INDY Week November 1, 2023

Also inside, p. 17:

The INDY’s 2023 Endorsements: Raleigh | Durham | Chapel Hill November 1, 2023

Durham, Chapel Hill, and Carrboro with clip-out voter guide

Trials and Errors

By Lena Geller, p. 8

Despite the hallmarks of police incompetence and a stunning lack of evidence tying a Holly Springs man to a string of air gun shootings, Wake County prosecutors seem intent on pinning the crimes on him.

Raleigh W Durham W Chapel Hill

Liberty Warehouse hosts the annual iron pour at Durham Central Park on Saturday, November 4. (See calendar, page 30.) PHOTO COURTESY OF

VOL. 40 NO. 32

DURHAM CENTRAL PARK

CONTENTS NEWS 4

Most towns in Wake County have elections next week. In Wake Forest, Rolesville, Knightdale, and Garner, the talking points are all around growth.

BY JASMINE GALLUP

8

A trial riddled with police incompetence and a lack of evidence ended with a hung jury this summer. Why are Wake prosecutors so eager to pin a series of air gun shootings on a Holly Springs man? BY LENA GELLER

14 NC DOT won't approve the Fayetteville Street improvement project, after Durham already awarded a contract for it. BY JUSTIN LAIDLAW 17 Our endorsements in the Durham, Chapel Hill, and Carrboro municipal elections, plus elections for Chapel Hill Carrboro City Schools board. BY INDY STAFF

CULTURE 21 Hammer No More The Fingers quit making music when it stopped being fun.

11 years later, the band is back. BY JORDAN LAWRENCE 23 Years after her big break on America's Got Talent, Duke Student Kaitlyn Maher makes polished pop. BY BRIAN HOWE 24 Thirty years into making zines, artist Jenny Zervakis is still captivated by the weird world around us. BY TASSO HARTZOG

P U BLISH ER John Hurld

26 Sampling Southern gas station fare with Kate Medley. BY LENA GELLER

EDITOR IAL

28 UNC soccer coach Anson Dorrance and his daughter, tap dancer Michelle Dorrance, are both very fast on their feet. BY LAUREN WINGENROTH

Editor-in-Chief Jane Porter Culture Editor Sarah Edwards Staff Writers Jasmine Gallup Lena Geller Reporters Justin Laidlaw Chase Pellegrini de Paur Contributors Desmera Gatewood, Spencer Griffith, Carr Harkrader, Matt Hartman, Brian Howe, Kyesha Jennings, Jordan Lawrence, Glenn McDonald, Thomasi McDonald, Nick McGregor, Gabi Mendick, Shelbi Polk, Dan Ruccia, Harris Wheless, Byron Woods, Barry Yeoman

THE REGULARS 3

30 Culture calendar

Backtalk

CORRECTION In our Backtalk in our October 18 paper, Sammy Slade was referred to as a former Carrboro Town Council member. Slade is a current member of the council.

COVER Adelle Dickson, 55, of Holly Springs, poses for a portrait with a 2020 photo of her fiancé, Henderson Atwater, in her home on Monday, Oct. 9, 2023, in Holly Springs.

PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS

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BACK TA L K

In our October 18 paper, we published a deep dive

by Chase Pellegrini de Paur into the world of Chapel Hill politics and the dynamics driving the upcoming municipal election next week. We also published our endorsements for Chapel Hill mayor and town council, Carrboro mayor and town council, and the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools board (we’re republishing those endorsements again this week, along with our endorsements in Durham’s municipal election, beginning on page 17).

Chapel Hill reader MARGARET MCGUINN had some thoughts about our endorsements, sent along via email: I am deeply disappointed in your staff’s endorsement recommendations for Chapel Hill Town Council, and even more concerned about the rationale you offer. It could have been lifted verbatim from any email sent by the Triangle Blogblog, a notoriously vituperative group, repeating oversimplified and distorted representations of the positions held by Candidates Searing, Adams, Eckhardt, Sharp, and Soll. It also suggests that any supporters of these candidates are “stuck in time,” or could be “stealth Republicans”, and it repeats the unsupported claim that the recent rezoning proposal (and the candidates who supported it) will accomplish housing changes benefitting “students, renters, and public workers.”

There is no factual support for this claim in the experiences of other towns who have tried such a measure. In great contrast to the stated claim, similar rezoning proposals across the country have further facilitated the influx of developers creating very expensive rental units, and leaving towns to deal with the many damaging consequences: unsupported needs for parking, further problems with greater traffic than roads can support, loss of tree canopy, great stormwater runoff, and yes, the destruction of the special character of place that towns like Chapel Hill offer.

Previous letters (from E. Thomas Henkel and Maxkath 21, in the issue of 10/18/2023) outline the misleading and duplicitous allegations concerning PAC money made by the Blogblog and its supporters and candidates. I won’t repeat these here.

Chapel Hill needs to continue to grow, but not in the arbitrary, thoughtless, destructive ways reflected in our recent council decisions. I hope that your readers will inform themselves of the nuanced positions of candidates Searing, Adams, Eckhardt, Sharp and Soll, first, perhaps, by reading their candidate statements, and subsequently by reading the endorsement of CHALT and CHL-PAC. By doing so, voters can learn that development can be accomplished in a thoughtful, responsible, and most important of all, responsive, way.

WANT TO SEE YOUR NAME IN BOLD? indyweek.com

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Wake County

Building Up the ’Burbs Most Wake County towns have local elections this month. In Wake Forest, Garner, Knightdale, and Rolesville, the talking points center around how to grow.

BY JASMINE GALLUP jgallup@indyweek.com

I

n Wake Forest, a growing town on the outskirts of Wake County, Judith Blaine isn’t happy with the way her community is changing.

“There’s a lot of construction going on and a lot of houses being built and a lot of traffic developing as a result of that,” Blaine says. “Some of that is a real issue to lots of people that live here.”

Blaine is one of the many Raleigh residents who downsized once her children moved out of the house. She moved to Wake Forest about eight years ago, but even then, development hadn’t exploded like it has now, she says.

“Part of it is coming from the decisions of the town council to give the leeway for that much development,” Blaine says. “In recent years, [the town council is] more pro-development, and the consequences of that do not appear to be quite as significant [to them]. It’s affecting some areas of town really significantly.”

Blaine isn’t the only person who feels this way. Across the Triangle, longtime residents are worried about the impact rapid population growth is having on the environment, public amenities like roads, and the character of their small-town communities.

Neighborhoods all over Wake County are in flux, and none more so than those in historically rural-suburban towns like Wake Forest, Knightdale, and Garner. As Raleigh’s population shoots up, transplants are spilling out toward towns in search of affordable homes with short commutes. And more roads, shopping centers, and apartment complexes are under construction.

As the election approaches, the biggest questions candidates are facing are how 4

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they will handle growth and development.

In most places, there are two main teams.

First, there are candidates advocating for what they call “responsible growth,” or a slowdown of current growth. Many say they want to preserve the old-school charm or character of their towns, as well as deal with the problems growth creates, such as environmental damage and increased demand for police and fire service.

Second, there are the candidates who advocate for denser development, which they say will help address the housing crisis.

As more people move to towns like Wake Forest and housing becomes unaffordable for some middle- and lower-class residents, they say more apartments, duplexes, triplexes, and quads would help.

But the situation isn’t black and white.

Candidates concerned about the impact new construction will have on the town aren’t necessarily anti-growth. And candidates who support rezoning approvals aren’t necessarily disregarding the cost. Here’s our rundown of the pre-election political ground in four towns around Wake County.

Meet the next mayor of Garner: Buddy Gupton Buddy Gupton, a lifelong resident of Garner, moved to the town as a child in 1958 but still describes himself as a “Johnny-come-lately.”

“I thought I was a regular until I got to know my wife and found out that not only was she at least 10th-generation Garner, but she was actually born on Main Street,” Gupton says with a chuckle. “That made

White Street in downtown Wake Forest PHOTO VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS me feel like a carpetbagger just coming in for the ride.”

Gupton works at a local insurance company, Jones Advisors. This year, his name is the only one on the ballot in the race for mayor.

“It’s a blessing and a curse,” Gupton says.

“It’s a blessing that I don’t have to campaign very hard. … I don’t have to spend any time debating or actively soliciting [votes] or spending a bunch of money. …

But it’s a curse, because it’s a shame that there are not more people interested and in line and eager to serve. In that sense, it’s discouraging.”

On the town council side, three of the five seats are on the ballot this year, with all three incumbents running for reelection. In addition, newcomer Rex Whaley has thrown his hat in the ring, trying to unseat Phil Matthews, Elmo Vance, or Demian Dellinger.

But Garner’s longtime mayor, Ken Marshburn, decided to retire this year. In addition, none of the current council members sought the mayor’s seat—that’s how Gupton ended up stepping to the plate, he says.

“My background is business: working with contractors, local businesses, local families,” Gupton says. “My hobby has been working with the chamber of commerce. I’ve been on the board of directors there for 37 years, and that’s kind of been my civic interest.”

For years, Gupton and other residents hoped more people and businesses would come to Garner.

“Now suddenly, there’s a tidal wave of

incoming stuff. It’s what we wanted, but now the challenge is how to make sure we’re getting not just more stuff, but better stuff,” he says. “Better neighborhoods, better housing, more diversity, better business opportunities, better infrastructure.

There’s going to be more, whether we like it or not. Our challenge is to make it the best we can.”

Gupton says Marshburn and the current town council have “been doing an unbelievably good job.” He’s happy with their updates to the town’s comprehensive plan, which take into account the extension of I-540 and accompanying growth. Looking toward the future, Gupton says Garner needs to beef up its infrastructure, including roads and bus rapid transit.

As far as development is concerned, “we can’t say yes to everything. We can’t say no to everything. We just have to find the best we can do from all sides,” he says. “As a community, we just have to adopt that patience and confidence to push ahead.”

Half a dozen vying for at-large seats in Wake Forest Two members of the Wake Forest Board of Commissioners aren’t running for reelection, so there are guaranteed to be some newcomers on the five-person board next year.

Incumbents Jim Dyer and Chad Sary are stepping down, leaving two at-large seats open for a large field of candidates. An addi-

INDYweek.com November 1, 2023

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tional seat, currently held by Adam Wright, is also on the ballot; Wright is running to retain it. If fresh faces win all three seats, they will also win a moderate majority, possibly leading to some policy shifts.

Among the candidates are Joe Kimray, co-owner of Wake Forest family business B & W Hardware; Jim Thompson, an executive at a consulting firm and former commissioner from 2013 to 2017; Tom Ballman, a city planner and former member of the Wake Forest Planning Board; Ben Clapsaddle, a former candidate for the Wake County school board; and Faith Cross, a nurse, mother of three, and the only woman on the ballot.

Each candidate has their own strategy to manage growth, with approaches ranging from support for high-density development to total opposition to urbanization, according to interviews by the Wake Forest Gazette. (The INDY was unsuccessful in reaching these candidates for interviews.)

Wright, the only incumbent on the ballot, supports staying the town council’s current course: encouraging high-density development along major roads and intersections (per the new land use map), supporting more affordable housing, and negotiating with developers to secure community benefits like sidewalks and moving assistance.

As the housing market calms down, Wright told the Gazette that he believes “this period, marked by high interest rates and a slowing market, presents an opportunity to prioritize infrastructure upgrades to accommodate our growth.”

Kimray and Thompson also advocate for supporting high-density development near transit centers and negotiating with developers to create walkable, self-sustaining communities.

Kimray has said he’s supported devel-

“[We need] to be able to attract and pull in the younger, educated professionals. There just isn’t a home for them here, and they’re the lifeblood of the community.” opments like this, such as Grove 98, and opposed developments that don’t include these types of amenities, such as Devon Square. Thompson mentioned the town council faces a challenge in improving street and sidewalk connectivity.

“Residents throughout town need regular access to our parks and greenways and our downtown core for shopping and relaxing, thus maintaining our small town charm,” he told the Gazette.

Ballman and Clapsaddle take more balanced approaches to growth. Ballman said he supports density but also individual homeownership as a form of building wealth.

In other words, he’d prefer the town support condos and town houses over apartments.

Clapsaddle favors environmental preservation, telling the Gazette that “deviations from the UDO [unified development ordinance] must be the exception and not the rule.”

“Every project and development must include protection of green space, natural streams and waterways, inclusion of sidewalks and multi-use paths and the protection of our tree canopy,” Clapsaddle told the Gazette.

Finally, Cross outright opposes the town council’s current trajectory, telling the Gazette that “with all the recent approvals

The Garner Firemen’s Festival, October 7, 2023 PHOTO COURTESY OF THE TOWN OF GARNER

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of apartments, townhomes and generally higher density development, we are losing our small town charm.” The UDO should be modified to guide development away from urbanization, she added, and “protect the existing neighborhoods and character of the town.”

Mayoral challenge in Rolesville In Rolesville, incumbent mayor Ronnie Currin is facing an unexpected challenge from public school teacher Scott Wagoner, who says he’s “in it to win it.” Wagoner’s decision to run for mayor was last-minute—he kept checking the candidate filings and seeing that there was no one else in the race.

“Putting my name in the hat might have caught Rolesville off guard,” Wagoner says. “I have not been campaigning for years … but since doing it, it has enhanced my desire and my purpose for it. I’m committed to the race.”

“I think I can do better,” he adds. “It’s not about doing different. It rarely is. It’s not a black-and-white situation. I just think I can be what Rolesville needs for the next four [years].”

Wagoner, who moved to Rolesville three years ago with his wife and daughter, currently teaches at Rolesville High School. As a teacher, he’s experienced firsthand the consequences of staffing shortages. The high school is still having a hard time hiring, Wagoner says, because teachers and other middle-class workers can’t afford nearby houses in today’s real estate market.

When Wagoner and his family first moved, “there were houses available, and we could afford them,” he says. “That is no longer the case. It’s been a real struggle that I’ve witnessed.”

Many people who live in Rolesville commute to Raleigh, where they earn larger paychecks, Wagoner says. He wants to attract people who will live, work, and play in the community. “[We need] to be able to attract and pull in the younger, educated professionals. There just isn’t a home for them here, and they’re the lifeblood of the community,”

Wagoner says. “The town’s growing. There’s no stopping it. It’s just, can we shape it in a way where those new neighborhoods feel a part of our town? And they are welcomed and embraced?”

Wagoner says he thinks Rolesville can learn from surrounding communities that have already experienced this kind of growth. He supports the town board’s current efforts to connect streets, sidewalks, and greenways. Wagoner also wants to work with residents to figure out exactly how the town fits into Wake County, as well as give people a stronger sense of place.

“Rolesville [High], already a huge school, is going to get bigger,” he says. “The future of this town and the future of this school need to be connected.”

In addition to the mayoral race, two at-large seats on the town’s board of commissioners are up for election. While incumbent Michelle Medley is defending her seat, Sheilah Sutton decided not to run for reelection.

Two other candidates are also running— business lawyer Michael Paul and Lenwood V. Long Jr., former pastor and now CEO of a nonprofit that supports African American– led community economic development, the African American Alliance of Community Development Financial Institutions.

Nothing changing in Knightdale In Knightdale, the only candidates on the ballot are incumbents. Mayor Jessica Day as well as town council members Stephen Morgan and Ben McDonald are unchallenged this year, meaning the town will likely stay its current course.

Day, the Knightdale Town Council’s first African American woman member, was initially elected to the council in 2017. She served as mayor pro tem in 2019 and was elected mayor in 2021. During her time in office, she’s made significant investments in the town’s fire and police departments, as well as parks and greenways.

Under Day, the town council also adopted Wake County’s antidiscrimination ordinance, created a comprehensive transportation plan, and held its first Juneteenth celebration this year, which thousands of people attended.

Residents seem mostly satisfied with the town’s performance, according to a 2022 survey. On housing, most residents said they were satisfied or very satisfied with the range of housing types; about 33 percent said they were satisfied with the availability of housing options by price; and 42 percent said they were neutral about the quality of the town’s affordable housing programs. W

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Wake County

Trials and Errors Despite all the hallmarks of police incompetence and a stunning lack of evidence tying a Holly Springs man, Henderson Atwater, to a string of air gun shootings, Wake County prosecutors seem intent on pinning the crimes on him.

BY LENA GELLER lgeller@indyweek.com

Piney Grove-Wilbon Road in Holly Springs, where Arianna Evans was shot while driving home from Home Depot.

PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS

I

n a windowless courtroom on the seventh floor of the Wake County Justice Center, assistant district attorney Casey Young is pointing her finger at Henderson Atwater.

“It appears that he has a round head,” Young says. “It appears that he does not have any hair.”

There’s a silence. All eyes are on Atwater, the defendant, who looks calm. He’s sitting next to his attorneys, wearing a dark red cable-knit sweater. Young shifts the focus to his posture.

“Look how low he’s sitting in his chair,” she says. “As he has been all week.”

A toilet flushes pointedly on the other side of the wall. Atwater, who faces two centuries in prison if convicted on all charges, remains slouched.

It’s a Friday morning in August, the penultimate day of his trial. He’s been in jail for two and a half years. His bond is $1.5 million.

A Holly Springs native, Atwater, 47, has been charged in connection to more than 30 air gun shootings in and around his hometown. Nearly all of the pellet and BB gun shootings Atwater is charged with, reported between April 2020 and January 2021, targeted other moving vehicles. Most were drive-bys. None were fatal, though prosecutors argue that some could have been.

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In one particularly gnarly incident, a college student named Arianna Evans was shot in the face while driving home from a shift at Home Depot. The BB was embedded so deeply in her forehead that doctors couldn’t extract it for a week. (They could not, in Young’s words, “simply pop it out like a pimple.”) Had it struck two inches lower, it “could have gone through her eye and lodged itself in her brain,” according to Young.

Seventeen of the charges brought against Atwater were heard in August. After a deliberation period that spanned two days, the jury was hung and the judge declared a mistrial.

But the ordeal is far from over. An additional 20-plus shooting-related charges against Atwater weren’t packaged as part of the August trial. Those charges could be heard in a future proceeding or dismissed.

And Wake County district attorney Lorrin Freeman recently told the INDY that she intends to retry Atwater on the same charges he was heard on in August for reasons that don’t seem entirely clear. Physical evidence is conspicuously lacking, eyewitness accounts are flimsy at best, and the case bears the hallmarks of police incompetence from beginning to end.

Witness testimonies and bits of circum-

stantial evidence link Atwater to a few of the shootings, but the only piece of direct evidence—a clip of municipal camera footage that allegedly shows Atwater, in his car, shooting at downtown Holly Springs storefronts—is nowhere to be found. Two Holly Springs officers say they viewed the footage the month it was captured, April 2020, but didn’t save a copy of it.

Which is why, as part of her closing statement, Young is attempting to tie Atwater’s “round head” to a video police did manage to preserve. Filmed by a security camera mounted up the street from the storefront shooting, the video shows a car suspected to be fleeing the April 2020 crime.

Young pulls the footage up on a projector screen and hits pause when the car comes into frame.

“You’re seeing a male, seated low in this vehicle,” Young tells the jury. “He appears to have a round head and no hair.”

It’s a stretch. The image is blurry and pixelated. The driver’s head is a smudge. The car is a gray sedan, like the Volkswagen Jetta that Atwater drove three years ago, but there’s no make, model, or license plate number visible.

According to Atwater’s cell phone records, Atwater wasn’t even in the area at the time of this shooting.

But the jury never found out about the cell phone records, because the defense attorneys didn’t argue a case.

“I

never thought I’d be a guy who has one of these things,” says William Pruden, pointing at his rolling briefcase.

It’s a Monday evening in September, several weeks post-mistrial. Pruden, Atwater’s lead defense attorney, is bringing me some documents. As usual, he’s fired up.

“If they try this case again,” Pruden says, reaching down to wrestle with a bulging file folder, “many of the key witnesses will be perjuring themselves.” He declines to specify which witnesses he’s talking about.

A former U.S. Army intelligence analyst, Pruden is young, just over 30, and relatively new to the legal field. His military training comes through in his approach to law: he’s industrious, rough around the edges, and convicted to the core, often saying things like “Nobody can change the truth, and you can quote me on that.”

Atwater’s fiancée, Adelle Dickson, told me that sometimes, she doesn’t know who’s more upset about the charges: Atwater or his attorney.

Dickson found Pruden online, using a website called “something like Ask a Lawyer,” she says. Her fiancé had been in jail for

nine months and the court-appointed counsel had barely spoken to him.

When Pruden was contacted about the case, the first thing he noticed was Atwater’s bond—originally $3.5 million—which seemed unfathomably high. Atwater has a record, including a dozen traffic violations, several weapon possession charges, and some missed court appearances. He’d never been charged with a violent crime before, though.

(According to Freeman, Atwater’s bond, which was lowered from $3.5 million to $1.5 million in a reduction hearing, is standard given his priors and the nature of the charges against him.)

I ask Pruden what else jumped out at him about the case.

“Things just weren’t adding up,” he says, pauses, then adds, “I grew up country.”

Translation: he knows his way around a pellet gun.

To prepare for the trial—his first as lead defense attorney—Pruden sought help from a private investigator, a Campbell University law school student, and a professional legal mediator. The mediator, Kate Deiter-Maradei, offered to assist Pruden pro bono after hearing about the case. She describes it as a “Pelican Brief–level frame job,” a reference to the multilayered plot of the John Grisham legal thriller.

Pruden also partnered up with a more seasoned defense attorney, Chad Axford, who did most of the talking in the courtroom.

At the trial, Pruden and Axford got off to a rocky start and never really found their footing. Most of their motions failed. They endured dozens of sustained objections while cross-examining witnesses. Even at times when prosecutors didn’t cut them off with objections, the defense’s cross-examinations were disjointed, as they paused in the middle of questions to rifle through notes.

And they were up against a well-oiled machine.

Based on motions and preliminary examinations that Young and assistant DA Patrick Latour won approval on outside the presence of the jury, jurors heard little that the prosecution didn’t want them to know, and just about everything that they did.

Air guns aren’t toys. Most shootings dented, punctured, or busted the windows out of vehicles, causing hundreds or thousands of dollars of damage. In one incident, a 15-yearold girl was bloodied when a car window shattered into her lap. Evans, the college student who was shot in the face, was also lacerated by window glass. Photos of her injuries and the damaged cars were blown up and exhibited on a projector screen with the courtroom lights dimmed.

On the witness stand, few victims could recall physical attributes of the person who shot at them. Some remembered being passed by an indeterminate sedan. Others hadn’t seen another car on the road.

But temporal and geographic consistencies emerged in their testimonies: most incidents took place in the late afternoon, and all occurred within a small sliver region of Wake County.

Of the nine shootings involved in the charges heard at the trial, eight occurred along a near-continuous route bookended, roughly, by Atwater’s mobile home and the house where his father, Amon Atwater, resides. In maps the prosecutors exhibited, the sites looked like Hansel and Gretel bread crumbs.

One shooting, captured in blurry Ring camera footage, punctured a garage door on Atwater’s street in southern

Holly Springs. Three took place on the road in front of Amon’s house, across the street from Holly Springs Elementary School. Four occurred at points on the seven-mile stretch in between.

The outlying shooting occurred several miles outside the main route, in a rural pocket where the town meets the county line. That shooting, which involves a man named Craig Packer, is the linchpin of the state’s case.

Packer is the only victim who knows Atwater personally. He’s also the only victim who has identified Atwater as the shooter.

Packer lives across the street from a woodsy, uninhabited half acre that Amon owns and Atwater maintains. On the stand, Packer said he’d been friendly with Atwater before the shooting. They’d interacted “a dozen, maybe a baker’s dozen” times.

Sometimes, Atwater used the half acre as a place to shoot pellet guns, drink beer, listen to music, and “act crazy,” Packer said. But the behavior didn’t bother him.

Packer occasionally helped clear garbage off the road that bisects the two properties.

“You know, just trying to be neighborly,” he said.

Then, in September 2020, Packer and his wife were chainsawing branches off trees near their home when

Atwater drove by and shot at them with a pellet gun, Packer said.

“I heard a ‘pew’ sound. And then I heard something come in through the leaves,” he said. “Like, you could hear a projectile ‘tch tch tch’ hitting the leaves. I looked up and saw his little Volkswagen.”

A few minutes later, Atwater came down the road from the other direction. Packer followed him in his truck and Atwater pulled over. They had a back-and-forth.

“I was a little bit mad,” Packer said. “I was like, ‘Why did you shoot at me?’ He said, ‘I didn’t.’”

Packer took a picture of Atwater’s license plate. Then he went home and reported the incident to a Wake sheriff’s deputy.

A

fter Packer phoned in the shooting, though, nothing happened.

Even three months later, in December, when Packer called the sheriff’s office on Atwater again—this time, to report that he could hear Atwater blasting “Smells Like Teen Spirit” late at night—Wake deputies didn’t revisit the September allegations.

Atwater wasn’t arrested until the next year, when Melissa Ottaway, the sergeant leading the shooting case in Holly

KEY LOCATIONS FROM THE TRIAL

HOLLY SPRINGS ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

AMON ATWATER’S RESIDENCE 412 Holly Springs Rd

SHOOTING Holly Springs Rd. near Holly Springs Elementary School SHOOTING Holly Springs Rd. near Holly Springs Elementary School

CAMERA FOOTAGE ASAP Comp & Cell Repair 109B N. Main St.

SHOOTING Holly Springs Rd. near Holly Springs Elementary School

SHOOTING on S. Main St. SHOOTING Pace Yourself Run Co 242 S. Main St.

Holly Springs

SHOOTING Intersection of S. Main St. & Hickory St.

AMON ATWATER’S 1/2 AC LAND PARCEL 7225 Cass Holt Rd

SHOOTING 7228 Cass Holt Rd

This map shows the nine shootings that prosecutors selected to be heard in the August trial. The map does not show all of the 30+ shootings that Atwater has been charged with, some of which took place in other municipalities.

HENDERSON ATWATER’S RESIDENCE 6501 Mims Rd

SHOOTING Piney Grove-Wilbon Rd between Adcock Rd & Duncan Cook Rd SHOOTING 6325 Mims Rd

INDYweek.com November 1, 2023

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TIMELINE OF EVENTS APRIL 14, 2020 Shooting: Three storefronts are shot on South Main Street in downtown Holly Springs.

APRIL 15, 2020 Holly Springs detective Matt Watson gathers security camera footage from ASAP Computer + Repair showing a car fleeing the previous day’s shooting. Based on the footage he watches, Watson identifies the suspect as a young white male.

APRIL 19, 2020 Shooting: A woman’s car is shot while she’s driving near the intersection of South Main Street and Hickory Avenue.

Shooting: A teenager’s car is shot while she’s driving in front of Holly Springs Elementary School.

APRIL 20, 2020 Holly Springs detective Melissa Ottaway allegedly views town camera footage showing Henderson Atwater’s vehicle at the scene of the April 14 shooting. She doesn’t save the footage. Thirty days later, the footage auto-deletes.

MAY 16, 2020 Shooting: Arianna Evans’s car is shot on Piney Grove–Wilbon Road. The projectile comes through the car window and embeds itself in Evans’s forehead.

Springs, came across a listserv post that Packer had uploaded to NextDoor.

Ottaway shared the post with Rich Whitlow, the detective in charge of the county’s investigation into the reported shootings. (Holly Springs and Wake County had separate, concurrent investigations into the string of air gun shootings, as did Fuquay-Varina and Apex).

“In the post, Mr. Packer says he had been shot, chased the guy down, that his name was Henderson, and that Henderson drove a gray VW,” Whitlow wrote later in a supplemental report dated March 2021. “Mr. Packer also provided me a photo he took of Henderson Atwater’s car the day of the incident.”

On January 21, 2021, Whitlow brought Atwater in for questioning on an unrelated matter, a warrant for a failure to appear in court, and invited Ottaway to join.

Atwater waived his Miranda rights and talked to both detectives. The questioning ended up centering around the air gun shootings. He’s been locked up since.

At the trial, Young screens the recording of the interrogation in full. Atwater is shown handcuffed to a table, wearing a T-shirt that says “IT IS WHAT IT IS.” Ottaway and Whitlow tell him, again and again, that they know he’s guilty and have proof.

“We have you on video,” Ottaway says, “in your car, shooting at downtown businesses in Holly Springs. That’s in the evidence. We have that.”

The interrogation is almost an hour long. Jurors grimace and wince throughout. Atwater doesn’t confess to the shootings at any point, though the officers disorient him so ably that about 30 minutes in, he discloses, unsolicited, that he sometimes uses cocaine.

When the screening concludes, jurors glance at each other, confused. There have been multiple references to video of Atwater shooting at businesses that hasn’t been shown.

Ottaway, with a no-nonsense topknot and a gun on her hip, takes the stand to explain.

Soon after the storefront shooting on April 14, 2020, she says, she discovered town camera footage of Atwater at the scene of the crime. She wrote down his tag number but didn’t save the video. Then she became occupied with a different case, she says, a “brutal homicide,” and neglected to follow up with him.

A few weeks later, on June 7, 2020, there was another air gun shooting.

“So I said, ‘Let’s go back and get the video footage from April,’” recalls Ottaway, who has worked for the Holly Spring Police Department for 16 years. “That’s when I learned that our town camera system only has the capacity to store video footage for 30 days.”

There is existing town camera footage that shows Atwater’s license plate in proximity to the June 7 shooting. The footage doesn’t show the shooting itself, though Atwater’s car is one of several on the road at the moment that a victim said her Jeep was shot at.

If police had seen Atwater’s tags in two clips of shooting footage that spring, why didn’t they follow up until the next year?

“We just dropped the ball, I guess,” Ottaway says on the stand. The department, she explains, was overworked and understaffed. It struggled with a multipronged investigation and faltered in the face of technology.

When Ottaway steps down from the stand, Whitlow

JUNE 7, 2020 Shooting: A woman’s car is shot while she’s driving on South Main Street. Town camera footage is saved soon after. The footage shows Atwater’s car as one of several on the road at the moment the victim says the shooting occurred, though the footage does not show the shooting itself.

Shooting: A woman’s car is shot while she’s driving in front of Holly Springs Elementary School.

JUNE 20, 2020 Henderson Atwater is cleared as a suspect by Holly Springs police, who report that his vehicle does not match the car in the ASAP Computer footage. Police also report that Atwater has not been found to be connected to a juvenile.

At the time, the suspect was thought to be a juvenile, as Watson had described the shooter as a young white male after watching the ASAP Computer footage.

JULY 6, 2020 A young white male, Matthew Council, is arrested in Apex for shooting an air gun out of his window at parked cars. The next year, he pleads guilty to discharging a firearm and gets off with a $1,300 fine and no prison time.

(continued on next page)

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A note from the jury to Wake County Superior Court Judge Paul Ridgeway as members were trying to reach a verdict in Atwater’s trial. PHOTO COURTESY OF WAKE COUNTY SUPERIOR COURT

takes her place. After several nudges from the prosecution, Whitlow testifies that no, the sheriff’s office did not make a report when Packer told him he’d been shot at but “should have.”

That’s not good enough for Young: the department “dropped the ball,” she says. Whitlow concedes.

The final piece of the state’s case: on January 22, 2021, the day after Atwater was arrested, a search warrant found a pellet gun in his car, and pellet and BB ammunition in his home. But prosecutors presented no evidence that tied either the gun or the ammunition to any of the shootings.

“I don’t want to sit here and tell you this was the perfect investigation. It wasn’t,” Young says in her closing statement. “But there’s still enough.”

When contacted by the INDY, the Wake County Sheriff’s Office declined to comment on the ongoing case.

In a statement, the Holly Springs Police Department said it was limited in what it could say about the case but emphasized that Atwater’s charges stemmed from a multi-agency investigation. Freeman, the DA, said that “right now, it would be our intent to retry the original charges that the jury hung on, absent some resolution of the case in advance of that.”

In an email, Freeman elaborated on what kind of resolution Atwater could expect as an alternative to a retrial.

Such a resolution would likely hinge on Atwater accepting some level of guilt.

“We have informed [Atwater’s] attorneys that we would calendar a motion to reconsider his conditions of release before the judge who oversaw the trial,” Freeman wrote,

adding that the defense attorneys “have not pursued this relief.”

“We also have invited discussions about a nontrial disposition,” Freeman said.

Pruden is unshaken.

“Nobody should have to plead guilty to something they didn’t do, just to get out of jail,” he says.

P

olice are allowed to lie during interrogations. So when Ottaway and Whitlow were interrogating Atwater and said, a dozen times, that they had a video they didn’t actually have, they weren’t breaking any laws.

But watching them lie repeatedly over the course of an hour didn’t do much to strengthen their credibility.

That’s one of the reasons the defense attorneys decided not to make a case, they told me: they felt that after the interrogation, some jurors likely had doubts about police testimonies. (The INDY wasn’t able to reach any jurors for comment on this story.)

Also, the attorneys wanted the last word, they said.

Forfeiting their right to present evidence and call witnesses enabled them to deliver their closing statement after Young’s.

But the main reason they didn’t argue a case, they said, was because they weren’t particularly prepared.

Pruden says the state withheld a significant amount of discovery—more than one gigabyte’s worth—until several weeks before the trial. Young and Wake DA Freeman both say the defense attorneys received everything they’d requested on time, with the exception of one accidental delay.

The intersection of South Main Street and West Ballentine Street in Holly Springs. Town camera footage at the intersection captured Henderson Atwater’s car in the vicinity of a drive-by airgun shooting on June 7, 2020. PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS

TIMELINE OF EVENTS (continued) SEPTEMBER 19, 2020 Shooting: Craig Packer and his wife are shot at while doing yard work near their home on Cass Holt Road in Holly Springs. Packer reports the incident to the Wake sheriff’s office, identifying Atwater as the shooter. The sheriff’s office doesn’t follow up with Atwater. Rich Whitlow, the detective who led the county’s investigation into the string of air gun shootings, later says that a Wake deputy neglected to make a report about the incident.

NOVEMBER 2, 2020 Shooting: A married couple’s garage door is shot on Mims Road in Holly Springs. Grainy Ring camera footage shows that the shooter was driving a sedan.

DECEMBER 8, 2020 Packer calls the Wake sheriff’s office to report Atwater for a noise violation.

DECEMBER 10, 2020 Shooting: A woman’s car is shot while she’s driving in front of Holly Springs Elementary School.

JANUARY 19, 2021 Ottaway comes across a NextDoor post from Packer. Packer had posted that Atwater shot at him in September 2020.

JANUARY 21, 2021 Ottaway and Whitlow bring Atwater in for questioning on a matter unrelated to the air gun shootings, though the interrogation ends up centering on the shootings. Atwater is detained.

JANUARY 22, 2021 A search warrant finds a pellet gun in Atwater’s car and air gun ammunition in his home. Atwater is subsequently charged in connection to more than 30 shootings in and around Holly Springs.

Over the next year and a half, while Atwater is in jail, at least 11 air gun shootings are reported in Holly Springs, Apex, and Raleigh.

JULY 24, 2023 Atwater’s 19-year-old son, De’Marious McClain, is found dead in the same Wake County Detention Center jail cell Atwater had occupied weeks prior.

The death remains under investigation.

AUGUST 14, 2023 Atwater’s trial begins.

AUGUST 21, 2023 The jury remains hung after six hours of deliberation. The presiding judge, Paul Ridgeway, declares a mistrial. Atwater returns to jail. According to Wake DA Lorrin Freeman, the state intends to retry Atwater on the same charges.

INDYweek.com November 1, 2023

11

Regardless, Pruden and Axford say they didn’t come across some very important materials until July of this year, which caused them to scramble and ultimately leave a lot unsaid in the courtroom. (The final closing statement they wanted so badly ended up being an impassioned 10-minute flip chart presentation. Young’s was an hourlong PowerPoint.)

So here’s the defense’s evidence, most of which the jury didn’t hear.

In June 2020, Holly Springs police dismissed Atwater as a suspect, according to a case supplemental report.

They didn’t think Atwater’s Jetta matched the security footage of a vehicle fleeing the storefront shooting on April 14.

That’s the footage that, at trial, Young said showed Atwater’s “round head.” It was gathered from a shop called ASAP Computer + Repair.

The case report also states that no leads were developed regarding Atwater in June 2020 because “no juveniles/young adults were found connected or closely related” to him.

Police were looking for juvenile suspects at the time because the Holly Springs detective who collected the footage from ASAP Computer + Repair, Matt Watson, had described the driver he saw in the footage as a young white male. (The original footage from ASAP Computer was not saved. At the trial, Watson, who now works as a detective in Lee County, testified that for convenience, he’d gathered the footage by taking a video of it with his iPhone while it played on a screen at the shop.)

According to court records, a case report, and Steve Calcavecchia, an eyewitness who spoke with the INDY, in July 2020, Apex police arrested a young white male, Matthew Council, for shooting a BB gun out of his car window at parked vehicles.

Council pleaded guilty to discharging a firearm and got off with a $1,300 fine and no prison time. It’s unclear to what extent he’s been investigated for the crimes Atwater has been charged with, which occurred in Apex and Fuquay-Varina as well as Holly Springs and the county. Council declined a request for comment.

Freeman told the INDY that she couldn’t comment specifically on Council but noted that Atwater’s trial had been allowed to move forward after “issues raised by the defense in motions” were “taken very seriously” and “reviewed by a court,” and will likely move forward again. When asked about the defense’s allegations of police misconduct, Freeman had the same response.

According to cell phone records, Atwater was located in areas near most of the shootings he’s been charged with— because he lives in town, his attorneys say. But his phone was not pinged around the storefront shooting or the Craig Packer shooting.

In a March 2021 case report, Whitlow stated that the phone records may be inaccurate, as Packer was able to provide a time-stamped photo from the night he was shot at. The photo shows the back of Atwater’s parked Jetta

with a lawn mower sticking out of the trunk. Atwater himself is not pictured.

In a phone call with the INDY, Packer said he thinks Atwater has “done plenty of time for what he did to me.”

But he says he’s confident that Atwater is behind the other shootings too.

“I didn’t cause any of this and I don’t feel guilty from it,” Packer says. “No incidents have occurred since he’s been in jail.”

That’s not true: at least 11 air gun shootings, some of them drive-bys, were reported in Holly Springs, Apex, and Raleigh in the year and a half after Atwater was arrested.

Officials attribute most of them to a TikTok trend.

E

ven without hearing a case from the defense, the jury hits a standstill after three hours of deliberation. It’s a stuffy Friday afternoon. The foreperson, a white woman in

save original copies of two key pieces of video evidence. The defense flailed at trial but emerged without a single guilty charge. Amy Schumer and Kim Kardashian have shared an infographic calling for the charges to be dismissed. The DA remains bent on getting a conviction.

In the middle of all of it is Atwater, who’s back in jail now, grieving.

Three weeks before the trial began, his 19-year-old son, De’Marious McClain, was found dead in the same Wake County Detention Center cell that Atwater had occupied weeks prior. The death remains under investigation and an autopsy report has not yet been released.

Guards were supposed to let Atwater watch a livestream of his son’s funeral, but then they didn’t, Dickson says.

Dickson, a school bus driver, has spent the years her fiancé has been in jail working and undergoing cancer treatments. She’s had two surgeries. Her twin brother and godmother both died right before Atwater was arrested, and the rest of her family lives in Wilmington, so no one’s been around to take care of her.

In early October, I ask her how she’s feeling—hopeful, in limbo, tired?

“Everything,” she says.

She and Atwater have been together for almost two decades. They met in 2005.

Atwater was picking a friend up from work and saw Dickson as she was coming in as shift relief. For weeks after, he kept up the chauffeur bit so he could see her when she clocked in.

Before Atwater was arrested, he insisted on taking Dickson to all of her doctor’s appointments, she says. He did the same for his mother, who also had cancer.

“He knew that if we went to appointments on our own, we would play down our symptoms,” Dickson says. “So he would always come and tell the doctors what we’d been going through. I’d say, ‘I’m fine, ain’t nothing wrong,’ and he’d say, ‘Here’s what’s really going on.’”

“They’re making it look like he’s this cruel person who’s out there hurting people,” she says about the state. “He’s the exact opposite of that.”

After Atwater had been in jail for six months, his mother died. Around the same time, Nicole, the mother of his son, succumbed to a diabetic coma. Then his son died in a jail cell in July, leaving behind three children.

Atwater kept all emotion close to his sweater at the trial except for one moment on the third day, right after Ottaway had undergone a preliminary examination. Atwater asked the judge if he could be excused. Ridgeway said no.

“I need to be excused,” Atwater repeated, agitated. “I need to be excused. It is my right to be excused. I need to be excused.”

Pruden stood up. “Your honor, his son just died,” he said.

Ridgeway frowned and called for a lunch recess. After the break, Atwater apologized.

“Understandable,” Ridgeway said. “Very good. Let’s go back on the record.”

The jurors, lined up outside the courtroom, missed the whole thing. W

“They’re making it look like he’s this cruel person who’s out there hurting people. He’s the exact opposite of that.”

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her sixties, has just come into the courtroom and handed the judge a folded piece of notebook paper.

“If we cannot be unanimous on any count, what happens next?” Wake County Superior Court Judge Paul Ridgeway reads aloud. “What’s the procedure?”

He asks the foreperson whether the same split applies on all 17 counts or if it varies. The latter, she says. Ridgeway recites the Allen charge (“It is your duty to do whatever you can to reach a verdict”) and tells jurors to come back on Monday.

After the weekend and three more hours of deliberation, though, the jury remains hung. More than half of jurors find Atwater not guilty of the Craig Packer shooting. At least three find him not guilty on each of the other counts and won’t budge. It’s a mistrial.

The case is a peculiar one. Deputies neglected to document the most critical eyewitness account. Police failed to

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13

NEWS

Durham

Transit Dreams, Deferred A decision by NC DOT not to approve the Fayetteville Street improvement project, after the city had already awarded a contract for it, leads transit advocates to question whether DOT’s values are really aligned with their own.

BY JUSTIN LAIDLAW jlaidlaw@indyweek.com

The intersection at Fayetteville Street and Umstead Street PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS

D

rive down any major road in Durham and there’s a chance you’re riding on a highway in disguise.

Erwin Road, Roxboro Street, Alston Avenue, Fayetteville Street, Duke Street, Chapel Hill Road, University Drive, Durham–Chapel Hill Boulevard, Holloway Street, Geer Street, Cornwallis Road, Hillandale Road, Hillsborough Road: a huge chunk of Durham’s roadways are owned and maintained by the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NC DOT). NC DOT is responsible for more than 81,000 miles of roads statewide; only Texas’s transportation department maintains more miles of roads than North Carolina’s. Any changes to those roads are subject to NC DOT review before the city can consider adoption.

In September, this tension came to a head.

Members of Durham’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Commission (BPAC), a citizen-led group that advises the city council and board of county commissioners, sent a letter to city and state officials rebuking a recent NC DOT decision to halt an infrastructure improvement project on Fayetteville Street near the interchange at NC-147.

The Fayetteville Street Bike Lane Project would bring new traffic patterns and bike lanes to a half-mile portion of Fayetteville Street between East Main Street and East Umstead Street. It’s part of a group of street redesigns planned throughout the city, totaling eight miles. The largest project, at Stadium Drive and Olympic Avenue, will span 2.5 miles.

“BPAC demands the original and already approved plan for the Fayetteville Street Bike Lane Project be reinstated, that work resume on this project immediately, and that this last-minute reversal be reprimanded by 14

November 1, 2023

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NCDOT,” the letter stated.

But John Sandor, the NC DOT district engineer for Durham, Granville, and Person Counties, says that, despite the fact that the city had done an analysis and provided a design for the Fayetteville Street project as well as bid out the project and awarded a contract, NC DOT never actually gave the city the final approval that was needed to move forward with the project.

“We were very clear up front that [the city’s design] was going to be a challenge,” Sandor says.

Following the letter in September, Sean Egan, the director of the city of Durham’s transportation department, clarified the miscommunication in an email back to BPAC, saying that the issue stemmed from a misunderstanding of NC DOT’s request for more analysis and pressure from the community on the Durham Transportation Department to keep projects on a tighter schedule. The city had already done an analysis of the project and submitted a design to NC DOT. After not hearing back from DOT, Egan says, the city assumed it had the green light to proceed with the project.

“We’ve been really focused on moving our projects forward.”

Egan adds that since there were no outstanding questions or comments from NC DOT’s district or congestion manager on the city’s design for the project, the city moved forward with bidding and awarding the project to NPS Solutions LLC for $499,996. Work on the project was slated to begin this fall.

“We’re not really in a position to wait on every single one of our projects for questions and comments [from NC

DOT] to come forward,” Egan continues. “If we did that, we wouldn’t be able to move our projects and get them on the street. So, in a case like this, NC DOT can always come back and say, ‘We’ve done the additional review, we have checked with congestion management, and they’ve raised objections to doing this.’”

And that’s exactly what happened.

“We never had a version of an analysis that showed that it could work with separated bike lanes without some real traffic issues cropping up,” says Sandor. “There’s just too many cars right there.”

Shared goals, shared values?

Planning for the eight miles of projects started in 2018.

The City of Durham received funding from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) for these projects through a Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) Improvement Program Grant. Sandor says that NC DOT serves a managerial role on many projects like these, collecting and distributing funds to the different municipalities.

“The FHWA has assigned that role to NC DOT to be that proxy to make sure the project gets built properly and those reimbursement dollars come back to the city through NC DOT,” says Sandor. “We essentially bankroll a lot of these projects off our budget, and then the CMAQ grants come in and fill in behind it. So NC DOT is always covering the costs of all these various projects, and then we go and seek reimbursement back from the federal government.”

But the management of those funds was compromised

in 2020 when the state auditor’s office put NC DOT on probation for overspending its budget by 12.5 percent. The department was forced to lay off temporary staff and furlough employees, as well as press pause on hundreds of projects that weren’t already under construction.

In addition, budget constraints and delays due to COVID19 stalled progress on the CMAQ projects planned for Durham. Implementation is finally set to begin this fall on the remaining 7.5 miles of new infrastructure, but now excluding the Fayetteville Street portion.

The BPAC letter argues that NC DOT did not approve the Fayetteville Street Bike Lane Project “due to traffic congestion concerns projected for 20 years from now.”

The letter criticizes NC DOT’s decision not to approve the city’s design on four major points: the cost of a last-minute cancellation to the city; congestion concerns from NC DOT being “not well-founded”; lack of commitment to transportation safety initiative Vision Zero; and more disinvestment in the historic Hayti neighborhood.

BPAC member Mary Rose Fontana lives near the area where the Fayetteville Street project was anticipated. She says folks who bike or walk are forced to look for alternative ways to commute through the neighborhood.

“I don’t even look for places to go on Fayetteville Street, knowing we’re not going to drive there, because it’s not safe,” Fontana says. “It’s a deterrent for people who don’t want to risk their safety.”

Sandor says he acknowledges the group’s frustration. He notes that design standards have evolved significantly since NC-147 was first built but that the original design of the highways makes them hard to accommodate.

“It’s evidence of how things were done in the ’60s,” he says. “If that was built today, we’d have a nice big bridge, nice side paths, it would be great. We’d have everything

out there for everybody, because that’s what we would do today. When that was built, we were lucky to have sidewalks on that bridge.”

Egan is still optimistic that the City of Durham and NC DOT can achieve their overall shared goals around public safety and zero emissions even after the recent miscommunication.

But advocates like John Tallmadge, executive director of the transportation-equity nonprofit Bike Durham, question whether those goals are still aligned.

“There is a choice about what is the priority of the various values that you are trying to achieve with your transportation decisions,” says Tallmadge.

Sandor says NC DOT’s approach is rooted in data.

“We want to see it in analysis,” says Sandor. “One of the things we point to is when someone says, ‘Well if we get rid of this car lane and put a bike lane in, we’ll eliminate those people’s need to take a car because they’ll now be riding a bike.’ Nowhere in this country has that happened.

There’s no research that supports that theory.”

Tallmadge says that folks at NC DOT will have to use a different approach if they want to meet their goals.

“The governor has signed an executive order to achieve zero carbon emissions, and vehicle miles traveled [VMT] reduction is one of the strategies for getting there,” Tallmadge says. “In order to do that, the analyses that are being done for these projects can’t just assume that VMT is going to go up. If you’re always going to accommodate it, you’re not going to achieve those goals.”

Tallmadge was one of many advocates who spoke during this year’s city budget hearings in support of city staff hiring a Vision Zero coordinator. Vision Zero is a nationwide initiative to eliminate transportation-related deaths and serious injuries. The coordinator would work across city

departments to ensure a shared vision for eliminating traffic deaths and improving public safety through infrastructure and policy changes. The Durham City Council included funding for the position when the budget was adopted in June. The coordinator is expected to start in December.

Another option NC DOT has indicated that it would relinquish ownership of the roads to the City of Durham for no up-front cost, says Egan. NC DOT maintains roughly 797 lane miles (total miles multiplied by the number of lanes available) in Durham.

But the yearly maintenance would require more annual revenue from the city’s coffers, which would necessitate raising taxes. According to estimates from the city’s public works department, the costs of maintenance activities over the life cycle would range from $7,000 per lane mile for “rejuvenator” activities to $140,000 per lane mile for repaving. That’s on top of an already-existing $179 million backlog of maintenance requests for current city-owned roads. With the increasing possibility of raising taxes to facilitate other needs like worker compensation and additional staff, the city would have to decide if it has the capacity to own and maintain more roads and whether it is a high priority.

“Funding has not kept up with the level of need from [the city’s public works department],” Egan says. “If we’re struggling to keep up with the streets that we already own and maintain, is it the right way forward to take on additional maintenance responsibility for state-owned roadways?”

With funding at a premium, the transportation department tries to take advantage of opportunities to piggy-

Proposed location for Fayetteville Street Bike Lane Project MAP DATA FROM THE CITY OF DURHAM INDYweek.com November 1, 2023

15

The future of transit in Durham Since the controversial light rail project failed to leave the station a few years ago, the city has been researching ways to bolster other types of transportation services by introducing concepts such as Bus Rapid Transit, which would give buses priority on strategic roadways throughout the city, reducing travel times. Future plans could also include a substation at the Village shopping center in East Durham, where bus ridership is higher than any other stop besides the downtown station.

“We did really extensive community engagement around the Holloway corridor and Fayetteville corridor,” says Egan. “We got a clear understanding of what riders were looking for, and now what they’ve told us is stop bringing us surveys and start delivering 16

November 1, 2023

INDYweek.com

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results that we can see on the ground.”

All the different approaches to transit are on the table moving forward, Egan says.

Durham will have to rely on collaboration with the NC DOT and a strong process for community engagement to ensure all the various stakeholders are represented in the city’s future transportation network.

But it’s not as easy as adding bike lanes wherever residents may want them.

“It’s going to be a whole mix of different things,” Sandor says. “I look at the American Tobacco Trail as such a great project, and Durham’s got the beltline trail coming.

Those are going to be your transformative projects that offer very significant improvements to moving the needle in providing people legitimate options to that very problem as we urbanize and get more crowded and congested.”

The City of Durham and NC DOT are also in the process of reimagining a section of the NC-147 freeway that runs through the heart of downtown. The federal government has made grant funding available to states and local municipalities through the Reconnecting Communities and Neighborhoods Program, an initiative that will improve connectivity “by removing, retrofitting, or mitigating highways or other transportation facilities that create barriers to community connectivity, including to mobility, access, or economic development,” according to the U.S. Department of Transportation website.

Folks in Durham have long cited the construction of NC-147 as the largest contributor to the dissolution of the city’s historic Hayti district back when the freeway was first built.

“The U.S. Department [of Transportation] is looking at the legacy of federally funded highways that were built by bulldozing historically Black and brown residential and commercial districts and the harm that those projects did to disadvantaged communities,” says Egan. “We have a tragic history in Durham of roadway projects that have impacted particularly African American residential and commercial communities. We don’t want to repeat the mistakes of the past.” W

GU

back on other construction projects to meet their needs.

“Anytime a street is getting either torn up for a waterline project or resurfaced by the city’s public works department or NC DOT, it’s an opportunity for us to reconsider the roadway design,” Egan says.

Every year, the city’s transportation department requests a schedule of NC DOT’s planned resurfacing projects so it can research and submit potential redesigns. Road construction projects like these are what Egan calls a “blank slate,” and it’s one of the most cost-effective ways for the transportation department to adopt new design features like bike lanes or even changing a street from oneway to two-way, since the road will already have to be repainted.

The city is currently under contract to analyze Mangum Street and Roxboro Street, one-way streets that flow through downtown.

“Each one of those projects has funding already allocated to put down new pavement markings,” Egan says. ”So if we do some of that concept development and community engagement around changes in design, we basically get all of the construction costs for free.”

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Th e INDY’s 2 0 2 3 E ndorsements: Durham Municipal E lections, Chapel Hill M a yor and Town Council, Carrboro Mayor and Tow n Council, Chapel Hill-Carrbo ro City Schools Board o f Education

By INDY staff

With the primary behind them, Durham voters will choose their next mayor and council members on November 7.

2023 elections Voters Guide

We’re pleased that all of the candidates for mayor and three at-large seats on the city council that we originally endorsed made it through the primary. And we’re standing by our choices.

Durham Mayor

As we wrote in September, Durham is at a crossroads.

leonardo williams

As the city continues to rapidly grow, its most essential workers can no longer afford to live here. With too few homes available for the influx of newcomers, not to mention too few affordable homes for longtime, lower-income residents, the threat of displacement looms large. Local businesses and the city’s downtown core are still struggling to bounce back from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. And the past several years have seen a troubling resurgence of gun violence, especially among the city’s young people.

City Council at Large

nate baker j av i e r a c a b a l l e r o carl rist Chapel Hill

That’s why it feels crucial for voters to elect the right leaders to guide the city forward.

Mayor

Over in Orange County, Chapel Hill and Carrboro have found themselves mired in something like an existential crisis.

Jess Anderson Town Council

Caught between the desires of many residents to see the towns grow, modernize, and expand their tax bases, the pushback from another contingent who would rather see them stay the same has been fierce. It’s a fight between those who would move forward and those who want to go back in time to an idealized version of the past. While the town has made progress in the last few years and seems to be on the right track, that tension persists this election cycle.

Melissa McCullough Theodore Nollert Amy Ryan Erik Valera

On the one side, progressive candidates favor innovations in the fields of housing, transit, community spaces, and commercial development. They understand that homes in Chapel Hill and Carrboro are or are rapidly becoming out of reach for many, including young people, workers, and longtime residents of color, and they see that expanding the built environment is one way to address such disparities. On the other side, there’s a preoccupation with parks and green spaces, of which the towns have plenty and are not in danger of losing, and a complacency about the reality that the area is becoming one that’s unlivable for anyone but the rich. A town can’t be stuck in time.

Without further ado, here are the INDY’s 2023 endorsements for Durham mayor and city council, Chapel Hill mayor and town council, Carrboro mayor and town council, and two seats on the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Board of Education.

Carrboro Mayor

Barbara Foushee Town Council

Catherine Fray Jason Merrill Eliazar Posada YOUR PHOTO ID IS REQUIRED TO VOTE

CHCCS Board of Education

Rani Dasi Barbara Fedders

VOTE HERE

POLLS OPEN 6:30 A.M. - 7:30 P.M. ON ELECTION DAY

INDYweek.com November 1, 2023

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Durham

INDY’s 2023 Endorsements * election day tuesday, 11/07 Mayor

leonardo williams

In his two years on the city council, Leonardo Williams has shown a willingness to learn the ins and outs of city government, a desire to do the job of governing well, and an inclination to hold himself accountable to the residents he represents.

Probably the most accessible of all the council members, if community engage-

ment were a high school superlative, Williams would be voted “most likely to show up” to any event touting the Bull City or highlighting the work of its people. No one gets out and about in the community more than he does.

At the same time, Williams is the closest member the council has to a go-between among various fractious members, alliances, and voting blocs. His cordiality to colleagues, often under trying circumstances, is admirable, even if at times he exhibits a testiness toward certain members of the constituency at meetings and on social media (we’ll chalk that up to his status as a relative newcomer to political life).

Williams’s self-described moderacy and

business-friendly perspective chilled him to progressives two years ago—many of them supported Leo Williams’s opponent, AJ Williams, in the race for his Ward 3 seat—and sometimes those pro-business instincts have worked against Leo (supporting a financial wellness series hosted by the chamber of commerce featuring a seminar on crypto investing was a weird move that won him few accolades, for instance). But, with endorsements from all the major progressive groups this election cycle, it’s safe to say Williams’s former critics have since come around.

We have too, and Williams has earned our endorsement.

State senator Mike Woodard is a solid leader and would bring a different dynamic to a council that desperately needs it. He has years of legislative experience, both on the Durham council (he served from 2005 to 2013) and in the General Assembly. But if his recent voting record is any indication, a progressive Democrat Woodard is not.

Casting votes in favor of promoting charter schools, against more stringent environmental regulations, and against giving cities and counties more local control to self-govern than the minimal power they currently have aren’t choices that align with the values of Woodard’s progressive constituents.

City Council at Large

nate baker

A Bull City native and professional urban planner, Nate Baker has a unique perspective on Durham’s past and potential future.

Baker has served on the Durham Planning Commission since 2018 and has a detailed understanding of the challenges the city faces as it grows. While some find Baker polarizing—he has been a vocal opponent of the controversial SCAD text amendments, for example—his philosophy of “people-centered development” to achieve Durham’s housing and climate goals is conscientious and idea driven.

With endorsements from the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People and the NC Triangle Democratic Socialists of America, Baker has built a coalition across different working-class communities and been a strong supporter of the labor movements in the Bull City.

Baker would be the youngest member of the council if elected. We think council veterans can help guide Baker’s passion for issues such as tackling climate change locally, creating walkable communities and affordable housing, and generating eco18

November 1, 2023

INDYweek.com

nomic mobility for working-class residents into actionable policies.

Although Baker lacks experience as an elected official, his skill set as an urban planner and commitment to progressive causes make him a strong candidate for city council. He’s earned our endorsement.

j a viera caballero

outcome for Durham residents.

Caballero understands the limits of what the city can legally do and the constraints imposed upon local governments by the state, and she’s adept at explaining those realities to constituents. That’s an important skill and one that serves Durham well when it comes to policymaking.

Caballero’s ability to stay focused on good governing and the institutional knowledge she brings has earned her our endorsement for another term on the council.

carl rist

A veteran on the council since she was appointed in 2018 (and elected in 2019), Javiera Caballero has stayed above the fray when it comes to the drama at the dais and behind the scenes.

An independent thinker, Caballero understands the realities around the need for zoning reform to pave the way for more affordable housing. But while generally supportive of new development, she’s not a guaranteed yes vote for any given project. Rather, Caballero seems to consider the merits of proposals on a caseby-case basis, holds high standards for design quality and community benefits, and doesn’t shy away from negotiating with developers for the best achievable

As a nonprofit volunteer for causes that include building affordable housing with Habitat for Humanity to championing the Durham Living Wage Project under the auspices of the People’s Alliance, Carl Rist has a long history of service to the Bull City and its residents.

Over his more than three decades as a Durhamite, Rist has built deep relationships with diverse groups and has shown that he’s capable of building bridges to connect to those whom he’s not yet reached.

A longtime advocate for expanding prosperity and building household wealth in his professional life, Rist understands the connections between securing economic stability and guaranteeing the success of future generations.

“Collegial” and “kind” are words used often to describe Rist, and both are qualities that have been lacking in city hall of late. We think Rist will make a fine addition to Durham’s city council.

INDY editor-in-chief Jane Porter, culture editor Sarah Edwards, staff writer Lena Geller, reporter Justin Laidlaw, and reporter Chase Pellegrini de Paur contributed to these endorsements.

Chapel Hill

INDY’s 2023 Endorsements * election day tuesday, 11/07 Mayor

Jess Anderson

Jess Anderson has done impressive work during her two terms on the Chapel Hill Town Council, and we think she’s the best choice to succeed Mayor Pam Hemminger and continue that work from the top seat.

As a council member, the UNC-Chapel Hill public policy professor was integral to

the town’s adoption of the Complete Community framework, which emphasizes new housing choices, greater greenway and transit connectivity, and people-oriented placemaking. Other successes include negotiating a partnership with Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools to provide spaces for kids for affordable summer camps; advocating for ARPA funding for parks and playgrounds and “a penny for parks” in this year’s budget; and securing affordable housing in addition to preserving green space on the Legion Property in a booming part of town.

An energetic, collaborative leader, Anderson has already served as mayor pro tempore and chaired the town’s Council Com-

mittee for Economic Stability. A proponent of data-based decision-making, Anderson’s background in public policy has guided the council to be more inclusive and transparent in terms of community engagement, and her voting record speaks to a vision that Chapel Hill really should be a town for all and not just the privileged.

Anderson’s opponent, Adam Searing, has done impressive work in his career as a lawyer and lobbyist advocating for expanded health care coverage for North Carolina residents, particularly for children and low-income families. But his first term on the council has been less productive. He's been a no vote on some of the more substantive is-

sues that come before the council, from new housing initiatives to the budget, so we’re not sure what Searing's vision is for Chapel Hill besides preserving neighborhoods and parks and expanding bike trails. And while those are all important, there are a lot of people who feel left out of the conversation.

As an elected official, being responsive to your colleagues and your constituents—all your constituents—is an important attribute that we feel has been lacking during Searing's first term on council.

Chapel Hill needs a leader who will listen to diverse perspectives and work collaboratively to find consensus for the good of all.

We think that leader would be Anderson.

Town Council

Mel i s s a M c C u l l ou g h

T heodore Nollert

Amy Ryan

Erik Valera

A trained ecologist and career-long civil servant who spent more than two decades working for the EPA, Melissa McCullough has years of experience in service to Chapel Hill, too. McCullough has sat on Chapel Hill’s Planning Commission for seven years.

She’s served on the board of the Bike Alliance of Chapel Hill, as a Democratic Party precinct chair, and as a leader of the local Sierra Club. And McCullough helped shape Chapel Hill’s 2020 Comprehensive Plan.

Her comprehensive campaign platform prioritizes housing, transportation, green spaces and the environment, and, importantly, equity and affordability and the town’s students specifically. We think McCullough will make a thoughtful member of the council who’s willing to consider and listen to different perspectives and voices.

A graduate student leader at UNC-CH, Theodore Nollert has stood out this campaign cycle for his earnest desire to improve life in the town for residents, both current and future. Organizing busy graduate students and successfully winning them a pay raise is no small feat, requiring a lot of energy and persistence. We’ve seen that translate in Nollert’s far-reaching ground campaign this fall (knocking on doors on a rainy Saturday morning to talk with future constituents takes dedication).

Nollert currently serves on the town Planning Commission, which sets him up to hit the ground running if elected to council. We also appreciate Nollert’s platform’s inclusion of diversity, noting the work that needs to be done to help the town’s women and minority business owners as well as LGBTQ+ youth. With incumbent Tai Huynh leaving the council, Chapel Hill urgently needs a voice to speak for the young renters that the town should hope to attract and hold on to in coming years.

We hope to hear Nollert’s voice advocating for them on the council.

While we don’t agree with every decision she’s taken on the council—her vote against the expanded housing choices text amendment in June was disappointing, but she said the proposal needed more guardrails—we think Amy Ryan’s knowledge and experience will serve a council well that will see, at minimum, three new members elected. And it never hurts to have an independent voice at the table.

A longtime public servant, Ryan has served on Chapel Hill’s town council since 2019, as well as on its Planning Commission and its Community Design Commission. On council, she’s served on various committees and is adept at communicating the work of the council and its bodies to her constituents.

A champion for the environment, Ryan, a professional writer and editor, brings detailed knowledge of Chapel Hill’s land use and town ordinances to the council chamber, as well as conscientiousness, strong communication skills, and a collaborative approach to governing. We endorse Ryan for another term.

Erik Valera is an executive at El Centro Hispano, the largest Latino-led/Latinoserving organization in the state. An advocate for cultural diversity, Valera serves on Gov. Roy Cooper’s Advisory Council on Hispanic/ Latino Affairs. We appreciate Valera’s reminders that Hispanic/Latino residents and voters are not a monolith—something that can be forgotten in conversions about minority groups.

Valera’s current work on the town's Planning Commission gives him a good understanding of the processes that drive local government, and we appreciate his desire to serve the community by helping Chapel Hill live up to its potential as a leader on climate change.

We support Valera’s bid for council.

Honorable mention: Jon Mitchell

The chair of the Chapel Hill Planning Commission since 2022, Jon Mitchell understands the role growth and development will play in this election and the town’s future. We’d urge readers to give the avid e-biker, regulatory lawyer, and part-time stay-at-home dad a hard look; he’d likely bring a thoughtful, actionable approach to governing to the town council.

INDYweek.com November 1, 2023

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Carrboro

INDY’s 2023 Endorsements * election day tuesday, 11/07

Mayor

Town Council

B a r b a r a Fo u s h e e

C at he rine Fray

Jason Merri ll

Eliazar Posada

She’s running unopposed, but we’re still happy to throw our support behind Barbara Foushee for Carrboro mayor.

In her nearly six years on the town council, Foushee has been a driving force behind race equity initiatives, a community action plan on climate change, zoning amendments related to housing and infrastructure, and improved connectivity for cyclists and pedestrians. This work is reflected most clearly in the town’s adoption of its Comprehensive Plan last year.

We’re confident that, as mayor, Foushee will continue to prioritize community engagement, expanded and inclusive economic development, and affordable housing initiatives.

Catherine Fray has served on Carrboro’s Planning Board since 2012 and was twice elected to serve as the board’s chair. Fray also co-chaired Carrboro Connects, the task force created to implement Carrboro’s Comprehensive Plan, from 2020 to 2022.

We think Fray’s deep knowledge of land use in Carrboro, their professional experience facilitating discussion among disparate groups of people as a software implementation consultant, and their advocacy for LGBTQ+ residents and students will serve them well on the town council.

The former owner of bike repair shop Back Alley Bikes, Jason Merrill spent six years on the Chapel Hill Transportation Connectivity and Advisory Board, where he says he learned a lot about how municipal governments function.

He's a proponent of affordability and housing choice initiatives, increased transit connectivity and access to green spaces, and support for local businesses, and we like Merrill’s specific focus on the town’s opportunity to grow the Bolin Creek Greenway. We think Merrill will make a great addition to Carrboro’s town council.

One of the youngest members on the town council, we support reelection of Eliazar Posada.

The founder of a consulting firm that works with nonprofits and other grassroots organizations, Posada is the son of migrant farmworkers and the former president and CEO of the state’s oldest Latino organization, El Centro Hispano.

Posada’s work on the council has included overseeing the adoption of Carrboro’s Comprehensive Plan, advocating for zoning reform and greater connectivity, and championing the 203 Project. We want to see Posada’s good work in the areas of affordable housing, equitable public transit, and equality for all residents continue on the council.

CHCCS Board of Education The Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Board of Education did an admirable job this year prioritizing pay raises and benefits for the district's teachers and staff. But it could use some new leaders willing to test fresh, innovative ideas and expand the district’s equity lens as the achievement gap between white students and students of color persists. In short, it needs leaders with vision.

Prioritizing students' mental health, incentivizing staff to stay and support teachers, and creating community partnerships will be key to the district's success in the coming years, as will continuing to support the superintendent.

There are four open seats on the CHCCS Board of Education, but this year, with 13 candidates in the running, we feel informed enough to endorse only two candidates for these seats. Here are those recommendations.

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R ani Dasi

teams, and her professional experience as the director of corporate finance for nonprofit RTI International speaks well to her ability to pursue investment goals in the annual budgets.

We endorse Dasi for another term.

Barbara Fed der s A member of the CHCCS board since 2015, Dasi, a former chair and vice chair, has championed higher pay for teachers and staff during her tenure and overseen implementation of the district’s five-year strategic plan. She advocates for partnerships between the district and community stakeholders, reinstating teacher fellowships, investing in facility improvements, and investing in mental health resources.

Dasi has put her time in as a CHCCS volunteer, with PTAs and school improvement

Barbara Fedders is a UNC-CH law professor who, as director of the law school’s Youth Justice Clinic, works with law students to advocate on behalf of court-involved young people who are in need of resources and support.

Fedders’s vision for education in the district transcends test scores, and she emphasizes the importance of fostering students’ social and emotional well-being, encouraging their willingness to take risks, and growing their appreciation of cultural diversity as key to a well-rounded education.

A commitment to ensuring equity and promoting safety and well-being are the twin pillars of Fedders’s campaign platform and she has actionable ideas around how the district can achieve these goals. Fedders’s connection to the LGBTQ+ community, too, will ensure that there’s a powerful voice on the board for queer and trans students, whose identities and rights are under attack at the state level.

We strongly endorse Fedders.

INDY Editor-in-chief Jane Porter, reporter Chase Pellegrini de Paur, and INDY contributor Kirk Ross participated in the process of making these endorsements.

M U SIC

HAMMER NO MORE THE FINGERS: SILVER ZEBRA

Trinity House Records | October 23

Hammer No More the Fingers band members Duncan Webster, Jeff Stickley, and Joe Hall.

PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS

Another Beat Eleven years after their last album, Hammer No More the Fingers are having fun again—and it shows.

BY JORDAN LAWRENCE music@indyweek.com

T

he most striking thing about Hammer No More the Fingers, which is back with a new record for the first time in 11 years, is how little the band has changed.

The Durham trio of Duncan Webster, Joe Hall, and Jeff Stickley is still defined by colorfully muscular guitar and bass and lithe drumming that wind around each other with a deft and energetic chemistry that could only come from musicians who have a close bond as both friends and collaborators. Their music still exists somewhere in the ether between fist-pumping radio rock, digested by fans of such titans as Red Hot Chili Peppers and Foo Fighters, and cerebral indie rock complexities, befitting a band that originally emerged, back in 2007 with a self-titled EP, just as Triangle luminaries like Superchunk and Polvo were returning after their own long absences.

The group’s vibe is still fanciful, carefree, and somewhat jock-ish—reflected by the title of new album Silver Zebra

and a graphic released ahead of it that features a basketballing zebra with six balls and six arms. Naturally, it wears a jersey bedecked with the trio’s long-standing hammerand-hand crest.

The band’s lyrics also still find a way to balance that approachably offbeat aesthetic with the looming specter of more serious feelings.

“Stacks of smoke are swallowing the air,” Webster, the bassist, murmurs to open “Motorcycle Man.” “The old district stands above my lair / I fell into the Lucky Strike tower / On a punji stick on raw power.” There’s a sense of dread and recoiling at the changing landscape of Durham here, lending menace to the mirth as the band ramps up and wonders if there is “madness in the eye of Motorcycle Man.” That Hammer reemerges without missing a beat, presenting a more honed version of the fun and impactful rock band they were before, makes sense when you consider

how the band got here: they stopped making music when it stopped being fun, and returned to recording when the fun finally returned.

Sitting on Webster’s porch, sipping bourbon on an early fall evening, they remember how a particularly disastrous out-of-town run pointed them toward stopping the band at the height of its original powers.

From 2009 to 2012, they were as hot as any act in the Triangle, following up the all-killer, no-filler debut fulllength Looking for Bruce with the more evolved Black Shark in 2011 and the more psyched-out EP Pink Worm a year later. They pushed themselves on the road, too, frequently filling the majority of their weeks with out-of-town runs, trying to link up with like-minded bands that could help them build a network and audience.

But like many popular local groups, Hammer didn’t enjoy the same rapturous reception out on the road that it received at home.

“It was specifically a weekend of shows we played in Atlanta and Athens, and each show had a total of two people,” Webster recalls. “We were playing in Atlanta, and there were some people in the room, and they walked out.”

The band returned to Durham. Initially, they tried to resume their grind of practicing often and getting back on the road, but when it came time to rehearse, their hearts weren’t in it. Drummer Stickley suggested that maybe they should take a beat to consider whether all the road-dogging was worth it.

“I was pissed at first,” guitarist Hall says. “I was upset to slow it down. But then, like the next day—‘Yep, that sounds right.’”

The band didn’t entirely go absent, continuing to play sporadic local gigs, sometimes in back-to-back spurts.

Hammer will return to that two-night release celebration format this week, playing an “Underwater Party Museum”– themed Friday show at Durham’s Rubies on Five Points and returning to the venue on Saturday for a “Metallic Safari” outing.

In the last decade and change, band members settled into regular jobs and less nomadic lives (as the group discussed the new album with me recently, Webster’s two INDYweek.com November 1, 2023

21

little girls were inside the house). They also moved on to other musical projects— Webster at the fore with the indie-pop duo Beauty World and lending support in the band Organos, and Stickley backing Hall as the guitarist wrote and sang his own songs as Blanko Basnet.

The last couple years, Hammer started to feel renewed momentum in its local gigs, pulling healthy crowds with an enthusiasm they felt might even outstrip the excitement of their initial run. They decided to use their show at the Pinhook this spring as a chance to work on and debut new music. Their spark rekindled, and the material came together quickly, with the band playing seven of the 10 songs that ended up on Silver Zebra that night.

The remarkable concision of the album is one aspect that does point to Hammer’s time away from releasing music. The grooves and verses are wound tighter and punchier than ever, with the trio getting in and out of each song quickly and efficiently before snapping into the next. Opener “Underwater Party Museum” is a scant 1:23 and no song lasts longer than 2:57, resulting in a brisk 22-minute run time.

The time away from making music as a group sharpened their perspective on what was necessary and what wasn’t. The result is as thrilling as any music Hammer has released.

“Do we need to repeat that? Do we need to repeat anything?” Stickley recounts of the writing process. “Let’s not prolong.

Let’s not bore anything. If the point gets across, then there’s no need to make anything one beat longer than it needs to be.”

Hammer, which has always been in a somewhat tenuous position as to which audience to market itself due to its existence between traditional rock worlds, doesn’t have plans to return furiously to the road. Nor are they all that concerned with being experts on new music and how they fit within it—when the INDY points to how the new album’s brevity, rock-forrock’s-sake approach and silly-but-heartfelt vibe could put them in line with 100 gecs and other similar acts, they say they aren’t aware of the ascendant Missouri duo but they’re excited to check them out.

“I would love personally to keep this energy that we have currently going so that we can do another record before the next 11 years,” Hall says. “It’s still fun to think about playing some bigger stage, so to speak. But that, personally for me, is not the driving motivator.”

Stickley agrees.

“We’re fighting,” he says, “to stay together and play and have fun and be friends and enjoy everything.” W 22

November 1, 2023

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se). They projects— e-pop duo ort in the king Hall his own

M U SIC

KAITLYN MAHER: WHEN DID WE GROW UP?

Self-released | Nov. 3

mer startn its local an enthustrip the ey decidhook this nd debut , and the with the ongs that ght. he album to Hammusic. The BY BRIAN HOWE music@indyweek.com ghter and getting in efficientxt. Opens a scant han 2:57, n time. music as ective on asn’t. The don’t remember much from when I was Hammer four years old. My résumé was very thin back then. But Kaitlyn Maher’s memory and o we need CV both begin at four. counts of It’s 2008, and a host is handing her a prolong. microphone. He tells her to go to the X oint gets marked on the stage, and she runs into the make any- floodlights, her pink bows flouncing. Fifteen ds to be.” years later, she can still see it all so clearly. been in a “I absolutely booked it to that X,” says to which Maher, now a 19-year-old Duke student o its exis- who is about to release When Did We Grow k worlds, Up?, an album of polished yet personal pop iously to songs with a country finish. “I was so tiny, oncerned and it seemed so much larger than life, and and how all these people looked so happy.”

DY points Of course, you too can see it clearly: it rock-for- was on national television. The host was ut-heart- Jerry Springer, the show was America’s Got with 100 Talent, and the song Maher cooed was say they “Somewhere Out There.”

Missouri The audition propelled her to the top 10 hem out. of season 3, abetted by her adorability in keep this the judge interviews: “Are you from New going so York?” “I’m from America!” efore the Actually, she was from Northern Virginia, ill fun to where her family had gotten a surprising stage, so email from the show after uploading a clip or me, is of Maher singing “Happy Birthday” on YouTube, still a fairly new platform and not yet the viral machine it would become. The clip y togeth- was only meant to reach a family member e friends in Canada, but it also caught the eye of a casting director at NBC.

Sing, Memory Fifteen years after America’s Got Talent, Kaitlyn Maher takes stock of the extraordinary childhood she’s leaving behind on When Did We Grow Up?

I

Kaitlyn Maher PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS “My dad was really skeptical of the email because it just seemed so unlikely,” Maher remembers. “So he called NBC and said, ‘Hey, I think you have a child predator impersonating one of your casting directors.’ And they said, ‘Oh, Mr. Maher, yes, we would love to have her come and audition.’

He was just flabbergasted.”

She recalls her parents asking her if she wanted to do it, warning her that it might be a little scary. “I was so excited. I wanted to do it so badly,” she says. In New York, the spell of uncanny unlikelihood went on as she passed Broadway-caliber talents in round after round. She sang “When You Wish upon a Star,” “What a Wonderful World,” “Beauty and the Beast,” and “I’ll Be There.”

“It was big, but it wasn’t scary,” she remembers. “I look back and think, ‘Oh, that was just a cute little kid on stage, and people love that.’ But that was the thing I have always taken away from that whole experience: I loved seeing people be happy when I would sing.”

After AGT, Maher started getting screen and voice roles in movie franchises like Disney’s Santa Paws and touring internationally.

“My parents were always very vocal that if I ever stopped liking it, I could just finish whatever I had already agreed to do,” she says. “And I think that because there was no pressure, it always was just such a fun hobby for me.”

To accommodate her show biz career, she was homeschooled until she decided she wanted to go to high school, which turned out not to resemble the “idyllic experience” portrayed in the kinds of movies she had been acting in. But she found new ways to excel, particularly on the USA Debate team. She won a national tournament just before she came to Duke, where she is majoring in public policy with a minor in musical theater.

In the lockdown days of COVID, Maher was busy with school and online debate, but opportunities in the entertainment industry became scarce, and she was entering the acute transitional phase of leaving home for college. She processed it by writing the wistful yet tart songs that compose When Did We Grow Up? It’s technically her second album, if you count the one she released when she was five, the year after AGT, but as a singer-songwriter, it’s her first. Drawing on her industry connections and studio familiarity, she hired a producer and session band in the D.C. area to record it, and an unexpected sound emerged.

Lead single “Good Friend Salary” is an Olivia Rodrigo–style kiss-off but with pop-country twang instead of alt-rock crunch, and the standout “Silver Line” is Shania-sharp. As you’d expect of a precociously seasoned performer, Maher’s singing has grown clear and strong, and her

language skills are reflected in her crisp vernacular writing. (“Silver Line” begins, “It’s 7:00 a.m. in the morning—I know that was redundant, I’m sorry.”)

Overall, the album is suffused with the sense of someone measuring the distance between an extraordinary childhood and an unwritten adulthood; paths branching into entertainment and public policy, from that fleeting, liminal vantage just between them. The title track, on which her father sings backup, is especially poignant, with its textured nostalgia tugging back against the prevailing drive to expand, learn, and grow.

In a clip viewed tens of millions of times, Maher will always be four and running toward that X. Perhaps now, with a whole field of Xs before her and no one telling her where to go, she wishes she could have gone a little slower. It’s complicated, growing up.

“It’s me chronicling that bridge between childhood and adulthood,” Maher says of the album.

“It’s this push and pull between feeling ambitious and chasing these future aspirations while also wanting to stay in the past with what is known. The album is vulnerable in the sense that it showcases the parts of me that have been more wary and reticent. Being on the cusp is exhilarating, uncertain, scary—all of the emotions.” W INDYweek.com November 1, 2023

23

A RT

Lines of Thinking Thirty years into making her attentive, idiosyncratic zines and comics, Durham artist Jenny Zervakis is still captivated by the weird world around us.

BY TASSO HARTZOG arts@indyweek.com

Jenny Zervakis in her kitchen, where she often works on comics. PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS

J

ohn Porcellino still remembers his first encounter with a Jenny Zervakis comic.

“It must have been 1991, when Jenny sent me the first Strange Growths,” he says, eyes glazing over as he reconstructs the scene. “I had my stack of mail, and I was leaning on the doorway flipping through it. I opened up the envelope with her zine in it and just read the whole thing cover to cover.”

Porcellino, an award-winning cartoonist and creator of King-Cat Comics, saw something in Zervakis’s stories that he couldn’t find elsewhere. Although things had changed since the heyday of R. Crumb, alternative comics in the 1980s and ’90s were still something of a swaggering boys’ club. Zervakis’s art, on the other hand, had a “poetic, understated feel.”

“She still has this element to her work, even all these years later,” Porcellino says, “of rawness combined with subtlety.”

Zervakis, who was raised in the Chicago suburbs before making her way to Durham for graduate school, is still writing and drawing, 30-something years and two kids later.

Her most recent zine, Love and Other Crack-ups 2, debuted at Durham’s Zine Machine festival in October. (This newest zine, along with Zervakis’ other work, is also available on the comic distribution website Spit and a Half.)

Zervakis has attended Zine Machine annually since its inception in 2015; as we spoke at her table, the Fruit—a former produce warehouse that’s been converted into a multipurpose event space—buzzed with printed-matter enthusiasts, arms and tote bags overflowing with books, zines, and comics. Zervakis, a self-described introvert who 24

November 1, 2023

INDYweek.com

likes people, beamed.

Although Zervakis loved comics as a kid—Archie, Jack Kirby’s superhero stories—she never imagined making them herself until, living in Chicago after college, she was introduced to autobiographical comics like Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor. Soon afterward, Zervakis discovered a community of like-minded zine-makers, linked by a publication called Factsheet Five that Porcellino calls the “internet for zine people.”

“My big revelatory thing was not only that I could do this myself,” Zervakis says, “but also that people were interested in exchanging and reading my comics.” She began sending her zine Strange Growths to addresses around the country; one of them belonged to Porcellino, who would, in 2017, help Zervakis collect several years’ worth of her early comics into a book published by his distribution service and press, Spit and a Half.

Zervakis’ new zine, Love and Other Crack-ups 2, returns to the years before she began making comics.

“I’d been cleaning out my attic,” she says, “and I found a big box of my old journals.” They spanned her college years and were, to her surprise, “actually pretty fun.” The resulting zine, about “first love and things breaking,” consists of photocopied selections from those journals alongside freshly drawn comics. She assembled it ’90s style, without a computer.

Zervakis’s drawings are loose and unfussy. Unlike the prototypical alternative comic artist who stockpiles specialized pen nibs and obsesses over the minute matters of

craft, Zervakis prefers photocopy paper and ballpoint pen.

But that doesn’t mean her art is elementary—far from it.

“There’s almost a ghostly quality to a lot of her imagery,” says Rob Clough, a comics critic, editor, and publisher at Fieldmouse Press who’s been friends with Zervakis since the late ’90s.

For Clough, the two defining characteristics of Zervakis’s comics are their observational acuity and their “total sincerity”—both of which are on display in the new zine, which centers on a tempestuous summer trip to Europe.

Her sharp eye and sincerity align in a love for watching weird strangers: “The old lady on the train is cleaning her fingernails with a knife,” she writes with utter nonjudgment in Love and Other Crack-ups 2.

Like a DIY version of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Zervakis’s zines deal with in-between states, uncomfortable transitions, and struggles for self-knowledge. Instead of drawing on mythical subjects, though, Zervakis examines the material of her own life. “Her stories are all anecdotal, except they’re all meaningful—about being human,” Clough says. Zervakis’s preternatural sensitivity extends even to the apparently inanimate. “When you look at a plant,” she tells me, “sometimes it looks happy or sad.” And in her drawings, it’s true. Faces, trees, radiators—everything swells with emotion, even though it’s not always clear what kind. This sensitivity runs in the family.

“Everyone in my family is an artist in some form or another,” Zervakis says, including two older relatives who worked as commercial artists, though her parents discouraged her

from following the same path. “Our mother was like, ‘Of course you won’t do this as a career.’”

Zervakis has both abided by and resisted her mother’s advice: she has a PhD from Duke and a day job as a psychologist but has also been making zines and comics for 30 years.

It is no surprise, then, that one of Zervakis’s favorite poets is Wallace Stevens, who refused a professorship at Harvard because accepting it would have meant giving up his job at a Connecticut insurance company.

At last month’s Zine Machine festival, Zervakis was selling prints of a Stevens poem, “Gubbinal,” that she’d turned into a comic.

“You know,” she told me, “some of his coworkers didn’t even know he was a writer.”

Zervakis, too, flies under the radar. “She’s extraordinarily modest,” Clough tells me— all the better for observing what’s around her. “The stories I do are about Durham and the people who live in it,” Zervakis says, adding, “Durham used to be a little more eccentric.” In a 1991 issue of Strange Growths, for example, Zervakis illustrates a strange Friday night she spent at a Durham police station after her boyfriend was pulled over.

In the waiting room, while another woman talks about why she quit playing field hockey, Zervakis notices two men dressed in per-

fect cowboy outfits; they also happen to have “the tiniest feet I’d ever seen.” One of them asks Zervakis if she wants company: “It seemed,” she notes wryly, “like he was propositioning me in a police station.”

When deciding on a place for us to meet, Zervakis told me that Parker and Otis was the first location that came to mind, before she remembered that three years ago, soon after its original building was purchased by a multibillion-dollar real estate investment firm, the restaurant moved out of the quirky Brightleaf location she loved. Zervakis and I met instead on more familiar ground: a picnic bench beneath a stand of oak trees on Ninth Street.

She might be most at home in a version of the city that doesn’t exist anymore, and she might still be making zines the old-fashioned way, but as Clough remarks, her art “still feels incredibly fresh.” Love and Other Crackups 2 is a compelling blend of the old and the new—a retrospective that manages to look forward, too. (The zine ends, “To be continued.”) Zervakis makes it clear that comics are not a money-making venture—printing is expensive, and putting together a zine takes considerable time. On top of that: “I just hate making photocopies.” Why keep making zines then?

“It’s still important to me,” Zervakis says.

“I still like to tell stories and have people read them.” W

“My big revelatory thing was not only that I could do this myself but also that people were interested in exchanging and reading my comics.”

Raleigh's Community Bookstore

EVE N T S

IN-STORE

Wildacres Writers Workshop Poets

MON 11.6

7:00 PM

IN-STORE

James Patterson & Mike Lupica, 12 Months to Live

IN-STORE

Keeper of the Lost Cities Fan Gathering Featuring crafts, prizes, activities and more!

Featuring Steve Cushman, Alana Dagenhart, Michael Gaspeny and Arthur Russell

SUN 11.12 1:30 4:00 PM

IN-STORE

­

­

IN-STORE

Katherine Snow Smith Stepping on the Blender

IN-STORE

TUE 11.14 7:00 PM

Jenny Zervakis holds up an old journal.

PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS.

Get tickets to these events and others at www.quailridgebooks.com www.quailridgebooks.com 919.828.1588 • North Hills 4209-100 Lassiter Mill Road, Raleigh, NC 27609 FREE Media Mail shipping on U.S. orders over $50 INDYweek.com November 1, 2023

25

FO O D & D R I N K

KATE MEDLEY: Thank You Please Come Again: How Gas Stations Feed & Fuel the American South | The Bitter Southerner; October 2023

Fueling Up Talking with photojournalist Kate Medley about how Southern gas stations mirror their communities.

BY LENA GELLER food@indyweek.com

K

ate Medley likes to eat lunch at gas stations.

She developed the habit in the early 2000s, soon after she’d started her career as an itinerant photojournalist covering politics and social justice in the American South. Her work takes her to small communities where lunch options are often limited. Between fast food and whatever the local gas station has on offer, she says, the latter is the way to go.

Medley’s first foray into professionalizing her lunch routine was in 2012, when she photographed and coauthored an INDY story about gas station food in the Triangle. After the story was published, Medley, a Durham resident who grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, continued the project, eventually landing a book deal with The Bitter Southerner.

Her decade-long journey culminates this month with the release of Thank You Please Come Again, a hardcover collection of photos capturing 75 gas stations—“filling stations,” as Medley calls them—across 11 southern states.

While food is a focus in Thank You Please Come Again— mouthwatering depictions of a sushi restaurant tucked inside a Han-Dee Hugo’s had us hightailing to Apex—the book isn’t a guide to eating along the interstate. Some of the stations in Medley’s images have closed. BMW Pit Stop, for instance, a gas station that Medley photographed in Moon Lake, Mississippi, shut down several years ago.

But the photos of BMW Pit Stop—one of which shows a handwritten note taped to the door reading, “If you need something and we are closed please call Kevin, I’ll come right over and get it”—will still tell you a whole lot about the culture in Moon Lake. Through Medley’s loving eye, we get a look at how gas stations can function as mirrors of their surrounding communities, and we see what’s lost when they shutter.

To mark the book’s release, the INDY sat down with Medley to discuss her photography, her time on the road, and her research into the history of gas stations.

INDY: How did you decide which gas stations to visit and photograph?

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Lu Xuyng (on left) at Nana’s Fastfood and Seafood in Charlotte, NC PHOTO BY KATE MEDLEY MEDLEY: A lot of the time, there was just something in my gut that caused me to pull off the road. In retrospect, I primarily visited independently run gas stations. Some of them were affiliated with corporate oil companies, but they were usually locally owned. There was sort of a framework of “If the head of marketing isn’t behind the cash register, then I’m gonna move on.”

I was always looking for a sign of the human hand. That’s a terrible way of putting it, but, like, I was looking for a sign of a person’s touch. At one of the first places I stopped, there was a cascading row of hand-painted signs out on the highway. There’s something about the imperfections of a hand-painted sign—it’s like a language to me. You start looking for the person behind it.

in other places, too. One of the taxidermy images in the book is from Heritage Grill in Durham.

It’s definitely a subculture within Southern gas stations.

Hunters will stop by in the morning to fill up their thermos of coffee or get a sausage biscuit. Then they’ll go kill deer. Then—in Hurdle Mills, for instance—they’ll bring the deer back for processing at the gas station. So these places will put trophy photos on the wall or hang the deer heads on the wall.

I did notice a lot of handwriting in your photos.

This is a book about the working-class South. It’s a book about the people who keep the South in motion, literally and figuratively. These businesses are run by workers, and their customers are largely workers.

It’s one of the greatest art forms. It points directly back to a person: how the person is feeling that day, where the person comes from, what the person’s vision for their business is. So handwriting was always a big initial draw for me.

Then you get inside, and you see the little pieces of Saran wrapped cake at the cash register. You see a bulletin board with signs for a lost dog or some wacky class. You see all these reflections of the community.

A lot of the places you stopped at had taxidermy on the walls. Is that common? Or were you seeking it out? I don’t know that I’ve seen taxidermy in a gas station before.

There’s a lot of taxidermy in the Florida Panhandle. But it’s

You also took a lot of photos of workers. Some are posing, but most are shown in their natural state. It’s refreshing to see pictures of service workers who aren’t being forced to smile.

Talk to me about how gas stations have evolved over time.

It used to be very common for gas stations to have full-service mechanics. That was their economic driver.

Today, we see much less of that. You see a lot of these places, especially in more economically depressed areas, ripping out the gas tanks and just going with convenience store and food offerings. So that’s one aspect of things.

We’re also seeing a lot of emerging foodways happening in the backs of these places. The majority of gas stations in

the United States are run by immigrants. I would love to see a Master’s thesis charting the population shifts in the United States by way of gas station food.

There’s a great spot in the back of a BP in Raleigh. It’s an old lunch counter that’s now a taqueria. And they have really good food. I mean, they hand-make the tortillas.

I went there 10 years ago for the INDY story, and then I went back six months ago.

There’s no signage, and they don’t speak English, and there’s a line out the door at lunchtime. They are getting the workers of central Raleigh through the workday.

How did people typically react when you would come in and start taking photos?

A lot of them were confused. There was a place I visited in Cameron, North Carolina.

It’s just a regular gas station. The owner told me that on Friday nights, there are like 100 people in there, because it has all these pool tables in the back. But I was there on a Tuesday morning or something, when it was empty.

I asked him, “Hey, would it be OK if I took a few photographs?” He’s like, “Yeah, sure.”

Then he stands and watches me from the corner while I’m doing my thing. Afterwards, he was like, “Why is this interesting?”

I asked how people reacted to you in part because your book frames gas stations as homey and welcoming, but I think for a lot of people, especially for women and people of color, if you’re traveling alone in an unfamiliar place, stopping at a gas station can be kind

of … scary? I mean, you just don’t know how you’re going to be perceived until you walk in.

What you’re saying takes me back to my research of these spaces in the 1960s.

Black travelers had guidebooks and familial connections to guide them through networks of gas stations that were literal safe havens. And those stations had to function as more than just a place to get gas, because they were so few and far between.

They had to be the rest stop. They had to be the place to get hot food.

This book would be very different if it were photographed by anyone else. There were some places I didn’t feel comfortable stopping. And there were other places where I did stop, but where it was very evident to me that my presence as a white woman—for instance, in an all-Black community in the Mississippi Delta—was jarring for people. Taking pictures for this book was not worth unsettling people. So sometimes I would sort of read the room, buy a cup of coffee, and hit the road.

What’s the best thing you ate along the way?

I’m still thinking about a Cajun banh mi I got outside New Orleans. It was divine.

Closer to home, in Greensboro, there’s an amazing Senegalese restaurant inside a Circle K. It’s called Saint Louis Saveurs. They serve hamburgers and chicken nuggets, but the whole rest of the menu is Senegalese food: jollof rice, okra soup, etcetera.

The space used to be a Dunkin’ Donuts.

When you open the door, you still pull on the big D handle. W

Bestof theBest of the

Triangle

 For the first time ever the INDY Best of the Triangle Reader’s Poll is going County vs. County! The winners of Wake, Durham, and Orange/Chatham Counties are competing to determine the Best of the Best of the Triangle 2023!

VOTE

NOW!

The Gizzards and Livers Store in Wilson, North Carolina. PHOTO BY KATE MEDLEY INDYweek.com November 1, 2023

27

E TC.

Fast on Their Feet UNC’s Anson Dorrance is the most successful women’s college soccer coach in history. His daughter Michelle is one of the world’s foremost tap dancers.

Their callings have more in common than you’d think.

BY LAUREN WINGENROTH arts@indyweek.com

UNC Head Women’s Soccer Coach Anson Dorrance poses for a portrait with his daughter, Michelle Dorrance, a tap dancer and founder of Dorrance Dance, at Dorrance Field. PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS

W

hen people find out that Michelle Dorrance, one of the most influential and sought-after tap dancers and choreographers in the world, is the daughter of famed UNC-Chapel Hill women’s soccer coach Anson Dorrance, it usually doesn’t take long for them to suggest that she might’ve inherited the fast footwork from her father.

They’re about half-right: Anson may have 22 national championships with his Tar Heels (who are currently vying for their 23rd), but Michelle’s mother, M’Liss, a former professional ballet dancer and the cofounder of the Ballet School of Chapel Hill, also deserves credit.

And while agility may be the most visible thread connecting the passions of the Dorrance family, it’s not the only common ground that tap dance and soccer share. Soccer has its own kind of rhythm, and tap can be competitive.

“Tap dance is, at its core, an improvisational form that lives in battles, and trading, and one-upmanship,” Michelle says, “trying to create an idea that’s rooted in what the other person just executed, and taking it to a new place.”

Those connections are on display in a new video for Carolina Performing Arts’ (CPA) Artists are Athletes/Athletes are Artists series, featuring Michelle alongside one of UNC women’s soccer’s most creative players, senior midfielder Sam Meza.

Earlier this year, the first video in the series had former UNC star point guard Caleb Love and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater performer Michael Jackson Jr. leaping through the air side by side.

“There is a disconnect sometimes between the arts and athletics, when in fact they’re both about coming together for a shared experience,” says CPA executive and artistic 28

November 1, 2023

INDYweek.com

director Alison Friedman. “What I hope to do with these videos is to build bridges and show that there are parallels; there are similarities.”

The short films, just a few minutes long, premiere at halftime of a game and then live on social media. Recruiting Anson and Michelle next was obvious, says Friedman, between the family connection and “the intricacy of the footwork; the percussion of the taps and the kicks,” she says. It was obvious to Michelle, too. As soon as she saw that first one on Instagram, she had a feeling: “We’re next.”

O

n a soccer field lit like a stage, Michelle and Meza stare each other down; an implicit sportsmanlike challenge that seems to acknowledge that, though they’re on Meza’s turf, they’re equals.

As the video flips back and forth between the pitch and the stage, where Michelle’s taps are more at home, the two playfully mimic one another’s movement with dizzyingly nimble steps, each of them relaxed yet precise; intense and inventive.

It isn’t just the innate similarities between soccer and tap that make Michelle and Meza so simpatico in their physicality. It’s also Michelle’s deep understanding of the game, cultivated not only through years of watching her father’s teams but also through her own youth career as a soccer player, which continued through her freshman year at New York University—despite the fact that her prodigious dance career also began at a young age.

Michelle, who now lives in Brooklyn and whose speech patterns mirror her dancing—quick, rhythmic, sometimes

surprising—grew up studying multiple forms of dance at her mother’s studio. It became obvious early on that she particularly excelled at one of them, able to rattle off crisp, complex tap sequences that shocked her teachers and led her to progress to the studio’s most advanced level as an elementary schooler.

By age 8, she was touring the world with the prestigious North Carolina Youth Tap Ensemble (then called the Children’s Tap Company). By the time she was a teenager, she’d worked with a laundry list of tap icons. All the while, she was dividing her time between the studio and the pitch, playing on club teams, and darting from rehearsal to practice and back.

“I really loved the game,” Michelle says. “There’s something about doing things in community that pushes the core of who you are. You’re really fighting for something that is bigger than yourself.”

Though Michelle thrived on footwork drills and ball handling, it was clear to both her and her father that she wasn’t destined for soccer greatness. (Growing up, when journalists would ask her if she planned to play for her father one day, she liked to respond, “Is your daughter going to be a reporter?”)

She was “quick,” she says, but not “fast.” “Put me in a sprint, and I’d be in the last third of the team. I was a sweeper, but as soon as speed became a major factor, I couldn’t be the last one before the keeper.”

Anson and M’Liss’s parenting style was intentionally hands-off, neither of them pushing Michelle toward their respective activities. M’Liss, in fact, encouraged Michelle to quit ballet in high school, as her time was limited and

“I watched my dad champion women’s sports, and it has everything to do with the way I see myself in my own field.” she struggled with the flexibility and grace required for it—though, she did, of course, love petit allegro for its small, quick jumps.

“My wife and I are so accustomed to parents who go overboard with the talent of their children,” Anson says. “And we weren’t going to be those parents.” Early in Michelle’s career, the Dorrances found themselves at the Bessie Awards—the Oscars of the New York City dance world.

“Our kid wins,” says Anson, “and we turned to each other and said, ‘You know what?

Maybe she’s actually pretty good.’”

“Pretty good” understates Michelle’s artistry and skill as a tap dancer and choreographer. (In addition to that Bessie, she’s won a MacArthur “Genius” Grant, a Doris Duke Fellowship, and much more.) But it’s probably a fair assessment of her soccer skills—even if she was good enough to make NYU’s Division III team.

“I really can’t believe that I played my freshman year,” she says. “I went to NYU to educate myself, but I came to New York City to tap dance. But I don’t regret it, I loved my team.”

It wasn’t long after quitting the NYU soccer team that Michelle was chosen by legendary tap dancer Savion Glover to join his company in 2001. From there, her career exploded—a four-year stint in Stomp off-Broadway, the Bessie Award, and then a shift toward choreography that has established her as one of tap dance’s leading innovators, known for forging unexpected collaborations, experimenting with sound and technology, and bringing tap onto new stages and into new spaces.

You could say that the drive to not just excel in her field but to push it forward is a trait Michelle inherited from her dad, too. Though he’s probably best known for developing and popularizing the physical, attacking style of play that has come to define the U.S. Women’s National Team, which he coached from 1986 to 1994, he also claims to be the first coach to use the language of dance to describe soccer movement. (It’s now common to hear patterns on the field described as “choreography.”) Still, Anson is adamant that, aside from playing the drums in high school, he doesn’t share in his family’s creativity.

“I identify more with the warriors on my

team than the artists,” he says. “Part of the spine of any great soccer team is to have the warriors win the ball for the artists.

Basically, we carry the piano to the stage, and then we let the artists take over and actually play it.”

“I want arts to be everywhere,” he goes on. “I really regret that I have absolutely no talent for them. Have I not enjoyed my athletic life? No, I have loved every second of it. But I’d love to be able to play an instrument, I’d love to be able to sing, and I’d love to be able to dance.”

M

ichelle still has deep ties to her hometown. Her company, Dorrance Dance, will perform its Nutcracker Suite at CPA on December 13, and she’s a reliable presence at the annual NC Rhythms Tap Festival. This year, though, she’s been back in Chapel Hill more than ever.

“Are we going to win this year or what? I’ve been flying down for games,” she says. She laments that she missed out on getting a “23 in ’23” T-shirt—her father’s team is currently seeking its 23rd National Championship and is ranked third in the country at 10-1-8.

Though still consistently one of the best teams in the NCAA, winning used to be more of a given for Anson’s Tar Heels. From 1982 through 2009, there were only eight years in which the team didn’t win the National Championship.

“I want them to win this year—I want them to win every damn year,” says Michelle.

“And my generation is used to us winning constantly. But this is my dad’s dream for the women’s game, that it is this hard.” She recalls watching the first Women’s World Cup in China, at age 11, and how little people paid attention to women’s sports then.

“I watched this dream come true,” she says. “I watched my dad champion women’s sports, and it has everything to do with the way I see myself in my own field.”

It is perhaps a dream fulfilled, too, that Michelle found something both distinctly her own and yet so connected to her parents. “A lot of the things I gravitated towards loving in both of my parents’ forms have such a deep relationship with the thing that I fell in love with so quickly in tap and could execute as a young person, which is incredibly quick footwork,” she says. “Footwork, to me, is music.” W

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TRY INDY CLASSIFIEDS! Email classy@indyweek.com or sales@indyweek.com for more information INDYweek.com November 1, 2023

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C U LT U R E CA L E NDA R

LIKE TO PLAN AHEAD?

THURS 11/2

WED 11/1 MUSIC

SCREEN

MUSIC

Boys Like Girls: Speaking Our Language Tour $37+. 7 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.

NCMA Matinee: Black Orpheus $7. 2 p.m. North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh.

The Deep Creeps Halloween Party $10. 8 p.m. Kingfisher, Durham.

Dicks: The Musical (SingAlong) $10.50. Various times.

Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh.

Charles Latham and the Borrowed Band / Jessie and the Jinx / The Yardarm $5. 8 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.

Vince Herman Band $25. 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Dusk / Cameron Stenger / Alycia Lang $12+. 7:30 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

COMMUNITY Public Birds of Prey Tour $10. 11 a.m. Piedmont Wildlife Center, Durham.

Rob Scheps/Jim O’Connor Quintet $25. 8 p.m. Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.

Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue $46.50+. 8 p.m. Carolina Theatre, Durham.

FRI 11/3 MUSIC

MUSIC

Yumi Zouma / Chelsea Jade $20. 8 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.

Hammer No More the Fingers: Album Release Party - Night 1 $12. 8 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.

The Conjure and Queer Agenda Present GIRLS ROOM $10. 11 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

STAGE

Lil Uzi Vert: Pink Tape Tour 2023 $55+. 8 p.m. PNC Arena, Raleigh.

Hammer No More the Fingers: Album Release Party - Night 2 $12. 8 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.

Beyond Stones: A Reconsideration of the Inca Built Environment, Stella Nair 5:30 p.m. Murphey Hall, Rm. 116, Chapel Hill.

University Theatre Presents: What We Grew Up With $12. Nov. 2-5. 7:30 p.m.

Kennedy-McIlwee Studio Theatre, Raleigh.

Rayland Baxter / Flyte $25. 8 p.m. Haw River Ballroom, Saxapahaw.

Theatre Raleigh in Concert: Norm Lewis $35+. 8 p.m. Theatre Raleigh, Raleigh.

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INDYweek.com

Zoe & Cloyd $30+. 6:30 p.m. Stewart Theatre, Raleigh.

STAGE

BEYOND FEAR: Burlesque Variety Show to Benefit Victims of Domestic Violence $15. 6:30 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

Paul and Ian’s One-Man Show Presents Dalibor Petru’s Intercom $10. 8 p.m. Shadowbox Studio, Durham.

Old North State Storytelling Festival Nov. 3-4. 7 p.m. The Cary Theater, Cary.

ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE

Hayden James $25. 9 p.m. The Fruit, Durham.

STAGE

Hush Hush: Comedy Based on Secrets from the Audience! $8. 9 p.m. Mettlesome Theater, Durham.

Sing-along of Dicks: The Musical screens at Alamo Drafthouse on Wednesday, 11/1. PHOTO COURTESY OF

SAT 11/4

Queer IRLS

nhook,

the lease

on Five

SUN 11/5

TUES 11/7

WED 11/8

MUSIC

MUSIC

MUSIC

STAGE

MUSIC

John Hoppenthaler: Night Wing over Metropolitan Area 2 p.m. North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh.

The Durham Symphony Presents A Night with Tchaikovsky $35. 7 p.m. Carolina Theatre, Durham.

ZOPA / Dolly $25. 8 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.

A. Savage / Sluice $18. 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

ART

Hip Hop South Series: The Underground Collective Presents Respect the Producer $10.75+. 7 p.m. CURRENT Artspace + Studio.

ART

Jennifer Koh $10. 7 p.m. Baldwin Auditorium at Duke University, Durham.

Jeremy “Bean” Clemons Jazz Trio $8. 9 p.m. Kingfisher, Durham.

Funny Girl $24+. Nov. 7-12. Various times. Durham Performing Arts Center, Durham.

PAGE

John R. Miller / FERD $20. 8 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.

uit,

ewart

Art-n-Soul Market 12 p.m. Mystic Farm and Distillery, Durham.

wbox

MON 11/6

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The 7th Annual Liberty Arts Iron Pour 4 p.m. Durham Central Park, Durham.

-Man libor

CULTURE CALENDAR

FIND OUR COMPLETE COMMUNITY CALENDAR AT INDYWEEK.COM/CALENDAR

COMMUNITY 2023 Walk in Their Shoes 5k Walk/Run to Benefit the Homeless Community in Durham 9:30 a.m. Southern Boundaries Park, Durham.

Glassblowing with Cotton Swab Rob 7 p.m. Durty Bull Brewing Company, Durham.

STAGE Neptunes Comedy November: Zak Toscani $12. 6:30 p.m. Neptunes, Raleigh.

Yard Act $22. 8 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.

New Scholarship on the U.S. South: A Wilson Library Fellows Symposium Nov. 7-8. Various times.

Wilson Special Collections Library, Chapel Hill.

COMMUNITY Barbecue and Jazz with Mystic Bourbon $75. 6 p.m. The Willard Rooftop Lounge, Raleigh.

COMMUNITY Beautiful Together Fall Fest $25. 12 p.m. Beautiful Together Animal Sanctuary, Chapel Hill.

The Durham Art Guild 75th Anniversary Party and Market Nov. 4-5. 10-4 p.m.

Brightleaf Square, Durham.

Living Future Saturday: Krop and Wright $16. 1 p.m. perfect lovers, Durham.

Yard Act performs at Motorco Music Hall on Tuesday, Nov. 7.

PHOTO COURTESY OF MOTORCO

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C U LT U R E CA L E NDA R

THURS 11/9

LIKE TO PLAN AHEAD?

FRI 11/10

MUSIC It Had to Be Snakes / Year of October / Megayacht $7. 8 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.

Mary Lattimore / Rosali $20. 8 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.

Reporting in China and Egypt: Finding Stories from the Nile to the Yangtze 5:30 p.m. David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Duke University, Durham.

ART

Sweet Dream / White Toledo / Wild Love $15. 8 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.

STAGE A Case for the Existence of God $20. Nov. 9-19. 7:30 p.m.

Mettlesome Theater, Durham.

SAT 11/11

MUSIC

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MUSIC

MUSIC

Emo Night Brooklyn $17. 9 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.

SJ Sindu in Conversation with Karen Tucker: The Goth House Experiment 6:30 p.m. Letters Bookshop, Durham.

Al Strong $4.62. 11 a.m. Carolina Theatre, Durham.

The Durham Symphony Presents A Night with Tchaikovsky $35. 7 p.m. Carolina Theatre, Durham.

High June / Icarus Airline / Phoenix Theory $10. 7 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.

ART

Moonlight in the Garden $5+. Nov. 9-11 and 16-18.

5:30 p.m., JC Raulston Arboretum, Raleigh.

Mamis & the Papis and Party Illegal Present: Moodboard $5. 10 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.

Neo-Psychedelia: The Nature of Things Unstable Nov. 10–March 2024. 5 p.m.

CAM Raleigh, Raleigh.

Paint and Cheers: ChatGPT-Inspired Art Making 6 p.m. The Nasher Museum of Art, Durham.

Nick Lowe feat. Los Straitjackets $40. 8 p.m. Haw River Ballroom, Saxapahaw.

Off-Grid: A Painting Exhibition Opening Reception 6 p.m. Peel Gallery, Carrboro.

Adulting: Shallow Cuts Edition $10. 7 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.

Club 11:11 Disco, Funk, and House $11. 10 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

STAGE Golden Age $8. 9 p.m. Mettlesome Theater, Durham.

Paula Poundstone $20+. 8 p.m. Carolina Theatre, Durham.

SCREEN To Kill a Tiger $5.59. 5 p.m. The Cary Theater, Cary.

ART John Beerman’s Seen and Unseen: Paintings of North Carolina and Normandy Nov. 11–Jan.6. 5 p.m. Craven Allen Gallery and House of Frames, Durham.

Nick Lowe feat. Los Straightjackets perform at Haw River Ballroom Friday, Nov. 10. PHOTO COURTESY OF HAW RIVER BALLROOM

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November 1, 2023

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SUN 11/12

Patrick Yim, Violin 3 p.m. Nelson Music Room at Duke University, Durham.

Sun June / Runnner / Greg Freeman $20. 7:30 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

ART Family Day: A Portrait of Gratitude 1 p.m. The Nasher Museum of Art, Durham.

FIND OUR COMPLETE COMMUNITY CALENDAR AT INDYWEEK.COM/CALENDAR

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.

MON 11/13

TUES 11/14

MUSIC

MUSIC

Rosie Tucker $15. 8 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham

Billy Raffoul, Lucy Gaffney, The Indiana Drones $15. 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro

STAGE Peppa Pig Sing-Along Party $29.50+. 6 p.m. Durham Performing Arts Center, Durham

Candlelight: Featuring Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and More $40. 6:30 p.m. Hayti Heritage Center, Durham

SCREEN The Quiet Epidemic | Film Screening and Panel Discussion 6:30 p.m. Carolina Theatre, Durham

Rosie Tucker performs at The Pinhook Monday, 11/13 PHOTO COURTESY OF THE PINHOOK

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CLASSIFIEDS

Best Best

www.regulatorbookshop.com

720 Ninth Street, Durham, NC 27705 10-6 Daily

su | do | ku

this week’s puzzle level:

© Puzzles by Pappocom

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.



For the first time ever the INDY Best of the Triangle Reader’s Poll is going County vs.

County! The winners of Wake, Durham, and Orange/Chatham Counties are competing to determine the Best of the Best of the Triangle 2023!

RECYCLE THIS PAPER If you just can’t wait, check out the current week’s answer key and previous puzzles at indyweek.com/puzzles-page.

Best of luck, and have fun!

HEALTH & WELL BEING

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EMPLOYMENT Salesforce Developer Teleflex LLC seeks a Salesforce Developer (SD-SA) in Morrisville, NC with telecommuting permitted to perform all advanced impact analysis regarding change mgmt relative to custom code & integrations & be responsible for tech documentation of all advanced configuration & code aspects of the Salesforce system.

Reqs BS+2 yrs exp. Email resume to: tfxjobs@teleflex.com. Must ref job title & code.

Software Engineer WiseTech Global (U.S.), Inc. seeks a Software Engineer (SE-YZ) in Chapel Hill, NC: Participate in Test Driven Agile development & contribute to open-source tools.

MS deg req’d. Telecommuting permitted. $110,365/ year. Mail resumes to WiseTech Global, Attn: Allison Cash, 40105 Moring; Chapel Hill, NC 27517. Must ref job title & code Classroom Teacher Classroom Teacher sought by Envision Science Academy in Wake Forest, NC. Min. Req. Bach’s deg or equiv in Edu, + 2 yrs of elementary classroom teaching exp. Reqs valid NC teaching license. Resumes: Charles Fuller, 590 Traditions Grande Blvd., Wake Forest, NC 27587. No Calls. EOE.

VOTE NOW!

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November 1, 2023

INDYweek.com

INDY CLASSIFIEDS classy@indyweek.com

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CLASSIFIEDS EMPLOYMENT

EMPLOYMENT

Network Security Engineer.

Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings in Durham, NC seeks an Network Security Engineer to design, implement, & support our network security enterprise.

Collaborate w/ architects, engineers, & administrators to ensure reliable, high-performance technology environment. Can work remote. Reqs MS+3yrs or BS+5yrs exp.; To apply, send resume to: labcorphold@labcorp.com ; Ref #231003.

Principal Technical Program Manager Principal Technical Program Manager, Veradigm LLC. May teleco frm US & rept to Raleigh, NC offce. Devel & own execut’n stratgy for reg & compliance progs. Reqs Bach in Info Sys, Mgmt Info Sys, Hlthcare or rel sci/ hlth field or equiv. Reqs 5 yrs progressiv med/ hlthcre tech exp to incl 5 yrs: stndrd & structrd med terms; mng tech integrat’n & prog deliv timelines; customr collab; QA test; site reliablty & outage mgmt; multi-tenant Cloud; data anlys; mkt & sales to establsh core msg, value props & pricing; SaaS/Cloud Comput; SW dev prog mgmt; Rel DBs; APIs; 4 yrs: med bill rules & wrkflows; HIPAA rules & guid; EHR compliance & cert progs. M - F, 40 hrs/wk. Apply: Send resume to: applicants@veradigm.com & ref job #110243.

Data Measurement & Reporting Advisors Data Measurement & Reporting Advisors (Raleigh, NC) Collaborate w/ SMEs for Specialty & Dental Solutions, implmt reporting solutions that meet needs. Gather internal/external data & create data layer in Hadoop & AWS cloud in Redshift & Teradata vantage d/base. Reqs MS in CompSci, Comp & Info Sys, or rltd & 2 yrs IT exp (or BS in CompSci, Comp & Info Sys, or rltd & 5 yrs IT exp). Resumes to Cigna-Evernorth Services Inc. at: Jay.Mummadi@Evernorth.com Sr. Data Architect Sr. Data Architect at Truist, F/T (Raleigh, NC) Define & doc the tech’l architecture of the data warehouse, incl the physical components & their functionality. Derive infrastructure system specs from business reqmts, dsgn solutions that support core organizational functions, & ensure their high availability & other performance goals. Must have Bach’s deg in Comp Sci, Comp CIS, or related tech’l deg + 8 yrs of progressive exp in IT positions performing/utilizing the following: s/ware dvlpmt & s/ware dsgn architecture; Big Data expertise in Hadoop MapReduce HDFS, Pig, Hive, Flume, & HBase; implmtn of Spark (in Scala & SQL); RESTful microservices w/ Spring Boot, Swagger, Eureka & Zuul; building & maintaining DevOps Continuous Integration pipelines; utilizing exp w/: Kubernates, AWS, & Azure; & mentoring less exp’d teammates/ dvlprs. In the alternative, employer will accept a Master’s Deg in Comp Sci, Comp CIS, or related tech’l deg + 6 yrs of exp in IT positions performing/utilizing the aforementioned. Position may be eligible to work remotely but is based out of & reports to Truist offices in Raleigh, NC. Must be available to travel to Raleigh, NC regularly for meetings & reviews w/ manager & project teams w/in 24-hrs’ notice. Apply online (https://careers.truist.com/) or email resume w/ cvr ltr to: Paige Whitesell, Paige.Whitesell@Truist.com (Ref. Job R0080580) Expert Software Engineer Expert Software Engineer, Practice Fusion, Inc. May teleco in US & rept to Raleigh, NC offce. Desgn, code, test & doc at exprt lvl in areas of hlthcare SW devel & maint. Reqs at least Bach in Comp Sci/Comp Engg/ rel/ equiv & 7 yrs progressiv SW devel/SW engg exp incl 7 yrs: C#/Net; ASP.NET/REST; code write & code review; WCF; OOAD; T-SQL-SQL Server DB schemas & stored procedrs; Visual Studio. M-F 9a - 6p. Apply: resume to: applicants@veradigm.com & ref #112825 Senior Statistical Programmer Senior Statistical Programmer, IQVIA RDS Inc., Durham, NC. Multi Openings. Generate SDTM domains, ADaM data sets & Define.xml files in creating spec files for these domains. Reqs Bach/ Mast in Stat/ Biostat/ Comp Sci rel/ equiv. Req if Bach 4 yrs, if Mast 2 yrs stat prog exp incl (if Bach 4 yrs/ Mast 2 yrs): use clinical drug dev proc knwl; clinical prog stndrds incl CDISC, SDTM, TLFs & ADaM; comp apps incl Base SAS, SAS/ STAT & SAS Macro Lang; prog, dev, & validate stndrd datasets, tables, listings & figures w/ SAS. M-F, 40 hrs/ wk. Apply: resume to: grace.gibson@iqvia.com & ref #112208.

INDY CLASSIFIEDS classy@indyweek.com

Senior Quality Assurance Specialist KBI Biopharma, Inc. seeks a Senior Quality Assurance Specialist in Durham, NC to be responsible for raw materials and consumables release in support of manufacturing operations in collaboration with manufacturing and supply chain. Master’s + 6 yrs rel exp. Will also accept BS + 8 yrs rel exp. For full req’s and to apply send please vist: https://www.kbibiopharma.com/careers Job Reference Number: R-00005472 Software Engineer II Software Engineer II at Truist, F/T (Raleigh, NC) Deliver technically complex solutions. Perform system integration support for all project work. Dvlp customized coding, s/ware integration, perform analysis, configure solutions, using tools specific to the project or the area.

Responsible for dsgn, dvlpg, & maintaining automated unit testing, & supporting integration & functional testing. Must have Bach’s deg in Comp Sci, IT, or related tech’l field. Must have 4 yrs of exp in s/ware engg or IT consulting positions performing/ utilizing the following: in-depth knowl in info systems & ability to identify, apply, & implmt IT best practices; understanding of key business processes & competitive strategies related to the IT function; planning & managing projects & solve complex problems by applying best practices; applying broad functional knowl in defining technology reqmts; interpreting internal & external business challenges & implmtg best practices to improve products, processes, or services; leading technology projects of moderate complexity; applying Agile &/or Waterfall methodologies; dsgng, dvlpg, & testing of mainframe applications using COBOL, CICS, DB2, JCL, VSAM technologies; & utilizing exp w/: COBOL, Assembler, Eztrieve, CICS, DB2, JCL, VSAM, SAS, Mainframe systems, SQL, Changeman, FileManager (file-aid), Waterfall &/or Agile, REXX, Rally, NDM (Connect Direct), FTP, SPUFI, DFSORT, ICETOOL, Visio, Service Now, IBM IDZ, ESP/CA Workstation, & Doc Direct. Position may work remotely but is based out of & reports to Truist offices in Raleigh, NC. Must be available to travel to Raleigh, NC regularly for meetings & reviews w/ manager & project teams w/in 48-hrs’ notice. Apply online (https://careers.truist.com/) or email resume w/ cvr ltr to: Paige Whitesell, Paige.Whitesell@Truist.com (Ref. Job R0080659).

LAST WEEK’S PUZZLE

Sr. Field Service Technician Sr. Field Service Technician (ST-AF) Raleigh, NC & other unanticipated locations throughout the U.S. Install, test, analyze, maintain, repair & train on Syntegon Packaging equipment & associated products at customer sites.

Associate’s plus 2 yrs rltd exp req’d. Mail resumes to: Syntegon Technology Services: HR Manager, 2440 Sumner Blvd., Raleigh, NC 27616. Must ref job title & code.

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