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Raleighâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Mary Ann Scherr revolutionized jewelry design and predicted wearable tech long before Apple did it.

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Black & White & Dead All Over

Raleigh VOL. 37 NO. 8

CONTENTS NEWS 9

Raleigh dispatched CACs. Now what?

BY LEIGH TAUSS

10 Gray Ellis wants to be the first transgender man elected to a state legislature in the U.S. BY GIULIA HEYWARD 12

After a student was raped, Duke Hospital sent the bill collectors after her.

BY CAMERON BEACH

FEATURES 14

The compassionate jewelry of Mary Ann Scherr.

BY SARAH EDWARDS

FOOD + DRINK 22 Sister Liu’s makes the best dumplings in the Triangle.

BY NICK WILLIAMS

MUSIC 24 Crowmeat Bob’s musical nervous breakdown.

BY HARRIS WHELESS

ARTS + CULTURE 31 Meet Yayoi Kusama, high priestess of polka dots. 32 Bobcat Goldthwait’s beef with Seinfeld.

BY MITALI ROUTH

BY HART FOWLER

n Thursday, McClatchy Co., which owns The Charlotte Observer, The News & Observer, and The Durham Herald-Sun, along with 27 other newspapers in 13 other states, filed for bankruptcy. It was less of a surprise than a shock.

The company has been burdened by debt from the acquisition of KnightRidder in 2006 and its own pension fund. If a court agrees to its reorganization proposal, McClatchy will shed 55 percent of its debt and offload most of its pension obligations to the feds. In the short term, its papers shouldn’t be affected. The downside is what comes next. After 163 years, the McClatchy family would give up control of the company. The hedge fund Chatham Asset Management would take over—and take the company private. Chatham has media experience: a controlling stake in American Media Inc., which owns The National Enquirer, Men’s Journal, Us Weekly, and other publications. It said last week that it’s “committed to preserving independent journalism and newsroom jobs.” Maybe. Chatham isn’t the worst hedge fund that could own McClatchy. That would be Alden Global Capital, the industry vulture founded by Duke alum Heath Freeman that has systematically dismembered once-great papers like the Denver Post. Alden may get a crack at McClatchy yet. The question is what Chatham does once McClatchy’s balance sheets are cleaned up, probably mid-year. This is an age of media consolidation, after all. Last year, McClatchy made a play for Tribune, which rejected its overtures. The new McClatchy will look more attractive, and a merger’s cost-savings will make financial sense. As The Nieman Lab’s Ken Doctor has reported, Alden owns about a third of Tribune stock and is already pulling strings inside the company. On June 30, around the time McClatchy likely emerges from bankruptcy, Alden’s agreement not to pursue a hostile takeover of Tribune will expire. So it’s not hard to envision a future in which Alden has swallowed up and started slicing and dicing Tribune—and McClatchy becomes part of that hollowed-out family.

DEPARTMENTS 4 Voices

21 1,000 Words

5 15 Minutes

23 Where to Eat and Drink This Week

6 Quickbait

Music Calendar

7 A Week in the Life

Culture Calendar

That’s a worst-case scenario. In more optimistic consolidations, McClatchy or Tribune runs the show instead of Freeman. In the best case, local investors take the North Carolina papers off Chatham’s hands. But this business rarely inspires optimism these days, especially when the words “hedge fund” and “newspaper” appear in the same story. —Jeffrey C. Billman (jbillman@indyweek.com)

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February 19, 2020

BACKTALK

We released our endorsements last week, and—quelle surprise!—some people weren’t happy with them. This week, we’ll publish responses to our endorsement of Elizabeth Warren for president.

We’ll begin with JACKSON ROSS CURTIS: “I’m in my mid-thirties and have never been interested in politics. This is undeniably an age of cynicism and to a large degree an age of passive non-engagement. As you stated in your endorsement of Warren, Bernie is relying on a grassroots revolution to pass sweeping legislation. He’s doing this by exciting people like me. The part that wasn’t explicitly said in your endorsement is that Warren is more of a centrist than Bernie, thus her legislation will likely get more Republican support. Why the fuck should any progressive want to pass more centrist, establishment legislation that has only ever fucked the working class and benefited the elite 1 percent? “This is at the heart of Bernie’s campaign: We deserve a happy life. We should not have to compromise for the things we deserve. This includes kowtowing to corporatists, centrists, conservatives, or anyone else whose interests aren’t the people’s interests. The divided Washington you speak of is not just Republican against Democrat. The greater divide is that of grifter shills in both parties and the politicians who answer to the people. In other words, there are Democrats who do not have working-class interests at heart. Do not ‘Vote Blue No Matter Who.’ This is why I support Bernie Sanders.” PATRICIA SHAW wants us to reconsider Warren for an altogether different reason: “She’s a good woman. I like her and many of her views, and I feel the same way about Bernie, Pete, and even Joe, but none of them can beat Trump. Beating Trump is paramount in this election. He’s a dangerous man, and we must beat him. “Mike Bloomberg is the only man who can do it. He’s a decent man, with a decent past. (Shame on you for bringing up his once approval of stopand-frisk laws. He apologized, he realized he hadn’t given it enough thought, he just wanted to lower the too-high crime rates in NYC. Elizabeth Warren, on the other hand, lied about being part-Native American in order to obtain minority perks in her application to college.) “Either don’t endorse anyone or endorse Mike Bloomberg—because he’s the only person who can beat Trump.”

voices

The Third Place In praise of the community spaces that make cities what they are BY CHIKA GUJARATHI backtalk@indyweek.com

uring the early 2000s, when I was an undergrad at UNC-Chapel Hill, Raleigh wasn’t on my shortlist of hangouts. I knew the area around N.C. State, which usually warranted the rare trip to Raleigh in the first place. Beyond that, I never found a compelling reason to revisit. So, almost 15 years later, when my husband suggested that we leave Chicago to make the City of Oaks our new home, my first thought was still grounded in that tainted opinion. I quickly blurted out, “What the heck is there to do in Raleigh?” There are several ways that living in a big city can spoil you. But first and foremost, in my opinion, are its third places. A phrase coined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg in the late 1990s in his book The Great Good Place, a third place is a place between home (first place) and work (second place) where a community can easily come together to mingle, relax, and get inspired. Third places are low on personal investment. You don’t need to dress up, or drive long distances, or pay a lot of money. They allow you to make last-minute plans with friends. They provide a space that is inclusive for all types of people of all backgrounds and ages. Basically, third places share art, beauty, and community equally to anyone who shows up. One of the best-known examples of a third place in Chicago is Millennium Park, where my friends and I used to meet up with nothing more than a picnic blanket and have a lot of good conversations. Some days, we’d catch a free performance by an artist we couldn’t otherwise afford, but most of the time, we just lazily lingered, talked, and enjoyed the good weather. These rituals only intensified once we became parents because, as it turns out, kids love third places, too (and you don’t need to clean your home to see your friends). The patchwork of picnic blankets would grow in size, each of us bringing whatever we could to share. My initial hesitation at the thought of moving to Raleigh was really me wondering how much of this experience I would be able to replicate here. The answer has been slowly unraveling in these last four or so years. In many ways, I’ve been amazed at how easily I’ve kept

up with my love for the arts and theater in Raleigh and the greater RTP area (actually more than what I managed in Chicago). I also feel like I have enjoyed more fancy meals here than back in the day. I am a proud Raleighite by all means. And in terms of third places, I’ve found a lot of joy and comfort now that Moore Square Park and Transfer Co. Food Hall have opened downtown. Still, with all of the development going on, I think we all deserve more than just a couple of options. I am

“Third places are low on personal investment. You don’t need to dress up, or drive long distances, or pay a lot of money.” curious to know how you all feel about the choices you have in your neighborhoods. What are your favorite third places, and why are they important to you? Years after the publication of his book, Oldenburg wrote in a 2014 New York Times column that “Joyful association in the public domain is far better than watching television in our lifeless subdivisions.” I still love my TV more than Oldenburg might approve, but I do hope that city planners spend more time considering not just how many mixed-use condos and office buildings to accommodate, but also community spaces that allow the likes of me to spend more time with my friends—without having to clean my home. 2 Voices is made possible by contributions to the INDY Press Club. Join today at KeepItINDY.com.

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CHIKA GUJARATHI is a Raleigh-based writer and author of the Hello Namaste! children’s books. Her work can be found on her blog The Antibland Chronicles.

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Bartender at Woody’s at City Market BY ELENA DURVAS backtalk@indyweek.com

Long story short, a boy. I was planning on moving up here to be closer to him; I found out things weren’t working out, but I had already made plans, so I still came up here.

What’s a common misconception about bartending?

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! TE VO

MARCH 3

! TE VO

TUESDAY,

SAVE THE DATE!

! TE VO

N.C. PRIMARY ELECTION

! TE VO ! TE VO

Ten years ago, you wouldn’t wanna live downtown; now everyone wants to live

It was very personal when Donald Trump went to Puerto Rico and threw paper towels at the people; that was very personal. That was after Hurricane Maria. I feel like the general view from the U.S. public about Puerto Rico is a little annoying. That’s the best word I can use. It’s really frustrating and annoying that people don’t understand that the Puerto Rican flag is also the American flag, point-blank. My passport says “United States of America,” and I was born and raised in Puerto Rico. Also for people who don’t get it, PR is in Central America, which is part of the Americas, so Mexicans are American, Colombians are American, Brazilians are American, Uruguayans are American, Chileans are American, Cubans are American, Canadians are American. We’re all America. W

! TE VO

How have you seen Raleigh change in the 12 years you’ve lived here?

What social issue is most important to you?

February 21, 2020 and February 28, 2020

! TE VO

That it’s not a real job. A lot of people look down on servers or any kind of restaurant job, but with bartending, I feel like people interact more, [so bartenders] get the heat more than anybody else about getting a “real job,” and I’m using quotation marks because this is a real job. I honestly wish that they could do it for one day, just for them to see what it’s like on our side of things. It’s really, really demeaning when people say this is not a real job when I’m on my feet for eight-plus hours literally walking back and forth every single day. You’re picking up heavy stuff, refilling beers or grabbing kegs, taking food out to a table. It’s not an easy job, and we are paid to make it look like it’s easy.

downtown. I honestly love how much it’s grown in a positive way. I love how much it’s brought in from other places, which a greater variety of cultures and differences of opinions. We’re even bringing in Top Chef chefs; we have James Beard Award chefs living here and doing business here. It’s pretty incredible how much it’s grown.

What brought you to Raleigh?

FRIDAY

! TE VO

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February 19, 2020

Q UIC KBA I T

Toxic Soup

arlier this month, Durham Housing Authority executive director Anthony Scott confirmed the presence of yet another toxic substance inhabiting McDougald Terrace. Joining the likes of carbon monoxide—which led the DHA to evacuate 280 families to area hotels in January—lead, mold, and

sewage problems, the city’s oldest and largest public housing complex also had asbestos. (The first six families returned to McDougald on Friday.) Here, we take a look at what science says about the conditions and potential hazards they’ve been living with for, well, who knows how long—and what happens when indifferent officials at all levels of government allow these complexes to fall into disrepair.

Mold Exposure

Carbon Monoxide Poisoning

CAUSED BY: Damp and moldy environments.

CAUSED BY: Incorrectly installed or poorly ventilated household appliances, which emit CO.

LEADS TO: Stuffy nose, wheezing, upper respiratory infections, red or itchy eyes or skin; more intense reactions for those with allergies or asthma; potential link to asthma in some children; hypersensitivity pneumonitis for those susceptible; sometimes no effects.

LEADS TO: Headache, dizziness, weakness, upset stomach, vomiting, chest pain, confusion, flu-like symptoms; loss of consciousness or death at high levels; those sleeping or drunk may die before experiencing symptoms. More than 400 Americans die each year from accidental CO poisoning.

Lead Poisoning CAUSED BY: Lead-based paint and lead-contaminated dust common in older buildings. Lead builds up in body over months or years. LEADS TO: Fatal at high levels. In children, causes learning difficulties, irritability, loss of appetite; in adults, high blood pressure, mood disorders, miscarriage, stillbirth, premature birth; childhood exposure linked to violence in young adulthood in some studies.

Sewage Issues CAUSED BY: At McDougald Terrace, a corrupted manhole leaking raw sewage and a stormwater pipe that has reportedly been leaking raw sewage into Rocky Creek since 2017. Residents have also long reported backed-up toilets. LEADS TO: Gastroenteritis, with symptoms including nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhea, cramps, fever, and dehydration; exposure in homes has been linked to hepatitis A.

Violent Crime CAUSED BY: Lots of things, including exposure to violent crime; also, possibly, lead. LEADS TO: Childhood trauma, destabilization, trouble sleeping, PTSD, desensitization to violence, myriad behavioral, psychological, and physical issues, academic failure, alcohol and drug abuse, adult criminality, early death by violent crime.

Asbestos Exposure

CAUSED BY: Dust from a group of naturally occurring minerals with soft, wooly fibers resistant to heat, electricity, and corrosion, sometimes used in drywall and cement.

Cockroaches/Bedbugs

LEADS TO: Cancers of the lung, larynx, ovary, as well as mesothelioma, a rare, aggressive, and fatal tumor. Worst effects stem from intense concentrations or regular exposure over a long period of time.

LEADS TO: Cockroaches: allergic reactions and asthma symptoms; spread bacteria, parasitic worms, and other pathogens. Bedbugs: sometimes severe allergic reactions; secondary skin infections. Both: mental health issues including anxiety and insomnia.

February 19, 2020

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CAUSED BY: Evolution.

A WE E K IN THE L IFE

The Good, The Bad & The Awful

2/11

The CHAPEL HILL-CARRBORO SCHOOL BOARD ended a two-year professional development contract it had never approved but the school system had dropped $342,000 on anyway, thanks to administrators who found a way around the normal approval mechanism. According to a new report from LIVEITUP! HILLSBOROUGH STREET, food and beverage sales in the corridor surrounding N.C. State grew almost 9 percent from 2018 to 2019. In November, ethics watchdog BOB HALL filed a complaint against Senate leader Phil Berger over a house he owned in Raleigh and rented to his campaign. A month later, Berger sold the house to a lobbyist. Last Tuesday, Hall filed another ethics complaint.

2/12

(Here’s what’s happened since the INDY went to press last week)

Orange County Superior Court Judge ALLEN BADDOUR, who signed off on the secretly negotiated settlement between the North Carolina division of the Sons of Confederate veterans and the UNC System in November, vacated that agreement, ruling that the SCV never had grounds to sue in the first place—which, no shit, Sherlock, the SCV said as much two months ago.

d goo

2/13

bad MCCLATCHY CO., the parent company of The News & Observer and The Durham Herald-Sun, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. If a judge accepts its reorganization plan, McClatchy will be taken over by the hedge fund that owns American Media Inc., the parent company of, among other publications, The National Enquirer. New rankings showed that North Carolina’s MARK MEADOWS, a leading Trump sycophant, is the most conservative member of the U.S. House of Representatives. The North Carolina Democratic Party filed an ethics complaint against SENATOR THOM TILLIS, saying that a fundraising email he sent asking for donations to a “Presidential Protection Fund” while he was a juror in Donald Trump’s impeachment trial violated the law. Nothing is likely to come of it. On the first day of early voting, former New York City mayor MIKE BLOOMBERG came to Raleigh to pitch people on the idea that he could beat Trump. He did not address the recently surfaced video of him defending stop-and-frisk by saying that young black men all look alike or video of him saying that the end of redlining caused the housing crisis.

2/14

The first six of more than 280 families who were evacuated from MCDOUGALD TERRACE in the wake of the public housing complex’s carbon monoxide crisis returned home. BERNIE SANDERS, now leading in polls in North Carolina, brought more than 3,000 people to the Durham Convention Center for a rally featuring, appropriately enough, Bull Durham actor Susan Sarandon.

2/17

JOHN BOLTON, a neocon who has never met a war he didn’t like—and who could have testified to Congress about his firsthand knowledge of Trump’s quid pro quo but chose to sell his book instead—gave a talk to a sold-out audience at Duke.

f aw

T. Greg Doucette There are a lot of people who deserve credit for unraveling the UNC Board of Governors’ $2.5 million secret Silent Sam deal with the North Carolina division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, which a judge vacated last week: the student journalists at The Daily Tar Heel, whose reporting brought to light all sorts of chicanery; the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which intervened on behalf of students and faculty, leading to the settlement being tossed, among others. But it’s possible none of this would have happened without local attorney, former BOG member, and INDY Voices columnist T. Greg Doucette, who first reported the insanity of the day-before-Thanksgiving wham-bam lawsuit-settlement, then acquired sources inside the SCV who leaked him information— including Commander Kevin Stone’s letter to his men bragging that the BOG made a deal even though it knew the SCV didn’t have the standing to sue—that exposed the whole charade for what it was.

Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Last week, the CHCCS School Board axed a two-year, $767,000 professional development contract with an organization called Education Elements. The move came two months after the board suspended the contract, which came two weeks after the board says it first learned about it. By that point, the school system had already shelled out $342,000, though it never voted to approve the contract, and the contract never went through the state-required pre-audit process. How did this happen? According to school board chairwoman Mary Ann Wolf, since each monthly payment to Education Elements fell below $90,000—the threshold for getting board approval—administrators just decided they could do it on their own, no big deal.

McClatchy Co. Everyone assumed it was coming at one point or another. McClatchy makes a good amount of revenue, but it’s saddled with too much debt, both from its acquisition of Knight-Ridder and its pension fund. Assuming a judge approves the bankruptcy reorganization the company proposed last week, it will shave down that debt and shift the burden of its pension obligations to the federal government. In the short term, its papers—including The News & Observer and The Durham Herald-Sun—shouldn’t be affected. But longer-term, it’s hard to be optimistic, either for our local papers or for local journalism generally. McClatchy’s new majority owner will be a hedge fund (and a hedge fund that controls The National Enquirer and Us Weekly’s parent company, no less). Hedge funds, as a rule, don’t exist to make public-interest journalism; they exist to make profits.

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February 19, 2020

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Raleigh

After the Storm The Raleigh Council’s decision to eliminate CACs sparked an uproar. What comes next? BY L EI G H TAU S S ltauss@indyweek.com

he Raleigh City Council’s surprise dismantling of citizen advisory councils two weeks ago sent shockwaves through the city’s political circles. Some neighborhood advocates accused the council of selling out to developers, as CACs offered them an outlet to voice objections to projects. The council’s progrowth supporters rejoiced, calling the CACs a relic of a bygone era and brushing aside the cloak-and-dagger manner with which they were dispatched. On Tuesday—after the INDY goes to press—the city’s staff is scheduled to update the council on its progress finding a consultant to develop a new framework for community engagement. Mayor MaryAnn Baldwin says she doesn’t believe one has been chosen yet—selecting one may require a bidding process—but she’s hopeful the staff will sort it out within a month. The decision to end CACs was spearheaded by council newcomer Saige Martin, who whipped votes in secret ahead of the February 4 meeting. Not even council

member David Cox knew about the decision before he was handed a paper copy of the four motions Martin prepared. The public was blindsided, too; the motions weren’t on the agenda, and the public wasn’t given a chance to speak on them. CACs have been around since the 1970s, when they were established in an effort to snag federal block grants. They became a fixture of Raleigh’s civic landscape, amassing political power and exerting influence over rezoning cases. (Ten rezoning cases are still slated to go before CACs in the next month; the council permitted them to hear pending cases through March 17.) Bob Geary, a city planning commission member and former INDY columnist, says the system needed to be reformed. But ditching it all together “makes little sense.” “CACs served an important purpose,” Geary says. “Still, despite the constraints imposed by the city, the CACs proved useful over many years’ time as a common ground for staff and residents to meet and share basic information and to discuss issues as they arose.” Geary has proposed holding planning commission hearings at night to fill in the void left behind by CACs and make meetings more accessible for residents. That idea won’t be vetted until the commission’s March retreat. Meanwhile, Cox, a CAC proponent, attempted to take mat-

“There was no process that was going to be perfect. My goal was to move as quickly as possible.”

ters into his own hands, vowing on his blog to hold community meetings of his own. However, when he asked city manager Ruffin Hall if he could use staff members at these meetings, he was told he’d need the full council’s approval, Cox posted on Facebook last week. Cox—who also suggested on Facebook that the council’s CAC vote could sour him on affordable housing and parks bonds expected to be on the ballot in November— did not return a call seeking comment. Baldwin says Cox’s inquiry will be “clarified” at Tuesday’s meeting, although she did not elaborate. Former city council member Stef Mendell has been an outspoken advocate online for bringing back CACs (she, too, did not return a phone call seeking comment). On Saturday, Mendell shared on Twitter that one of the more than 200 Wake County Democratic Party precincts voted unanimously in favor of a resolution to reinstate CACs. The county party will consider such resolutions at its convention in March. (The city council is composed of seven Democrats and one unaffiliated member.) Residents will still have the opportunity to learn about rezoning cases through meetings held by developers, as required by city code, Baldwin says, and the council might add a second required meeting for cases deemed “impactful.” Residents within 1,000 feet of the proposed rezoning would be notified about those meetings. Since the council voted to eliminate CACs, Martin has been meeting with CAC chairs to discuss the next steps. Although he acknowledges that “the process sucked,” he says it was a necessary evil. Now, he argues, there’s hope that the city’s 2021 budget might include an office of community engagement. That would allow residents to weigh in on the affordable housing and parks bonds. “No matter what we did, there was going to be a storm,” Martin says. “There was no process that was going to be perfect. My goal was to move as quickly as possible to get to the end result.” W

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February 19, 2020

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North Carolina

Swing Open the Door Four years after HB 2, Gray Ellis wants to become the first transgender man ever elected to a state legislature BY GIULIA HEYWARD backtalk@indyweek.com

n a warm summer day in 1977, a group of neighborhood kids spilled into the kitchen of the Ellis family home in Whiteville, a small town in rural Columbus County, awaiting popsicles. “Line up. Girls first,” Gray’s mother called out. The four-year-old walked to the back of the line. His mom caught Gray’s attention. “Girls first,” she repeated. “I heard you.” Gray didn’t have the vocabulary to describe how he felt. He wouldn’t know the word transgender until he was much older. He only knew that he didn’t feel like a girl. “I knew I identified as male,” he says. “But what that meant, I didn’t know. And I thought I was the only person in the world like me.” His grandfather preached at the town’s Pentecostal church, and his father was the choir director. But Ellis stresses that the town embraced him. He never told his grandfather—or anyone—about his gender identity, but his grandfather referred to him with masculine pronouns and, as he neared death, offered him one of his prized suits. It was, he says, one of his first gender-affirming experiences. “I really don’t know whether he just knew and accepted it,” Ellis says. “But it was never vocalized.” Finding people like him, however, meant leaving Whiteville. The day he graduated high school, he packed all of his belong10

February 19, 2020

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ings into a white convertible Mustang and drove to the Triangle to attend N.C. Central, his first step toward law school. Three decades later, Ellis, now 47, is a family lawyer, whose firm has locations in Pittsboro and Durham, where he lives with his son and partner. He transitioned at age 39. He’s been living as an openly transgender man for almost a decade. He says Durham welcomed him. “I’ve had shockingly little backlash,” Ellis says. “People just accepted me for who I was. Part of that is luck, and part of that was just who I was as a person. I’ve never been polarizing, despite being a trans person. I cross bridges with a lot of people.” Now he’s seeking to become the first transgender person elected not only to Gray Ellis PHOTO COURTESY OF GRAY ELLIS the General Assembly, but to any state legislature in the country. Ellis is running against Natalie Murdock and Pierce Free- targeted transgender people with HB 2. “We’ve seen a dramatic increase in the last two years,” says Elliot Imse, communilon in the Democratic primary for the District 20 state Senate seat, until recently cations director for the Victory Fund, a political action committee that helps elect held by Floyd McKissick Jr. He’s already LGBTQ people. “There’s still only 841 [LGBTQ] elected officials, meaning that we’re the first transgender man to run for any just 0.1 percent of those in elected office.” In 2018, Danica Roem was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates, becoming elected office in North Carolina. This is part of a trend. As stigmas sur- the country’s first openly transgender woman—and transgender person—to take office. rounding sexual and gender identities Since then, the Victory Fund says 20 more transgender women and five transgender recede, more and more LGBTQ people men have won elections, too. “Places that are more welcoming to LGBTQ people have more LGBTQ people in —including, notably, former South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg, who is among the office,” Imse says. “When LGBTQ people are in the halls of power, we influence the top tier of Democratic presidential hope- debate, we humanize LGBTQ lives for legislative colleagues, and that leads to more fuls after the Iowa and New Hampshire inclusive legislation.” Advocates hope that could be the case in North Carolina, as well. contests—are seeking public office. All of In addition to making it a crime for transgender people to use public facilities that this is happening less than five years after the U.S. Supreme Court made same-sex conform with their gender identity, HB 2—the so-called bathroom bill—also prohibmarriage legal nationwide, and four years ited local governments from enacting nondiscrimination ordinances that protectafter Republicans in the General Assembly ed LGBTQ people. While the law was repealed amid a furious backlash in 2017, its

THE

INDY’s

2020

PRIMARY Voting Guide replacement—HB 142—kept that prohibition through the end of this year. Ellis is one of three transgender people who will appear on ballots in the area next month. Angela Bridgman is running for the state Senate, as well, in District 18 in Wake County. Wendy May is making a second bid for Johnston County commissioner. Her first effort in 2016 made her the first transgender person to seek office in North Carolina. “I’ve faced a lot of hate,” says May, who also identifies as nonbinary. “In reality, I’m not running because I’m transgender or nonbinary. I’m running because I’m an advocate.” Bridgman—the first transgender woman to run for the General Assembly—says the positive response she got from her community after HB 2 passed inspired her to run. “A whole bunch of people became my ally,” Bridgman says. “People stood up for me. It really shook me out of my complacency.” Like Bridgman and May, Ellis says he’s not running simply as the transgender candidate. He’s focused on progressive issues like expanding Medicaid and improving education. But being a transgender candidate has brought national attention, including an endorsement from the Victory Fund and a profile in The Advocate. Still, Ellis is likely an underdog in a marquee contest. Murdock has the backing of the influential Durham People’s Alliance PAC, while Freelon—the son of a world-famous architect and a Grammy-nominated jazz singer, not to mention a former mayoral candidate and well-regarded musician in his own right—is supported by Mayor Steve Schewel and other city politicos. Whatever happens on March 3, Ellis says he’s “super proud” of his campaign. “I hope that what I’m doing, win or lose, is going to help bring about changes and is going to open up doors where people didn’t even know there was a door to go through,” he says. W

State & Federal President Democrat: Elizabeth Warren Republican: Bill Weld U.S. Senator Democrat: Cal Cunningham or Erica Smith Republican: None U.S. House, District 2 Democrat: Deborah Ross U.S. House, District 4 Democrat: David Price Governor Democrat: Roy Cooper Republican: None Lieutenant Governor Democrat: Chaz Beasley Republican: None Attorney General Republican: Christine Mumma State Auditor Democrat: Beth Wood Republican: Tim Hoegmeyer

Durham County NC Senate, District 20 Democrat: Natalie Murdock Durham Board of Commissioners Democrat: Nida Allam, Nimasheena Barnes, Heidi Carter, Brenda Howerton, Wendy Jacobs Durham School Board At-Large Alexandra Valladares

Orange County NC House, District 58 Democrat: Verla Insko Orange Board Of Commissioners, At-Large Democrat: Amy Fowler Orange County Board Of Commissioners, District 1 Democrat: Mark Dorosin, Jean Hamilton Orange County Schools Board Of Education Carrie Doyle, Jennifer Moore, LaTandra Strong District Court 15B Seat 3 Democrat: Hathaway Pendergrass

Wake County State Senate, District 18 Democrat: Sarah Crawford Republican: None State House, District 33 Democrat: Antoine Marshall

Commissioner of Agriculture Democrat: Jenna Wadsworth

State House, District 35 Republican: None

Commissioner of Insurance Republican: Mike Causey

State House, District 36 Republican: None

Commissioner of Labor Republican: None

State House, District 37 Republican: Anna Powell

Secretary of State Republican: Chad Brown

State House, District 38 Democrat: Abe Jones

Superintendent of Public Instruction Democrat: Jennifer Mangrum Republican: Catherine Truitt

District Court 10B Seat 3 Democrat: Tiffanie Meyers

State Treasurer Democrat: Matt Leatherman

Wake County Board of Commissioners, District 1 Democrat: Sig Hutchinson

Early voting through Saturday, February 29. Election Day is Tuesday, March 3.

Follow @INDYWeek on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for breaking news.

District Court 10F Seat 3 Democrat: Damion Mccullers

Wake County Board of Commissioners, District 3 Democrat: Maria Cervania Wake County Register of Deeds Democrat: William L. Madden

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February 19, 2020

N E WS

Durham

Insult to Injury After a Duke student was raped, Duke Hospital sent bill collectors after her BY CAMERON BEACH backtalk@indyweek.com

Editor’s note: This story was produced through a partnership between the INDY and The 9th Street Journal, which is published by journalism students at Duke University’s DeWitt Wallace Center for Media & Democracy.

n the early morning on December 13, 2018, a Duke student was sitting in her apartment’s common room in the university’s Central Campus. She was cramming for her organic chemistry final when a man she didn’t know opened the door. She says the stranger entered, threatened her with a knife, and raped her. The student, then a sophomore, immediately went to the Duke Hospital emergency room. She wanted a sexual assault nurse examiner to collect a rape kit, an invasive evidence collection process that often takes hours and requires victims to describe the details of their assault. But that kit could provide crucial evidence for police to catch her assailant. Police have not announced any arrests in the case. But six months after the assault, the student received a call from a number she didn’t recognize. “This is a call from a debt collection agency for Duke Health,” the person said, according to the student. The caller informed her that she owed hundreds of dollars for her emergency room visit for the rape examination. “Before that, I had no idea I owed any money,” the student, who asked not to be identified, told The 9th Street Journal. “I asked them to talk to my mom because it was really traumatic and hard, but they didn’t do that. They kept calling me over and over again.” Rape victims are not supposed to be charged for sexual assault exams, but the rules have loopholes. The federal Violence Against Women Act requires that all states cover the cost of the exams. But beyond the exams themselves, each state can decide what additional hospital services they’ll cover. North Carolina’s interpretation is called the Rape Victims Assistance Program. The program offers hospitals 12

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INDYweek.com

Duke University Chapel PHOTO BY ALEX BOERNER

up to $800 for a sexual assault exam: $350 for the sexual assault nurse examiner, $250 for the hospital facility fees, and $200 for “other expenses,” including sexually transmitted disease antibiotics or pregnancy tests for the victim. Victims should never be directly billed by a hospital for the examination, according to the North Carolina Department of Public Safety. But Molly Chadbourne, a former sexual assault nurse examiner in Durham, says victims still get charged for other services. “There are still fees for checking into the hospital, for getting an X-ray, or for needing other care,” she explains. “All that other stuff, patients can get charged for. Sexual assault patients definitely get bills.” Chadbourne says some states cover all of a sexual assault victim’s other hospital bills, while others cap their payments at a certain amount. She notes the $800 cap in North Carolina and says, “$800 is nothing at a hospital.” Though the Violence Against Women Act is supposed to protect victims from being billed after a sexual assault, many women have reported experiences like the student’s, according to accounts in news articles and on websites. The practice is caused by a combination of state policy, billing mistakes, and poor communication between debt collectors and hospitals. When the student went to Duke Hospital last December after being assaulted, she didn’t bring her insurance card.

“They said that was fine at the time,” she says. She was told that she wouldn’t have to pay for her sexual assault exam and that she didn’t have to worry about billing. A few hours after the assault, police sent a Duke Alert, the university’s warning system for crime and severe weather. “A student reported that between 1:00 a.m. and 3:00 a.m. this morning ... she was awakened by a white male with short brown hair and a perfume smell about him,” read the alert emailed to students, faculty, and staff. “He threatened her with a knife, put on a condom, and forced her to have sex.” The student was embarrassed by the detailed university-wide alert. “Reading the email was really hard,” she says. “They never asked me if it was okay to send out that email, or if I even wanted to talk to the police. They just said, ‘You need to talk to this officer,’ and I did it because it felt like I had to.” Months after the assault, she was beginning to heal. She was put in contact with the Duke Women’s Center and started seeing a psychiatrist. Duke Hospital has an online billing system. But the student says she didn’t think she would have bills, so she never checked it. After four months, Duke Health sends all unpaid medical bills to debt collection agencies. Then, she got the first call from a debt collector. The calls kept coming. “We are [a] debt collector,” a voicemail message from

the agency said. “This call is an attempt to collect a debt and any information obtained will be used for that purpose.” “They’re always from a random number, and never the same number twice,” the student says. “I told them my insurance card information, and I got confirmation that everything was worked out over the summer. But they continue to call and say we owe them even more.” When she called Duke Health to report what was happening, the billing office told her that she had an outstanding charge. She asked that the debt collectors contact her mom instead so she wouldn’t have to explain her situation to strangers. She and her mom are still working through the bill. Her bill from her emergency room visit on December 13 is labeled “Accounts with Collections Agency” in Duke’s online billing system. But she says she has difficulty determining how much she owes because the collectors have a separate billing system. The collectors keep calling every few months. The student authorized Duke Health to discuss her bills with The 9th Street Journal, but a Duke Health spokeswoman declined to comment on the student’s situation. Across the country, victims have report-

ed getting billed by hospitals after a sexual assault. “We definitely hear about this,” says Grace Frances, the director of community partnerships at End Violence Against Women International, a nonprofit that educates professionals about sexual assault. “It is definitely still a problem.” In 2017, a study published in the American Journal of Public Health found that the average hospital bill after a rape was $6,737. After billing insurance, sexual assault victims were left with an average of $948 to pay out of pocket. And 88 percent of medical records indicated that victims were charged on the day they visited the hospital. “Oftentimes, the charges that they’re seeing aren’t the cost of the rape kit,” says Ashley Tennessee, the lead researcher on the study and an assistant professor at the Medical University of South Carolina. “Most people who are sexually assaulted have additional costs. They might want tests completed or treatments for physical abuse.” Tennessee sees the problem as twofold: Victims are sometimes mistakenly charged for their rape kit exam. But more often, they’re billed for treatment related to their sexual assault.

If victims check into the emergency room, they can also be charged a facility fee. Duke itself acknowledges that going to its emergency room will cost patients “at least $1,000.” Asked if Duke Health has a policy about charging for sexual assault exams, a spokeswoman declined to comment. Tennessee recommends that states broaden their policies to reimburse hospitals for more than just the sexual assault exam. She also hopes that hospitals will charge sexual assault victims through a separate billing process to ensure that no mistakes are made. “Someone has to pay for it,” she says. “At this point, it’s the victim.” For sexual assault survivors who have been billed by hospitals in North Carolina, there is another option: the crime victim compensation fund. Victims of violent crime can apply for medical compensation up to $30,000, including physical treatment and future counseling. But there are bureaucratic hurdles that can be challenging for survivors of sexual assault. To submit a claim, a victim must provide a police report. That means they have to report their rape to police before they’re eligible for the compensation.

“I think you should be able to come into the emergency room and say, ‘I was sexually assaulted, I want to get medical care,’ and get that for free,” Chadbourne says. “But that’s not how it works.” Even for victims who are eligible to apply to the compensation fund, there are still barriers. They have to collect documents and get them notarized before submitting their application, and will likely wait months to receive compensation. And in the meantime, they’ll still be billed for their sexual assault exam visit. “It’s unacceptable,” Frances says. “You’re telling victims that you don’t care what it means to them when they get a bill in the mail, and their family sees it.” “It’s putting the responsibility on the victim to get themselves reimbursed,” Chadbourne says. “And that’s hard.” For the Duke student, it is also confusing. “We’re unsure about what the bill is for at this point because we’ve already paid so much,” she says. She also feels betrayed by the institution that failed to protect her while on campus. “I hated their whole response,” she says. “They just sent us to a collection agency.” W

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February 19, 2020

Wearable Possibilities

Ovals necklace and earrings by Mary Ann Scherr PHOTO BY JASON DOWDLE

When it comes to life-monitoring tech, jewelry titan Mary Ann Scherr was ahead of her time BY SAR AH E DWAR D S sedwards@indyweek.com

ALL IS POSSIBLE: MARY ANN SCHERR’S LEGACY IN METAL

Opening reception: Thursday, Feb. 20, 6 p.m. Exhibit through Saturday, Sep. 6 Gregg Museum of Art & Design, Raleigh

February 19, 2020

INDYweek.com

Mary Ann Scherr at work circa 1970 PHOTO COURTESY OF THE SCHERR FAMILY

ne night in 1969, Mary Ann Scherr was up late working on a design she’d been commissioned to make for Miss Ohio in the Miss Universe competition. She didn’t find beauty pageants particularly stimulating, but while watching the Ohio-born astronaut Neil Armstrong take his first stuttering steps across the moon as an on-screen monitor displayed his heartbeat, she grew inspired. That year, Miss Ohio would walk across the stage wearing a glammed-out spacesuit with a heart-monitoring belt. Such anecdotes, which distill so neatly into parables about beauty, function, and futurism, are the essence of Mary Ann Scherr, who died in Raleigh in 2016 at the age of 94. All Is Possible: Mary Ann Scherr’s Legacy in Metal, a new exhibit that opens on Thursday at N.C. State’s Gregg Museum, honors her legacy, which looms large in the world of jewelry and industrial design, and even larger in the lives of her students. Curator Ana Estrades says that the title of the exhibit is a motto that Scherr often repeated and liked to appliqué into her jewelry designs. A pioneer in the use of exotic materials such as pyrite and titanium, she believed in the unlimited possibilities of metal as well as the possibilities of the lives around her. “It’s not over ‘til it’s over,” jewelry designer Suijin Li remembers her former teacher saying. “Every day over your life, you need to live it fully.” Scherr taught at Meredith College, Duke, and N.C. State, among other institutions. Upon her death, obituaries noted that she was beloved by “thousands” of students. Meanwhile, her far-reaching designs could be found in the permanent collections of The Met, The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Vatican Museums, and in the private collections of Liz Claiborne and the U.S. Steel Corporation. This exhibit, though, is the

first retrospective of her work to be shown in Raleigh, where she lived for the last 27 years of her life. Scherr was born in 1921 to working-class parents in Akron, Ohio. Her mother was a seamstress, her father a skilled mechanic; at the age of 17, he invented a threading mechanism that would be adopted by every rubber company in the world. (Not that the family profited from it: Unaware of the inventions’ potential, he sold the licensing to Goodrich for $1.) Scherr took after her parents and began drawing at an early age; she often used her allowance to buy oversize sheets of paper from a local bakery for drawing. After high school, she interviewed to be a clerk at a local store. The interview went well enough, she thought, but afterward, the owner asked to speak with her mother. “I am not hiring your daughter because if I do, she’ll never go on to study art,” he said. “I’m telling you to let her go to art school.” Upon Scherr’s acceptance into the Cleveland Institute of Art, her parents mortgaged the family home to pay for tuition. There, she began experimenting with different mediums; jewelry was not one of them. “I wanted to be a sculptor and a painter and a designer,” Scherr said in an oral history with the Smithsonian Institution. “I was interested in everything but metals.” Then came the war. She dropped out of school and found work as an illustrator and cartographer, detouring from her visual-art ambitions entirely when she went on the road for a year as a dancer. After the war, she married Sam Scherr, a childhood friend, and was hired as an interior and accessory designer at Ford. She was one of the first— most say the first—female designers at the company, and could have carved out a distinctive career in cars. But she grew restless. “My background reads like a telephone book,” Scherr said. “Because once the work became too familiar, I had to move on and on.” In the late 1940s, she moved to Akron, where Sam Scherr opened up an industrial-design firm, and she became pregnant with their first child. Restless again, she enrolled in a night class for jewelry-making.

uch of the jewelry popular today has been designed with an eye toward restraint. In catalogs, pearls, pendants, and thin gold rings disappear into the bodies of models. In the middle-class jewelry market of strip malls and snowy Jared ads, only diamond rings stand out as objects engineered to demand attention. They signify romantic attachment, constancy. Once you have a diamond ring on, you’re not meant to ever take it off.

From left: Electronic oxygen pendant, “No-Nod” sleep detector (top) and a ring from the Scherr family collection (bottom), “worry bracelet” with moving circles, titanium “grapes” necklace PHOTOS BY JASON DOWDLE/COURTESY OF THE GREGG MUSEUM OF ART & DESIGN

Scherr’s designs rebuff tradition. They’re not diminutive, and most pieces on display at The Gregg would be impractical to wear on a daily basis. There is an imposing physicality about the way her signature cuffs take up space on a wrist or neck. They look royal and assertive and a little wild, like jewelry you might find in the wreckage of a Viking ship. When admiring certain designs, it is easy to find evidence of her past career in the automotive industry. The flash and heft of a hubcap is always close at hand. By definition, many of these one-of-akind designs are couture, but that category doesn’t feel right for Scherr’s work, which firmly pushed form into function. Jewelry was art, yes, but it was also more than art: It was something that could be essential to living. Miss Ohio’s belt was only one of Scherr’s forays into wearable and bio-sensing technology; on display at The Gregg are a sleep detector and an electronic oxygen pendant. A 1981 New York Times piece detailed Scherr refashioning hospital-issue medical hardware into necklaces for women who’d had trache-

ostomies, which she described as “compassionate jewelry.” Prices started at $100. In 1982, while Scherr was chair of the product-design department at Parsons, she helped create a series of jewelry designs that monitored vital functions. In an interview about the designs later that year, Scherr anticipated the dawn of technology like the Fitbit and the Apple Watch. “The time will come when life-monitoring jewelry will be as common as wristwatches, and no one will think of leaving home without a heart or air monitor,” she said. “I can already envision a bracelet or ring that would be a time-piece, a body monitor, and a telephone.” By the 1980s, she had earned considerable clout in the New York art world, with a client list that included Vice President Walter Mondale, the Duke of Windsor, and Andy Warhol, who bought one of her cookie jars for his collection. (When it appeared in the background of a prominent picture in the Times, the value of her jars skyrocketed.) She and Sam shared a 5,000-square-foot Soho loft on Broadway Avenue. She was at the height of her career. And then, they packed their belongings and moved to Raleigh.

amously tiny, draped in black, her wrists webbed with gold-and-silver designs and her feet outfitted in stilettos, Scherr stood out in North Carolina. Moving south from New York in one’s sixties is not a seamless endeavor. “She came here kicking and screaming,” her daughter Sydney Scherr says. Sam’s health had deteriorated, though, and all three of the couple’s children lived in Raleigh. Scherr had connections with the state from teaching at the Penland Center for the Arts. It made sense. And soon, with the distractions of New York behind her, she threw herself into yet another chapter of that immense telephone book of a life. With more time to spend in the studio, her work became more “introspective,” as she put it. In 2002, Sam died, and in her widowhood, Mary Ann continued to pour her life into the Raleigh arts community. She served on the city council’s art commission, joined the Raleigh Fine Arts Society, and cofounded the Roundabout Art Collective. She also continued to teach into her nineties, a vocation that she called a “design in itself.” “She was very devoted as a mentor and teacher,” says Ana Estrades. “She felt like it was the face of her legacy.”

Years ago, Scherr gave a sterling silver “All Is Possible” cuff to Suijin Li, who will be teaching a metals workshop in conjunction with the exhibit at the N.C. State Crafts Center this spring. The birthday gift is on display at the Gregg. “She actually made me promise when she was on her deathbed, you need to carry this on, you need to figure out what you want to do,” she says. “She was always pushing people forward in a good way.” Scherr’s daughter Sydney remembers hiding beneath her mother’s desk as a child, watchfully copying her sketches. Sometimes Sydney would nibble on matches as the two worked. “My mother was a terrible cook,” she says. “They probably tasted better than her cooking.” But her mother’s domestic aptitude had no effect on how Sydney saw her. As with many of the people who came into contact with Scherr, Sydney has gone on to a career in jewelry design. And as with many of the people who speak about Scherr, light is the frame of reference. Metal seeks luster; so did Mary Ann Scherr. “She was the light of my life,” Sydney says. “In literally everything she did, I followed in her footsteps. She was this beacon.” W

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February 19, 2020

Over the River and Through the Woods

Wedding G U I D E

In a historic mill where thread was once spun, tie the knot in unpretentious style BY KELLY HINCHCLIFFE

backtalk@indyweek.com

magine the soothing sounds of the Haw River welcoming guests to your wedding. A stunning sunset fades into the horizon as you exchange vows inside a three-story rustic ballroom filled with windows and skylights showcasing the coming nightfall and starry sky. Intricate lighting bathes the ballroom in a romantic glow while a local band plays, setting the mood at the reception as guests enjoy a specialized brew created just for the occasion. Flowers picked from a local farm adorn the tables and bouquets. This is the vision of Heather and Tom LaGarde, founders and co-owners of the Haw River Ballroom in Saxapahaw, an old mill town on the banks of the Haw River in southern Alamance County. The couple opened the ballroom as a live-music venue in 2011 after learning the building might be torn down. They have since transformed the former Dye House of Saxapahaw’s Historic Cotton Mill into an entertainment hub in the town of nearly 2,000 residents. The ballroom has hosted national and international bands, global conferences, and unique weddings for couples from around the world. Before the couple restored the building, it was dark and dank. Pigeons had claimed the space as their own. Nobody knew what to do with the rundown structure. Some suggested it could become a restaurant or a large supermarket. The LaGardes weren’t sure what to

February 19, 2020

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PHOTO COURTESY OF CAROLYN SCOTT

do with it either, but they knew they wanted to save it. “We’re big lovers of old buildings and history,” Heather LaGarde says. “None of us had any idea what it would turn into, and it’s been a really happy, moving, cool process actually to watch it grow.” Weddings at the ballroom have been especially meaningful to the LaGardes, who work with local vendors to make couples’ ceremonies unique, with a Saxapahaw flair. Couples can visit local flower farms and create their own bouquets before the ceremony. Nearby restaurants, caterers, and brewers work with couples to create their ideal menu of food and specialty beer. Local designers can draw the menu on chalkboards for an artistic touch. Couples can also plan kayaking adventures down the Haw River for their wedding parties. Saxapahaw history, inspiration, and craftsmanship touch all aspects of the space. “We have our wedding team work really closely with the people getting married.

And I say ‘people’ getting married because I’m also really proud of the fact that it’s not always brides and grooms,” LaGarde says, noting the same-sex weddings they’ve hosted. “It’s a big mixture of all different kinds [of people] … We’re known for that, and we are happy to be known for that. It’s a really big deal to us, making sure that people understand this is a really ‘welcome to all kinds of people’ space.” The venue has a standing capacity of 708 people, mostly for live concerts, but weddings typically average around 200 to 250 people. The ballroom has hosted everything from intimate ceremonies with 50 guests to much larger weddings with 350-person guest lists and “giant, crazy, wonderful” dance parties, according to Heather LaGarde. The ballroom includes three levels, a riverside deck, a coffeehouse, a full-service stage, and state-of-the-art

sound and lighting systems. An outdoor amphitheater can also be rented separately and incorporated into the wedding plan. Inside, historic details and vintage furnishings decorate the space, while solar and geothermal power, including climate control and radiant heat floors, keep visitors comfortable any time of the year. The ballroom also features a massive metal-and-concrete tank that houses the main lighting and sound system. The ballroom averages about 25 to 30 weddings a year—the record is 40 ceremonies in one year. LaGarde advises couples who want to use the space to reserve it at least six months in advance so they can get first selection of dates ahead of bands, which typically schedule tour dates about six months out. The space is meant to be friendly and welcoming, not pretentious. “You can tell it pretty fast when people come visit if it’s their style or not, and we really respect if it’s not,” LaGarde says. “Occasionally we get those folks who are just, it’s just probably not what they were picturing. Maybe they were picturing a hotel ballroom. I’m not sure.” LaGarde’s team encourages wedding parties to be creative in how they decorate and use the space. A team of lighting and sound experts who work with national and international musicians can help couples plan the look and sound of their ceremony and reception. “If there’s a table that's just running through the center of the space, we can just light that table and make it really dark and beautiful and intimate,” she says. “Or if it’s a humongous wedding, you can really go crazy with lighting. It’s pretty flexible.” The ballroom has hosted some unique weddings, including one couple that tented the entire venue, another that covered the space in antlers, and a celebrity couple that wanted cornhole games everywhere. Others have gone with Southern-themed weddings full of flowers or handmade art covering the space. “We tried to build it so that people could have their own fun gussying it up,” LaGarde said. “We really love watching how people have done that."

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February 19, 2020

Wedding G U I D E

Breaking the Mold The Triangle’s only black-owned bridal shop gets hitched to Durham’s Black Wall Street BY BROOKLYNN COOPER

“W

e only have twos and fours.” That’s the greeting wedding planner Gineen Cargo received at most bridal stores. Before she could say she wasn’t the bride, consultants would size her up and stop her. And when Cargo started shopping for her own wedding gown, the same thing happened. “It’s like, ‘You didn’t even let me in the door,’” she says. “I just didn’t want other people to have that experience.” These moments inspired Cargo to open Gavin Christianson Bridal, a private boutique in downtown Durham that carries dresses from size zero to 32—and larger, if needed. GC Bridal is by-appointment-only because Cargo personalizes each bride’s visit. “When I say ‘inclusivity,’ it also means that you’re getting the same experience,” Cargo says. “You treating me differently because I’m black is the same as you treating me differently because I’m fat or because I don’t have legs. It’s not just inclusion in the sense that I have a dress you can try on, it’s also inclusion in the experience.” GC Bridal is the only black-owned bridal shop in the Triangle, but Cargo doesn’t actively advertise that because she focuses on the brides. Still, she makes a point to maintain relationships with other black boutique owners across the country. There aren’t many. An exact number is hard to come by, but Cargo can count the ones she knows on her hands. In the bridal industry, associations and conferences aren’t commonplace. For black-owned shops, they’re nonexistent. Cargo and her colleagues—who own spaces in Texas, Maryland, Tennessee, Illinois, and the D.C. area—spend a lot of time on the phone in what she describes as a trial-and-error process. “It’s a lot of, ‘I have a situation, you’ve been in the industry longer than me, what would you do?’” she says. Cargo doesn’t tell customers that she owns the shop unless someone asks, but she doesn’t mind opening up about it. “It’s exciting for some of my black brides—or just any bride of color, honestly—because it’s breaking the trend,” she says. GC Bridal sits on the corner of North Church Street and East Parrish Street, Durham’s historic Black Wall Street. Cargo fell in love with the location when she found it on Craigslist, and once she realized it was on Parrish Street, she knew that was the spot for her boutique. Cargo imagined her late grandmother—who lived in Braggtown for her entire life—saying how proud she was of her for choosing a street

February 19, 2020

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PHOTOS BY TYSON & LENOX MEDIA, COURTESY OF GAVIN CHRISTIANSON BRIDAL

with so much history. That was the sign she needed. GC Bridal had its official grand opening last July, but to Cargo, it was on March 8, her grandmother’s birthday. She originally planned the opening for that date, but the electricity wasn’t turned on in time. “I remember being crushed,” Cargo says. “I’ll still say March, though, because my grandma’s going to get this honor.” Just like the location and size inclusivity, Cargo is also intentional about relationships with her customers. Before appointments, Cargo and her consultants look at brides’ Pinterest boards, ask about wedding venues, and take note of food allergies and other special accommodations. These details aid her team in pre-selecting dress styles and preparing refreshments. Recently, a bride-to-be chose a dress from GC Bridal, and her mother asked her how she knew it was the one. The bride listed the things she loved about the dress: the shape, the style, the accents. Her mother argued that she probably liked the dress so much because the consultants discussed possible customizations and alterations. The bride agreed. “[At other shops] there was a lack of education of what they could do,” Cargo says. “We sat down and took the time with her, so she was like, ‘OK, this is my dress because they have helped me understand how I can have exactly what I want.’” Cargo believes GC Bridal’s one-on-one approach is what causes brides to enjoy their experience. Many of her former customers still keep in contact with her today. One woman’s daughter attends Empower Dance Studio, which is also on Parrish Street. They stop by GC Bridal regularly just to say hi. Cargo said those organic relationships are more important to her than receiving wedding invites from her customers. “When I sell a wedding dress or sell a veil or a tuxedo, it feels like I was part of your big day, and that’s exciting,” Cargo says. “Even if I’m not on the guest list, I’m always on the guest list in some way. The icing on the cake is when they send pictures. It’s like, ‘Yay, I was there.’”

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February 19, 2020

Wedding G U I D E

Moments from Love Party, the LBGT+ Wedding Expo February 16, 2020, held at The Matthews House in Cary

PHOTOS BY JADE WILSON

February 19, 2020

INDYweek.com

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION: INDYâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S WEDDING GUIDE

1,000 Words

Hayti, Scene WORDS + PHOTOGRAPHY BY JADE WILSON

The 26th annual Hayti Heritage Film Festival ran from February 13â&#x20AC;&#x201C;15, screening more than 30 films focused on identity, Afrofuturism, death, and politics.

TOP LEFT AND RIGHT: Hayti Heritage Film Festival. BOTTOM LEFT: Hayti Heritage Center director Angela Lee. BOTTOM RIGHT: Festival director Lana Garland.

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February 19, 2020

FOOD & DR I NK

Dumplings at Sister Liu’s

Eat This

PHOTO BY JADE WILSON

The Secret of the Dumpling Here’s what makes Sister Liu’s dumplings the best in the Triangle BY NICK WILLIAMS food@indyweek.com

he search for dumplings par excellence—at least in our country’s semi-urban badlands—often culminates in the most godforsaken places imaginable. There’s an inverse correlation between great ones and faceless strip-mall digs. You’re on the right track if the space is a gauntlet of industrial cooking and food-storage equipment. So much the better if the sole decoration is, like, a picture of a palm tree. And if there’s absolutely nowhere to sit yet a line snaking out the door, then you’ve probably found the best dumplings in town. Sister Liu’s Kitchen is a perfect example of this dichotomy, cloistered in a tiny space next to eight lanes of Fury Road-style traffic in the former Straw Valley compound, Durham’s labyrinthine retail and dining venue. And while other, prettier restaurants around town serve good dumplings, Sister Liu’s are undeniably the best. Cuiying Liu arrived in Durham in 2013 from Harbin, a city in China’s northeast known for bone-chilling cold, exquisite works of ice sculpture, and soulful cuisine. Liu started cooking for friends and family, but her dumplings quickly garnered a hardcore following among local students. She opened her namesake kitchen in 2018, and within a few months, it landed on Bon Appétit’s list of the 50 Best New Restaurants in America, a fairly astounding accomplishment for a take-out-only dive that is, at best, mildly difficult to find. So what’s the secret? What makes a dumpling great, as opposed to good, as opposed to merely OK?

February 19, 2020

INDYweek.com

SISTER LIU’S KITCHEN

5504 Durham-Chapel Hill Blvd., #103, Durham | 919-244-3973 | sisterliuskitchen.com

For one, the wrapper is a vital component, and the wrappers at Sister Liu’s are delightfully slippery, paper-thin but with enough density and chew to manifest their own tactile appeal. And a dumpling must be juicy; Sister Liu’s are profoundly so, the filling in each sealed wrapper brewing its own tiny thimbleful of ambrosial broth during the steaming process. They don’t explode on the tongue so much as squish in a feat of textural synesthesia. These dumplings feel delicious. Finally, to truly qualify for greatness, a dumpling with one filling must be immediately and strikingly distinguishable from one with a different filling. This might seem obvious, but cross-variety dumpling contrast is frustratingly tricky to guarantee, especially for customers who eat their dumplings at peak toothsomeness, which is to say, screamingly hot. Unimaginative seasoning or over-reliance on MSG can make an order of pork and chive dumplings taste exactly the same as an accompanying order of, say, beef and celery. This is not a problem at Sister Liu’s, with its shuffling menu of fillings and preparations. Lamb and carrot dumplings taste earthy and gamey, with a streak of root-vegetable sweetness. Beef and onion dumplings are milder, silky, and fatty. Vegan dumplings—filled with tofu and cabbage or mushroom, cabbage, and

Chinese Burger at Sister Liu’s

herbs—have enticing vegetal richness and complexity. My favorite are the pork, shrimp, and cabbage dumplings, an ingenious combination of land and sea brightened by pungent cabbage. On a recent visit, I stockpiled an unfair quota of these wondrous little purses and denied a frequent lunch collaborator his fair share. I speculated—not for the first time—that I would probably be OK eating nothing else for the rest of my life. The dumplings are the main attraction, but Sister Liu’s also serves immensely satisfying hand-held delicacies helpfully referred to as “Chinese Burgers.” After exhaustive research (i.e., five seconds on the internet), I determined these to be an expert take on rou jia mo, a stuffed flatbread originating in the Shaanxi Province. Literally translated as “meat sandwiched in bread,” this regional staple has conquered China and is creeping steadily into the global street food canon. The rou jia mo at Sister Liu’s is at least as good as the dumplings. The bun—steamed, then griddled—is a culinary paradox, perched between crispiness and puffball softness. Liu slices them along one edge and crams in a ladleful of filling. Recent offerings included a vegan hodgepodge of fried vegetables and pickles and spicy braised pork belly with green peppers and cilantro. The latter—a Liu family recipe—is a hungry commuter’s dream. W

PHOTO BY JADE WILSON

E VE NTS THURS., FEB. 20, 6 P.M.

Lawrence BBQ Pop-Up at Kingfisher Ahead of the highly anticipated opening of Lawrence BBQ in RTP this summer, Jake Wood drops by Kingfisher with a pop-up preview menu that will include sandwiches, oysters, and sticky ribs. Sure, Kingfisher is a classy cocktail joint, but that doesn’t mean you can’t pair it with some ’cue-stained fingertips and “Fancy Ass Brisket.” Kingfisher 321 E. Chapel Hill St., Durham kingfisherdurham.com THURS, FEB. 20, 4–8 P.M., $10

Winter Pantry Swap Piedmont Picnic’s mission is to connect folks through skill-building and community events, and this old-fashioned pantry swap fits the bill. To participate, bring your wares—fermented and canned goods, baked goods, that extra SCOBY in the dark recesses of your pantry—to display at a table and ready your bid sheet. Voilà: a homegrown pantry makeover. Rebus Works 301 Kinsey St., Raleigh rebusworks.us | 919-754-8452 SUN., FEB. 23, NOON–3:30 P.M.

Fourth Annual Chili Cook-Off Round out your weekend with Ponysaurus Brewing Company’s annual chili cook-off. Demonstrate your chili acumen for a panel of judges that includes Jacob Boehm of Snap Pea, Clayton Anderson of Whiskey Kitchen, Billy Cotter of Dashi and Toast, and Isaac Martin of the Cast Iron Group. Alternately: Sip beer and sample chili. Ponysaurus 219 Hood St., Durham ponysaurusbrewing.com | 844-369-7669 MON., FEB. 24, 7–9 P.M.

Karen Akunowicz at High Horse Karen Akunowicz joins chef Katsuji Tanabe at the next installation of his Top Chef series. Akunowicz, a James Beard Award-winner and the owner of the cozy Italian restaurant Fox & Knife in Boston, will visit High Horse to prepare a special one-night-only menu. High Horse 208 Wolfe St., Raleigh highhorsenc.com | 919-594-1381 BY SARAH EDWARDS

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February 19, 2020

M U SIC

We Can’t Believe Our Ears In a 120-year-old memoir of a nervous breakdown, Judge Schreber’s Avian Choir finds an allegory for the hallucinatory power of noise music BY HARRIS WHELESS music@indyweek.com

Crowmeat Bob performing at Neptune’s Parlour

PHOTO BY JADE WILSON

The woodpeckers, blackbirds, and swallows nesting in the asylum garden shouted the same question at him over and over: “Are you not ashamed?”

February 19, 2020

INDYweek.com

n 1900, Daniel Paul Schreber, a former judge who had been institutionalized after a series of mental collapses, began writing a comprehensive account of his experiences to use in an appeal for his release. “I hear words from the talking birds impinging on my ears from outside,” Schreber wrote. The woodpeckers, blackbirds, and swallows nesting in the asylum garden shouted the same question at him over and over: “Are you not ashamed?” Our senses can be unreliable narrators of what is going on around us. Especially in abstract genres such as noise music, there are sounds that may or may not just be a trick of the ear. What are all these things we hear amid the crunch of distortion and the hair-raising gale of electronics? Are they really there at all? “I think that’s the attraction of noise music for a lot of people,” says Bob Pence. “You’re never sure what you’re hearing—whether what you’re hearing is in your mind or not.” Pence, who makes music as Crowmeat Bob, is a horn player and guitarist who’s been a mainstay of the Triangle’s experimental and free-improv scene since he moved to Raleigh in 2000. Judge Schreber’s Avian Choir, his latest project, is his first as a bandleader. In October, it released BLEED, an album composed for heavy-metal band and strings. The record takes its concept from Schreber and what he was hearing outside of his window. About 120 years later, Pence hands me the notes Schreber submitted in his defense, printed and bound in a book called Memoirs of My Nervous Illness. We’re sitting on the couch in Pence’s apartment, bordered on all sides by a musician’s equivalent of mounted game: instruments, lecterns, concert posters, and shelves and shelves of records. There is a precarious

stack of books on the coffee table with a little desktop sign that says “Out to Lunch” perched on top. A record by old-school Chapel Hill psychobilly band Flat Duo Jets blares on the turntable. Pence says that the “avian choir” Schreber heard outside of the asylum served as a jumping-off point for the album’s monster-movie string theatrics. “I think the whole string orchestra thing lends itself to hallucination,” Pence says. “I was thinking about those dissonant harmonics on the higher end of the spectrum interacting and creating all these little weird sounds, ghost sounds, whatever you want to call them. If you turn it up really loud, get really high, you can hear all kinds of shit in it.” The album also takes musical cues from two other wildly divergent sources: spectralism, an abstruse style of classical composition informed by the harmonic series, and ‘90s drone metal bands such as Earth. “Just the thought of combining those dense, intense string sounds with the droney heavy metal stuff, I thought would make for some really cool shit,” Pence says. Orchestral metal is something he’s done in live performances since the mid-aughts, with the Micro-East Collective and other large ensembles, but this is the first time he’s done it in a professional recording studio. The blueprint for the record was sketched out in the same place we’re sitting. The acoustic guitar resting against the wall is the one Pence used to compose the riffs at the core of BLEED’s dense harmonic structure. The album is thrillingly frightening, with screaming strings, sharp peals of horns, raunchy guitar riffs, and a drummer who hauls ass like it’s the second coming.

“With all that overdrive on the guitars and the density of the sound and the harmonics, the overtones, it creates all these tinier molecular rhythms,” Pence says. The album was recorded in one session— with some overdubs later—at Fidelitorium Recordings in Kernersville. It features a large ensemble: Pence on guitar and reeds, 14 string players, Jon Ferrell on bass, and Mike Isenberg on drums. “The tightrope-walk was that you had so many people playing at once that everbody had to get it right,” says Isenberg, who has previously played with Pence in bands such as Kolyma and Savage Knights. “Sometimes the rhythm or string section would nail something, but [Pence] would be aware that something else didn’t go right and wave his hand to call it off.” BLEED is separated into four parts. Side A, “THE UNFOLDING,” is steeped in the idea of time unfolding in widening intervals, with music that follows suit. Riffs extend and repeat, the strings become more dissonant with each second, the drums plod along at their own stubborn pace, and Pence’s horn seems to writhe in bodily anguish. The first part of Side A, “Zarathustra’s Ape,” begins with a soft drone before the rhythm section kicks in with a swath of heavy distortion, which morphs into a hulking monolith of fractured sounds. In the feedback and horns, second part “The Cardboard Cutout Spiral Sundial” starts to take shape. A textured landscape appears: the whisper of a bow on strings, atmospheric static, gradual trills, and finally, a needle lapping against dead wax. Side B, “THE RETURN,” opens with “The Bacillus of Revenge,” a long string piecein which an extended drone teeters, rattles, and crumbles into a crescendo of bow-scraping and violent Psycho stabs. As the mist clears, you can hear a sample of the ‘30s radio show Lights Out—the gong and the doom-laden voice that says, “It is later than you think”—before the deafening thrash metal of “The Wheel of Ixion” brings the record home. If you heard this coming out of a passing car, you’d be halfway home before your groceries hit the ground. But when you approach it intentionally, the effect is one of startling rapture. To Isenberg, for avant-garde music, it’s markedly direct rather than rarified. “Things like this can be sort of precious, but I think it has a genuine visceral quality, and the metal parts sound like metal,” he says. “I don’t think anything about it is terribly delicate. I think it’s a striking recording.”

ence is a regular at underground haunts like Nightlight in Chapel Hill and Neptune’s in Raleigh. On the day we visited him, he had a show coming up with HardFace—a horn-and-electronics duo with Alex Swing— at The Wicked Witch. Pence hunched over his laptop, pulling up the Facebook event: “Eighteen going, 43 interested, baby!” he says. “Gonna be a big show!” Located next to a tattoo parlor, behind a small, dark door that opens onto a staircase with duct tape at the edge of each step, The Wicked Witch has a distinct haunted-house feel. Smoke putters out of a fog machine in thin, looping swirls. The black walls and floor are bathed in red light, and there are floor-length mirrors around the perimeter. In one beside the stage, you can see Pence setting up mics and Swing readying his mixing board. There’s a brief sound check, and we’re off in a flurry of hair and sound. Swing blows up distorted samples into zonked-out clouds of noise. Pence alternates between horns, cutting through the haze like an ocean liner through an ice sheet. His hands move frantically against the saxophone for several minutes; then he tosses it at its case and picks up a trombone. He muffles the sound with a plunger mute, and suddenly we’re in a boiler room with steam blowing out of our ears. An amazing amount of thought and chops go into improvising a room full of noise or an album’s worth of harmonic phantoms. Whatever musical mode you’re working in, Pence says, your own voice—and in turn, your identity as a musician—comes through. “Identity is manifold and in constant flux but reveals itself through these songs or interval patterns, reflex arcs, things that you do that are your own, for better or worse,” he says. “So when you talk about a musician’s identity, I think you’re talking about a kind of a territorial instinct. Like the birdsong.” It’s worth noting that Pence also plays in a duo called Reflex Arc with Ginger Wagg, and the alacrity with which the phrase floats into his mind seems to reinforce his point. In the end, Schreber’s story is a useful frame for exploring the gap between sounds that exist and sounds we hear, but what matters is Pence’s musical fingerprint, one we’ve come to know through so many projects, big and small, over two decades. “It’s all kind of arbitrary, because listening to the record, you’re not necessarily going to get any of that shit, and it doesn’t matter as long as it sounds good to you,” Pence says. W KeepItINDY.com

February 19, 2020

TH 3/5 @CAT’S @CAT’S CRADLE

MOLLY TUTTLE

Chocolate Lounge & Wine Bar Fri 2/21

Chocolate Covered Comedy 8pm

Sat 2/22

Remona Jeannine

Sun 2/23

NC Songwriters Co-op 1pm

Fri 2/28

John Stevens with Zach Drill

Sat 2/29

Larry Bach & John Gillespie

Sun 3/1

Rob Gelblum 2pm

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

W/OLIVER HAZARD

SA 2/22 @CAT’S @CAT’S CRADLE BACK ROOM

TIM BARRY

W/ROGER HARVEY & FRIENDS CAT'S CRADLE

SOLD OUT 2/19 YBN CORDAE ($20/$22.50) SOLD2/21 ARCHER'S OF LOAF ($25) OUT

723 RIGSBEE AVENUE • DURHAM, NC 27701

RECENTLY ANNOUNCED: Risk!, Stephen Lynch SOLD OUT WED

2/19

HARI KONDABOLU Liz Miele

2/20

The Kernal

Raund Haus 4 Year Anniversary featuring

DAEDELUS

School of Rock Cary presents SUN 2/23 a medley of massive hits by artists Led Zeppelin, Duran Duran, Bon Jovi, Queen and much, much more! Durham Mardi Gras: TUE 2/25 The Bulltown Strutters / Katharine Whalen WED The Monti StorySLAM

7 DEADLY SINS

Duke Performances presents

SAT

GNAWA LANGUS OM

SUN

SA 11/14 HOODOO GURUS ($25/$28) CAT'S CRADLE BACK ROOM WE 2/19 BLACK LIPS W/WARISH ($15)

WE 3/11 DESTROYER W/NAP EYES ($20/$23)

SU 2/23 SLOAN ($25)

SA 3/14 RADICAL FACE W/AXEL FLÓVENT ($25/$28)

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

WE 3/18 WHITE REAPER W/YOUNG GUV, BUDDY CRIME ($15/$17)

WE 2/26 WISH YOU WERE HERE (JESSEE BARNETT OF STICK TO YOUR GUNS) ($12/$14)

SA 3/21 BEST COAST THE ALWAYS TOMORROW TOUR W/MANNEQUIN PUSSY ($25/$27)

TH 2/27 ZEN FRISBEE W/TEETH OF ENGLAND, JOE BRZOSKA ($8)

FR 3/27 SOCCER MOMMY W/ TOMBERLIN ($18/$20) SA 3/28 ANTIBALAS ($18/$22)

FR 2/28 @CAT’S @CAT’S CRADLE

JUNIOR BROWN

W/BUCKSHOT BETTY

SOLD TH 2/20 THE BROOK & THE BLUFF OUT W/JORDY SEARCY ($12/$14)

SA 2/22 TIM BARRY W/ ROGER HARVEY & FRIENDS ($15)

SU 2/23 @CAT’S @CAT’S CRADLE BACK ROOM

SLOAN

FR 2/28 PALEHOUND W/ADULT MOM ($13/$15) SA 2/29 ENO MOUNTAIN BOYS W/CHUCK MOUNTAIN, WINFIELD ($8) TU 3/3 KNUCKLE PUCK W/HEART SOLD OUTATTACK MAN, BETTER LOVE ($23) WE 3/4 J RODDY WALSTON (SOLO) W/ PALM PALM ($15) FR 3/6 SIR WOMAN (KELSEY WILSON OF WILD CHILD/ GLORIETTA) SA 3/7 TYLER RAMSEY ($15)

MO 4/6 MIGHTY OAKS ($12/$14)

ARTSCENTER (CARRBORO) TU 3/24 JAMES MCMURTRY W/BONNIE WHITMORE ($22/$25) MOTORCO (DUR) FR 3/6 ELLIS DYSON & THE SHAMBLES W/DOWNTOWN ABBY AND THE ECHOS ($10/$12)

SU 4/5 CALEB CAUDLE ALBUM RELEASE TOUR W/WILD PONIES AND DAWN LANDES ( $15/$20) WE 4/8 VETIVER ($15/ $18)

TU 3/17 POST ANIMAL W/TWEN ($15/$17)

TH 4/9 THE NATIONAL PARKS ACOUSTIC SET ($12/$15)

WE 3/25 TINY MOVING PARTS W/ BELMONT, CAPSTAN, JETTY BONES ($18/$22)

FR 4/10 MATTIEL ($10/$12)

TU 4/14 DEAFHEAVEN W/INTER ARMA, GREET DEATH, ALL YOUR SISTERS ( $25/$28)

TU 4/14 ALLAN RAYMAN ($22/$25)

FR 6/5 DIET CIG W/SAD13 ($15/$17) HAW RIVER BALLROOM SA 2/22 GARZA FT. ROB GARZA OF THIEVERY CORPORATION WHERE THE MOON HIDES TOUR W/BODY GAMES ($20/$23)

WE 4/8 STEPHEN MALKMUS W/QAIS ESSAR & THE MAGIK CARPET ($20/$23)

SU 3/8 DAN RODRIGUEZ ($15)

FR 4/10 BROTHER ALI - OPEN MIKE EAGLE, DJ LAST WORD ($18/$20)

TU 3/10 PHANGS W/90’S KIDS, LOWBORN, SEASONS ($12/$14)

MO 4/20 REAL ESTATE ($25/$28)

WE 3/11 HEART BONES W/COLD CREAM ($10/$12)

TH 4/16 INDIGO DE SOUZA W/ TRUTH CLUB ($10/$12)

TH 3/12 SONG TRAVELER'S WRITERS NIGHT

FR 4/17 AN EVENING WITH JILL ANDREWS ($14/$17)

FR 3/13 SONGS FROM THE ROAD BAND W/BIG FAT GAP ($12/$15)

SA 4/18 JOHN CRAIGIE W/HONEYSUCKLE ($12/$15)

SA 3/14 VERSUS ($15)

MO 4/19 DYLAN LEBLANC

SU 3/15 CALL ME KARIZMA W/CYRUS, MXRCUS ALEXIS, STICKY ARROW ($15/$18)

TU 4/21 KATIE PRUITT ($10)

WE 4/22 CRANK IT LOUD PRESENTS: NOTHING, NOWHERE. W/DANGER INCORPORATED, RO RANSOM, BOGUES ($18/$22) MO 4/27 WAVVES KING OF THE BEACH 10 YEAR ANNIVERSARY USA TOUR W/SADGIRL ($22/$25) TU 4/28 47 SOUL ($20/$23) SA 5/2 GUIDED BY VOICES ($30/$35) SU 5/3 THE RESIDENTS ($30/$35) MO 5/4 STEREOLAB ($35/$38)

SA 5/9 POOLSIDE ($20/ $25) SU 5/10 GREG DULLI W/JOSEPH ARTHUR ($33/$38) MO 5/11 BARNS COURTNEY ($22/$25)

2/29 Wovenhand

MO 9/21 ADHOC PRESENTS BIKINI KILL ($29.50/ $35)

TH 3/5 MOLLY TUTTLE W/OLIVER HAZARD ($20/ $23)

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

THU 2/27 Building Bridges: Muslims in America with

FR 9/18 ADHOC PRESENTS OH SEES W/ MR. ELEVATOR ($25/$28)

FR 2/21 POST-ARCHERS OF LOAF THROWDOWN WITH PIPE AND LACY JAGS (FREE!)

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

SAT

DAN DEACON

W/ED SCHRADER’S MUSIC BEAT, BOULEVARDS, JENNY BESETZT

SA 2/29 OF MONTREAL W/LILY'S BAND ($17)

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

REMEMBER JONES

2/21 Triangle Afrobeat Orchestra

2/26

FR 2/28 JUNIOR BROWN W/BUCKSHOT BETTY ($20/$24)

TH 3/26 REBIRTH BRASS BAND ($20/$23)

PAUL CAUTHEN

2/22

TH 2/27 DAN DEACON W/ ED SCHRADER'S MUSIC BEAT, BOULEVARDS, JENNY BESETZT ($15/$17)

TU 3/24 PORCHES W/SASSY 009 ($16/$18)

THU

FRI

SA 2/22 HAYES CARLL (SOLO) W/ALLISON MOORER SEATED SHOW ($25/$28)

TH 2/27 @CAT’S @CAT’S CRADLE

WE 5/13 BOB SCHNEIDER (SOLO) ($20/$23)

WE 4/14 BENT KNEE ($15)

TH 2/27 TODD SNIDER W/LILLY HART ($25/$28) TU 3/24 JOHN MORELAND W/S.G.GOODMAN ($15/$18) SOLDMO 4/20 SHARON VAN ETTEN W/JAY SOM ($28/$31) OUT

FR 4/24 WAXAHATCHEE W/OHMME ($18 ADV/ $20)

SU 4/26 SAMMY RAE & THE FRIENDS ($12/$15)

FR 5/1 TENNIS W/MOLLY BURCH ($18/$20)

TU 3/17 BAMBARA W/BLACK SURFER ($10/$12)

FR 5/1 KEVIN KRAUTER W/WHY BONNIE ($10/$12)

SU 5/3 SNAIL MAIL W/ HOTLINE TNT ($20 / $22)

FR 3/20 THE OLD CEREMONY W/REESE MCHENRY ( $10/$12)

SA 5/23 FRANCES QUINLAN ($16/$18) WE 6/17 PINEGROVE W/HOVVDY ($21/$25)

SU 6/21 GREGORY ALAN ISAKOV W/ CHE APACHE

WHEELS FUN PARK

MO 6/22 GREGORY ALAN ISAKOV W/ CHE APACHE THE CAROLINA THEATER (DURHAM) WE 4/15 ANGEL OLSEN W/MADI DIAZ ($32.50/$35) TH 4/30 BEN GIBBARD ($32.70+) DPAC (DURHAM) TH 8/27* CODY KO & NOEL MILLER TINY MEAT GANG - GLOBAL DOMINATION ($24.50+) *rescheduled from april FLETCHER HALL (RAL) TH 5/14 BRUCE COCKBURN ($37-$50)

MO 3/16 GRADUATING LIFE W/KING OF HECK

TU 3/24 STEVE GUNN, MARY LATTIMORE, & WILLIAM TYLER ($20/$22) TH 3/26 CONSIDER THE SOURCE W/EMMA'S LOUNGE ($10/$12) SA LD LAUREN SANDERSON - MIDWEST O3/28 S OUT KIDS CAN MAKE IT BIG TOUR

School of Rock Chapel Hill Mid-Season Showcase

TH 5/14 YOLA WALK THROUGH FIRE WORLD TOUR W/AMYTHYST KIAH ($20/23)

COMING SOON: Little People, Frameworks, Ellis Dyson & The Shambles, Lee Fields and The Expressions, Post Animal, Against Me!, Asgeir, Mdou Moctar, 75 Dollar Bill, Tiny Moving Parts, Laura Marling, Dance With The Dead, Magic Sword, Black Atlantic, Caspian, Deafheaven, Vundabar, Shannon & the Clams, Kevin Morby, Sebadoh, Okilly Dokilly, Harley Poe, Oso Oso, Prince Daddy & The Heyena, CBDB, Napalm Death, Fu Manchu, Neil Hamburger, The Cybertronic Spree, Diet Cig, Greer

SA 6/6 BOMBAY BICYCLE CLUB ($32/$35)

MO 3/30 VILRAY ($12)

TH 6/11 BAYSIDE W/SENSES FAIL, HAWTHORNE HEIGHTS, CAN'T SWIM ($25/$29)

TH 4/2 VAGABON W/ANGELICA GARCIA ($14/$16)

MO 6/15 THE GROWLERS ($30)

FR 4/3 HONEY MAGPIE ALBUM RELEASE W/RODES AND ENO RIVER RATS ($8/$10)

SA 2/22 DANTE HIGH ROLLER SKATE DANCE PARTY W/RALEIGH ROCKERS B-BOY CREW DJ SWEET WILLIAM ($15/$20) NC MUSEUM OF ART (RAL) SU 4/26 BRITTANY HOWARD (OF ALABAMA SHAKES) W/ NU MANGOS ($35-$60)

SA 4/4 CHERRY POOLS W/JET BLACK ALLEY CAT, SMALL TALKS, MOBS ($13/$15)

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

3/1

February 19, 2020

INDYweek.com

WE 6/17 PINEGROVE W/HOVVDY ($21/$25) SA 8/8 WEYES BLOOD ($17/$20)

SU 3/29 THE JACKS

Member Admission Price

*Be on the lookout for these big names coming through the Triangle

(Not Valid for Special Events, expires 01-21)

919-6-TEASER for directions and information

www.teasersmensclub.com 156 Ramseur St. Durham, NC

Wye Oak performs at Baldwin Auditorium on Friday, February 28. PHOTO BY KENDALL BAILEY ATWATER

Feb. 28 Wye Oak Baldwin Auditorium, 8 p.m., $25

Apr. 2 Vagabon Cat’s Cradle, 8 p.m., $14–$16

Mar. 3 Jacquees The Ritz, 8 p.m., $25

Apr. 15 Angel Olsen Carolina Theatre, 8 p.m., $33–$35

Mar. 4 Zac Brown Band PNC Arena, 7 p.m., $30+ Mar. 12 Billie Eilish PNC Arena, 7:30 p.m., SOLD OUT Mar. 20 Michael Bublé PNC Arena, 8 p.m., $65+ Mar. 21 Best Coast Cat’s Cradle, 8 p.m., $25–$27 Mar. 27 Soccer Mommy Cat’s Cradle, 8 p.m., $18–$20 Mar. 30 Mandy Moore DPAC, 8 p.m., $40+

Apr. 20 Sharon Van Etten Haw River Ballroom, 8 p.m., SOLD OUT Apr. 22 Lake Street Dive DPAC, 7:30 p.m., $35+ Apr. 24 Waxahatchee Haw River Ballroom, 8 p.m., $18-$20 May 3 Snail Mail Haw River Ballroom, 8 p.m., $20-$22 May 24 Ozuna PNC Arena, 8 p.m., $40+ Jun. 2 Local Natives Red Hat Amphitheatre, 6:30 p.m., $25+

Jun. 2 The Lumineers Walnut Creek Amphitheatre, 7 p.m., $35+ Jun. 20 The Doobie Brothers Walnut Creek Amphitheatre, $30+ Jun. 23 Alanis Morissette Walnut Creek Amphitheatre, 7 p.m., $55+ Jul. 4 The Black Crowes Walnut Creek Amphitheatre, 8 p.m., $29+ Jul. 10 Thomas Rhett Walnut Creek Amphitheatre, 7:30 p.m., $44+ Jul. 11 Tedeschi Trucks Band Walnut Creek Amphitheatre, 6:30 p.m., $45+

Aug. 1 Harry Styles PNC Arena, 8 p.m., $36+ Aug. 2 Rage Against the Machine PNC Arena, 8 p.m. Aug. 10 Journey, The Pretenders Walnut Creek Amphitheatre, 7 p.m., $35+ Aug. 25 Goo Goo Dolls Red Hat Amphitheatre, 6:30 p.m., $25+ Sep. 9 KISS Walnut Creek Amphitheatre, 7:30 p.m., $40+ Sep. 12 Maroon 5, Meghan Trainor Walnut Creek Amphitheatre, 7 p.m., $50+

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February 19, 2020

M U SIC CA L E N DA R

FEBRUARY 19– FEBRUARY 26

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22

Daedelus pick

If you had to beatify a patron saint for the Durhambased beat-music collective and label Raund Haus, you could do much worse than Daedelus. The LA-based producer has fused brainy electronic music and instrumental hip-hop for some of the most prominent labels where that fusion thrives, from Mush and Ninja Tune to Anticon and Brainfeeder. His sound, which has hip-hop at its core but proceeds wherever it wants from there, is writ large in the eclectic aesthetic that Raund Haus has developed over the last four years, so it’s a coup that he will headline the crew’s fourth birthday party at Motorco. Fresh off a release by Pixl Prymd, with new records from Ronnie Flash and a Tokyo-based collective in the pipeline, the young but essential label has a lot to celebrate. Made of Oak (the solo electronic alias of Sylvan Esso’s Nick Sanborn), Charlotte’s Axnt, Durham’s Treee City and Trandle, and others raund—er, round out the bill. —Brian Howe Motorco Music Hall, Durham 8 p.m., $12

Daedelus

PHOTO COURTESY OF MOTORCO MUSIC HALL

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 21

Ally J

Raleigh Blues Festival

Blue Cactus

Singer Allison Johnson treats everything like the blues. Yeah, she does soul and R&B and jazz and funk and other things, too, but she sings them all with the urgency and fire of the blues. Originally from Akron, Ohio, Ally J has been bouncing around the Durham music scene since 2007 and has been a staple of Third Fridays at Arcana for at least the past year or so. This time, she’ll be joined by Steve Munoz. —Dan Ruccia

The 11th Annual Raleigh Blues Festival is an evening-long jaunt into the blues and beyond, with Louisiana’s Tucka channeling quiet storm crooners, the delightfully swaggering Pokey Bear performing his blend of bayou soul, and contemporary blues singer Nellie “Tiger” Travis filling the room with her smoky singing. 60s soul songwriter and producer Roy C, meanwhile, boasts the prescient career footnote of having worked with a group of high school students called The Honey Drippers to release “Impeach The President” in 1973, a song now frequently sampled in hip-hop tracks. Rounding out the night are Lacee and Big G. —Josephine McRobbie

Celebrating the release of a new seven-inch with this full-band show, Blue Cactus is rooted in classic twang— like the loping honky-tonk shuffles that back the biting Trump takedown “Finger On The Button” and its disillusioned b-side cousin, “Quittin’ Again”—though its adventurous Americana spans heartland anthems and cosmic country while echoing Tom Petty and Neil Young. Opener Chris Frisina fills folk rambles with warmth and gentle humor, and Christy Jean Smith adds gorgeously aching, rustic tunes. A dollar from each record will go to local non-profit Transplanting Traditions Community Farm. —Spencer Griffith

Arcana, Durham 9 p.m., FREE

Duke Energy Center, Raleigh 8 p.m., $49

February 19, 2020

INDYweek.com

The Pinhook, Durham 8 p.m., $12

M U SIC CA L E N DA R

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22

Youth League, Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol, A Bottle Volcanic Scuzzy riffs and sludgy grooves are capped by wild wails on last year’s aptly dubbed Grease Beast EP from Austin three-piece Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol, whose mix of monolithic headbangers and melodic buzzsaws leaves a path of destruction in its wake. Durham trio Youth League crafts succinct yet cinematic post-rock with mathy moments. Wilmington’s A Bottle Volcanic makes a rare Triangle appearance, bringing along its dynamic doom spiked with surprising folk elements. —Spencer Griffith Slim’s Downtown, Raleigh 9 p.m., $7

Wednesday Night Titans Pour House Music Hall, 9 p.m. $12-$15. YBN Cordae, 24kGldn, L0NR Cat’s Cradle, 8 p.m. Sold out.

Thu. 2/20 20th Century Boy, Valefor Local 506, 8 p.m. $5. The Brook & The Bluff, Jordy Searcy Cat’s Cradle Back Room, 8 p.m. Sold out. Brother Hawk, Doomstress, Bedowyn The Maywood, 9 p.m. $10. Cajammers Blue Note Grill, 7 p.m.

Ally J performs at Arcana on Friday, February 21. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ARTIST

Wed. 2/19 Black Lips Cat’s Cradle Back Room, 9 p.m. $15. Tatiana Hargraves, Libby Rodenbough, Alex Bingham, and other special guests Arcana, 8 p.m. Hari Kondabolu, Liz Miele Motorco Music Hall, 8 p.m. $25.

Sanborn, Schatz, & McCaughan Neptunes Parlour, 10 p.m. $10. UNC Wind Ensemble, UNC Symphony Band UNC Campus: Memorial Hall, 7:30 p.m. $10. Upward Dogs The Cave Tavern, 9 p.m. $5 suggested.

Paul Cauthen, The Kernal Motorco Music Hall, 8 p.m. $12-$20. DL Zene, Nun AfterHours, SunQueen Kelcey Pour House Music Hall, 9 p.m. $5. Flamenco Night: Eduardo de Rosamaria, Dennis Aberle, Teresa Fernandez Arcana, 7 p.m. $10-$20. Jazz Combos UNC Campus: Hill Hall, 7:30 p.m.

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February 19, 2020

M U SIC CA L E N DA R TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 25

Isabel Leonard

Durham Mardi Gras: The Bulltown Strutters, Katherine Whalen Motorco Music Hall, 7:30 p.m. Free.

Isabel Leonard is a Grammy Award-winning mezzo-soprano and versatile opera performer, a quality which has served her well in a diverse set of gigs including hosting The Metropolitan Opera’s movie-theater transmissions, visiting Sesame Street, and performing for the Supreme Court (Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a fan). In this performance with the UNC Symphony Orchestra, Leonard sings arias by Gounod, Bizet, and Berlioz, as well as Ravel’s Shéhérazade song cycle. —Josephine McRobbie

Howlin Rain, Sunwatchers, Night Jeans Kings, 10 p.m. $10. Isabel Leonard & The UNC Symphony Orchestra UNC Campus: Memorial Hall, 7:30 p.m. $27+.

UNC’s Memorial Hall, Chapel Hill 7:30 p.m., $27

Konbanwa, Heavy for the Vintage, Exclusive Humor, Gub Gub the Lizard King Slim’s Downtown, 9 p.m. $5. No Visa Dance Party Nightlight, 9:30 p.m. $5-$10. Rodes, Riley Moore, Rachel Despard The Cave Tavern, 9 p.m. $5 suggested.

Shaun Martin, Electric Kif Cat’s Cradle Back Room, 8 p.m. $12-$15.

Fri. 2/21

Eric Chesson Pour House Music Hall, 5 p.m.

11th Annual Raleigh Blues Festival Memorial Auditorium, 8 p.m. $50-99.

Dead Casual, Windley, With Clarity Schoolkids Records Raleigh, 7 p.m.

Archers of Loaf, Gauche Cat’s Cradle, 9 p.m. Sold out. Brookelynne Basuka Ruby Deluxe, 10 p.m.

Status Lost, Waking April, Meag Kings, 8 p.m. $10.

Blue Cactus, Chris Frisina, Christy Jean Smith The Pinhook, 8 p.m. $12-$15.

Whizthekid, OTS Nasi, Bigbankk2x, OTS Jalen, king Phill, zone The Pinhook, 8 p.m. $10.

Brooks Hubbard Band, Biggins Kings, 10:30 p.m. $10-$12. Chad Eby Trio Sharp Nine Gallery, 8 p.m. $20.

Duke Jazz Ensemble, Ulysses Owens Jr. Duke Campus: Baldwin Auditorium, 8 p.m. $10. Gnarbot, Zephyranthes Pour House Music Hall, 9 p.m. $7-$10. Andy Lyle Hall The Station, 9 p.m. I Am Soteria Haw River Ballroom, 7 p.m. $15-$20. Johnny Mathis Meymandi Concert Hall, Showtimes: Fri. & Sat.: 8 p.m. $80+. Office Hours Duke Coffeehouse, 9 p.m. $10. Railroad Earth, Handmade Moments Lincoln Theatre, 8 p.m. $25. Ravary, Rafael Green Local 506, 9 p.m. $7-$10. Remember Jones, Triangle Afrobeat Orchestra Motorco Music Hall, 8 p.m. $15-$25. Jon Shain, FJ Ventre Wake Forest Listening Room, 7 p.m. $12. Sibannac, Sex Negative, Dan Mac The Cave Tavern, 9 p.m. $5 suggested. The Whiskey Honeys Blue Note Grill, 9 p.m. UNC Jazz Bands UNC Campus: Hill Hall, 8 p.m. Paul Van Dyk The Fruit, 10 p.m. $35.

Isabel Leonard performs at Memorial Hall on Tuesday, February 25. PHOTO BY BECCA FAY 30

February 19, 2020

INDYweek.com

Nordista Freeze Pour House Music Hall, 9 p.m. $10-$12. Tommy Stinson Schoolkids Records Raleigh, 7 p.m. $25-$1.

Blue Cactus releases a new 7-inch at the Pinhook on Friday, February 21.

Sat. 2/22 15th North Carolina Regional Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Festival UNC Campus: Hill Hall, 8 a.m. BRAINxTOILET, Budd Dwyer, Kryptcest, Father Montego, M.S.D., Pathogenesis, Leachate, Junt, Sunday Girl, Acwelan, Cave Grave, Secretion, Self Termination The Maywood, 5 p.m. $20. Brown Mountain Lightning Bugs Wake Forest Listening Room, 7 p.m. $10. Hayes Carll, Allison Moorer Cat’s Cradle, 8 p.m. Sold out. Dante High Roller Skate Dance Party Wheels Fun Park, 11 p.m. $15-$20. Garza Haw River Ballroom, 8 p.m. $20-$23. Goth Prom: 20th Century Boy Arcana, 7 p.m. $5. Jefferson Hart & Ghosts of Old N. St, GSO, Jerry Kee The Kraken, 8 p.m. Madhatter, Honeybadger, Hypgnosis, Neuron Husky Nightlight, 10 p.m. $10.

Maria Schneider Orchestra UNC Campus: Memorial Hall, 8 p.m. $27+. Jack Marion Pour House Music Hall, 3 p.m. Michael Daughtry Pour House Music Hall, 5 p.m. NC K-Pop Festival The Ritz, 6 p.m. $16. Neilfest 2020 Kings, 8 p.m. $10. Paladin, Datura, Knightmare, Inanimus Pour House Music Hall, 9 p.m. $8-$12. Phatlynx, Boo Hag, Bo-Stevens, Tupelo Crush The Cave Tavern, 9 p.m. $5 suggested. Ana Popovic Blue Note Grill, 8 p.m. $20-$25. Raund Haus 4 Year Anniversary Motorco Music Hall, 9 p.m. $12-$15. Sadie Rock and the Mad Ryans Local 506, 7:30 p.m. $7-$10. Samba Jovem, NC Brazilian Arts, Oxente, Brazilian Drumming, DJ Junior Guedes, Caique Vidal & Batuque Rhythms Live Music Hall, 8 p.m. $12. Same As It Ever Was Lincoln Theatre, 9 p.m. $12.

Spaced Angel, Caffeine Day Dream, Stranded Bandits, Night Crew The Wicked Witch, 9 p.m. $10. The Lowdown Dirty, Greatscot, Matt Southern & Lost Gold Slim’s Downtown, 9 p.m. $5. The Wait (The Band Tribute), C. Albert Blomquist and The Buck-Ups The Station, 10 p.m.

Sun. 2/23 Seong-Jin Cho Duke Campus: Baldwin Auditorium, 7 p.m. Sold out. Danny Feedback, The Callers The Station, 8 p.m. The Doppler Effect UNC Campus: Hill Hall, 7:30 p.m. $15. The Family Crest Kings, 8 p.m. $15. Great Music For Soaring Spaces Duke Campus: Duke Chapel, 4 p.m. Free. James K, Hank Jackson, Solo Termite, GOVERNANCE, Sponge Bath Nightlight, 9 p.m. $8.

PHOTO BY CHRIS FRISINA

Stranded Bandits, Danny Feedback, Roar the Engines Slim’s Downtown, 9 p.m. $5.

Kinda Nice, Sidewalk Furniture Slim’s Downtown, 8 p.m. $5.

Alex Travers, Josh Miller, Hank and Brendon The Cave Tavern, 9 p.m. $5 suggested.

Moses & Cutshall, Heavenly Creatures Duke Coffeehouse, 8:30 p.m. $5.

Wed. 2/26

Mysti Mayhem Blue Note Grill, 5 p.m. Putter, Sluice, Toss Arcana, 8:30 p.m. $7-$10. Sarah With an H Pour House Music Hall, 5 p.m. School of Rock Cary: A Medley Of Massive Hits Motorco Music Hall, 12 p.m. $5. Sloan Cat’s Cradle Back Room, 8 p.m. $25.

$5 Elvis The Cave Tavern, 9 p.m. $5 suggested. 919noise Showcase: High Tunnels, feltbattery, Benjamin David Felton, Heavy For The Vintage Nightlight, 8:30 p.m. $7. Jesse Barnett Cat’s Cradle Back Room, 8 p.m. $12-$14. Dermot Kennedy The Ritz, 8 p.m. $35-$225.

Wallows The Ritz, 8 p.m. Sold out.

Passafire, Bumpin Uglies, Joey Harkum Pour House Music Hall, 8 p.m. $15-$18.

Mon. 2/24

Peekaboo Lincoln Theatre, 9 p.m. $15-$22.

Dexter Romweber The Cave Tavern, 9 p.m. $5 suggested.

Pocket Vinyl, Spaced Angel, Lazaris Pit The Maywood, 8:30 p.m. $8.

Tue. 2/25

Zephyranthes, Shake the Baby Til the Love Comes Out, Green Aisles, Through the Tallwoods Ruby Deluxe, 8 p.m. $7.

Boom Unit Brass Band, Rollin Dynamite Blue Note Grill, 8 p.m. Drew and Ellie Holcomb Carolina Theatre, 8 p.m. $35-$50.

A RT

YAYOI KUSAMA: OPEN THE SHAPE CALLED LOVE

Exhibit through Sunday, Apr. 12 | Dance performance by Killian Manning: Sunday, Mar. 15, 2 p.m. | Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill Detail from an untitled 1967 painting by Yayoi Kusama PHOTO COURTESY OF THE COLLECTION OF JAMES KEITH BROWN AND ERIC DIEFENBACH

The High Priestess of Polka Dots The art of Yayoi Kusama beyond her spectacular mirrored rooms at the Ackland BY MITALI ROUTH arts@indyweek.com

ayoi Kusama’s impact on the art of the past century is incontrovertible. An enigmatic pioneer in the 1960s New York avant-garde whose influence can be observed in the work of Joseph Cornell, Donald Judd, and Andy Warhol, Kusama returned to her native Japan in the early ‘70s and eventually checked into a full-time psychiatric-treatment facility, where she has continued to live and work ever since. From the ‘70s until the late ‘90s, little attention was paid to Kusama outside of Japan. In recent decades, renewed international interest has largely focused on her wildly popular “infinity mirrors,” which consist of kaleidoscopic mirrored surfaces and lights that viewers either peer into or enter. NCMA bought one for its permanent collection and unveiled it in the exhibit You Are Here in 2018. But Kusama’s long and prolific career includes everything from drawing, paint-

ing, and sculpture to poetry, performance, and film. Open the Shape Called Love, a new exhibit at UNC’s Ackland Art Museum, presents 22 artworks, created between the ‘50s and the ‘00s, from this lesser-known side of Kusama. It’s a subtle, understated introduction to one of the world’s most important living artists, though it struggles to tell a cohesive story about her multifaceted work. The exhibit’s title comes from one of Kusama’s poems: “Open the shape called Love,” she writes. “I want to return to the earth.” The words inevitably bring death to mind, but at almost 91, she knows something about survival. Kusama is a self-identified “obsessional artist,” and critics have often emphasized her struggles with mental illness. “Painting saved my life,” she has said. “I fight pain, anxiety, and fear every day, and art is the only method I have found to relieve my illness.”

In the wall text and catalog that frame the show, the Ackland is preoccupied with this self-therapeutic aspect, focusing heavily on artist’s reported hallucinations and outlining what the museum terms her three-pronged approach to “managing [her mental] condition, expressing that condition, and transcending that condition.” But Kusama’s concerns as an artist extend far beyond herself, toward an ever-evolving philosophical investigation in which the self is a kind of conceptual substrate of the cosmos. “My momentary life, that is supported by some invisible force, exists in a brief moment of quietude amidst hundreds of millions of endless light years,” she has said. In failing to flesh out the visual and conceptual considerations of the cosmos in Kusama’s paintings, the exhibit eclipses her philosophical interests with a story about her psychic unraveling. Though it touts her “acute sensitivity to the cultural

moment [of the 1970s],” it doesn’t sufficiently expand on her traumatic historical context—growing up in the shadow of the U.S.’s atomic bombing of Japan, for example—or adequately situate the artist among her avant-garde contemporaries. Either approach would have made the attempt to connect Open the Shape Called Love to ancillary exhibit Toriawase: A Special Installation of Modern Japanese Art and Ceramics more constructive. “Toriawase,” meaning to choose and combine objects with care, is practiced in Japanese tea ceremonies. While the works in the small exhibit are exquisite, the association with Kusama is loose, seemingly limited to shared national origin rather than conceptual, historical, or other intersections that are implied but never fully illuminated. More than a story of mental illness, the works at the Ackland convey ideas about the infinite. The scale is intimate; you can imagine the self-appointed “High Priestess of Polka Dots” making them privately, meticulously, in a small studio, away from the rest of the world. Most striking are her “Infinity Net” paintings, in which Kusama explores form as something at once ordered and chaotic, contained and infinitely reproducible, and always prone to dissipation. Her networks of dots and other organic shapes seem to extend beyond their small frames. This resonates with Kusama’s obsessive exploration of the self as something that dissolves and repeats—something that tends toward obliteration. “Forget yourself,” she has said. “Become one with eternity. Become one with your environment.” Kusama’s infinity mirrors captivate us through the drama of light, scale, and reflection, but their very popularity often restricts our engagement to selfies. They are hardly sites for contemplating Kusama’s questions about the conflicts between truth and illusion. But such revelations are possible in the Ackland’s exhibit, where Kusama’s tender obsessiveness looks less like evidence of psychological precarity, as the museum would have it, and more like the method and theory of a sustained artistic inquiry. W KeepItINDY.com

February 19, 2020

STAGE

BOBCAT GOLDTHWAIT

Thursday, Feb. 20–Saturday, Feb. 22 | Various times | $21–$29 | Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh

Solid Goldthwait

THAT TIME HE WORKED WITH JUDD APATOW Goldthwait is currently working with Apatow on a feature-film version of Call Me Lucky, Goldthwait’s documentary about comedian Barry Crimmins.

Beefing with Seinfeld, opening for Nirvana, and more of the man called Bobcat’s greatest hits

It reminds of my relationship with Robin Williams, because Judd talks about my work and acts like we are peers, and the reality of it is, we’re not. Where my movies make hundreds of dollars, his make millions. It is a biopic trying to tell Barry’s story. It’s a hell of a story. He was a bar comic who was a political satirist, and late in life he disclosed about his child abuse. When he was looking for other survivors in the early ‘90s, he was on AOL and they were allowing child pornography to be exchanged. AOL turned a deaf ear to it, and Barry pointed it out and ended up on the floor of the Senate, taking on AOL. It is like a Frank Capra story but from a very unlikely person. It is really sweet and nice of Judd to work on this piece. I’ve known him since he was a PA on Comic Relief. We worked on The Larry Sanders Show together. He was drawn to the Barry story, and it was something both of us believed in and wanted to do.

BY HART FOWLER arts@indyweek.com

omedian Bobcat Goldthwait first rose to fame in the 1980s, when his screechy-voiced stand-up persona crossed over in the Police Academy movie franchise. Thirty years later, he’s settled into a long tenure on NPR’s Wait Wait...Don’t Tell Me! and branched out into filmmaking, but he’s still in the road-comedy game, and he’s got four shows at Goodnights this week. (He’s also recording part of a new comedy special with Dana Gould at The Mothlight in Asheville while he’s around.) We recently reached him by phone in LA and talked about some of the most memorable moments of a long career, from sparring with Jerry Seinfeld to his long friendship with Robin Williams. THAT TIME HE BEEFED WITH SEINFELD In the current season of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, Jerry Seinfeld lambasts a comedian that is understood to be Goldthwait (they beeped out his name) to guest Bridget Everett, a close friend of Goldthwait, who, in the 1990s, used to make fun of the banality of Seinfeld’s humor in his stand-up. BOBCAT GOLDTHWAIT: In his defense, I have said mean things about the guy. But he had promoted the pilot I had worked on with Bridget on Twitter, so I thought we were all good and didn’t have a beef. I guess it goes to show that you can be very successful and very rich and still be really unhappy. I really felt bad for Bridget because he was trying to make her feel bad for being my friend. He has all the right to say he doesn’t like me. I think he’s a little crazy to spend that much time on his joke bashing me in the comedic sense. But I feel that the weird part is when he confuses the love from an audience with self-worth. I mean, I’m happy that crowds like me, it’s nice that I can have a good crowd, but I don’t confuse that with whether I’m a good person. He’s talking about my act that I probably haven’t done in 20 years. And he still does the same act from 30 years ago, and that’s the filter he’s judging me through. Yeah, it’s funny, after all these years he finally has an opinion about something, and it is me. 32

February 19, 2020

INDYweek.com

Bobcat Goldthwait PHOTO BY ROBYN VON SWAN

His question was whether I’m funny or not, and comedy is subjective. Some people find Richard Pryor, Andy Kaufman, and George Carlin funny, and other people find it funny to discuss where the socks go in the dryer. It is like any kind of art. Is Michael Bolton not a good musician? You know, Michael Bolton worked for a lot of people. And you can’t take that away from anyone who connects with someone on an emotional level. But so does Iggy Pop. And I’m just saying, I’m inclined to go to an Iggy Pop concert. THAT TIME HE OPENED FOR NIRVANA, NAKED Goldthwait opened for Nirvana on their last North American tour—the one on which he famously rappelled nude from the roof of the Oakland Coliseum. I emceed, and if the crowd didn’t hate me, I’d do time. Actually, if they did hate me, I’d still do time. Before they broke [into the mainstream,] I met Kurt because he wanted to interview me for a college radio station in Ann Arbor because he was a fan of my stand-up, which reminds me of how Jimi Hendrix really liked Buddy Hackett. He liked my stand-up, and he would listen to my album over and over. When I met [Dave Grohl], he was complaining about that.

THAT TIME HE WAS FRIENDS WITH ROBIN WILLIAMS Goldthwait and Williams performed and collaborated on countless shows. Goldthwait wrote and directed the film World’s Greatest Dad, which starred the late actor. We were really close friends, and I think we were because he could trust me to be himself around me. I keep that to myself because he is gone. One thing about Robin that I do want people to know was that he was misdiagnosed with Parkinson’s, and he had something called Lewy body dementia, which is very aggressive, much more aggressive than Alzheimer’s. Him taking his life was not a result of being depressed or the effects of alcohol or drugs. He was sober most of the time for the 30 years I knew him. It was really that his brain gave him misinformation. I don’t mean to take anything away from people who have lost people to depression or drugs, but that wasn’t Robin’s story. If any good comes out of this horrible thing, it is that maybe people will be more aware of Lewy body dementia, and it would be great if people were a little bit more kind with someone’s suicide and not just call them weak or judge them. If you have a disease that tells you that it is OK to walk across the street when you think it’s a red, but it’s a green light, that’s where my friend was. W

ROB SCHNEIDER

Friday, Feb. 21 & Saturday, Feb. 22 | Various times | $30 | Raleigh Improv, Cary

STAGE

Rob Schneider vs. Rob Schneider by Rob Schneider arts@indyweek.com

INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF RALEIGH

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25,000 PEOPLE 3 DAYS 60+ CULTURES INTERNATIONALFESTIVAL.ORG

When Bobcat Goldthwait mentioned “The” Rob Schneider Michael Bolton in our interview (see p. PHOTO BY JULIA KUZMENKO 32), we couldn’t help but think of the immortal line by the character cursed with that name in the movie Office Space: “Why should I change? He’s the one who sucks!” As it happens, someone in Raleigh knows what it’s like to bear a dubious famous name—Rob Schneider, a stand-up comedian who runs an open mic at Durty Bull Brewing Company every Friday at 8:00 p.m. With “the” Rob Schneider (Deuce Bigalow, The Hot Chick) coming to the Raleigh Improv this weekend, we had to ask “our” Rob Schneider: Does it suck being a comedian named Rob Schneider, or does the comedian named Rob Schneider not suck? Hi, my name is Robert Schneider. I go by Rob. There was nothing noteworthy about this name until I was in high school and another Rob Schneider appeared on Saturday Night Live. Even then, it did not come up frequently until I got into comedy about five years ago. Performing stand-up comedy as Rob Schneider has been both a blessing and a curse. The main downside is that I have heard every famous Rob Schneider line often enough to realize how annoying it must be for “the” Rob Schneider. I have even had people insist on calling me Deuce Bigalow. On the flipside, performing as Rob Schneider provides an easy icebreaker to connect with the crowd. There are several ways you can open a set when your name is Rob Schneider. I have joked about how far down the list of names that would be if I were going to pick a stage name. A few people have told me I remind them a little of Vince Vaughn, so I have joked about how I would rather have the name Rob Schneider and look like Vince Vaughn than vice versa. Another advantage is that my comedy Facebook page is easy to remember. It is “Rob Schneider Comedy – Not That One.” That makes it easy for people to find me, and they can see one of my favorite sets I’ve done, where I was the host for Mark Curry at Raleigh Improv. I put up to 25 comics in each open mic at Durty Bull, so I meet a lot of people, and they always remember my name. So overall, I would say it does not suck to be Rob Schneider. Several people who have seen me perform have been on social media asking the more famous Rob Schneider and Raleigh Improv to have two Rob Schneiders on the show, even going so far as to make up the hashtag #tworobsonemic. I have not been asked to be on the show but am hopeful that Rob Schneider will respond to these requests by saying, “You can do it.”

JIM GRAHAM BUILDING AND EXPOSITION CENTER NC STATE FAIRGROUNDS Friday, March 6: 10am to 10pm Saturday, March 7: 10am to 10pm Sunday, March 8: 11am to 6pm

Come celebrate global culture, cuisine, arts, education, and cross-cultural communication. FOOD, DANCE, MUSIC, EXHIBITS, SHOPPING, FASHION SHOW, KID’S STUFF, ART, CRAFTS, NATURALIZATION CEREMONY, COOKING DEMOS, DANCE WORKSHOPS, PASSPORT SCAVENGER HUNT The International Festival is funded in part by the City of Raleigh based on recommendations of the Raleigh Arts Commission

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February 19, 2020

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FEBRUARY 19– FEBRUARY 26

SUBMIT! Submit your event details at indyweek.com/submit#cals by 5 p.m. Wednesday for the following week’s issue. QUESTIONS? spequeno@indyweek.com

Ongoing As One Opera. 7:30 p.m. both days. $27. Through Feb. 20. 7:30 p.m. Current ArtSpace + Studio, Chapel Hill.

stage Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo PHOTO COURTESY OF DUKE PERFORMANCES

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22

Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo You’ve never seen ballet like that of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo (affectionately called the “Trocks”). The circa-1974 company presents classical ballets with a twist— the hilarious renditions are performed by an allmale cast en pointe. While pointe shoes are traditionally only worn by ballerinas, the Trocks prove that ballerinos can dance on their toes, too. The result is a gender-bending night at the ballet starring a cheeky group of masters of the form. —Rachel Rockwell

Opening The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee Play. Showtimes: Thu.-Sat.: 7:30 p.m. Sun: 2 p.m. $10. Thu., Feb. 20, Sun., Feb. 23, The ArtsCenter, Carrboro. Blippi Live! Variety show. $25+. Thu., Feb. 20, Thu., Feb. 20, 6 p.m. Durham Performing Arts Center, Durham. Evening of Entertainment $13-35. Fri., Feb. 21, 7:30 p.m. Durham Performing Arts Center, Durham.

The Carolina Theatre, Durham 8 p.m., $35–$60

GCA Stand-Up 101 Graduation Showcase Comedy. $10. Wed., Feb. 26, 8 p.m. Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22

Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo $35$60. Sat., Feb. 22, 8 p.m. Carolina Theatre, Durham.

Drunk Black History Live! The oral tradition of storytelling has shaped the lived experiences of Black people across the diaspora. Storytelling was one of the first opportunities for black folks to represent themselves as anything other than property. Most important, storytelling creates space to identify shared experiences in the Black community and experience joy and laughter. Hosted by Monét Marshall (who will be sipping Rosé out of a teacup) at The Palace International’s Vault space, “Black Drunk History Live” is a celebratory event that will feature alcohol-influenced narration by three local storytellers who will recount true Black history as Improve Noir, Durham’s Black improv team, attempts to act those stories out. —Kyesha Jennings The Vault, Durham 7 p.m., $10-$15

Carolina Ballet: Rhapsody in Blue Showtimes: Thu. & Fri.: 8 p.m. Sat.: 2 p.m. & 8 p.m. Sun.: 2 p.m. $37+. Through Feb. 16. Fletcher Opera Theater, Raleigh. Dancing With The Stars: Live! $50+. Wed., Feb. 19, 7:30 p.m. Durham Performing Arts Center, Durham. Dreamgirls Musical. Showtimes: Fri. & Sat.: 8 p.m. Sun.: 3 p.m. $15. Through Feb. 23. 8 p.m. NCCU Campus: University Theater, Durham.

The Old Man & The Old Moon Play. Showtimes: Feb. 14-15, 20-22, 28-29, 7:30 p.m. Feb. 16 and 23, 3 p.m. Mar. 1, 3 p.m. $33. Through Mar. 1. Theatre In The Park, Raleigh.

KevOnStage Comedy. Showtimes: Wed. & Thu.: 7 p.m. $30-$80. Through Feb. 20. Raleigh Improv, Cary.

Orange Light Play. Showtimes: Thu.: 7:30 p.m. Fri. & Sat.: 8 p.m. Sun.: 2 p.m. Through Feb. 16 Durham Fruit Company, Durham.

Kinky Boots Musical. Showtimes: Tue.-Fri.: 7:30 Sat. & Sun.: 2 p.m. & 7:30 p.m. $31+. Through Feb. 16. Memorial Auditorium, Raleigh.

Ragtime Musical. Wed.Sat.: 7:30 p.m. Sun.: 2 p.m. $24-$28. Through Feb. 23. NCSU Campus: Stewart Theatre, Raleigh.

Loving Play. Showtimes: Fri. & Sat.: 8 p.m. Sun.: 3 p.m. $24. Through Feb. 29. Pure Life Theatre, Raleigh. Mean Girls Musical. Showtimes: Tue.-Thu.: 7:30 p.m. Fri.: 8 p.m Sat.: 2 p.m. & 8 p.m. Sun.: 1 p.m. & 7 p.m. $125+. Through Feb. 16, Durham Performing Arts Center, Durham.

Seussical Jr. Musical. $17. Thu-Fri: 7:30 p.m. Sat-Sun: 1 p.m. & 5 p.m. Through Feb. 23. Raleigh Little Theatre, Raleigh. Sweat Play. Showtimes: Fri. & Sat.: 7:30 p.m. Sun.: 3:30 p.m. $5-$23. Through Mar. 1. Umstead Park United Church of Christ, Raleigh.

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 19

Hari Kondabolu

Python. Monty Python Burlesque show. $8-$20. Thu., Feb. 20, 8:30 p.m. The View at Legends, Raleigh.

The comedian Hari Kondabolu has sculptd a career out of social commentary. A writer on the comedy talk show Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell (RIP); his first standup album was titled Waiting for 2042—i.e., the year minorities in America will, well, no longer be in the minority. With this new hour of material, Kondabolu is delving into more personal, family-related (though, if we had to guess, still lightly political) material. —Anna Cassell

Rob Schneider Comedy. Showtimes: Fri.: 7 p.m. & 9:15 p.m. Sat.: 6:30 p.m. & 9 p.m. $30-$80. Feb. 21-22. Raleigh Improv, Cary. Set It Off Live On Stage Play. $48-78. Sun., Feb. 23, 4 p.m. Memorial Auditorium, Raleigh. SUMMER: The Donna Summer Musical $30+. Showtimes: Tue.-Thu.: 7:30 p.m. Fri.: 8 p.m. Sat.: 2 p.m & 8 p.m. Sun.: 1 p.m. & 7 p.m. Feb. 25-Mar. 1. Durham Performing Arts Center, Durham.

Forest Moon Theater: Prelude to a Kiss Play. Showtimes: Fri. & Sat.: 7:30 p.m.; Sun.: 3 p.m. $15-$18. Through Feb. 23. Wake Forest Renaissance Center, Wake Forest.

Motorco Music Hall, Durham 8 p.m., $25-$30

Hari Kondabolu

PHOTO COURTESY OF MOTORCO MUSIC HALL

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C U LT U R E CA L E NDA R 2.21

NC BOOK FESTIVAL EVENTS: Legendary science-fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson 5:30pm Raleigh Review Celebrates 10 Years 7pm

arts Opening Josef Albers and Homage to the Square Paintings. Feb. 21-Aug. 30. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh. All is Possible: Mary Ann Scherr’s Legacy in Metal Jewelry and design. Feb. 20-Sep. 6. Gregg Museum of Art & Design, Raleigh. Art Workshop: Paint Maritime Scenes in Oil Fri., Feb. 21. 11 a.m. The Centerpiece, Raleigh. Brainchild: It’s Alive! Opening Reception Fri., Feb. 21. 6 p.m. NorthStar Church of the Arts, City of Durham. Celebration Art Show & Reception: Joe McDonough, Patricia Cooke Sat., Feb. 22. 12 p.m. The Scrap Exchange, Durham. Consensual Hallucination: Dara Morgenstern Feb. 21-Mar. 20. Holy Mountain Printing, Durham. Curator Talk: Hairstory and Domestic Demise Sat., Feb. 22. 12 p.m. Artspace, Raleigh. Family and Friends Sunday Sun., Feb. 23. 2 p.m. Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill. Jane Kraike: Serigraphs Prints. Feb. 22-Mar. 28. Adam Cave Fine Art, Raleigh. Ali Osborn: Macadam Drawings. Feb. 21-Apr. 11. Oneoneone, Chapel Hill.

Panel Discussion: Applying for Local and Statewide Funding $10. Tue., Feb. 25. 6:30 PM Durham Art Guild, Durham. Past Lives Mixed media. Feb. 22-Mar. 14. The Scrap Exchange, Durham. Reception: Compose and Materialize Fri., Feb. 21. 6: PM Durham Arts Council, Durham. Reception: Jane Kraike Prints. Sat., Feb. 22. 6: PM Adam Cave Fine Art, Raleigh. Reception: Reasons to Get out of Bed Paintings. Fri., Feb. 21. 2: PM Golden Belt Arts, Durham. The Right Angle, the Meander, & the Star Maps. Feb. 21-Mar. 16. Durham Arts Council, Durham. Billy Strayhorn Solo exhibit. Feb. 24-Mar. 22. Hillsborough Gallery of Arts, Hillsborough. Think Big! Opening Reception Fri., Feb. 21. 6: PM 5 Points Gallery, Durham. Think Big!—A Small Works Exhibition Group show. Feb. 20-Mar. 16. 5 Points Gallery, Durham. Third Friday at Golden Belt Fri., Feb. 21. 6: PM Golden Belt Arts, Durham.

Ongoing All That Glitters: Spark and Dazzle from the Permanent Collection Costumes. Through May 17. Gregg Museum of Art & Design, Raleigh. Art’s Work in the Age of Biotechnology Other exhibits at NC State Libraries and GES Center. Through Mar. 15. Gregg Museum of Art & Design, Raleigh. John James Audubon: The Birds of America Ornithological engravings. Through Dec. 31. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh. John Beerman: The Shape of Light Paintings. Through Feb. 29. Craven Allen Gallery, Durham. Megan Bostic, Andy Mauery, Rosemary MezaDesPlas: Hairstory Art made of human hair. Through Feb. 29. Artspace, Raleigh.

THAT KINGS: Taylor Jenkins Reid w/ Amelia Meath, Katya Apekina with Jeff Jackson, Andre Perry with Darrell Stover, John Kessel with Mur Lafferty and Kim Stanley Robinson, Tupelo Hassman with Belle Boggs 12pm-5pm Design By Time Group Show. Through May 17. Gregg Museum of Art & Design, Raleigh. Domestic Demise: Elizabeth Alexander, Patty Carroll Group show. Through Apr. 11. Artspace, Raleigh. Favorite Things Paintings. Through Feb. 29. V L Rees Gallery, Raleigh. Flora fem Fauna Group show. Through Feb. 25. Meredith College: Weems Gallery, Raleigh. Joe Frank: At the Dark End of the Bar Radio shows. Through Feb. 25. Lump, Raleigh. The Full Light of Day Group show of artists with disabilities. Through Mar. 6. VAE Raleigh, Raleigh The Future is Female Group show. Through Dec. 31. 21c Museum Hotel, Durham.

Instruments of Divination in Africa: Works from the Collection of Rhonda Morgan Wilkerson, Ph.D. Sculpture and objects used in divination. Through Jun. 7. Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill. Daniel Kariko: Surburban Symbiosis Insectum Domesticus Photography. Through Mar. 1. Nature Art Gallery, Raleigh. Jeana Eve Klein & Anne Hill: Meditative Obsessive Mixed media. Through Feb 29. Horse & Buggy Press and Friends, Durham. Yayoi Kusama: Open the Shape Called Love Solo exhibit. Through Apr. 12. Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill. Law and Justice: The Supreme Court of North Carolina, 1819- 2019 Artifacts, images, texts. Through May 31. NC Museum of History, Raleigh.

Seeing Red Group show of women artists. Feb. 7- 29. Local Color Gallery, Raleigh.

Sydney Steen: Fault Lines Vignettes. Through Oct. 25. 21c Museum Hotel, Durham. Cheryl Thurber: Documenting Gravel Springs, Mississippi, in the 1970s Photography. Through Mar. 31. UNC Campus: Wilson Special Collections Library, Chapel Hill.

A Moving Grove Paintings. Through Feb. 29. Anchorlight, Raleigh.

Matt Tomko Paintings. Through Apr. 12. Mad Hatter Bakeshop & Cafe, Durham.

Cornelio Campos: My Roots Paintings. Through Mar. 12. Durham Arts Council, Durham.

Gifts of Earth and Intimacy Copper works. Through Dec. 31. 21c Museum Hotel, Durham.

Eleanor Mills: Wildflowers of Crested Butte, Colorado Photography. Through Apr. 18. Duke Campus: Lilly Library, Durham.

Toriawase: A Special Installation of Modern Japanese Art and Ceramics Through Apr. 12. Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill.

Compose and Materialize Group show. Through Mar. 7. Durham Arts Council, Durham.

Green Group show. Through Feb. 23. Hillsborough Gallery of Arts, Hillsborough.

Native Places: Drawing as a Way to See Watercolor sketches. Through Feb. 20. Rebus Works, Raleigh.

JP Trostle: Quantum Flux Photography. Through Jul. 14. Durham Convention Center, Durham.

Cosmic Rhythm Vibrations Mixed media. Through Mar. 1. Nasher Museum of Art, Durham.

Abie Harris: Painting Music Through Mar. 1. The Community Church of Chapel Hill Unitarian Universalist, Chapel Hill.

Organized Chaos #1: Geometric Shapes & Patterns Paintings. Through Mar. 10. Triangle Cultural Art Gallery, Raleigh.

Urban Saga Group show. Through Mar. 18. Litmus Gallery, Raleigh.

A Creative Protest: MLK Comes to Durham Through Apr. 5. Museum of Durham History, Durham. Cultures of the Sea: Art of the Ancient Americas Mixed media. Through May. 31. Nasher Museum of Art, Durham.

Mar Hester: Action/ Reaction Photography and origami. Through Feb. 29. Artspace, Raleigh. Horse & Buggy and Friends: Satellite Parrish Street Gallery Group show. Through Apr. 1. Horse & Buggy Press PopUp Shop, Durham.

QuiltSpeak: Uncovering Women’s Voices Through Quilts Through Mar. 8. NC Museum of History, Raleigh. Corey Pemberton: creature, comfort Paintings. Solo exhibition. Through May. 10. CAM Raleigh, Raleigh. Kenneth Proseus: Reasons to Get out of Bed Paintings. Through Mar. 8. Golden Belt Arts, Durham.

AT CAM RALEIGH: The NC Book Festival Book Fair 10am-6pm 2.23

AT KINGS: Sunday Sendoff w/ Jake Xerxes Fussell, JP Gritton, Mesha Maren, M. Randal O’Wain and Daniel Wallace 1pm www.quailridgebooks.com 919.828.1588 • North Hills 4209-100 Lassiter Mill Road, Raleigh, NC 27609

CHECK OUT OUR PODCAST: BOOKIN’ w/Jason Jefferies

To The East Group show. Through Feb. 29. The Centerpiece, Raleigh.

Michelle Brinegar Through Apr. 11. Saladelia Cafe, Durham.

Shelly Hehenberger, Luna Lee Ray, R.J.Dobbs Mixed media and sculpture. Through Mar. 7. FRANK Gallery, Chapel Hill.

AT HQ RALEIGH: The State of Newspaper Journalism, Michael Parker with Jill McCorkle, Cat Warren 11am-4pm

Linda Starr: No Lack Of Color Solo exhibit. Through Mar. 1. Personify, Raleigh.

André Leon Gray: lost lux libertas Mixed media. Through Feb. 25. UNC Campus: Hanes Art Center, Chapel Hill.

Stephen Costello: Places Sculpture. Through Feb. 29. Craven Allen Gallery, Durham.

2.22

Leanne Shapton: La Donna Del Lago Painting and photography. Through Feb. 25. Lump, Raleigh.

AT NEPTUNES: Poetry Under the Sea featuring Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, Eduardo Corral, Tyree Daye, Dorianne Laux and more! 12pm-5pm

3/13

LEAHY 2/20– 2/23 2/22 2/28– 3/1 3/14

THE 25TH ANNUAL PUTNAM COUNTY SPELLING BEE (presented by Pauper Players) BUSTER KEATON’S “SHERLOCK JR.” LIVE SCORE BY TIM CARLESS DEAD MAN’S CELL PHONE (presented by One Song Productions) JOHN JORGENSON BLUEGRASS BAND

Get tickets at artscenterlive.org

Louis Watts: Sequoyaland Drawings. Through Mar. 22. Horace Williams House, Chapel Hill. Michael Weitzman: Natural Beauty Photography. Through Mar. 21. Herbert C Young Community Center, Cary. Jeff Whetstone: Species Complex. Photos. Through Mar. 14. Lump, Raleigh. William C. Wright: New Works Paintings. Feb. 13-Mar. 22. Gallery C, Raleigh.

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C U LT U R E CA L E NDA R

page SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22

Geek Garage Sale We live in an age where it is more possible than ever to accumulate—and accumulate, and accumulate—awesome things. Sadly, we also live in an age where these things might eventually intrude upon our personal space and/or relationships. As a solution, consider trading in some of your geekier items for store credit at Atomic Empire’s Geek Garage Sale. You might wind up using said credit to purchase more geeky items, but hey, life is a vicious circle. —Zack Smith Atomic Empire, Durham Noon–3 p.m., $1

Literary Frivolity PEN America the international network for writers serious about human rights, also knows how to throw down. Kicking off its new PEN America Piedmont Chapter, the nonprofit celebrates the North Carolina literary community with a story slam, a soundtrack by electronic musician Quilla, and a photo booth. Drop by to chat with chapter leader Deonna Kelli Sayed and national outreach coordinator Elly Brinkley to learn more. —Anna Cassell The Pinhook, Durham 6:30 p.m., FREE

Frances Bartkowski An Afterlife. Wed., Feb. 19, 5 p.m. Ahmadieh Family Lecture Hall, Durham. Brandon R. Byrd The Black Republic: African Americans and the Fate of Haiti. Thu., Feb. 20, 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh. Adam Domby The False Cause: Fraud, Fabrication, and White Supremacy in Confederate Memory. Wed., Feb. 26, 7 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs Dub. Wed., Feb. 19, 7 p.m. Golden Fig Books, Durham. Rebecca Hodge Wildland. Tue., Feb. 25, 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh. Mary Stevens Reckford On the Question of Beloved Community: Revisiting W. E. B. Du Bois’s Critique of the Teutonic Strongman. Thu., Feb. 20. 5:30 p.m. UNC Campus: Hyde Hall, Chapel Hill.

American Revolution Lecture Series: Patrick K. O’Donnell $15. Thu., Feb. 20. 7: PM NC Museum of History, Raleigh. Black History, Black Futures Wed., Feb. 26. 6 p.m. Orange County Main Library, Hillsborough. An Evening With Garden & Gun Featuring Maya Freelon $25-$35. Thu., Feb. 20. 5:30 PM CAM Raleigh, Raleigh.

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 23

Readings

Lectures

Happy Hour: Dr. Rachel Greenup Fri., Feb. 21. 5:30 p.m. Vert & Vogue, Durham. Historic Raleigh Trolley Celebrates Black History Month $10. Sat., Feb. 22. 1 p.m. Mordecai Historic Park, Raleigh. Gregory Jones: Family Engagement Summit Sat., Feb. 22. 8:30 a.m. Durham Public Schools Resource Center, Durham. Naming the Crisis: The Language of Human Rights and the Neoliberal Turn Thu., Feb. 20. 5:30 p.m. Ahmadieh Family Lecture Hall, Durham.

Jessica Ingram Road Through Midnight: A Civil Rights Memorial. Thu., Feb. 20, 5:30 p.m. Duke Campus: Center for Documentary Studies, Durham.

Kim Stanley Robinson Fri., Feb. 21, 5:30 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.

Diana Whitney and Kathryn Britton Thriving Women, Thriving World. Wed., Feb. 19, 7 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.

Star Families: African Sky Stories Sat., Feb. 22. 3:30 p.m. Morehead Planetarium & Science Center, Chapel Hill.

Peter Sandbeck: AfricanAmerican Gravestones Sat., Feb. 22. 2 p.m. Masonic Lodge, Hillsborough.

The Monti StorySLAM $12. Wed., Feb. 26. 7:30 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.

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S ER NE CCalendar CC UR LTEU A L E NDA R

film Special Showings

Movies by Movers Focusing a frame on a moving body—either via proscenium or camera—can, in an ironic and exhilarating twist, highlight the ways a body exceeds and break that frame. While dance on film is nothing new, dance film fuses choreography and cinematography to reimagine how we move through space. This weekend, the American Dance Festival’s Movies by Movers program screens a sampling, including Evann Siebens’ The Indexical Dance-a-thon!, a collaged manifesto that circles back to the framing above: why film dance in the first place? —Michaela Dwyer The Nasher Museum of Art, Durham 2 p.m., FREE

Birds of Prey—Irreverent superhero flick about the supervillain Harley Quinn. Rated R.

Pride & Prejudice Sold out. Wed., Feb. 19, 7 p.m. Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh.

Blumhouse’s Fantasy Island—The twisted fantasies offered by a remote tropical resort slowly twist into nightmares—who knew? Lucy Hale stars. Rated PG-13.

Rigoletto on the Lake $12$15. Sun., Feb. 23, 2 p.m. The Cary Theater, Cary. Road House $5. Sun., Feb. 23, 2 p.m. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh.

Cat Video Fest 2020 Feb. 22-23. Marbles Kids Museum, Raleigh.

Showgirls $7. Wed., Feb. 26, 9 p.m. Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh.

CatVideoFest 2020 $10. Sat., Feb. 22, 2 p.m. Carolina Theatre, Durham.

Opening

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon $6. Wed., Feb. 19, 7 p.m. The Cary Theater, Cary.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22

The Phantom of the Opera Tue. 7 p.m., Wed. 7 p.m. $12. Feb. 25-26. Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh.

Cute Fest See full schedule online. $8-$25. Feb. 21-23. Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh. Duet for Cannibals Fri., Feb. 21, 7 p.m. Rubenstein Arts Center - Film Theater, Durham. Fear Of Fear Thu., Feb. 20, 7 p.m. Rubenstein Arts Center - Film Theater, Durham. Five Star Final $7. Wed., Feb. 19, 7 p.m. Carolina Theatre, Durham. Get Out $7. Mon., Feb. 24, 7 p.m. Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh. Hobbit Trilogy, The Lord of the Rings 7 p.m. all showtimes. $9. Feb. 21-Mar. 1. Marbles Kids Museum, Raleigh. My Bloody Valentine $7. Tue., Feb. 25, 9 p.m. Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh. Napoloeon Dynamite $33. Fri., Feb. 21, 8 p.m. Carolina Theatre, Durham. Nightmare Alley, Stranger on the Third Floor $10. Fri., Feb. 21, 7 p.m. Carolina Theatre, Durham.

The Call of the Wild— Harrison Ford shares the screen with a CGI Great Bernard, in this adaptation of the classic Jack London adventure novel. Rated PG. Brahms: The Boy II—Katie Holmes stars in this sequel to The Boy; in this film, a young boy crafts an unsettling friendship with a doll named Brahms. PG-13.

Dolittle—Robert Downey Jr. plays the eccentric veterinarian in this fantasy action reprisal. Rated PG. ½ Downhill— A bleak comedy from a talented team, Downhill is a real conundrum, with some things done very well and others completely botched. Rated R. Ford v. Ferrari—Matt Damon and Christian Bale star in a biographical sports drama about a legendary race. 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.

 Parasite—This Oscar-winning social satire from filmmaker Bong Joon-Ho is crammed with dark twists and intricate metaphors. Rated R. —Sarah Edwards

The Rhythm Section— Blake Lively plays a woman hellbent on revenge after her family is murdered in a plane crash. Rated R.

The INDY uses a five-star rating scale. Unstarred films have not been reviewed by our writers. 1917—Epic war drama about two soldiers tasked with sending a message that could save 1,600 soldiers. Rated R.

Gretel and Hansel— Horror fantasy remake of the fairy tale about two children whose hike goes awry. Rated PG-13.

Bad Boys for Life—Buddy cop comedy about a midlife crisis. Produced by Will Smith. 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.

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 journalist assigned a profile of Fred Rogers,played by a perfectly-cast Tom Hanks. Rated PG.

Like a Boss—Things go awry for raunchy and ambitious duo Mia (Tiffany Hadish) and Mel (Rose Bryne) when things sour with a beauty tycoon. Rated R.

The Photograph—Issa Rae plays the estranged daughter of a famous photographer whose life is turned upside-down by the emergence of a photograph— and by a handsome journalist, played by LaKeith Stanfield, who wants to tell its story. Rated PG-13.

 The Gentleman— Guy Ritchie, the undisputed kingpin of the British gangster film, is back with a high-energy action-comedy. Rated PG-13. —Glenn McDonald

Now Playing

½ Just Mercy— Based on the book of the same name, this film tells the story of Bryan Stevenson, a young lawyer defending a client who is unjustly on death row. Rated PG-13.

Sonic the Hedgehog— Sega’s video game mascot hits the silver screen, now with less-scary teeth and legs after fan outcry over its trailer. Rated PG.  Uncut Gems— Loud and brash, with extreme close-ups and a discordant score ratcheting up the unease, this Safdie brothers flick stars Adam Sandler as a jeweler who places a high-stakes bet. Rated R. —Neil Morris

Jumanji: The Next Level— This adventure comedy picks up where the 1995 flick left off. Rated PG-13.

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C L AS S I F I E D S NOTICES Durham County Board of Elections Notice of Resolution to Adopt a Time for Counting of Absentee Ballots On 1/9/2020, the Durham County Board of Elections met at 201 E Main St., Durham, and adopted a resolution of the following effect: 1. The Board of Elections shall meet at 2:00 p.m. on Primary Election Day, Tuesday, 3/3/2020 at 201 E Main St., Durham (Room 126), to count absentee ballots. 2. The results of the absentee ballot count will not be announced before 7:30 p.m. on the date of the primary/election. 3. The Board of Elections shall meet at 9:00 a.m. on Thursday, 3/12/2020 at 201 E Main St., Durham (Room 126), to count additional timelyreceived absentee ballots prior to the county canvass. 4. Any member of the public may attend these meetings. Notice To Creditors All persons, firms, and corporations having claims against Joyce Wilson Biggers, deceased of Orange County, NC are notified to exhibit the same to the undersigned on or before May 5, 2020, or this notice will be pleaded in bar of recovery. Debtors of the decedent are asked to make immediate payment. This 30th day of January, 2020. Sara M. Biggers Executor, 101 Aberdeen Court, Carrboro NC 27510.

EMPLOYMENT FTCC Accepting Applications Fayetteville Technical Community College is now accepting applications for the following positions: Assessment/ Retention Specialist, Accounting Technician. For detailed information and to apply, please visit our employment portal at: https://faytechcc. peopleadmin.com/. Human Resources Office Phone: (910) 678-7342 Internet: http://www. faytechcc.edu. An Equal Opportunity Employer FTCC Accepting Applications Fayetteville Technical Community College is now accepting applications for the following position: Director of Student Activities. For detailed information and to apply, please visit our employment portal at: https://faytechcc. peopleadmin.com/ Human Resources Office Phone: (910) 678-7342 Internet: http://www. faytechcc.edu. An Equal Opportunity Employer Painters & Roofers Needed! Coating manufacturer looking for companies or individuals to apply coating systems on commercial roofs in North or South Carolina. CALL 740-656-0177

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February 19, 2020

INDYweek.com

Spring Travel Special! 7 Day / 6 Night Orlando + Daytona Beach Vacation with Hertz Rental Car Included. Only $398.00. Call 855-898-8912 to Reserve. 12 Months to use. (AAN CAN)

INDY CLASSIFIEDS classy@indyweek.com

P U Z Z L ES

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.

su | do | ku

this week’s puzzle level:

There is really only one rule to Sudoku: Fill in the game board so that the numbers 1 through 9 occur exactly once in each row, column, and 3x3 box. The numbers can appear in any order and diagonals are not considered. Your initial game board will consist of several numbers that are already placed. Those numbers cannot be changed. Your goal is to fill in the empty squares following the simple rule above.

If you just can’t wait, check out the current week’s answer key at www.indyweek.com, and click “puzzle pages.” Best of luck, and have fun! www.sudoku.com solution to last week’s puzzle

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KeepItINDY.com

2.19.20 February 19, 2020

ESCAPE TO ASHEVILLE EXPERIENCE

THE JAPANESE ART OF

D E E P R E L A X AT I O N

HISTORY TRIVIA: • On February 19, 1921, conservationist and photographer Hugh Morton was born in Wilmington. Morton is best known for developing the Grandfather Mountain. He also worked as a sports photographer at UNC-CH. • On February 22, 1856, the first patient was admitted to Dorothea Dix Hospital in Raleigh. The Romanesque hospital building was designed by Alexander T. Davis, who also designed buildings for UNC-CH. Courtesy of the Museum of Durham History

DANCE CLASSES IN LINDY HOP, SWING, BLUES

PRESEN

At Carrboro ArtsCenter. Private lessons available. RICHARD BADU, 919-724-1421, rbadudance@gmail.com

T H E U LT I M A T E

OUTDOOR SPA

919-286-1916 @hunkydorydurham We buy records. Now serving dank beer.

ASHEVILLE, NC P R I V A T E S A LT T U B S , MASSAGE, WET CEDAR SAUNA, TUB SIDE TEA SERVICE A N D OV E R N I G H T AC C O M M O DAT I O N S

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Happy 16th birthday, Cameron! Love, Mom and Dad

ADVERTISE WITH

Nominations Ballot Now Live VISIT INDYWEEK.COM FOR MORE INFORMATION

NOMINATION PERIOD

February 17 – March 15

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ADVERT I S I N G

Contact advertising@indyweek.com or John Hurld at 919-286-1972

Weekly deadline 12pm Monday classy@indyweek.com

Every year the Triangle votes on yearly favorites from coffee shops to orthodontists. The top nominees in each category make it to the final ballot for voting from March 29 – April 26.

INDY Week 2.19.20

Articles inside

Bobcat Goldthwait’s beef with Seinfeld. BY HART FOWLER

Crowmeat Bob’s musical nervous breakdown. BY HARRIS WHELESS

Meet Yayoi Kusama, high priestess of polka dots. BY MITALI ROUTH

Sister Liu’s makes the best dumplings in the Triangle. BY NICK WILLIAMS

The compassionate jewelry of Mary Ann Scherr. BY SARAH EDWARDS

After a student was raped, Duke Hospital sent the bill collectors after her

A Week in the Life

Raleigh dispatched CACs. Now what? BY LEIGH TAUSS

Voices

Quickbait

15 Minutes

Gray Ellis wants to be the first transgender man elected to a state