul: Bull City Word Clash Slam poetry. $8-$10. Sat, Dec 21, 8 p.m.

Hayti Heritage Center, Durham. hayti.org.

A Christmas Carol PHOTO COURTESY OF THEATRE IN THE PARK

Jamie Kennedy Comedy. Thu: 7 p.m.; Fri: 7 p.m. & 9:15 p.m.; Sat: 6:30 p.m. & 9 p.m. $20+. Dec 26-28. Raleigh Improv, Raleigh.

The Nutcracker Suite Shortened ballet, followed by afternoon tea. $12. Sat, Dec 21, 11 a.m. Cary Arts Center, Cary. townofcary. org.

Great Russian Nutcracker Ballet. Wed: 7 p.m.; Thu: 3 p.m. & 7 p.m. $31+. Dec 18-Dec 19. Carolina Theatre, Durham. carolinatheatre.org.

Mary Poppins Musical. 2 p.m. & 6 p.m. $12. Dec Thru 22.

Sweet Bee Theater & Center for the Arts, Pittsboro.

The Nutcracker Ballet. Dec. 18-21, 23, 27-28: 7 p.m.

Dec. 20-21, 23, 28-29: 2 p.m. Dec. 22: 1 p.m. & 5 p.m. $54+. Thru Dec 29.

Memorial Auditorium, Raleigh. dukeenergycenterraleigh.com.

Oh, What A (Holy) Night!

Cabaret. Thu-Sat: 8 p.m.; Sun: 3 p.m. $48. Dec 19-22.

Kennedy Theatre, Raleigh. dukeenergycenterraleigh.com.

Leonard Ouzts Comedy.

Showtimes: Fri: 7 p.m. & 9:15 p.m.; Sat: 6:30 p.m. & 9 p.m.; Sun: 7 p.m. $20. Dec 20-22.

Raleigh Improv, Raleigh.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Musical.

Thru Dec 24, Fletcher Opera Theater, Raleigh. dukeenergycenterraleigh.com.

Brian Parise Comedy. 8 p.m. both nights. $12. Dec 20-21.

The Santaland Diaries Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh. goodnightscomedy.com. Play. Dec 19-21: 8 p.m.; Dec 22: 3 p.m. $27. Thru Dec 22.

Jon Reep Comedy. Fri & Sat: 7:30 p.m. & 10 p.m.; Sun: 7 p.m. Theatre In The Park, Raleigh. $21-$29. Dec 27-29. Goodnights theatreinthepark.com.

Comedy Club, Raleigh. goodnightscomedy.com.

Shane Torres Comedy. 7 p.m. & 10 p.m. showtimes. $20+. Tue, Dec 31. Raleigh Improv, Raleigh.

A Trailer Park Christmas Play. $25. Sun, Dec 22, 3 p.m. NCSU Campus: Kennedy-McIlwee Studio Theatre, Raleigh.

ONGOING Camelot Burning Coal Theatre Company. Thu-Sat: 7:30 p.m. Sun: 2 p.m. Thru Dec 5-22. Burning Coal Theatre at the Murphey School, Raleigh. burningcoal.org.

A Christmas Carol Musical comedy. Wed-Fri: 7 p.m.; Sat: 2 p.m. & 7 p.m.; Sun: 2 p.m. $37+.

Dec 18-22. Durham Performing Arts Center, Durham. dpacnc. com.

Cinderella Raleigh Little Theatre.

Musical. $25-$31. Thu-Fri: 7:30 p.m. Sat: 1 p.m. & 5 p.m. Sun: 1 p.m. & 5 p.m. Thru Dec 22.

Raleigh Little Theatre, Raleigh. raleighlittletheatre.org.

FrUiTCaKeS Play. Fri & Sat: 8 p.m.; Sun: 3 p.m. $20-$22.Thru Dec 22. North Raleigh Arts & Creative Theatre, Raleigh. nract.org.

FOR OUR COMPLETE COMMUNITY CALENDAR

INDYWEEK.COM

INDYweek.com | 12.18.19 | 43

screen SPECIAL SHOWINGS 50 Over $10. Thu, Dec 19, 7 p.m. Carolina Theatre, Durham. carolinatheatre.org.

Amelie $1-$6. Wed, Dec 18, 7 p.m. The Cary Theater, Cary. thecarytheater.com.

Back to the Future $20.

Tue, Dec 31, 9 p.m. Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh. drafthouse. com/raleigh.

Cat in the Sack Donation suggested. Thu, Dec 19, 7:30 p.m. Shadowbox Studio, Durham. shadowboxstudio.org.

Christmas in Connecticut $5. Mon, Dec 30, 7 p.m.

Rialto Theatre, Raleigh. newsite. ambassadorcinemas.com/ rialto-theatre.

Elf with Snowball Fight 2 p.m. & 7 p.m. showtimes.

SOLD OUT. Sat, Dec 21, The Cary Theater, Cary. thecarytheater.com.

The Ghostkeeper, The Chill Factor Donation suggested.

Mon, Dec 30, 8 p.m.

Neptunes Parlour, Raleigh. neptunesparlour.com.

God Told Me To $7. Wed, Dec 18, 7 p.m. Carolina Theatre, Durham. carolinatheatre.org.

The Grinch (2018) 10 a.m. $5.

Dec 23-27. Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh. drafthouse.com/raleigh.

It’s A Wonderful Life Thu & Sun: 2 p.m. $3-$6. Dec 19-22, The Cary Theater, Cary. thecarytheater.com.

It’s a Wonderful Life $5.

Mon, Dec 23, 7 p.m. Rialto Theatre, Raleigh. newsite. ambassadorcinemas.com/ rialto-theatre/.

Jingle All The Way $3-$6.

Thu, Dec 19, 9 p.m. The Cary Theater, Cary. thecarytheater. com.

National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation Mon: 9:15 p.m.; Tue: 7 p.m. & 10 p.m.; Wed: 10:30 a.m. & 7 p.m. $8-$13. Dec 16-18.

Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh. drafthouse.com/raleigh.

The Polar Express $3-$6. Thu, Dec 19, 7 p.m. The Cary Theater, Cary. thecarytheater.com.

Rare Exports, A Christmas Horror Story Wed, Dec 18, 7 44 | 12.18.19 | INDYweek.com

p.m. The Wicked Witch, Raleigh. wickedwitchraleigh.com.

Rocky Horror Picture Show $7. Fri, Dec 20, 12 a.m. Rialto Theatre, Raleigh. newsite. ambassadorcinemas.com/ rialto-theatre.

Sing $5. Mon, Dec 30, 10 a.m.

Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh. drafthouse.com/raleigh.

OPENING Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker—Star Wars, one of the galaxy’s highest-earning blockbuster franchises, closes out the Skywalker saga this week with “Rise of the Skywalker.” Will we learn Kylo Ren is actually Rey’s father?

Probably not, but I’m just hoping Adam Driver takes his shirt off. Rated PG-13.

Bombshell—Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman, and Margot Robbie star as a trio of Fox News employees (Megyn Kelly, Gretchon Carlson, and producer Kayla Pospisil, respectively) who are done with Fox’s rabid culture of sexual harassment. Rated R. Cats—All we know about this live-action adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s take on a few T.S. Eliot verses is that, based on the trailer, it’s going to be unexpected and possibly unhinged. Rated PG.

N OW P L AY I N G The INDY uses a five-star rating scale. Unstarred films have not been reviewed by our writers.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood—Audiences can’t get enough of the Mr. Rogers content, and for good reason. In this rendition, Matthew Rhys plays a jaded journalist assigned a profile of Fred Rogers, who is played by a perfectly-cast Tom Hanks. Rated PG. The Addams Family —In this star-studded Addams family installation, the macabre clan face-off with a reality television show host. Rated PG. Black and Blue—A rookie cop captures a murder by corrupt cops, in this timely thriller. Rated R.

Bridges—In this action thriller, the NYPD undergoes a manhunt so massive that police shut down all twentyone bridges leading out of Manhattan. Rated R. Charlie’s Angels—Producer and director Elizabeth Banks helms a new generation of the angels. Rated PG-13.

Countdown—Apps may kill us all, and in this horror film, they do (the app in question is a countdown clock that predicts your time of death; not surprisingly, it may also be a killing mahine). Rated PG-13.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 19

Doctor Sleep—Stephen King sequel to The Shining. Rated R. Downton Abbey—King George V and Queen Mary pay a visit to the abbey and cause a flurry of activity in this spin-off of the television series. Rated PG. Ford v. Ferrari—Matt Damon and Christian Bale star in a biographical sports drama about a legendary race. Rated PG-13.

Frankie—Isabelle Hupert stars as an ailing matriarch in this sprawling family drama.

Rated PG-13.

Frozen 2— In search of the origins of her powers, Elsa and her sister Anna strike out beyond their frosty homeland.

Rated PG. The Good Liar—Sparks fly between an elderly couple who meet on a dating website. One of them, though, is a con artist.

Rated R. Harriet—Kasi Lemmons stars in this biographical film about the heroic abolitionist Harriet Tubman. Rated PG-13.

Hustlers—The true story of strippers drugging and stealing from Wall Street stock traders is the stuff think pieces are made of. Rated R. Jojo Rabbit—Black comedy about a German boy who discovers that his mother is hiding a Jewish girl in the attic.

Rated PG-13.

Joker—At first, the buzz around this star vehicle for Batman’s greatest villain was all about Joaquin Phoenix’s intense turn in a role Heath Ledger made famous. But as more details of the plot have emerged, there’s

THE CAT IN THE BAG Held at Shadowbox Studio, the monthly film screening series Movie Loft gives us the opportunity this December to enjoy the Quebecois rare gem The Cat in the Bag (Le Chat dans le sac).

With New Wave aesthetics and informed by documentary techniques, Gilles Groulx’s debut narrates the vicissitudes of the relationship between an idealist journalist (Claude Godbout) and an emerging actress (Barbara Ulrich), whose ideological differences push the young couple to a tipping point. Featuring a soundtrack by John Coltrane, this winner of the Grand Prix at the 1964 Montreal International Film Festival presents “a universal look at young alienation in the ‘60s” while also accounting for the specificities of this complex time in Quebec. Records by John Coltrane will be played starting at 6:30, followed by the screening of the film at 8:30 and more music to close out the eve. Hotdogs (a Movie Loft staple) will be served and admission is free as always, although donations are appreciated. — Marta Núñez Pouzols

SHADOWBOX STUDIO, DURHAM 6:30 p.m., free, www.shadowboxstudio.org been a justified backlash about what sounds like an antihero myth for violent incels. Rated R. Jumanji: The Next Level—This adventure comedy picks up where the 1995 flick left off.

Rated PG-13.  Knives Out— A powerhouse portraits of the tension between American oligarchy and America’s promise—and also one of the wittiest films of the year. Rated PG-13. —Neil Morris Last Christmas—An unlucky department store elf falls in love.

Rated PG-13.

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil— Angelina Jolie was perhaps born to do many things, but surely playing one of Disney’s greatest villianesses is one of them.

Rated PG. ½ Marriage Story—An amicable split turns supernova when lawyers get involved.

One of the best movies of the year (but maybe don’t watch with your spouse). Rated R. —Glenn McDonald

Midway—This WWII flick about Pearl Harbor and the subsequent Battle of Midway stars a fleet of hunks.

Rated PG-13. ½ Pain and Glory—In this auto-fictional exercise, the director Pedro Almodóvar is honest about his life but guarded about his psyche.

Rated R. —Marta Núñez Pouzols  Parasite—This highlyanticipated social satire from filmmaker Bong Joon-Ho is crammed with dark twists and intricate metaphors.

Rated R. —SE Playmobil: The Movie—This riff on the Lego movie franchise has an all-star cast acting out a plot about a child who disappears into a Playmobil set. Not yet rated.  Queen & Slim— A bad Tinder date turns into a nationwide manhunt after Queen and Slim kill a police officer in self-defense at a traffic stop. Rated R.

Richard Jewell—Clint Eastwood reconsiders the story of Richard Jewell, a security guard falsely accused of bombing the 1996 Olympics. Rated R. Terminator: Dark Fate— It’s like nothing after Terminator 2: Judgement Day ever happened as James Cameron returns to the fold of the classic sci-fi franchise. Rated R. Waves—An emotional movie about a suburban AfricanAmerican family navigating loss. Rated R. Zombieland: Double Tap—A heartland sequel to the 2009 cult classic. Rated R.

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INDYweek.com | 12.18.19 | 45

CROSSWORD If you just can’t wait, check out the current week’s answer key at www.indyweek.com, and click “puzzle pages” at the bottom of our webpage.

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If you just can’t wait, check out the current week’s answer key at www.indyweek.com, and click “puzzle pages.”

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46 | 12.18.19 | INDYweek.com

12.18.19

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INDYweek.com | 12.18.19 | 47

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The hospital admitted the first patients in 1856.

OF

D E E P R E L A X AT I O N

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