INDY Week December 11, 2024

Raleigh

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Durham

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Chapel Hill

VOL. 41 NO. 25

CONTENTS

NEWS

6 Carrboro's lawsuit against Duke Energy came as no surprise to those familiar with the town. BY CHASE PELLEGRINI DE PAUR

7 Housing and growth, election year highlights, musicians we've lost; here are the INDY stories that stood out in 2024. BY SARAH EDWARDS AND JANE PORTER

10 New Year's Resolutions: The INDY offers Durham City Council some friendly suggestions for 2025. BY JUSTIN LAIDLAW

12 Consider giving to these Triangle nonprofits doing on-the-ground work in our local communities this season. BY JASMINE GALLUP

2024: A YEAR IN PHOTOS

15 A look back at the INDY images that capture 2024. BY ANGELICA EDWARDS

INDY Week reporter Lena Geller, shown here at Devil’s Pizzeria, takes readers through a day of cheap eats across Durham. (See story,

CULTURE

51 Durham's curbside food scraps pickup pilot looks to cut landfill waste. BY GABI MENDICK

53 Incoming! Babygirl, Nosferatu, and other movies coming soon to a theater near you. BY GLENN MCDONALD

54 Twenty local releases that INDY contributors loved this year. BY SARAH EDWARDS, SPENCER GRIFFITH, BRIAN HOWE, JORDAN LAWRENCE, ERIC TULLIS, AND GRACE YANNOTTA

57 Twenty years ago, Rachael Ray visited Durham with a mission: Prove that $40 could fuel a full day of local dining. Is that still possible? BY LENA GELLER

THE REGULARS

5 Backtalk 4 Voices 59 Culture calendar COVER ILLUSTRATION BY NICOLE PAJOR MOORE

W E M A D E T H I S

Publisher John Hurld

Editorial

Editor-in-Chief

Jane Porter

Culture Editor

Sarah Edwards

Staff Writers

Lena Geller

Justin Laidlaw

Chase Pellegrini de Paur

Report for America Corps Member

Chloe Courtney Bohl

Contributors

Jasmine Gallup, Desmera Gatewood, Spencer Griffith, Carr Harkrader, Tasso Hartzog, Brian Howe, Kyesha Jennings, Jordan Lawrence, Elim Lee, Glenn McDonald, Nick McGregor, Gabi Mendick, Cy Neff, Shelbi Polk,

Andrea Richards, Grace Yannotta, Barry Yeoman

Copy Editor Iza Wojciechowska

Creative

Creative Director

Nicole Pajor Moore

Graphic Designer

Ann Salman

Staff Photographer

Angelica Edwards

Advertising

Publisher

John Hurld

Director of Revenue

Mathias Marchington

Director of Operations Chelsey Koch

Circulation Berry Media Group

Membership/subscriptions John Hurld

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page 58.) PHOTO BY ANGELIA EDWARDS

Who Deserves to Die?

Advocates are urging Gov. Cooper to commute the sentences of the 136 people on North Carolina’s death row roster. Most were sentenced to death decades ago; should they still be in line for execution?

BY AMANDA ABRAMS backtalk@indyweek.com

I

’ m repeatedly struck by my friend Rodney Taylor’s need to put his voice out into the world. When he and I talk on the phone or exchange messages, he’ll tell me about the novel he’s working on—his third, this time providing social commentary along with the story—and the book of essays that’s gradually coming together. The podcast that started as a blog has been on hiatus for a few months, but he and his collaborators are planning a new set of episodes for 2025.

And then there’s the youth program he launched around 2015—ostensibly about chess but ultimately providing mentorship and life lessons to young people—that took place at a community center in New York, where he’s from.

Taylor designed the initiative and helped direct it by phone from afar, until COVID put a lid on things. He’s hoping to get back to it eventually; recently he expanded the curriculum from 26 pages to over 200 and will be ready to start things up again when the time is right.

When I ask Taylor why he’s so determined to have an impact, I can hear the shrug in his voice. “I guess I’ve tried to make the best of my situation and figure out how can I use what I know to be productive,” he explains. I suppose that’s what many of us aim to do with our talents and time, but Taylor’s situation is unusual. Since 1998, he’s been incarcerated in Unit 3 in NC Central Prison in Raleigh: our state’s death row. Half a lifetime ago,

26-year-old Taylor was caught up in the drug trade and killed a man in Wilmington while visiting from New York. He was sentenced to death and has been here ever since, waiting to be executed. I met him in 2016 when I began leading a meditation group on the unit, and we stayed in touch after it ended.

Taylor is, of course, far from alone. There are 134 men and two women on death row, all of them hovering in a kind of limbo. Since the last execution in 2006, North Carolina has been experiencing a de facto death penalty moratorium: executions have been halted because of lawsuits related to the state’s lethal injection protocol and to racial justice issues around the men’s conviction and sentencing.

Now a group of advocates is pushing to convert that unofficial pause into something more permanent. The North Carolina Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty is urging Governor Cooper to commute all 136 death sentences to prison terms before he leaves office on December 31. Their campaign has included demonstrations, petitions, op-eds, reports, billboards, and a 136-mile march from Winston-Salem to Raleigh.

One of their key points is that the current situation could change at any time.

“The status quo of executions being held at bay can’t last forever,” says Kristin Collins, director of public information at the Durham-based Center for Death Penalty Litigation, a coalition member. Once the lawsuits are resolved—and with Republicans controlling the state Supreme Court, the decisions may well be unfavorable for those on death row— the state could experience a flood of executions.

And yet, says Collins, “These are people who wouldn’t be sentenced to death today. They’re really old sentences, under very different laws. There are lots of reforms that’ve happened since then.”

More than a third of the men on Unit 3 are over 60 years old, and the majority were convicted in the 1990s, a distinctly different era in criminal justice and one in which the death penalty had much more public support. Back then, factors like trauma, age, and mental illness were given less weight, and far less attention was paid to issues of racial justice. According to the coalition, nearly half the people on death row were tried by juries that were wholly white

ILLUSTRATION BY ANN SALMAN AND NICOLE PAJOR MOORE

or included only one person of color.

Taylor knows these details: he and the others are paying attention. Most, like Taylor himself, have filed petitions for clemency through their lawyers. No one’s particularly optimistic. “I’ve been hearing they’re going to get rid of the death penalty since before I got here,” says Taylor. “After 27 years, you’re like, ‘Man, it’s not going to happen.’”

He’s gradually found a way to make peace, some peace at least, with his circumstances. In his early years on “the row,” Taylor recognized that something had gone very wrong in his life for him to wind up there. In response, he says, “all I’ve done since I’ve been here is work on myself and try to be a better person.” In an effort to gain insight into himself and those around him, he writes every day, something he’s loved doing since he was 11.

He’s not the only one who long ago turned introspective. During the almost three years that I led weekly meditation groups on the unit, I met many sincere and heartfelt men. Most had been there for decades and had developed very close bonds with one another. Those relationships and their many years in confinement have gradually softened them and worn them smooth.

Taylor says that’s unsurprising. “It’s like a boxed-in life here, but human beings aren’t meant to be boxed in; we’re meant to spread out and explore the world. So when you’re locked inside, you explore your mind, you explore yourself.”

You might say they’re grasping for redemption. That’s an ancient word that comes with heavy religious overtones, but in this case it fits. Many of these men are now very different people than they were when they arrived years ago, without the hard and ugly edges that originally brought them there. Like Taylor, they’ve turned away from their bad deeds and are aiming to make something of themselves.

To be clear, I don’t believe anyone should be killed as punishment, whether they’ve transformed or not. It’s not fair, just, or even logical. But I do wonder if Gov. Cooper has any sense of what the men on Unit 3 are like now: what they’ve gone through, how they’ve changed. I understand the governor might not be finished with his political career, and commuting more than 100 sentences could be a drag on that future, as well as on the state’s Democratic Party writ large. But he’s a good person; I firmly believe that. And he’s the only one who can grant clemency—another ancient word—to the state’s death row residents.

The people there have, in a very real sense, done their time. How could executing them now ever be the right thing to do? W

A C K T

A couple of weeks ago, we published a joint report with our newsroom partners at The Assembly about a Durham coalition’s campaign to get Duke University to pay $50 million to the City of Durham or Durham County annually in lieu of property taxes. We got a lot of feedback from readers and are excerpting some messages below.

From reader GANN HERMAN in Durham:

I hope you will add to the topic I kept reading to see commented on: the relationship between Duke and its low-income employees. Much of the “grumbling” I hear relates to exploitative labor practices. It would be clarifying to have your reporters interview Duke’s custodians, food service workers, groundskeepers, all the hourly wage employees across its properties. Is the grumbling justified or are their labor practices in need of sunshine? Are their wages high enough for such workers to actually live in Durham or do they have to commute from other counties?

From reader MIKE MASSEY in Durham:

Duke’s obstructing the area transit project on 2 occasions came across as Duke’s wanting to make a statement, whether intended or not, on where the power resides in Durham. The most recent plug-pulling was especially irksome as the rationale, if genuine, should have been voiced in the project’s earliest considerations before the spending of such vast resources by project partners. At least Duke’s original voiced

objection, although largely over aesthetics, came earlier in the initial plan’s process.

Duke’s presence is of monumental benefit to our area. Finding ways of dispelling any lingering effects of the above would be important as Duke and Durham move forward together.

From reader MARYPAUL THOMAS:

Here’s the point made by the campaign that was missed in the article: when Duke’s philanthropy, no matter how generous, is determined by Duke being in full control, there’s an antidemocratic distribution. If “payments in lieu of taxes” (PILOT) were made to Durham County, then Durham and its elected government decide how best to use it for the benefit of ALL people who live in the county.

We also wrote about Durham Public Schools’ new superintendent, Anthony Lewis, and the series of listening tours he took in his first three months on the job to hear from the Durham community. While we concluded that Dr. Lewis has a lot of work ahead of him to fix understaffed bus routes,

address aging facilities, and repair the relationship between the district’s administration and school staff, reader DAVID FRAC notes there are other issues Lewis will need to address:

The new superintendent certainly has his work cut out for him. According to the school district’s 2023/2024 Academic Achievement Report, only 47% of Durham students achieved Grade Level Proficiency for that period.

Finally, we wrote about the parting words from outgoing Raleigh mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin and District A member Mary Black at their last city council meeting.

From reader LISA BELLAMY:

Good story on the changing of the guard at City Hall following the elections.

Hope you continue to cover Black’s cause of tenant advocacy in Raleigh. It’s true that the rents are ever increasing and salaries just can’t keep up. Not everyone has high-tech/ high salary employment.

If something more isn’t done, the affordable housing crisis is going to make Raleigh less attractive for young workers.

Carrboro

Legal Remedy

Carrboro’s lawsuit against utility giant Duke Energy is the first of its kind, but those familiar with Carrboro’s long progressive history will find it unsurprising.

BY CHASE PELLEGRINI DE PAUR chase@indyweek.com

Last Wednesday, Carrboro mayor Barbara Foushee announced that the town is bringing a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against Duke Energy.

In the 70-page complaint filed in Orange County Superior Court, Carrboro attacks the utility’s alleged “knowing deception campaign concerning the causes and dangers posed by the climate crisis,” arguing that the company misled the public by downplaying the impact of burning fossil fuels.

It also “seeks to hold the company responsible” for damages to the town and its infrastructure due to the increased severity of storms, flooding, and temperature caused by climate change.

“We’ve been tracking damages from climate change, and it’s clear that our town and hardworking taxpayers cannot

and should not be forced to pay for this,” said Foushee at a press conference in the town hall’s intimate council chambers.

Behind her and the assembled council, which voted unanimously for the measure, posters spelled out “CARRBORO VS. FOSSIL FUELS” and “STOP CLIMATE DECEPTION.”

“This was not an easy decision to make, but I have abundant faith in our town’s bold courage and commitment to protecting our community and our planet,” said the mayor. Other municipalities have sued oil and gas companies, but Carrboro is the first to target an electric utility.

In national news about the lawsuit, Carrboro has been labeled “a town next to Chapel Hill” and a town “about 36 miles northwest of Raleigh” as if the lawsuit emerged from a sleepy void in the Old North State. But for anyone famil-

iar with Carrboro’s ultra-progressive reputation, it probably does not come as a surprise that the town of 21,000 is taking aggressive legal action against one of the country’s largest electric companies.

“For decades, Carrboro residents have proven themselves some of the boldest and most progressive residents in North Carolina,” Mayor Pro Tem Danny Nowell told the INDY at the conference.

Indeed, the town, sometimes cheekily referred to as “the People’s Republic of Carrboro,” became the first municipality in the state to elect an openly gay mayor in 1995 when Mike Nelson won nearly 50 percent of the vote. In 1994, it became the first in the state to grant benefits to same-sex partners of town employees. Outside Carrboro’s town hall, where officials posed for a photo after the press conference, a giant wreath is flanked by LGBTQ pride and Black Lives Matter flags.

Earlier this year, the council was the first in the state to call on congress to back a ceasefire in Gaza, although the resolution split the council in a 4–3 vote.

In the early 2000s, Carrboro was the first participating municipality to launch the “plenty,” a local currency meant to supplement the dollar. And, in recent years, the town has had conversations about renaming itself because namesake Julian Carr was a slave owner (although those talks have stalled because the change would require approval from the state legislature).

“We have a sense of wanting to be the most ferocious advocates possible for our progressive ideas,” said Nowell. Part of that comes from the town’s culture.

Carrboro, per the independently produced 2006 certified banger of a song “It’s Carrboro,” is “a place where the hippies and the hipsters meet.” Combine that with a ridiculously highly educated populace—about 70 percent of adults hold at least a bachelor’s degree, compared to 34 percent statewide—and the lawsuit seems more like a natural next step rather than a bizarre stunt by the progressive hub.

In the complaint, Carrboro alleges that it has lost, and will continue to lose, millions of dollars due to the impact of climate change. Those costs include road maintenance, stormwater infrastructure, and electricity costs—ironically paid to Duke Energy—to cool buildings during heat waves.

The lawsuit, though, is one cost that the town will not need to bear, as NC WARN, a nonprofit, is funding it. The town is also partnering with the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity.

In a statement to the INDY, Duke Energy said it is in the process of reviewing the complaint.

“Duke Energy is committed to its customers and communities and will continue working with policymakers and regulators to deliver reliable and increasingly clean energy while keeping rates as low as possible.” W

Carrboro town leaders outside the town hall PHOTO BY CHASE PELLEGRINI DE PAUR

The Triangle

INDY Stories

That Stood Out in 2024

Housing and growth, election year highlights, musicians we’ve lost; these are the stories that stood out to us in 2024.

BY SARAH EDWARDS AND JANE PORTER sedwards@indyweek.com, jporter@indyweek.com

Trials and tribulations at Durham Public Schools

The year 2024 was an eventful one for Durham Public Schools (DPS), and the INDY and our partners at the 9th Street Journal were here to chronicle it all. The year started off with a payroll crisis wherein hundreds of school system workers learned that promised salary increases, which had already been paid out to them for several months, were given as the result of a budgeting error. In mid-January, many transportation workers didn’t show up for work, and on the last day of the month, DPS closed 12 schools as teachers and staff held a sickout organized by the Durham Association of Educators (DAE). The next week, the DAE held a second day of protests, and superintendent Pascal Mubenga announced he was stepping down from his position. While the salary scandal was eventually resolved with a $27.5 million local supplement to the schools’ budget in June, a year of DAE organizing was already well under way. The group, Durham’s de facto teacher’s union, brought its fight for a meetand-confer policy to the school board this summer, and scored a long-sought, if partial, win in the fall. The school year opened with a bus driver shortage, which is just now inching toward resolution. That’s not even to mention redistricting growing pains, needed building repairs, and the fight over the new Durham School of the Arts; the school board approved DSA’s relocation in August and broke ground on the new building last month. In spite of the tumult, there were some wins along the way. DPS

selected a new superintendent, Dr. Anthony Lewis, in July, and Lewis spent his first three months on the job on a series of listening tours and plans to bring his strategic plan before the school board early next year. He also announced DPS’s plan to bring nutritious free lunches to all of its students. And students are as curious and persistent as ever: they proposed their own solutions to the world’s most pressing problems and continued to hold the local powers-that-be accountable with their actions on climate justice.

Housing hardships

The dearth of affordable housing and the problems associated with that shortage have become well-documented features of life in the Triangle, and 2024 gave us no exception. In January, freelance writer Cy Neff reported on safety, management, and upkeep complaints at North Durham’s elderly, low-income apartment facility JFK Towers and restrictions that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development placed on the complex’s owner, Millennia Properties. A few weeks later, 14 residents of the complex filed a class-action lawsuit against the company. Across town, staff writer Lena Geller investigated derelict properties owned by the family of former U.S. attorney general Loretta Lynch. In the May report, tenants, mired in a legal dispute with the Lynches, told the INDY that they lived in homes that had been in disrepair for years. The eviction lawsuits were resolved in September with an

undisclosed settlement. The housing crisis touches every group of people in the Triangle, college students included, and in August, the INDY’s Report for America corps member Chloe Courtney Bohl wrote about a new shortterm homestay program a Raleigh nonprofit is testing to help combat student homelessness. On the bright side, our local governments, along with private and nonprofit partners, are investing millions of dollars to bring more affordable units to Triangle cities and counties. In April, staff writer Chase Pellegrini de Paur wrote about Chapel Hill’s plans to bring affordable housing for seniors to the town’s American Legion Property. In September, staff writer Justin Laidlaw covered Durham Community Land Trustees plans to preserve affordable apartments at 1600 Anderson Street and build more affordable units nearby. There’s also the new affordable cottage court development coming to Southeast Raleigh’s Idlewild neighborhood and the Raleigh/Wake commitment to invest $30 million in 454 affordable units to look forward to.

Bull City Summit

Financial disputes, THC beverages, buzzy gurus, a local children’s nonprofit, an NFT of a key to the city: the rabbit hole this investigative piece on Bull City Summit (BCS), a science and technology festival, took the INDY down was quite deep. Durham has, for some time, needed its own Dreamville or Hopscotch to draw foot traffic, and as various festivals have come and gone in the Bull City,

Deborah Nash, 66, of Durham. PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS

local businesses were initially excited about BCS when festival owner Parag Bhandari launched it a few years ago. But between contractors reporting unpaid invoices and venues reporting zero-person turnouts and declining to work with Bhandari again, it appeared that this may not be the event to fill that gap. Although the BCS slated for 2024 did not happen, Bhandari has been working on other ventures: recent emails from the Bull City Summit Account have advertised a “VIP MEET & GREET WITH ANDRE3000” and Iceland Airwaves Exchange, “a new cross-cultural music, arts, and industry initiative.” Meanwhile, other events—like Rhiannon Giddens’s Biscuits & Banjos, slated for downtown Durham in April 2025—have emerged to fill the gaps.

The conflict in Gaza

Although separated by a distance of 6,000 miles, the devastating specter of the war in Gaza loomed large over the Triangle and its residents in 2024. In February, we compiled a timeline of local activism around calls for a ceasefire. Carrboro was the first Triangle municipality to adopt a ceasefire resolution last year, followed by Durham in February; Raleigh and Chapel Hill didn’t follow suit. In April, we broke the news that Triangle congresswoman Valerie Foushee traveled to Israel to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu without disclosing the trip to constituents beforehand. And when UNC-Chapel Hill campus police removed a pro-Palestinian encampment in a dawn sweep and arrested and detained dozens of students and protesters, we were there to document the fallout. We stayed in touch with student protesters through the year, some of whom were suspended and saw their lives upended by the university’s disciplinary process. We’ll be following these students’ stories, as well as Triangle activism around Gaza, as long as the conflict continues.

Mourning beloved local musicians

The INDY doesn’t have an obituary section, but some tributes are essential to document. This year, the local music community lost three beloved scene mainstays: in February, Dexter Romweber of the Flat Duo Jets passed, followed by the sudden death of rapper Kevin Joshua Rowsey II (better known as Rowdy) in April and the passing of musician Reese McHenry in November. There’s no grand throughline to draw between these tragedies—these three were different people making different music—except to say that they all leave behind big holes. Their deep community impact shines through clearly in tributes written by Pierce Freelon and David Menconi.

Growing pains

Stop us if you’ve heard this before: as the Triangle grows, residents are vexed over some new development projects and proposals. April’s virtual meeting on the future of Durham’s Lakewood Shopping Center is a glaring example. Developer BrodyCo proposed redeveloping the eight-acre, Food Lion–anchored site to include revitalized storefronts for small local businesses on one part of

the property and adding climate-controlled self-storage to another portion. Durham residents did not take kindly to the plan, to put it mildly. Downtown Durham businesses also had a rough go of 2024. In May, staff writer Justin Laidlaw reported on bar owners’ frustrations with ongoing construction they say is hurting their businesses. It’s not just that: rising rents, declining post-pandemic foot traffic, and a feeling that downtown is disconnected and hostile to pedestrians and cyclists have local business owners feeling like they’re struggling to survive (and a few businesses, like restaurants COPA and the flagship location of Beyu Caffe, did indeed shutter). To its credit, the City of Durham has been making strides to make its streets safer. City leaders moved forward with a plan to redesign state-owned Roxboro and Mangum Streets, despite NC Department of Transportation delays. The city brought in $12 million in federal grant money to make much-needed improvements to Holloway Street, Durham’s busiest transit corridor. And voters overwhelmingly approved a $115 million bond for street and sidewalk upgrades that city leaders placed on the ballot this fall. Still, the pace of development in Durham, and the types of projects city leaders are approving, continues to draw ire; in June, a planning commissioner resigned over the way some council members have “dismissed, at times ignored,” and “even denigrated” the planning commission’s work and expertise, staff writer Lena Geller reported. Over in Raleigh, a 2021 missing-middle housing policy has seen success in creating new types of housing and bringing down rents, but disgruntlement over the policy persists. In July, Chloe Courtney Bohl reported on a judge’s decision to block construction of townhomes in the City of

Oaks’ wealthy Hayes Barton neighborhood (Hayes Barton residents sued the city, and the developer, over the townhome plans and the missing-middle policy in 2023). As growth transcends Raleigh and spreads in all directions across Wake County, residents are airing their grievances. This summer, a proposed mixed-use housing development to be located across the street from E. Carroll Joyner Park drew ire from neighbors who were concerned about ecological threats and, frankly, the prospect of having more future neighbors. The developer, property owner, and town leaders are seeking a compromise.

Problems at Plum

Early this summer, upscale Durham restaurant Plum Southern Kitchen & Bar closed for a hiatus—a standard break, purportedly. Former restaurant employees told the INDY a markedly different story: They say things unraveled when restaurant owner Lisa Callaghan, who is white, repeatedly used the N-word while complaining about a Kendrick Lamar song that employees were playing before a shift. The situation devolved when Callaghan fired a Black bartender who had confronted her about the slur usage—and the majority of the restaurant’s employees quit in protest. This deeply reported piece by Lena Geller was our most-read story of the year and, in a reflection of the times, briefly served as a viral hot rod for discussions about racism, restaurant culture, and what constitutes an apology. But—in a continued reflection of the time— Plum survived the mass quitting and social media storm. It remains open; loyal customers regularly turn out.

Protestors link arms to protect a Palestinian flag mounted onto the flagpole at the UNC-Chapel Hill quad area on Tuesday, April 30, 2024, in Chapel Hill. PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS

Election year highlights

It was, of course, an election year, and we covered both the primary and the general election that saw numerous local races on voters’ ballots. In Durham’s only contested school board race, a candidate was accused of sexually harassing a young woman a decade ago; the woman’s father brought the allegations to light during the endorsement meeting for one of the city’s prominent PACs. We also saw newcomer Sophia Chitlik oust Mike Woodard in the primary after out-fundraising the longtime state senator despite his support from various special interest groups. And we profiled Durham district attorney Satana Deberry, who ran against congressman and NC attorney general–elect Jeff Jackson for the Democratic nomination. This fall saw races for a new Raleigh mayor and seats on the city council. Freelance writer Jasmine Gallup teed up the Raleigh election with a four-part series looking back on former mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin’s tenure, the state of housing and development, the future of downtown, and how voters’ choices will shape the city. We looked at an effort to stop the Wake County Democratic Party from making endorsements in the city council races, and we took some deep dives into those races, and into the candidates themselves, including in District A, District C, and the at-large race. We wrote about the nonpartisan-in-name-only Wake County school board election and Moms for Liberty’s tactics to get their candidates elected, and we covered a special election in Carrboro. We broke news about a state representative and her husband accused of harassing poll greeters and joined Mark Robinson on his last day on the campaign trail. And we wrote about bonds: infrastructure bonds, library bonds, and more. Next year will see yet another municipal election in Durham, and Mayor Leo Williams could be in a fight to hold on to his seat. Revisit Justin Laidlaw’s in-depth, insightful profile of the mayor from this summer.

Keeping Duke accountable

The INDY wouldn’t be doing its job as Durham’s community newspaper if we didn’t keep our eyes on Duke University, the Bull City’s largest employer and property owner. Duke’s been busy this year; accordingly, so have we. In April, staff writer and Duke alum Chase Pellegrini de Paur wrote about the climate commitment Duke made two years ago to its students, staff, and alumni and to the residents of Durham. It

was an ambitious promise, launched with an initial $36 million fund “framed as an unprecedented attempt to consolidate and leverage the university’s capabilities to address the climate crisis under one coordinating office,” he wrote. But, without clear goals and authority, some are worried that the climate commitment will end up a well-intentioned failure. This summer, Pellegrini de Paur also wrote about rezoning requests Duke has been bringing before the Durham City Council, asking city leaders for permission to rezone property without detailed development plans. Despite concerns from some council members, this fall Duke was ultimately granted rezonings for 10 university-owned parcels, giving the university broad freedom for future construction. Also this fall, staff writer Lena Geller wrote about a pressure campaign from the Duke Graduate Students Union on university admin to pay graduate and professional students a living wage. And we capped off the year with a deep look at a local group’s efforts to try to get Duke to pay $50 million to the City of Durham annually in lieu of taxes on much of the property it owns across the Bull City. The piece, a collaboration between staff writer Justin Laidlaw and our newsroom partners at The Assembly, puts a fine point on a question many in the Durham community have been asking for years: “Does Duke respect Durham?”

Out-of-the-box new arts spaces

Last month, we published a piece on Shadowbox Studio—a space that actually is in a box (it’s run out of a Durham storage unit) but offers out-of-the-box film and arts programming and has, miraculously, made it to a decade. Offbeat arts spaces are spoken of as something strictly of the past, when things were more affordable, but Shadowbox gives us a glimmer of hope for the new spots we’ve reported on. In 2022, coffeeshop-meets-everything spot Perfect Lovers opened, as did Night School Bar, a cocktails-meets-classes neighborhood dive. This year, Durham artist Catherine Edgerton turned their home into Queen Street Magic Boat, an anti-algorithmic space, if there ever was one, for community organizing and exhibitions. In Chapel Hill, photographer Phyllis Dooney opened the beautifully designed PHOTO Farm, a space with a darkroom and plenty of light-filled room for classes and experiments. We’re excited about these new creative beginnings and will be holding a candle in 2025 for all local arts spaces that go against the grain. W

New Year’s Resolutions

The INDY offers Durham City Council some friendly suggestions for a successful 2025.

BY JUSTIN LAIDLAW jlaidlaw@indyweek.com

Working in municipal government can be a difficult and thankless job. The pay is minimal, the hours are long, and no matter how little power or control you actually have over things like housing, transportation, or crime, your constituents will always assume you have more.

But with some amount of power still comes great responsibility, and our seven city council members, along with city staff, have an obligation to steward our community through the votes they take and the ideology they espouse. We look to the council for guidance, for inspiration, and for answers when it comes to the future of our city.

So ’tis the season, city council. I come bearing gifts. No coal this year. Just a few New Year’s resolutions for you all to share as you think about how to be your best selves in 2025. I’m not suggesting Durham needs its own department of government efficiency. Just a few tweaks on the margins. Remember, it’s because I care.

You have to shorten the meeting times

I’m not a gambling man, but let’s make a wager. If I set the over/under on how long the average city council meeting lasts at three and a half hours, what’s your bet?

My friend and INDY contributor Saleem Reshamwala said he would “optimistically take the under, with a tiny prayer.” We’ve

slogged through too many grueling meetings together, so I know just asking the question touched a nerve.

The answer is under, barely. The average city council meeting in 2024 took three hours and 22 minutes. That means you aren’t getting home until after 10:30 p.m. if you want to attend the meeting in person, which the city staff are obligated to do. The longest meeting this year, a full six hours, was on May 20, where the city manager presented her 2024–25 fiscal year budget proposal. Second place, at just under six hours, goes to the February 19 meeting where hundreds of protesters packed city hall and the surrounding block to convince the council to pass a Gaza and Israel ceasefire resolution. The fallout from that meeting led the city council to revisit its meeting decorum protocols.

It’s a catch-22. Civic participation is vital to the democratic process, but it is also the source of our meeting duration problem. Thirty residents will go up to the podium, one after another, and spend two to three minutes saying practically the same thing. There’s power in numbers, yes, but if your group has more than four people, maybe designate a team captain to speak on your behalf? Maybe the council could make some helpful suggestions around that? The issue is exacerbated by city council members who pontificate for twice as long as public speakers, sometimes longer. Should we have a shot clock?

Let’s liven up the meetings

America doesn’t need anymore reality TV in its politics. I’m not advocating for city council meetings to operate like Real Housewives or WWE wrestling. Government is serious business, but it’s not always that serious. If you’re going to hold us captive for four hours, at least have some fun with it.

Since Duke University appropriated the “Bull City” hand sign, city council should negotiate borrowing a few ideas from Cameron Indoor Stadium as part of the PILOT agreement. Let’s get a sound board with all the NBA Jam effects. The city clerk can yell “He’s on fire!” any time you vote unanimously.

Twice a year, treat every speaker like they’re part of the 1990s Chicago Bulls player introductions: Turn on the city council hype music, dim the lights. “At 5’8”, from Morningstar Law Group, making his 30th appearance at city council this year, it’s everyone’s favorite land use and zoning attorney, Nil ‘The Thrill’ Ghooooooooosh!”

Expand the city/county Neighborhood College program

Durham residents offer passionate civil discourse. It’s one of the Bull City’s great-

est qualities. People here give a damn. But the conversations at city hall, or on Reddit, don’t always scream “I did my homework.” Durham can do better. To solve the systematic issues facing our community, we first need folks, myself included, to understand how that system works.

The city council, in collaboration with the county commissioners, offers a little-known program called Neighborhood College. The seven-week program recruits Durham residents to learn the ins and outs of municipal government and become stewards of the information for their own neighborhood. Currently, the program is limited to 25 people at a time and costs $35 to participate.

The program runs infrequently (maybe once a year), per the county website. Neighborhood College is tailor-made to create camaraderie among residents and build a well-informed electorate that’s properly equipped to tackle the challenges ahead.

High school curriculums ought to prioritize this information. For a majority of students, understanding the mechanics of local government will be much more important to their future than Shakespeare or calculus. I love a good liberal arts education, but let’s be realistic, those kids are barely reading as is, let alone 17th-century English literature.

City council: Work with your friends at

ILLUSTRATION BY ANN SALMAN, PHOTO OF MAYOR WILLIAMS BY ANGELICA EDWARDS

the county and Durham Public Schools to expand Neighborhood College by increasing promotion of the program and class frequency and canceling the admission fee. Offer it to schools. If our taxes are going to anything, it should be to teaching us about how those dollars are being spent.

Finish the unified development ordinance

The last level. The final boss. Durham’s development procedures are the core concern at almost every city council meeting, and updating those procedures through a new unified development ordinance (UDO) could unlock new possibilities for Durham’s urban environment.

Fixing the UDO is also one of the few areas where private developers and residents align after the SCAD amendment debacle. Both sides have scrutinized the planning department recently for its handling of inner-city development, which has disrupted small businesses and the permitting of large-scale housing developments on the outskirts of Durham, which council member Nate Baker and others refer to as “urban sprawl.”

The City of Durham does not build housing, as mayor pro tem Mark-Anthony Middleton is quick to remind the community (though it does contribute money to housing projects). The UDO is the tool that the city council has the most influence over. Make completing the UDO your signature piece of legislation for 2025.

Honorable mentions

We also have some suggestions that didn’t make our Top Four but deserve recognition nonetheless.

Mayor Williams: We see you zipping through downtown on your scooter and your e-bike. We appreciate your being a proponent of alternative transit. But please, coming from someone who learned the hard way, you never know what dangers the Durham streets might throw your way. Set a good example and wear your helmet. Can we speed up fulfillment of the public records requests?

Join the X-odus, city council. It’s time to leave Twitter behind. Threads and Bluesky are fine alternatives.

One meeting a quarter should be “casual Friday” vibes. Wear your favorite Hawaiian floral tee, bring a straw hat and roll in the bar cart for mojitos and piña coladas.

Don’t drop the ball on the city manager search. W

The Triangle

Give Back

We’re highlighting the Triangle and North Carolina–based nonprofits providing on-the-ground assistance to those in our communities who need it most.

BY JASMINE GALLUP backtalk@indyweek.com

Giving season is upon us, and requests for donations are filling up virtual and physical mailboxes. But with so many different organizations in need, it can be hard to figure out where your dollar will do the most good.

For readers who want to give back, the INDY has compiled a list of local nonprofits whose work has a direct, immediate, and positive impact on people living in the Triangle and across North Carolina.

We paid special attention to political causes and Hurricane Helene relief but also spotlighted organizations that tackle important local issues including housing, the environment, and animal care.

Western NC Disaster Relief

Unlike many of the larger nonprofits responding to Hurricane Helene, Day One Relief focuses on long-term aid for people who are disproportionately affected by extreme weather events because of systemic issues like poverty or racism.

“There are people who started this storm with $5 in their bank account,” says president and CEO Jil Christensen. Low-income families, Black and Latino communities, and homebound elders are just a few of the populations who face the largest barriers to resources and the longest road to recovery.

Although it’s been about seven weeks since the storm, “this is the beginning of when things get really, really hard,” says Christensen. With a massive effort under way to deliver supplies to isolated and damaged areas, Day One Relief requests donations of brand-new coats and sleeping bags, long johns, wool socks, and many other items. For more information on what to give, visit their Facebook page.

Immigration

With President-elect Donald Trump threatening mass deportations, many immigration advocates are preparing for the worst.

“Immigrants are worried parents are gonna be separated from their children, that people who are here lawfully are gonna get swept up in these mass deportations,” says Carlene McNulty, interim director of the Immigrant and Refugee Rights Division at the NC Justice Center “There’s just an enormous fear.”

In addition to providing representation in court, the Justice Center helps immigrants arrange power of attorney in case they need someone to deal with homes or cars left behind. The center educates on emergency preparedness, such as making contingency plans for children to be picked up from school if a parent is detained. “Know Your Rights” seminars are also in demand, McNulty says.

Reproductive Rights and Abortion

Trump’s reelection also has advocates nationwide worried that access to reproductive health care, including abortion, could be limited even more severely. The Carolina Abortion Fund (CAF) helps people pay for abortion care and in some cases can help cover additional costs like transportation or lodging.

“The beauty of abortion funds is that we are solely dedicated to making it accessible on the ground,” says Alissa Lopez, former board member and current volun-

teer for CAF.

With abortion effectively banned in Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi, many are still traveling to North Carolina for abortions. That’s not to mention the state’s own residents who may need help navigating complex and time-consuming restrictions under the state’s 12-week abortion ban. Nonprofits like CAF need additional funds to ward off potential lawsuits and strengthen digital security to protect clients’ privacy, Lopez adds.

The Gaza Conflict

Despite calls for a ceasefire, death, destruction, and displacement have persisted in Gaza more than a year after the attack last fall on Israel by Hamas-led militants. Last week, Amnesty International accused Israel of committing genocide, a characterization that Voices for Justice in Palestine (VJP) has echoed.

“[The Biden administration] provided Israel with everything they wanted to wage a merciless, genocidal war on the extremely vulnerable population of Gaza,” stated an email from VJP. “Unimaginably, things are expected to get far worse under the Trump administration.”

Donations will help fund VJP’s mission of educating the community and advocating for national policy change. Over the past year, the nonprofit joined many other local advocacy groups in organizing pro-Palestinian protests across the Triangle, including in Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill.

To help provide “critical direct services in Gaza,” VJP recommends donating to the United Nations Relief and

Meagan Frost, the community outreach manager at the Wake County Animal Center, pets Newman. PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS

Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East, the Middle East Children’s Alliance, and the Palestinian American Medical Association.

Civil Rights

As a nonpartisan organization, Democracy NC is always fighting for voter rights, regardless of whether it’s an election year. In addition to helping people navigate voting laws, the nonprofit advocates for redistricting reform, increased funding for county boards of elections, and getting big money out of politics.

In 2025, Democracy NC will focus on educating people about who has the power to resolve problems they’re facing—everything from potholes to rent hikes, says development director Shannon Heck. The nonprofit also wants to encourage residents to engage with elected officials yearround, outside of just the voting booth: “It’s about holding [officials] accountable,” Heck says.

Racial Justice

Emancipate NC is one of the most impactful racial justice organizations at the local (and state) level.

In the past year, the nonprofit has sued the Durham County Sheriff’s Office over redacted jail policies, advocated for change in the foster care system, and fought for compensation for people who have experienced unjust incarceration, police violence, and illegal searches and seizures. They have also lobbied for change in Triangle police departments and continue to serve in a watchdog role.

Housing

While many Triangle organizations— CASA, the Raleigh Area Land Trust, and One Wake, to name a few—are working to increase the supply of affordable housing, we wanted to highlight a nonprofit that provides significant assistance to Triangle renters.

Legal Aid of NC handles a wide range of cases, but one major focus is the “eviction crisis,” says Legal Aid of Raleigh’s managing attorney Elysia Prendergast-Jones.

As new construction gentrifies low-income neighborhoods and the competitive housing market inflates rents, apartments are becoming unaffordable for many. And “in the places [residents] can afford, they’re dealing with mold issues or rodents,” says

Prendergast-Jones. Legal Aid lawyers can help prevent illegal evictions, negotiate move-out dates, and get landlords to make critical housing repairs.

Another major focus for Legal Aid is securing protective orders for domestic violence survivors, Prendergast-Jones adds. In both areas, the people in need of representation vastly outnumber the fulltime staff Legal Aid can keep onboard.

“This is the beginning of when things get really, really hard.”

The Environment

Plenty of state and local organizations are fighting to protect the environment, but Triangle Land Conservancy is a unique nonprofit focused on land-banking as a way to conserve green spaces.

In a rapidly growing Triangle, undeveloped property is valuable. Triangle Land Conservancy raises money to buy land for permanent preservation. In 2023, the nonprofit protected 910 acres in Chatham County, the Marks Creek Watershed, and other areas. Their projects help protect drinking water, support local farms, and connect people with nature.

Animals

The county animal shelters in Wake County, Orange County, and Durham County provide crucial services by sheltering strays, spaying and neutering animals, and adopting out pets. Their work is more important than ever as shelters have become overcrowded and local officials face tough decisions about whether to euthanize.

Volunteers, adoptions, and donations are all critical to shelters’ operations. Fostering animals can also help alleviate the pressure, as can keeping your own pets out of shelters through microchipping or rehoming with friends or family. To find out what to donate, visit local animal shelters’ websites and wishlists. W

2024: A YEAR IN PHOTOS

A look back at the INDY ’s photojournalism

EDWARDS

As the INDY’s staff photojournalist, I continually photograph new people, musicians, food, events, and issue-based experiences that reveal how robust and complex the Triangle is. In this last month of the year, I looked through my 2024 photo archive; here’s what I observed.

It was a big election year; people patiently waited in lines to cast their votes and attended political rallies months, weeks, and days before the general election. Politicians, including President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, President-Elect Donald Trump, and Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein, visited the Triangle often.

Throughout the year, local activists organized and

rallied for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.

Teachers and concerned community members continued to advocate for additional funding and support for public education.

Tenants living in derelict Durham properties inherited by the Reverend Leonzo Lynch and former U.S. attorney general Loretta Lynch agreed to have their portraits made and revealed the interiors of their deteriorating homes.

Businesses celebrated anniversaries. Southeastern Camera marked its 30th year, while others, such as Schoolkids Records, announced they were shutting their doors after several decades of serving customers in the Triangle.

The Triangle had another vibrant year culturally. Woody Wonka took the crown at Beavwatch, this year’s theme at the 20th annual Beaver Queen Pageant in Durham. Bull Durham, A New Musical cast members rehearsed for weeks at the Theatre Raleigh Arts Center before gracing the stage at Reynolds Industries Theater on Duke University’s campus.

As the new year approaches, I look forward to helping readers visually connect with our stories and showing them what people and issues impact the Triangle in 2025. I was born and raised in Raleigh, but the stories I covered in 2024 show me that I still have much to learn about the place I’ve called home my entire life.

PHOTOS AND WORDS BY ANGELICA

SCAN TO READ THE STORIES BEHIND THE PHOTOS

SCAN TO READ THE STORIES BEHIND THE PHOTOS

SCAN TO READ THE STORIES BEHIND THE PHOTOS

winners TRiangle TRianglewide wide Best2024 of the Triangle

It’s here: the very Best of the Best of the Triangle!

The INDY spread its Best of the Triangle contest into three mini contests across 2024, with competitions taking place in Durham, Orange/Chatham, and Wake Counties.

For our final installment, our Best of the Triangle Reader’s Poll winners went head to head, county versus county. The winners of Wake, Durham, and Orange/Chatham Counties competed against one another to determine who is the very Best of the Best of the Triangle in 2024 as determined by you, the INDY ’s dedicated readers.

In more than 100 categories that run the gamut from food and drink, to local stores, to local service providers, doctors, vets, and lawyers, health and fitness purveyors, museums, parks, concert halls, theaters, and everything in between, thank you for taking the time to tell us your favorites.

Our winners this year really do represent the very best of what the Triangle has to offer; they’re who make us proud to work, live, and play in the 919.

STAY INFORMED YEAR-ROUND!

Keep your eyes out next year for your chances to vote. We’ll be back and asking for your favorites once again in February 2025. Use the QR code on the cover of this paper to sign up for exclusive Best of information. And remember, shop local to support your favorites in the Triangle community this holiday season and year-round.

Congratulations to all of our Best of the Best of the Triangle 2024 winners!

— The INDY team

Contributors: Chloe Courtney Bohl, Sarah Edwards, Lena Geller, Matthew Junkroski, Justin Laidlaw, Chase Pellegrini de Paur, Jane Porter, and Avery Sloan.

BEST ALCOHOLIC COCKTAILS

ALLEY TWENTY SIX - DURHAM

Runners-up: The Crunkleton - Orange/Chatham, Bittersweet - Wake

BEST BAGEL

ISAAC’S BAGELS - DURHAM

Isaac Henrion earned our trust the old-fashioned way, starting with a folding table at a community garden and graduating to the Queeny’s pop-up window and the Durham Farmers’ Market before launching a brick-andmortar location last summer. His bagels nail the holy trinity of authenticity—crackly outer shell, dense but pillowy interior, just enough chew—and the menu at his storefront reads like a perfect blend of old-school deli (smoked whitefish salad with lemon and tomato) and new-school innovation (slow-roasted cherry tomatoes with adjika cream cheese). —LG

Runners-up: Brandwein’s Bagels - Orange/Chatham, Benchwarmers - Wake

BEST BAKERY

GUGLHUPF BAKERY, CAFE + RESTAURANT - DURHAM

There’s a special ingredient that defines Guglhupf: memories of lovingly made food from south Germany. Since 1998, Guglhupf’s iconic bakery has brought in customers flocking to scratch-made baked goods. Try classics like the focaccia or the gugfruit tart, or try something new in the seasonal scones. Regardless of what you enjoy, we guarantee that even the most picky of eaters can find a nice spot to sit and enjoy Guglhupf’s fresh coffee. Whether you plan to stop in for a quick bite, or you need to get some work done, Guglhupf’s tranquil atmosphere and delicious food will be motivation enough to get out of bed in the morning. —MJ

Runners-up: La Farm Bakery - Wake, Guglhupf Bake Shop - Orange/Chatham

BEST BARBECUE

THE ORIGINAL Q SHACK - DURHAM

Runners-up: Hillsborough BBQ Company - Orange/ Chatham, Longleaf Swine - Wake

BEST BEER RETAIL STORE

BEER STUDY - DURHAM

Runners-up: State of Beer - Wake, Beer StudyOrange/Chatham

BEST BISCUITS

SUNRISE BISCUIT KITCHEN - ORANGE/ CHATHAM

Runners-up: Rise - Durham, The Flying BiscuitWake

BEST BREWERY

PONYSAURUS BREWING - DURHAM

Runners-up: Eno River Brewery - Orange/Chatham, Trophy Brewing - Wake

BEST BRUNCH RESTAURANT

GUGLHUPF BAKERY, CAFE + RESTAURANT - DURHAM

Runners-up: Irregardless Cafe - Wake, Cafe Root Cellar Pittsboro - Orange/Chatham

BEST BURGER

AL’S BURGER SHACK - ORANGE/ CHATHAM

Runners-up: QueenBurger - Durham, MoJoe’s - Wake

BEST CATERING

MEDITERRANEAN DELI, BAKERY AND CATERING - ORANGE/ CHATHAM

Mediterranean Deli, a Franklin Street mainstay since 1992, has been through the wringer: in July 2023, a fire caused $3 million in damages and the restaurant’s main location to close. Opened by famously big-hearted Jamil Kadoura, a Palestinian immigrant who frequently raises money for the community, Med Deli is known for its fresh vegetarian offerings (the falafel and hummus are not to be missed) and expansive buffet and family-style catering all across the Triangle. As the Franklin Street location is slowly rebuilt from the ashes, Kadoura and staff have continued to run catering and delivery operations. —SE

Runners-up: Alpaca Peruvian Charcoal ChickenDurham, Caffe Luna - Wake

BEST CHEAP EATS

COSMIC CANTINA - DURHAM

Climb the stairway to burrito heaven at Cosmic Cantina and venture into an intergalactic food experience that Durhamites have enjoyed for decades. Even after all these years, Cosmic promises a simple menu and good vibes, and it’s still one of the few restaurants where friendly drunkards and hangry nighthawks can find refuge after last call. —JL

Runners-up: Mediterranean Deli, Bakery and Catering - Orange/Chatham, Alpaca Peruvian Chicken - Wake

Best Catering: Mediterranean Deli, Bakery

PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA

BEST CHEESE SHOP

DURHAM CO-OP MARKETDURHAM

Runners-up: The Cheese ShopOrange/Chatham, Raleigh CheesyWake

BEST CHINESE RESTAURANT SHANGHAI RESTAURANTDURHAM

Tucked into a strip mall off Chapel Hill Road, where grocery store signs may change but some things stay deliciously constant, Shanghai has spent over two decades perfecting the art of consistency without compromise. The menu bridges Chinese American classics with Cantonese and Szechuan specialties, while the dining room—with its red vinyl booths, vintage liquor-bottle display, and that one towering ficus that’s probably witnessed thousands of first dates—feels like it exists in its own particular dimension of Durham time. Just remember to plan ahead during the holidays, when

seemingly half of Durham has the same craving for comfort and MSG in this enduring sanctuary. —LG

Runners-up: Jade Palace RestaurantOrange/Chatham, Five Star - Wake

BEST COFFEE SHOP

COCOA CINNAMONDURHAM

Step inside any one of Cocoa Cinnamon’s three storefronts in Old North Durham, Old West Durham, and Lakewood and you’ll be greeted by rich espresso smells, colorful, eclectic decor, and the murmur of good conversation between friends and strangers. Husband and wife co-owners

Leon Grodski Barrera and Areli Barrera Grodski envisioned the shops as community hubs where Durhamites of all stripes could gather and feel welcome. The couple make a point of paying their staff a living wage and buying sustainably, ethically produced coffee from diverse, independent vendors. This is a cup of coffee to savor and feel good about. —CCB

Runners-up: Caffé Driade - Orange/ Chatham, Sola Coffee Cafe - Wake

BEST DESSERTS

GUGLHUPF BAKE SHOP - ORANGE/CHATHAM

Gugulhupf, the German restaurant on 15-501, is known as a great Triangle brunch spot. But if you’re just looking to grab a cup of coffee and a pastry, try the spinoff bake shop at Eastgate Crossing in Chapel Hill. Everything is made at the

Durham location and shipped over in the morning, so you know it’s going to be just as good but without that weekend brunch line. The staff will also patiently explain to you how to pronounce schnecke, as in almond schnecke, if that’s something you’re interested in. —CP

Runners-up: Rose’s Noodles, Dumplings and Sweets - Durham, Bittersweet - Wake

Best Bake Shop: Guglhupf Bake Shop PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS

BEST DRAFT SELECTION WOODEN NICKEL PUB - ORANGE/CHATHAM

The Wooden Nickel is perhaps the anchor of Hillsborough’s surprisingly vibrant after-dark scene. Paired with a great selection of food (think wings and sandwiches), the pub’s draft list is sure to have something for everyone. “Pub” is short for the olden phrase “public house,” and the Wooden Nickel certainly feels like a public town square, especially with a democratic free-for-all seating system that encourages the neighborly good vibes. —CP

Runners-up: Beer Study - Durham, Raleigh Beer Garden - Wake

BEST ETHNIC GROCERY STORE

LI MING’S GLOBAL MARTDURHAM

Runners-up: H Mart - Wake, Mediterranean Deli, Bakery and Catering - Orange/Chatham

BEST FOOD TRUCK CHIRBA CHIRBA DUMPLING TRUCKDURHAM

If you answered the question posed on Chirba Chirba Dumpling’s website— “Were you born ready to eat dumplings right now?”—with “Yes!” then this is likely the food truck for you. Chirba Chirba— directly translating to “eat eat” in Mandarin—is appropriately named for a food truck that sells dumplings. The truck itself moves around the Triangle, with a calendar on its website. If using the truck tracker is too difficult, the truck itself is also bright yellow, making it hard to miss. Owner Nate Adams spent 14 years in Taiwan before founding Chirba Chirba, and according to its website, Chirba Chirba prides itself on using quality ingredients in an authentic Chinese style. —AS

Runners-up: Tacos Los Altos - Orange/ Chatham, Gym Tacos - Wake

BEST INDIAN RESTAURANT VICEROY - DURHAM

Runners-up: Vimala’s Curryblossom Cafe - Orange/Chatham, Cheeni Indian Food Emporium - Wake (closed)

BEST ITALIAN RESTAURANT GOCCIOLINA ITALIAN RESTAURANT - DURHAM

It feels like giving away the bag to write about Gocciolina, a fairy-tale restaurant tucked in an entirely unassuming Guess Road plaza, but it’s not like this Italian restaurant is any secret—it’s topped this list for Best Italian Restaurant in the Triangle year after year, in addition to garnering lots of other praise. For good reason: owner-chef Aaron Benjamin trained in northern Italy before bringing his spaghetti carbonara and small-plate offerings to North Durham. Gocciolina is the kind of place you should seek out for something special: a birthday, an anniversary, a celebration of good news. You’ll feel transported and will leave with a full stomach. —SE

Runners-up: Pizzeria MercatoOrange/Chatham, Bella MonicaWake

BEST JAPANESE RESTAURANT

M SUSHI - DURHAM

Runners-up: Akai Hana Japanese Restaurant - Orange/Chatham, Waraji - Wake

BEST LATE NIGHT MEAL –PAST 10 P.M.

QUEENY’S - DURHAM

Runners-up: Wooden Nickel PubOrange/Chatham, My Way TavernWake

BEST MEXICAN RESTAURANT MEZCALITO - DURHAM

Runners-up: Fiesta Grill RestaurantOrange/Chatham, El Rodeo - Wake

BEST NEIGHBORHOOD BAR

THE VELVET HIPPO BAR & LOUNGE - DURHAM

It’s hard to imagine a better spot than the Velvet Hippo for going on a first date, having a night out with friends, or cradling a drink while gazing out over the rooftops of Durham. The over-the-top fauna theme transports patrons to a vacation in the heart of the Bull City, while menus for cocktails, small bites, and nonalcoholic options keep the vibes high. —CP

Runners-up: Eno River BrewingOrange/Chatham, The Davie - Wake

BEST NEW RESTAURANT

LITTLE BULL - DURHAM

Runners-up: Madre - Wake, La Montana - Orange/Chatham

BEST NON-ALCOHOLIC DRINKS

THE VELVET HIPPO BAR & LOUNGE - DURHAM

Runners-up: Cup A Joe - Wake, Wooden Nickel Pub - Orange/ Chatham

BEST PIZZA

PIZZERIA TORODURHAM

With its perfectly crispy wood-fired pizzas and bustling, neighborhood vibe, Pizzeria Toro is the perfect unfussy yet impressive spot to bring out-of-towners for a taste of Durham. Chef-owner Gray Brooks serves up inventive seasonal specials alongside crowd-pleasers like homemade cannoli and a truly exceptional kale salad topped with shaved Parm and Calabrian chilies. Hot tip: order the burrata and arugula pesto starter alongside your pizza of choice (I love their classic Margherita). Devour as much as you can of both. Then use your leftover pizza crusts to mop up every last drop of that bright, creamy pesto. *Chef’s kiss.* —CCB

Runners-up: Pizzeria MercatoOrange/Chatham, Oakwood Pizza Box - Wake

BEST SEAFOOD

SALTBOX SEAFOOD JOINTDURHAM

Runners-up: Squid’s Restaurant - Orange/Chatham, NC Seafood Restaurant at the Farmers’ MarketWake

BEST SMALL PLATES/TAPAS

MATEO - DURHAM

As a non-denizen of Durham, it’s always a treat to check out the Bull City’s vibrant food scene. Too bad my family and I can’t seem to branch out much, because we inevitably return to our favorite Durham dining spot: Mateo. Then there’s the next challenge: narrowing down what to order from a long list of tapas and más tapas. A few stalwarts: the datiles —dates stuffed with goat cheese and serrano ham—is a sweet-savory combo that borders on dessert; the almejas, calamares fritos, and gambas al ajillo are perfect for the seafood lover; and the ensalada and remolacha provide a light touch alongside more filling fare. Or go and be adventurous: octopus, roasted bone marrow, squid, and headon shrimp are also all on the menu. —JP

Runners-up: Glasshalfull - Orange/ Chatham, Barcelona Wine Bar - Wake

Best Pizza: Pizzeria Toro

PHOTO BY CAITLYN PENNA

BEST SOUTHERN FOOD MAMA DIP’S - ORANGE/ CHATHAM

Runners-up: Big Ed’s Diner - Wake, Lula and Sadie’s - Durham

BEST SUSHI

M SUSHI - DURHAM

Runners-up: Akai Hana Japanese Restaurant - Orange/Chatham, City Market Sushi - Wake

BEST THAI RESTAURANT THAI CAFE - DURHAM

Runners-up: Cham Thai - Orange/ Chatham, Sushi Thai - Wake

BEST VEGETARIAN EATERY

MEDITERRANEAN DELI, BAKERY AND CATERINGORANGE/CHATHAM

Runners-up: Sassool - Wake, Goorsha - Durham

BEST WINE LIST

ANGUS BARN - WAKE

What’s better than a perfectly cooked steak? A perfectly cooked steak enjoyed with a perfectly paired glass of wine. And

Raleigh’s Angus Barn, which boasts one of the largest wine cellars in the country, is your Triangle destination for that match made in heaven. With a wine list that spans 100 pages, you can take a wine world tour without ever leaving that beloved barn house off of US 70. And while red wines are the sommelier’s go-to for steaks, don’t forget about Angus Barn’s cheese-and-cracker offerings, which you can sample alongside hundreds of different white varietals. There’s truly something for everyone on this wine list, from a $30 Spanish Cava to a $15,000 bottle of Montrachet Grand Cru, aged 22 years. Santé! —JP

Runners-up: Louella Wine Beer & Beverages - Durham, Rocks + AcidOrange/Chatham

Runners-up: Hillsborough Wine Company - Orange/Chatham, Raleigh Wine Shop - Wake

DURHAM

Runners-up: The Wooden NickelOrange/Chatham, Buffalo Brothers - Wake

Best Sushi: M Sushi

PHOTO BY JEREMY M. LANGE

BEST ARBORETUM OR GARDEN

SARAH P. DUKE GARDENSDURHAM

Sarah P. Duke Gardens has 55 acres of specialized gardens, with attractions that include a carnivorous plant collection, terrace gardens, a pond-viewing shelter, and much more, seeing more than 600,000 visitors a year. With its location on Duke University’s campus that hosts camps and programs for young kids as well as events such as weddings, the Duke Gardens are a space for people of all ages. With both the natural cycle of nature on display and the celebratory cycle of major life events taking place, one could consider this a modern-day Garden of Eden—but with fewer apples and much less trickery. —AS

Runner-up: North Carolina Botanical Garden - Orange/Chatham, JC Raulston - Wake

BEST DANCE VENUE

CAT’S CRADLE - ORANGE/ CHATHAM

Runners-up: The Fruit - Durham, Legends - Wake

BEST GOLF COURSE

WASHINGTON DUKE INN & GOLF CLUB - DURHAM

Runners-up: Finley - Orange/Chatham, Lonnie Poole - Wake

BEST HOTEL

UMSTEAD - WAKE

Runners-up: The Durham Hotel - Durham, Colonial Inn - Orange/ Chatham

BEST HOTEL LOUNGE

THE

DURHAM HOTEL -

DURHAM

“Durham’s living room,” as it has been described, is like the bar in Cheers; all the staff remember your name, and seeing a familiar face is basically guaranteed. The music—often a blend of jazz standards, lo-fi beats, and classic oldies—is rarely suffocating but distinguished enough to perk your ears up and make you whip out the Shazam app. Grab a drink or a bite to eat and make yourself at home! —JL

Runners-up: Carolina Inn - Orange/ Chatham, Longleaf Hotel - Wake

Best Hotel Lounge: The Durham Hotel PHOTO BY ALEX BOERNER

BEST KARAOKE PLACE/EVENT THE PINHOOK - DURHAM

Runners-up: Wooden Nickel PubOrange/Chatham, Tinroof - Wake

BEST PLACE TO PEOPLE WATCH WEAVER ST. MARKET CARRBORO - ORANGE/ CHATHAM

Runners-up: Durham Farmers’ Market - Durham, Downtown Raleigh - Wake

BEST PRESCHOOL/EARLY EDUCATION PROGRAM

CAROLINA FRIENDS DURHAM EARLY SCHOOLDURHAM

Runners-up: Project Enlightenment - Wake, Learning Outside - Orange/ Chatham

BEST SPORTS BAR BULL MCCABE’S IRISH PUB - DURHAM

Things you need for a successful sports bar: good food and TVs. Bull McCabe’s offers both in abundance. Plenty of places will “put on the game” on their one screen, but McCabe’s is the best spot downtown to take in all of NFL Sunday and the next Man City versus Arsenal clash at the same time. For the nerds, Arturo hosts a brain-teas-

ing trivia showdown every Wednesday that keeps even the most fervent Jeopardy! viewers on their toes. —JL

Runners-up: Wooden Nickel PubOrange/Chatham, Player’s RetreatWake

BEST SUMMER CAMP

CAROLINA FRIENDS SCHOOL - ORANGE/ CHATHAM

At most summer camps, you’ll find the standard fare: lanyard-making, relay races, and that one counselor who’s a little too enthusiastic about sing-alongs. But Carolina Friends School’s summer program feels more like a kid-sized liberal arts college, where kids can dive into everything from stage combat to Minecraft world-building and advanced comics design. Drawing from the same Quaker principles that guide its regular school year, CFS’s summer program emphasizes learning through exploration and community—which means less structured activities and more “Hey, what happens if we try this?” —LG

Runners-up: Schoolhouse of WonderDurham, Marbles Kids Museum - Wake

BEST TRIVIA BAR/EVENT TOMATO JAKE’S PIZZERIADURHAM

Runners-up: The Beerded Lady Bottle Shop - Wake, Hammered Trivia @ Haw River Tap & Table - Orange/Chatham

Best Place to People Watch: Weaver St. Market PHOTO BY ALEX BOERNER

BEST CHEF

CARRIE SHLEIFFER, ALLEY TWENTY SIX - DURHAM

Runners-up: Ashley ChristensenWake, John Horn at Wooden Nickel Pub - Orange/Chatham, Leslie Chartier at The Travelling CafeOrange/Chatham

BEST DJ

JORDEN THE DJ - DURHAM

Runners-up: DJ Wilder - Orange/ Chatham, DJKStones - Wake

PubRetreatFRIENDS ORANGE/ find the relay races, little too But Caroliprogram feels arts college, everything from world-builddesign. Drawprinciples that CFS’s sumthrough community—which means more “Hey, —LG

- Wake

BEST DRAFT-SLINGER

TOM FISHER, QUEENY’SDURHAM

Runners-up: Kacie Walker, House of Hops (Pittsboro) - Orange/Chatham; Cailin, Clouds Taproom - Wake

BEST KIDS NONPROFIT MUSEUM OF LIFE AND SCIENCE - DURHAM

Across the Triangle, there are few places more enthralling for kiddos than Durham’s Museum of Life and Science.

Explore Apollo-era space artifacts or immerse yourself in the butterfly house. Meet black bears, lemurs, and resident red wolves. Tinker, take a train ride, or sound off in the Sound Garden. Open all day, seven days a week, it’s always a reliable option for parents who want to get their kids out of the house and give them something engaging. And because the Museum of Life and Science is a nonprofit, your support ensures that it will be enjoyed by generations of kids to come. —JP

Runners-up: Schoolhouse of WonderOrange/Chatham, Note in the Pocket - Wake

BEST LOCAL ACTIVIST GROUP

BIKE DURHAMDURHAM

Bike Durham’s advocacy work is nearly inescapable (full disclosure: I’m a former board member). Walk, bike, bus, or drive down any number of streets in Durham and you’ll notice freshly painted bike lanes, a new stop sign or crosswalk, and updated traffic patterns that make traveling through Durham feel safer. The Bike Durham team has been relentlessly pressuring the city, county, and state governments to make improvements to the Bull City’s transit system. And they’ve seen success; now, residents and visitors get to experience that advocacy work for themselves. —JL

Runners-up: Livable Raleigh - Wake, Orange County CFAC - Orange/ Chatham

BEST MIXOLOGIST

LESLIE MATISTA, THE VELVET HIPPO BAR & LOUNGEDURHAM

Runners-up: Britton Murray at Wooden Nickel Pub - Orange/ Chatham, Mara Sudol at Free Lance - Wake

BEST NONPROFIT

SECOND CHANCE PET ADOPTIONS - WAKE

Runners-up: TROSA - Durham, B3 Coffee - Orange/Chatham BEST POLITICIAN

DEBORAH ROSS - WAKE

Runners-up: Graig Meyer - Orange/ Chatham, Nida Allam - Durham

@ Haw Orange/Chatham

Runners-up:

Best Politician: Deborah Ross PHOTO BY BEN MCKEOWN

BEST BARBER SHOP

ROCK’S BAR AND HAIR SHOPDURHAM

Runner-up: Friendly Barber Shop - Orange/Chatham, Mister Pompadour - Wake

BEST CHILDCARE

SCHOOLHOUSE OF WONDERORANGE/CHATHAM

Runners-up: Indigo Montessori School - Durham, Chesterbrook Academy - Wake

BEST CHIROPRACTIC PRACTICE

UNIVERSITY CHIROPRACTIC - DURHAM

Runners-up: Carolina Spine Specialists - Orange/ Chatham, Bloom Family Wellness - Wake

BEST DENTAL PRACTICE

HOLMAN FAMILY DENTAL CAREORANGE/CHATHAM

Runners-up: Durham Pediatric Dentistry and Orthodontics - Durham, Lane & Associates Dentistry - Wake

BEST DERMATOLOGICAL PRACTICE

CHAPEL HILL DERMATOLOGYORANGE/CHATHAM

Runners-up: Regional Dermatology of DurhamDurham, Blue Ridge Dermatology - Wake

BEST GYM

UNC WELLNESS CENTER AT MEADOWMONT - ORANGE/CHATHAM

Runners-up: Duke Health and Fitness CenterDurham, Oak and Iron Fitness - Wake

BEST HAIR SALON

SOUTHERN ROOTS BEAUTY BAR - WAKE

Runners-up: Mina’s Studio - Orange/Chatham, Fuss and Bother Salon - Durham

BEST HOLISTIC MEDICINE

THE FOUNTAIN ACUPUNCTURE AND HERBAL MEDICINE - WAKE

Runners-up: Duke Integrative Medicine Center

- Durham, UNC Integrative Medicine - Orange/ Chatham

BEST MASSAGE THERAPIST

CAROLE L POPE, LMBT # 12671ORANGE/CHATHAM

Runners-up: Kim Turk at Duke Health & Fitness Center and Duke Integrative Medicine - Durham, Taylor Burt Kneaded Massage - Wake

BEST PEDIATRIC PRACTICE

REGIONAL PEDIATRICS - DURHAM

Runners-up: Chapel Hill Pediatrics - Orange/ Chatham, Durant Road Pediatrics - Wake

BEST SPA

THE SPA AT UMSTEAD - WAKE

There’s nowhere quite as relaxing in the Triangle as the Spa at Umstead. With massages, facial and body treatments, and mani-pedis on offer, you can make a day of unwinding in the 16,000-square-foot rejuvenating space. The Spa at Umstead offers separate men’s and women’s lounges complete with whirlpools, steam rooms, saunas, and plush areas to rest. In the warmer months, you have full access to the outdoor pool and tranquil meditation garden. There’s a reason the spa is popular, so whether you’re booking for yourself or someone else, it’s recommended to make reservations as far in advance as possible. —JP

Runners-up: Auroraflow Massage - Durham, Hillsborough Day Spa - Orange/Chatham

BEST VETERINARY PRACTICE

ENO ANIMAL HOSPITAL - DURHAM

Runners-up: Carrboro Plaza Veterinary ClinicOrange/Chatham, Care First Animal Hospital - Wake

BEST WOMEN’S HEALTH PRACTICE

CHAPEL HILL OBGYN - ORANGE/ CHATHAM

Runners-up: Chapel Hill OBGYN - Durham, Arbor OBGYN - Wake

BEST YOGA STUDIO

FRANKLIN STREET YOGA CENTERORANGE/CHATHAM

Runners-up: Threehouse Studios - Durham, Dose Yoga - Wake

Best Spa: The Spa at Umstead PHOTO BY D.L. ANDERSON

BEST ATTORNEY

BETSY MARTIN LAWDURHAM

Runners-up: Cara Gibbons - Wake, Cedar Grove Law - Orange/Chatham

BEST AUTO DEALER

MARK JACOBSON TOYOTA (SERVING ORANGE COUNTY)ORANGE/CHATHAM

Surely someone reading this is currently in the market for a Prius? If so, readers recommend that you check out Mark Jacobson Toyota on 15-501. Yes, it is in Durham but gets credit for “servicing” Orange and Chatham Counties with a collection of new and used cars. Stop by to meet some friendly salesfolks and competent mechanics. —CP

Runners-up: Southpoint HondaDurham, Lieth Honda - Wake

BEST AUTO MECHANIC

WASP AUTOMOTIVEDURHAM

Runners-up: Braxton Tire - Orange/ Chatham, Autobahn AutomotiveWake

BEST BRIDAL SHOP

GILDED BRIDAL

Runners-up: Bella Bridesmaids, New York Bridal, Simply Blush Bridal

BEST CBD/HEAD SHOP

CAROLINA HEMP HUTDURHAM

Runners-up: NC Hemp Shoppe - Wake; Carolina Hemp HutHillsborough Dispensary - Orange/ Chatham

BEST CLOTHING CONSIGNMENT

PENNIES FOR CHANGE THRIFT BOUTIQUE - DURHAM

Runners-up: My Secret ClosetOrange/Chatham, Dorcas - Wake

BEST DANCE STUDIO

NINTH STREET DANCEDURHAM

Runners-up: Monarch Movement Company - Orange/Chatham, CC&CO Dance Complex - Wake

BEST DOG BOARDING TOP DOG - ORANGE/ CHATHAM

Runners-up: Mosa Pet Spa & Resort - Wake, Sunny Acres Pet ResortDurham

BEST DOG GROOMING

ELLIOTTE’S PET SPA & SALON - DURHAM

Runners-up: Mosa Pet Spa & Resort - Wake, Hair of the Dog Grooming Studio - Orange/Chatham

BEST DOG TRAINING TOP DOG - ORANGE/ CHATHAM

Runners-up: Pawsitive Empowerment - Durham, Sally Said So - Wake

BEST DOG WALKING

PEAK CITY PUPPY - WAKE

Runners-up: Bull City Pet Sitting - Durham, Kimie’s Kritters LLCOrange/Chatham

BEST ELECTRICIAN

BONNEVILLE ELECTRICORANGE/CHATHAM

Runner-up: CMC Electric - Wake, Volt Doctors - Durham

BEST HVAC COMPANY

BOER BROTHERS - ORANGE/ CHATHAM

Runners-up: Air Experts - Wake, Alternative Aire - Durham

BEST INSURANCE COMPANY

BONNIE ROSE, NC FARM BUREAU - ORANGE/ CHATHAM

Runner-up: Bull City InsuranceDurham, Carolina Insurance Advisors - Wake

BEST JEWELER/JEWELRY STORE

MELISSA DESIGNER JEWELRY - ORANGE/CHATHAM

Runners-up: Jewelsmith - Durham, Bailey’s Fine Jewelry - Wake

BEST LANDSCAPER

TROSA LAWN CAREDURHAM

Runners-up: Fairway Green - Wake, Roots & Sproots - Orange/Chatham

BEST LOCAL BOOKSTORE

FLYLEAF BOOKS, CHAPEL HILLORANGE/CHATHAM

Opened by Chapel Hill couple Jamie and Michael Fiocco in 2009, Flyleaf’s reputation as a top-notch bookstore continues unabated year after year. That reputation seems to rest on a team of booksellers who truly love the reading life. Also, Flyleaf is the kind of shop where one can genuinely forge community: there are multiple book clubs (a silent book club, a “New Romantics” book club, the Queer Death Club, and more) to plug into as well as a robust event schedule of author talks and readings. —SE

Runners-up: The Regulator Bookshop - Durham, Quail Ridge Books - Wake

BEST MOVING COMPANY

TROSA MOVING

Runners-up: Chapel Hill Moving Company, Two Men and a Truck

BEST NEW BUSINESS

THE VELVET HIPPO BAR & LOUNGE - DURHAM

Runners-up: Eno River BrewingOrange/Chatham, Black Bird Books - Wake

Best Local Bookstore: Flyleaf Books PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS

BEST PAINTERS GONZALEZ PAINTERS & CONTRACTORS INC.ORANGE/CHATHAM

Runners-up: Zarazua PaintingDurham, Montoya Painting - Wake

BEST PLACE TO BUY LOCALLY MADE ART

DURHAM FARMERS’ MARKET - DURHAM

At the Durham Farmers’ Market, “locally made art” is an expansive category, encompassing everything from photo prints and pottery to hand-dyed clothing and painted gourd birdhouses. If you’re looking for a thoughtful holiday gift or unique memento, stroll through the farmers’ market to shop local wares you won’t find at a big-box store. —CCB

Runners-up: Womancraft Fine Handcrafted Gifts - Orange/ Chatham, Deco Raleigh - Wake

BEST REAL ESTATE COMPANY

INHABIT REAL ESTATEDURHAM

Runners-up: Raleigh Realty - Wake, Weaver Street Realty - Orange/ Chatham

BEST REALTOR (INDIVIDUAL’S NAME)

JUSTIN BURLESONDURHAM

Runners-up: William Fitzgerald - Wake, Terri Turner - Orange/ Chatham

BEST VINTAGE STORE

TROSA THRIFT STORE AND DONATION CENTERDURHAM

Runners-up: Rumors - Orange/ Chatham, Father & Son AntiquesWake

BEST ART GALLERY (ART FOR SALE) FRANK GALLERY - ORANGE/ CHATHAM

Runners-up: Artspace - Wake, Cecy’s Gallery & Studios - Durham

BEST ART MUSEUM NORTH CAROLINA MUSEUM OF ARTWAKE

It can be easy to take museums for granted but the North Carolina Museum of Art (NCMA), one of the preeminent museums in the American South—and the first in the country to use public funds to create a museum, in a rare positive move by the General Assembly!— deserves top-of-mind space. Beyond its touring exhibitions and recently reimagined People’s Collection, the sprawling lawns around the museum are ideal for picnics and long weekend hangs. Check NCMA’s calendar for frequent outdoor programming, too, including dance and musical performances. —SE

Runners-up: Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University - Durham, Ackland Art Museum - Orange/Chatham

BEST COMEDY CLUB/EVENT GOODNIGHTS COMEDY CLUB - WAKE

RIP to the old Raleigh ice cream factory, but the new Goodnights Comedy Club, located in an underground space in the Village District, just feels right. Goodnights owner Brad Grossman modeled the comedy club’s new home, which opened in 2023, on his very first business venture, the underground Helium Comedy Club in Philadelphia. And by going down, it feels like Goodnights—an institution of the Raleigh stand-up scene for more than three decades—has leveled up. Catch stadium-sized talent in an intimate venue at a modest ticket price. Or polish your own comedy act with a stand-up or improv class at Goodnights

Comedy Academy. However you choose to escape the real world for an hour or two, you’ll be laughing. —JP

Runners-up: Mettlesome - Durham, Yonder: Southern Cocktails and Brew - Orange/Chatham

BEST DRAG SHOW/EVENT THE HOUSE OF COXXDURHAM

The House of Coxx is called “Durham’s local drag family” for a reason. For over 10 years, the House of Coxx has helped Durham’s drag community flourish with programming including traditional themed drag shows, comedy nights, and trivia nights—though this only scratches the surface of what the House of Coxx offers. Between beautiful outfits and spectacular performances, you won’t regret attending one of the House of Coxx events. Vivica C. Coxx, creator and mother of the House of Coxx, strives to create drag events for everyone to enjoy, from the young to the old. Regardless of who you are or where you come from, the queens and kings of the House of Coxx will put on a performance you aren’t soon to forget. —MJ

Runners-up: Legends - Wake, Carrboro Pride - Orange/Chatham

BEST ELECTRONIC CONCERT VENUE

CAT’S CRADLE - ORANGE/ CHATHAM

Runners-up: Red Hat AmpitheaterWake, The Fruit - Durham

BEST FILM THEATER VENUE/ EVENT CAROLINA THEATRE OF DURHAM - DURHAM

context or spotlighting Southern arts and culture, their stories always feel timely, thorough, and fresh. —LG

Runners-up: WCHL - Orange/ Chatham, Basically Famous Podcast - Wake

BEST ART GALLERY (ART FOR SALE) FRANK GALLERY - ORANGE/ CHATHAM

Runners-up: Artspace - Wake, Cecy’s Gallery & Studios - Durham

Where else can you watch new blockbusters, retro classics, live comedy, youth ballet, and a jazz band performing music from a popular anime show, all in the same week? Durham’s Carolina Theatre is one of one. For years, the theater has been a pillar of the local arts community, exemplifying what makes Durham special; there’s something for everyone. Not to mention they offer the best movie popcorn in the Triangle, an essential ingredient for any visit to the cinema.

—JL

BEST NON-ART MUSEUM MUSEUM OF LIFE AND SCIENCE - DURHAM

Comedy Academy. However you choose to escape the real world for an hour or two, you’ll be laughing. —JP

Runners-up: Mettlesome - Durham, Yonder: Southern Cocktails and Brew - Orange/Chatham

Runners-up: Orange County Historical Museum - Orange/Chatham County, North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences - Wake

BEST RADIO

STATION

Runners-up: Chelsea TheaterOrange/Chatham, Alamo Drafthouse - Wake

BEST ART MUSEUM NORTH CAROLINA MUSEUM OF ARTWAKE

WUNC - TRIANGLE WIDE

BEST DRAG SHOW/EVENT THE HOUSE OF COXX -

Runners-up: WNCU, WCPE

DURHAM

BEST THEATRE COMPANY

BEST LOCAL/REGIONAL PODCAST

DUE SOUTH - DURHAM

It can be easy to take museums for granted but the North Carolina Museum of Art (NCMA), one of the preeminent museums in the American South—and the first in the country to use public funds to create a museum, in a rare positive move by the General Assembly!— deserves top-of-mind space. Beyond its touring exhibitions and recently reimagined People’s Collection, the sprawling lawns around the museum are ideal for picnics and long weekend hangs. Check NCMA’s calendar for frequent outdoor programming, too, including dance and musical performances. —SE

PLAYMAKERS REPERTORY COMPANY - ORANGE/ CHATHAM

Around the time Due South launched last fall, Jeff Tiberii, who cohosts the daily WUNC show with Leoneda Inge, told the INDY that the show would be “reliable, not predictable.” “We’re trying to zag a little bit,” Tiberii said, “and we want people to zig.” Due South ’s win in this Best Of category (after just eight months of being on the air) suggests that the people have, indeed, zigged. Veteran reporters Tiberii and Inge make it easy: whether they’re augmenting a top-of-the-hour news item with regional

Runners-up: Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University - Durham, Ackland Art Museum - Orange/Chatham

BEST COMEDY CLUB/EVENT GOODNIGHTS COMEDY CLUB - WAKE

RIP to the old Raleigh ice cream factory, but the new Goodnights Comedy Club, located in an underground space in the Village District, just feels right. Goodnights owner Brad Grossman modeled the comedy club’s new home, which opened in 2023, on his very first business venture, the underground Helium Comedy Club in Philadelphia. And by going down, it feels like Goodnights—an institution of the Raleigh stand-up scene for more than three decades—has leveled up. Catch stadium-sized talent in an intimate venue at a modest ticket price. Or polish your own comedy act with a stand-up or improv class at Goodnights

Runners-up: Raleigh Little Theatre - Wake, The Durham Savoyards, LtdDurham

BEST UNPLUGGED CONCERT VENUE CAT’S CRADLE - ORANGE/ CHATHAM

Runners-up: Motorco Music HallDurham, Koka Booth Ampitheater - Wake

The House of Coxx is called “Durham’s local drag family” for a reason. For over 10 years, the House of Coxx has helped Durham’s drag community flourish with programming including traditional themed drag shows, comedy nights, and trivia nights—though this only scratches the surface of what the House of Coxx offers. Between beautiful outfits and spectacular performances, you won’t regret attending one of the House of Coxx events. Vivica C. Coxx, creator and mother of the House of Coxx, strives to create drag events for everyone to enjoy, from the young to the old. Regardless of who you are or where you come from, the queens and kings of the House of Coxx will put on a performance you aren’t soon to forget. —MJ

Runners-up: Legends - Wake, Carrboro Pride - Orange/Chatham

BEST ELECTRONIC CONCERT VENUE

CAT’S CRADLE - ORANGE/ CHATHAM

Runners-up: Red Hat AmpitheaterWake, The Fruit - Durham

Best Radio Station and Best Local/ Regional Podcast: Due South of WUNC PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS

FO O D & D R I N K

Breaking Ground

Durham’s ambitious curbside food scrap collection pilot looks to cut landfill waste.

BY GABI MENDICK arts@indyweek.com

Leftover food comes and goes easily. Wilted salad left from a potluck, daily coffee grounds, the moldy butt of a loaf of bread, slick potato peels from Thanksgiving prep—if you’re like most people in Durham, all these scraps go promptly in the trash before being carted out to a curb and taking a 98-mile journey to a Sampson County landfill.

Locally, for those wishing to forgo landfill waste, two routes have traditionally been available: DIY backyard composting and paid services like CompostNow, a private company that offers pickup prices starting at $29 a month.

These options could soon expand: Durham is currently piloting an ambitious food scrap curbside collection, the first city in North Carolina to do so. The city hopes to make the public service permanent someday.

In 2016, the City of Durham’s Solid Waste Management Department hired a consultant to gather and analyze household waste. The study entailed collecting a sample of waste and sorting it into categories: cardboard, plastics, metals, food scraps.

“About 18 percent of what was in the waste stream was compostable food scraps,” department director Wayne Fenton says. “And by percentage that was the largest component of what was sent to waste. So we made that a priority to look at getting food scraps out of the landfills.”

Keeping organic waste out of landfills reduces methane, a gas that contributes to climate change—significantly.

In Sampson County—where waste from Durham, alongside 43 other North Carolina counties, goes to die—those emissions are particularly egregious.

According to 2021 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) figures, Sampson County ranks second in the nation for methane emissions, beating out 1,319 other municipal solid waste landfills for damage. (Landfills tend to be disproportionately placed in low-income areas, and North Carolina is no exception: Sampson County ranks 12th in poverty across the state, with a poverty level of

22.8 percent.)

“The EPA estimates that one-third of all food available for human consumption goes uneaten and is the most commonly landfilled material, responsible for 58 percent of the fugitive methane emissions at landfills,” explains Christine Wittmeier, organics recycling team lead at the NC Department of Environmental Quality. “Composting food scraps creates green jobs, reduces emissions, and extends landfill life by saving valuable air space.”

A municipal composting pilot

The practical outcome of the 2016 study came years later, in January 2022, when the City of Durham launched the first phase of its pilot program to collect and compost food scraps from city residents.

The initiative is three-pronged. Education, an essential phase, came first. For habits to become truly reflexive, people need to grasp the full picture and feel incentivized. In the United States, the average household wastes a shocking one-third of the food it purchases. This translates to financial loss: In a 2024 study, researchers found that the average North Carolina household loses $2,259 per year on food waste, a figure slightly higher than the national average of $2,033.

As part of the educational initiative, the city has encouraged backyard composting and has run sales on composting units. When possible, this method is ideal, Fen-

ton says.

“The city doesn’t have to collect [the waste],” Fenton explains, “which means there’s no cost involved, and the resident gets the finished product.”

The pilot’s second phase, making drop-off containers and sites available to residents for food waste disposal, launched in July 2024.

These drop-off sites—put in place through a partnership with CompostNow—are especially geared toward individuals living in apartments or other homes without outdoor space. One collection site is located at city hall and another at the waste disposal and recycling center at 2115 East Club Boulevard.

The drop-off containers are available to all city residents to use free of charge, though users must download an app, CompostHere, to unlock the containers and deposit food scraps.

The Solid Waste Management Department plans to expand this program and has accounted for an additional five drop-off locations in its fiscal year 2025–26 budget request. These units will be distributed across the city to serve a broader population.

The third prong of the city’s food scrap pilot is curbside collection. The pilot curbside program initially included 80 households in Walltown, a neighborhood chosen for the trial because it demographically mirrors Durham as a whole and because it is proximate to the Club Boulevard drop-off site.

Each household participating in the pilot was provided

A compost container at City Hall

PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS

with an indoor countertop container to collect food scraps as well as an outdoor cart. The food scraps residents collect are picked up once a week.

The first goal of the curbside program was to learn how to best communicate with community members about what items can and cannot be composted. It also provided an important time frame for collecting general feedback and learning what barriers exist to food scrap collection.

The trial has since expanded to include 440 households, and the city is exploring what the program could look like on a citywide scale, considering the costs, benefits, and logistics.

Participation in the pilot is free, and Fenton believes that the service should continue to be provided at no cost to residents, though annual budget changes ultimately need to be approved by the city council.

“If you’re asking someone to spend additional time—sort their food scraps, put it in a different cart, put it out on a different day—and then you tell them you’re gonna charge them, you’re not going to get as high a participation rate,” Fenton says.

Collaboration with other organizations has been central to putting program elements in place. In addition to its other partners, the city contracts with Atlas Organics, which composts the food scraps on-site at the waste disposal and recycling center.

As with any public initiative, financing the program is critical. In this case, the Solid Waste Management Department received funding from the NC Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Environmental Assistance and Customer Service through its 2022 Community Waste Reduction and Recycling Grant Program to purchase countertop compost bins and outdoor carts for the pilot.

So far, the curbside collection pilot has been received well. Of the 440 households, the only instances of participants leaving the pilot were because they moved out of the area served. How the program might be eventually rolled out and budgeted is still up in the air, Fenton emphasizes.

Moving forward

Collecting food scraps and composting is one of those things that’s not particularly pretty or convenient—unlike out-ofsight, out-of-mind disposal habits, it puts a process of interacting with smelly, slimy kitchen waste at the fore.

Nevertheless, the popularity of public compost collection has surged around the

country, with a recent study determining that about 12 percent of U.S. households have access to a food waste program, with about 400 programs concentrated in big cities like Chicago, Houston, and San Diego.

In 2022, California passed a bill requiring every jurisdiction to provide collection services for organic waste; an ambitious goal that has been met by about 75 percent of jurisdictions thus far. (Another recent California bill requires supermarkets to give away unsold food that is still good, an effort that squares waste reduction with efforts to fight hunger—another gargantuan problem in the United States, where 13.5 percent of households are reportedly food insecure.)

And that direct interaction with household waste also has its benefits: just as it is possible to shift disposal habits, it is possible that composting can also lead to greater shifts in environmental consciousness.

Duke’s Center for Advanced Hindsight, an applied behavioral science research center, is another Durham pilot partner. During the curbside collection pilot, it ran a study to see if composting households also see general waste levels reduced.

“We were really interested in how taking on this new behavior changes the way people think about themselves and whether they will develop any spillover behavior,” says Joseph Sherlock, a behavioral scientist at the Center for Advanced Hindsight.

For example, if someone starts sorting their food scraps, there’s a chance they may make other environmentally friendly lifestyle adjustments like eating less meat, driving less, or recycling more.

“It’s a problem,” Sherlock says of food waste, “that we all need to solve, and it really can only be done at the local level.”

Observing the public’s attitude toward composting and how the program has been received, Fenton draws parallels to recycling.

“I’ve been working in this industry for quite a few years, and I’ll just say that the enthusiasm we saw in the past when curbside recycling first started—people were very interested and very willing, and communities saw it as a really good thing,” he says. “We’re kind of now revisiting this with food scraps. People are very interested. They hear about the issues with methane and greenhouse gasses and they would like to do their part.”

“We don’t want to be in the disposal business,” Fenton continues, summing up the motivation behind his work. “We want to be in the diversion business—we want to divert things from landfills.” W

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Incoming! Erotic Thrillers, Gothic Horror, and Holiday Counterprogramming

Shocking

surprises in Babygirl, gruesome remake

Nosferatu, and other movies playing locally that you probably shouldn’t see with the whole family.

BY GLENN MCDONALD arts@indyweek.com

The group dynamics involved in choosing a movie are complex, especially when family is involved. It gets 100 times worse in December. Hollywood knows this. That’s why the big holiday movies are designed to have maximum demographic appeal. The studios want to provide a destination that works for you and the kids and Grandma and the relatives from out of town.

The happy news is that there are always a few bold films looking to counterprogram against all that—like, for instance, a transgressive erotic thriller about dominance, submission, and forbidden workplace lust. America!

Babygirl, from the Dutch filmmaker Halina Reijn, stars Nicole Kidman as a middle-aged executive tempted into a severely inappropriate romance with a hot young intern (Harris Dickinson). Hollywood used to make movies like this all the time—think Body Heat or Fatal Attraction—but the genre retreated among 21st-century anxieties and concerns: power dynamics, agegap relationships, intimacy coordinators. Advance word on Babygirl is that the film deliberately plays with our expectations around all this and provides some shocking surprises. Which is good! That’s what thrillers are supposed to do. It’s also a good sign that Nicole Kidman is on board. She’s one of our most fearless screen actors—if you haven’t already, check out the 2018 indie Destroyer. Her perfor-

mance in Babygirl won the Best Actress prize at this year’s Venice International Film Festival.

For another holiday counterprogramming option, consider the highly anticipated Nosferatu, director Robert Eggers’s remake of the 1922 silent-film classic. This one promises to be very family unfriendly—a gruesome and moody Gothic horror film soaked in dread, violence, and evil sex. Bringing the visiting in-laws would essentially be an act of aggression.

For those of us who enjoy this sort of thing, Nosferatu looks like one of the year’s best films. Like director F. W. Murnau’s original, the story is an id-first adaptation of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula, heavy on sex and death. Lily-Rose Depp takes the lead female role as Ellen, a disturbed 19th-century teenager who makes a series of poor decisions concerning window latches. Bill Skarsgård plays the sinister Count Orlock, and Willem Dafoe has the Van Helsing role.

Eggers is the perfect filmmaker for this material. His previous films—The Witch, The Lighthouse, and The Northman—feel less like movies than soft spots in the time-space continuum. His movies transport the viewer, and not always in a pleasant way. Early reviews of Nosferatu suggest that this is Eggers’s masterpiece. Finally, in the event that you actually do need a movie for the whole family, you

can’t go wrong with the Ninth Annual NY Dog Film Festival, a traveling exhibition of short films dedicated to the canine spirit.

This presentation is actually a two-hour compilation of narrative, animated, and documentary short films about dogs and the people who love them. The festival travels to theaters in the United States and Canada, with a percentage of revenue going to local rescue organizations. It’s playing locally at the Carolina Theatre in Durham through December 22, and it may pop up elsewhere—check your local listings.

Cat lovers, don’t fret. The Carolina is also screening this year’s NY Cat Film Festival—same deal, same dates. And according to online materials, both short-film collections are safe for kids.

QUICK PICKS

The biographical drama A Complete Unknown features Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan right around the time he

switched to electric guitars at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.

Daniel Craig headlines the period drama Queer, set in 1950s Mexico City, based on the novella by William S. Burroughs and directed by Luca Guadagnino (Call Me by Your Name).

Tolkien nerds looking for a holiday fix may want to check out The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, an anime adaptation set 180 years before the original trilogy. Miranda Otto reprises her role as Éowyn (she’s the narrator).

Hugh Grant plays the heavy in the psychological horror film Heretic, featuring two unfortunate Mormon missionaries, a creepy old house, and some intense theology debates.

For anyone looking to brush up on their ancient history, The Return is a retelling of Homer’s Odyssey, with Ralph Fiennes as Odysseus and Juliette Binoche as Penelope. High school students, check with your teachers, I think you can get extra credit for this. W

Still from Babygirl PHOTO COURTESY OF A24

M U S IC Local releases we loved in 2024

jphono1: We All Belong to Something Else

January

Carrboro’s John Harrison is known for his prolific output, usually amplified, whether it’s indie rock with North Elementary, electronic improvisation with Ben Felton in Tacoma Park, or anything goes as jphono1. But his standout from this year centered on the acoustic guitar, an easy stroll through the woods with friends like banjoist Nathan Bowles, pedal steel player Nathan Golub, and flutist Rachel Kiel. The record has a relaxed and sunny vibe, gently psychedelic, like the Beach Boys on their way down and Pink Floyd on their way up,

Chatham County Line: Hiyo

January

It would be a disservice to a great picker to say that Chatham County Line was improved by the exit of Chandler Holt, whose brightly percolating banjo propelled the band through its first two decades. Instead, let’s just call Hiyo, the group’s most unique and bewitching album to date, an example of evolution by subtraction. Filling in their newfound gaps with synthesizers, drum machines, and electric guitar tuned to become a futuristic banjo surrogate, the group offers a warmly progressive blend of bluegrass, rock, and Americana, leaning further into the voracious musical impulses that long have set the group apart.

—Jordan Lawrence

shaking hands in 1970. Richly simple and autumnally content, these friendly songs will follow you like faithful hounds, asking nothing, giving all.

—Brian Howe

Sonny Miles: Gamma

February

The only thing more impressive than former President Obama including “Raleighwood Hills” by soul adventurer Sonny Miles on his Favorite Music of 2019 list was what happened, five years later, when the promising young North Carolina vocalist/guitarist channeled all of that unexpected attention into a textured debut album, Gamma, representing a composite confection of a holy Black musical canon. It’s a beguiling batch of love songs wandering through the tension of fear and conceit. The longing of “Can’t Swipe Away” and the luring of “Garden (Late Night Edition)” both comprise a lush palette of charmed melodies that would melt any live audience. Now, if only he can be encouraged to show off his gifts on more stages. —Eric Tullis

Rosali: Bite Down

March

Behind the AI-generated listicles promising “Twelve Albums for Your Fall Vibe” lies an important truth: we experience music in relation to the seasons. Some albums are winter albums. Some songs do really sound like summer. Rosali’s Bite Down, released at the end of March, is the album of this spring. The opener, “On Tonight,” unfurls like a folded leaf from a bud: slow, tentative, delicately gorgeous. As the record progresses, Omaha’s David Nance and Mowed Sound lend a rowdier edge to Rosali’s warm rock melodies, as on “My Kind,” whose lively piano and crunchy guitars shake off any residual winter frost.

—Tasso Hartzog

Teens in Trouble: What’s Mine

March

Fans of The Beths will find plenty to love in the hooks and harmonies of What’s Mine, the debut LP from Raleigh outfit Teens in Trouble. Throughout the release, leader Lizzie Killian explores time and relationships—sometimes in tandem— over punchy power pop fueled by righteous riffs and anthemic refrains, like the immediately infectious opener. Obvious ’90s alternative influences abound—the solos on “Autopilot” are reminiscent of early Weezer—while “In My Dreams” emerges from a psych-tinged haze into a guitar-shredding climax.

—Spencer Griffith

Gibson & Toutant: On

the Green

March

Combining catchy folk-pop tunes and balky antique tech, Durham’s Gibson & Toutant (spouses Josephine McRobbie and Joe O’Connell) sound like Yo La Tengo in a haunted Radio Shack. The great thing about On the Green is that, however seriously you want to take it, it meets you there. Like the title—are we traversing a vast landscape, or just stoned? When the duo sings like a dial-up modem over a touch-tone phone, is this a theme on the mechanical erosion of humanity, or a funny way of saying the record is about communication? This whimsical invention and sly humor make the music even more unique than it first sounds.

—BH

Magic Tuber

Stringband:

Needlefall

March

There’s a strange point at which acoustic folk music, mutated by its travels through different technologies, turns into experimental music. Here’s a postmodern old-time fiddle-and-guitar duo that thought, “Why not just cut out the middleman?” Needlefall is like something you’d find in a Borges story, a crate of unlabeled ethnographic recordings from countries that never existed. A meadowy dance seems to warp like a magnetic tape loop in “Days of Longing.” The title track moves like a needle sticking and jumping in a groove. Any isolated moment might sound like ordinarily beautiful mountain music, but together, they fall in the uncanny valley. —BH

Shirlette Ammons:

Spectacles

April

With Spectacles, Black queer poet and rapper Shirlette Ammons tackles, head-on, the ways that being a member of those marginalized groups puts her constantly on display: “Spectacles you think we wearing dancin’ shoes / The way they clockin’ every move,” the Durham artist observes in one of the album’s many incisive bars. Spectacles is made more affirming by how it flexes the community that helps give Ammons strength, pulling in talented collaborators such as the rootsy-rocking Phil Cook and the electro-folking Amelia Meath, molding their signature sounds together into exciting new shapes.

Bats & Mice: PS:

Seriously.

May

This Chapel Hill trio stood out among brawny post-hardcore bands circa 2000 for their relative daintiness. While their songs had all the rushing highs and stomach-dropping plunges of their genre, they seemed to scamper around on pins and needles, desolately pretty, with a ringing melodic sensibility to rival indiepop peers like Death Cab for Cutie. More amazing was that these sensibilities were still intact when they made an unexpected return this year, whisking us back to Y2K with every broken spring of guitar, every ropy bass line, every moony vocal that rises to a sing-along chant, then erupts in a scream as the bottom falls out in a lava flood of guitar.

—BH

Rapsody: Please Don’t Cry

May

Before the recording of this year’s Please Don’t Cry, Rapsody had harbored thoughts of walking away from the rap game altogether to pursue filmmaking. Instead, in another Grammy-nominated effort—for the Erykah Badu–featured “3:AM” and the Hit-Boy-produced “Asteroids”—her approach to songs pivoted rather dramatically from the dutiful rhyme heroics to testimonial turf-swerving that grapples with parity, police brutality, infidelity, sexuality, and divine illumination. This time, Marlanna Evans chose peace and self-reckoning over the justice currently being sought today by some of the industry’s top dogs. This could very well be her second act. —ET

Fancy Gap: Fancy Gap

July

Fancy Gap’s self-titled debut album feels like a warm summer day, even in winter. Duo Stuart McLamb (formerly of The Love Langauge) and Charles Crossingham, alongside collaborators like Sharon Van Etten and The Foo Fighters’ Rami Jaffee, have crafted a polished country-pop sound that feels full-bodied and timeless. “Whispering Winds” stands out with its delicate acoustic twang, evoking John Denver, while “Magnolias” carries a darker, gritty mid-aughts-era nostalgia. A love letter to the South, radio, and love itself, Fancy Gap’s first release demonstrates their multifaceted sound with striking clarity.

—Grace Yannotta

Babe Haven: Nuisance

June

Babe Haven gets darker and heavier on Nuisance, the Durham quartet’s sophomore full-length, blending bits of hardcore, thrash, and even nu metal into their riot grrrl spunk. While the title “Die (and Rot)” does little to hide their menacing lyricism, the lead single also encapsulates the quartet’s ability to seamlessly shift dynamics at the drop of a hat, suddenly switching between a breakneck mosh pit breakdown and a dreamy, singsong bridge that’s backed by swirling shoegaze guitar.

—SG

American Aquarium: The Fear of Standing Still

July

American Aquarium’s 16th album fulfills the band’s frequent comparison to a Piedmontian Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. The album opens with “Crier,” an anthem on emotional masculinity, and explores themes like alcoholism and generational trauma, not to mention reproductive rights in the aptly named “Babies Having Babies.” More than anything, The Fear of Standing Still exposes that there is one thing we all share: the inevitable passage of time. How’s that for the new generation’s dad rock?

Jake Xerxes

Fussell: When I’m

Called July

When I’m Called may be the definitive Jake Xerxes Fussell album because it’s the one that finds him making his chosen songs most distinctly his own. The Durham-based singer, arranger, and guitarist has, for five albums now, spelunked through nearly forgotten crevasses of American folk music, breathing new life into old essentials by performing them anew. He shuffled things up on When I’m Called by composing instrumentals first and then finding songs that worked with them. The results are stark, wistful, and deeply felt, proof of Fussell’s devotion to extending folk’s long lineage.

—JL

Skylar Gudasz: Country

August

The Durham singer, songwriter, and bandleader Skylar Gudasz just dropped a new bit of merch: a bamboo fan emblazoned with her album title. It’s a perfect symbol for Country, which sweeps a refreshing breeze across the sticky Southern terrain it inhabits, musically and conceptually. Gudasz’s expansive songwriting and unhurried, involving voice hold down the likes of “Fire Country,” while sprightly arrangements bolster tunes like the irrepressibly bouncing “Mother’s Daughter.”

The music might suggest a homegrown Kacey Musgraves or a laid-back Fleetwood Mac, but most of all it continues to calibrate the fine balance of iconic motifs and personal visions that Gudasz has claimed as her terrain.

—BH

Nathan Bowles

Trio: Are Possible

July

Composed of banjoist Nathan Bowles, bassist Casey Toll, and drummer Rex McMurry, this nationally acclaimed trio plays Appalachian folk with the harmonic sophistication of jazz and the steely force of classical minimalism. Are Possible achieves the almost impossible: Its long acoustic instrumentals don’t suggest the casual camaraderie of a pickin’ session, and it doesn’t make you think about landscapes. Well, it might, but the tension and drama are concentrated in the grooves, how patterns lock together, flex, swarm apart, and change, like minds. “The Ternions” is the

centerpiece from which the album rolls out, not like mountains or rivers, but like something just as natural and wondrous: music.

—BH

Tescon Pol: The Longer Morrow

September

With their retro-futurist light show, kaleidoscopic polyrhythms, and occasional penchant for nighttime sunglasses, Durham’s Tescon Pol is the kind of band you might glimpse in a new-wave club in an ’80s cyberpunk movie. Ariel Johannessen and Mic Finger, who sings in an impressive Interpol baritone, put their synth fleet to work on The Longer Morrow, an acute-angled odyssey that takes in the robotic flutters of Autechre, the singing glitches of Aphex Twin, and the industrial ghoul-pop of Einstürzende Neubauten. Gorgeous and eerie, lined in pop neon yet not quite human, it’s a must for all your blade-running needs.

—BH

Faun Tempol: La Oprika

October

With layers of psychedelic instrumentation, La Oprika is an ecstatic introductory album for avant-garde Raleighbased duo Faun Tempol. It’s impossible to unpack La Oprika without focusing on opening track “Acting Like a Child”—at nearly 12 minutes long, it’s 20 percent of the album, a whirlwind of distorted vocals and reverb on top of a stabilizing bass line and catchy melody. Other tracks, like the ambient “Walls Were There” and the baroque “Soup du Jour,” offer a captivating mix of complexity and poppiness. As we leave 2024, I feel confident I’ll continue to unpack La Oprika into 2025.

—GY

DUNUMS: I wasn’t that thought

October

Sijal Nasralla founded DUNUMS in 2009 after visiting family in Palestine. DUNUMS is a musical collective; “band,” is too static a descriptor of Nasralla’s sprawling multimedia project—it’s more dynamic diasporic cacophony; a joyful, noisy dinner full of voices. On this new release, that crowded table represents contributions from numerous local musicians and artists. Described by Nasralla in an INDY feature earlier this year as “toddlercore,” the album draws inspiration from Nasralla’s young daughter, Tasneem, as well as the creative resilience of several Palestinian children who surived a 2009 massacre by Israeli forces. —Sarah Edwards

XOXOK: Jesus Piece

November

Iloved telling Keenan Jenkins’s story in the INDY recently, but it didn’t leave room to stress just how choice the music is on his second album as XOXOK. Embracing heady, free-flowing R&B in a sort of neo-retro style, Jenkins perfectly matched his voice and guitar (which are themselves alike—cool, clear, silvery, fluid) with a sensitive band that trembles like a pool of touched water. The melodies and grooves build with exquisite patience, and arrangements are always whooshing up or falling away to keep us rapt. Rather than being carried by the music, Jenkins’s voice structures it like a trellis, seated in its elemental power. A real journey.

—BH W

$40 a Day in Durham, 20 Years Later

Twenty years ago, Rachael Ray visited Durham with a mission: Prove that 40 bucks could fuel a full day of local dining. Is that still possible?

BY LENA GELLER lgeller@indyweek.com

Before Rachael Ray—the bubbly celebrity chef known for whipping crowds into a frenzy with a theatrical “Parmigiaaano Reggiannooo!”—became the queen of 30-minute meals, she was tackling a different culinary countdown.

The premise of her short-lived $40 a Day television show was simple. Ray would travel to different cities, attempting to eat three meals, a snack, and a drink from nonchain restaurants while staying on budget. The show ran for three seasons before getting canceled—but not before Ray made it to Durham, documenting the journey in an episode that aired on August 29, 2004.

I’ve always been drawn to Ray’s unpretentious cooking approach and enthusiastic hand-talking. So when a friend sent me a link to the local episode after it surfaced on the Bull City subreddit earlier this year, I watched it right away. “It’s wild how ‘Durham’ means the entire triangle for this show’s purposes,” one Reddit user wrote. “And also that eating for $40 a day was once possible …” Challenge accepted.

Several of Ray’s stops have since closed, including the Barbecue Joint, which shuttered over a decade ago, and Mama Dip’s, the beloved Chapel Hill institution that switched to catering-only earlier this year (as Reddit commenters were quick to note, the “Durham” episode hopscotches between Chapel Hill and Durham). While spots like Elmo’s Diner, where Ray ate breakfast, remain treasured affordable options, prices have crept just beyond what would work for a modern $40 challenge. To execute this challenge, we could have adjusted for inflation—about $66 in today’s dollars—but that felt like missing the point. Instead, I set out to capture the spirit of Ray’s adventure with my own Durham-only dining tour, accompanied by INDY photographer Angelica Edwards.

I laid out some ground rules. Like Rachael Ray, my day would include three full meals, a snack paired with an activity, and a beverage stop. Everything—tax and 20 percent

tips included (Ray tipped 15 percent)—had to fit within the $40 limit. I wouldn’t consume any other food or drinks throughout the day to truly test whether $40 could sustain me. And to fully commit to the bit, I donned Ray’s getup from the episode.

Cosplaying 2004 Ray was easy enough: double down on denim, side-part your hair like you mean business, and practice saying “Yum-o” without cringing. Finding meals that fit the budget would prove more challenging—though not impossible.

BREAKFAST: 11:15 a.m.

While Ray relied on local recommendations to find Elmo’s, I turned to the modern equivalent: Googling “cheap breakfast Durham NC.” This led me to Tater Bread Cafe, which operates out of a compact white brick building behind the vacant property that previously housed Los Primos Supermarket.

Below a hand-painted yellow sign, owner Walter Sneed greeted me as though he’d been expecting me all morning. In place of Ray’s sit-down breakfast at Elmo’s, where she ordered a $5.95 Southwest grits special (topped with ham, cheese, eggs, and veggies), I found myself at a walkup window, studying Tater Bread’s straightforward menu: pick a meat and a side, get two eggs and toast. In a nod to Ray’s breakfast choice, I ordered grits—which Sneed calls “Southern ice cream”—as my side and opted for the

salmon patty, priced a dollar less than other proteins, to keep me on budget. The timing felt serendipitous; I’d just read food historian Toni Tipton-Martin’s exploration of how Black cooks transformed canned salmon into a soul food breakfast staple.

When I tried to order coffee and learned they were out, Sneed’s son, Harrison, who had jumped in to man the window, threw in an orange juice for free. Angelica and I turned the trunk of my Camry into a makeshift dining room, spreading our breakfast out on the flat surface. My salmon patty looked a bit worse for the wear but tasted divine, with a crisp crust that gave way to a tender interior speckled with herbs. I smeared strawberry jam on my toast with the back of a plastic spoon while Angelica, a vegetarian, worked through her eggs, toast, and potatoes. With tip, my breakfast came to $8.40—already tracking better than Ray’s $9.09 tab at Elmo’s, where she’d ordered a $1.50 coffee in addition to her grits special.

SNACK: 2:20 p.m.

By two p.m., my lack of caffeine was becoming critical. In a moment of weakness at the INDY’s office, I poured myself a cup from the coffee station before our editorial meeting but managed to regain my willpower and handed it off to Ann, our graphic designer, before I could take a sip. Ray had paired her afternoon snack with a Durham Bulls game, munching on a $3 Cracker Jack in the stands.

The writer enjoys a $12.90 lunch at Taqueria Los Canarios PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS

November means no baseball, so after our meeting, Angelica and I walked to a Thanksgiving market at Durham Central Park, where fallen leaves skittered across the pavement. After surveying the vendor stalls, I landed at Bklyn Bakery, ordering their cheapest offering: a $2.25 vegan ginger molasses cookie. A few steps away, I grabbed a $3 coffee from Red Drum Roasters, doctoring it with complimentary oat milk and simple syrup. Between my reflexive “keep the change” at Bklyn Bakery, where I paid in cash, and the muscle-memory $1 tip tap on the iPad at Red Drum Roasters, my attempt to stay within a few bucks turned into a $7 splurge.

Angelica and I settled at a picnic table to plot our next move. We knew we wanted to go to a taco truck but weren’t sure which one would be the most economical, so we hunched over our phones, navigating a maze of Yelp pages and Facebook posts from the 2010s advertising $2 tacos that surely cost more by now. In the end, we opted for proximity: a taco truck three blocks away.

LUNCH:

3:00 p.m.

Taqueria Los Canarios sits propped on concrete blocks outside Trinity Food Mart. Steam wafted from the window as we approached. The prices, hand-painted on the side of the truck, looked promising— tacos were $3.50 each. Two shrimp tacos with crisp slaw and a side of salsa taquera plus a strawberry Jarritos came to $12.90 with tip—a jump from Ray’s $10.18 lunch at Mama Dip’s, where she’d enjoyed a bowl of gumbo ($6.25), corn bread ($0.60), and lemonade ($1.50), but still pretty afford-

able. I ate at a red picnic table beside the truck. Angelica skipped lunch upon learning that the vegetarian pupusas she’d hoped to order would take a long time to prepare.

DINNER: 6:30 p.m.

By dinner, I felt I needed some vegetables, mostly because I wanted to echo Ray’s line about how “beautiful and healthful” everything on her plate at the Barbecue Joint looked—and Angelica needed vegetables, mostly because she was going to pass out otherwise.

Money was feeling tight at this point; I only had $11.70 left. Devil’s Pizzeria on Ninth Street was an easy choice. Growing up in Durham, I’d spent many an afternoon there, drawn by their willingness to top a single slice with custom toppings and by the mega bang for your buck.

I ordered a slice with broccoli and spinach and, looking at my dwindling cash, sheepishly asked the cashier for tap water. “We only have bottles,” he said. “How much do they cost?” I asked. “For you? Free,” he said, making him the second person who’d volunteered to help stretch my budget.

The slice that arrived was a garden on a metal pie pan, with broccoli florets threatening to tumble onto the counter. The standard lineup of shakers—oregano, chili flakes, Parmesan—stood at attention nearby. Not exactly the Parmigiano Reggiano that Ray would roll her R’s for, but it did the trick. Angelica, finally getting a proper vegetarian meal, dove into a veggie sub and fries.

The slice plus tip ran $7.64: considerably less than Ray’s dinner, where she’d spent $13.73 on pulled pork, Brussels sprouts, and a beer.

DRINK: 8:00 p.m.

For our final stop, I traded Ray’s post-dinner full-caf cappuccino (a somewhat psychotic choice, IMO) for a more sensible $2.50 Bud Light special at Dain’s Place, a pub down the street from Devil’s. Calling it a day, I tipped 51 percent, bringing my total dollars spent to exactly 40. I sipped my beer and channeled Ray’s tasting notes to Angelica: “It’s got a real nose to it.”

In the episode, Ray is shown reading a copy of the INDY as she waits for her cappuccino at Caffé Driade. As part of my research, I unearthed the issue in the archives at the Durham Public Library. In its (88!) pages, I found full-page restaurant advertisements—a relic of robust predigital marketing—and a dining section that reads like a time capsule of Durham’s food scene. Some reviewed restaurants have long since closed their doors, while others—Lantern, Nana’s, Fearrington House—still dominate local food coverage today, including ours.

The stark difference between then and now isn’t just in the prices; it’s in how we find our food. Ray’s journey, guided by local word-of-mouth and print media, feels almost quaint in our era of algorithms.

Every single thing I ate during my $40 challenge was phenomenal. Not good-forthe-price phenomenal—phenomenal, full stop. The salmon patty at Tater Bread Cafe rivaled anything you’d find at a bougie brunch spot. The tacos at Los Canarios outshone their pricier counterparts. Even my veggie-loaded pizza slice held its own against craft pies across town.

While established restaurants with PR budgets and media connections continue to command attention, this challenge illuminated how much incredible food exists beyond our usual coverage radius. Nearly every person who took my order was also the owner of their establishment. These owner-operators aren’t just keeping prices accessible—they’re quietly maintaining Durham’s culinary excellence, whether or not they make it into restaurant reviews.

Likewise, the free drinks I received weren’t just about stretching my budget; they were reminders of the genuine hospitality that defines Durham’s food scene. Sure, a spontaneous day of dining might run you more than $40 in 2024, but this journey reminded me of something more valuable than nostalgia for early-aughts prices: some of Durham’s best food is being served from walkup windows and food trucks, prepared by the hands of owners who remember your face. You just have to know where to look. Sometimes, that means looking somewhere other than where food writers are telling you to go. W

RACHAEL’S DAY

Breakfast: Elmo’s Diner

Southwest grits special: Coffee: Tax + tip:

Total:

Lunch: Mama Dip’s Gumbo: Corn bread: Lemonade: Tax + tip:

Total:

Snack/activity: Bulls Game Cracker Jack:

Total:

Dinner: The Barbecue Joint Pulled pork: Brussels sprouts: Beer: Tax + tip: Total:

Drink: Caffé Driade Iced cappuccino: Tax + tip: Total:

GRAND TOTAL:

LENA’S DAY

Breakfast: Tater Bread Cafe

Breakfast platter (tax included): Orange juice: Tip: Total:

Thanksgiving Market Ginger molasses cookie from Bklyn Bakery: Tax + tip: Coffee from Red Drum Roasters (tax included): Tip: Total: Dinner: Devil’s

A slice of broccoli and spinach pizza from Devil’s Pizzeria PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS

C

MUSIC

Holiday Music on the Roof: Ally J 7:30 p.m. The Durham Hotel, Durham.

Live Jazz Music Wednesdays Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m. Slim’s Downtown, Raleigh.

STAGE

The Christmas Case of Hezekiah Jones Nov. 26–Dec. 15, various times. PlayMakers Repertory Company, Chapel Hill.

The Monti StorySLAM: The Naughty List 7:30 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.

’Twas the Night Before ... Dec. 5-15, various times. DPAC, Durham.

COMMUNITY

Holiday Market at the Durham 9 p.m. The Durham Hotel, Durham.

MUSIC

Chris Chism / Colin Cutler and Hot Pepper Jam 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

“One for Don” Featuring Idlewild South and Friends 8 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.

Treasure Pains / Boy Named Sue / Long Relief / Franky and the Slight Incline 8 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.

STAGE

The Rainmaker Dec. 5-22, various times. Burning Coal Theatre Company, Raleigh.

Carolina Ballet’s The Nutcracker Dec. 12-24, various times. Raleigh Memorial Auditorium, Raleigh.

Cinderella the Musical Dec. 6-22, various times. Raleigh Little Theatre, Raleigh.

SCREEN

How to Save a Milestone 7 p.m. Kings, Raleigh.

Straight Time 8 p.m. Shadowbox Studio, Durham.

COMMUNITY

Durham Night Market

5 p.m. American Tobacco Campus, Durham.

MUSIC

Blab School / Lioner / 1970s Film Stock 8 p.m. Shadowbox Studio, Durham.

Dream Rotation: Joey Zen / Dane / LEBROWN 9 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Emo Nite 7 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.

Hammer No More the Fingers / Spider Bags 8 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.

Jake Xerxes Fussell 8 p.m. Haw River Ballroom, Saxapahaw.

Santa Rave 9 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.

Ugly Sweater Holiday Pops Concert with the North Carolina Symphony 8 p.m. Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

STAGE

The ComedyWorx Show Fridays at 8 p.m. ComedyWorx, Raleigh.

The Harry Show Fridays at 10 p.m. ComedyWorx, Raleigh.

Hush Hush: Comedy Based on Secrets Fridays at 9 p.m. Mettlesome Theater, Durham.

The Passion of Mary Cardwell Dawson

Dec. 13-15, various times. Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts. Raleigh.

MUSIC

Adulting Dance Party 7 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.

Alisa Amador 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Angela Bingham Quintet 7:30 p.m. Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.

Cajammers 7 p.m. Succotash, Durham.

Chatham County Line Holiday Tour 8 p.m. Haw River Ballroom, Saxapahaw.

Shallow Cuts Presents: Ugly Christmas Sweater Pop Dance Party 10 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.

Southern Culture on the Skids 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

Start Making Sense (Talking Heads Tribute) 8:30 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.

Yolanda Rabun: Songs of Holiday Cheer 8 p.m. Missy Lane’s Assembly Room, Durham.

Rubies on Five Points is celebrating its three-year anniversary on December 13 with performances from Hammer No More the Fingers and Spider Bags.

PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS

SCREEN

Elf 11:30 a.m. Carolina Theatre, Durham.

STAGE

Golden Age Comedy 9 p.m. Mettlesome Theater, Durham.

Guys on Ice: The Ice-Fishing Musical Dec. 14-22, various times. Mettlesome Theater, Durham.

COMMUNITY

MAKRS Holiday Fest

11 a.m. City Plaza, Raleigh.

SUN 12/15

MUSIC

Eric Hirsh Trio performs Vince Guaraldi’s A Charlie Brown Christmas ENCORE 5 p.m. Missy Lane’s Assembly Room, Durham.

NCCU Jazz Faculty

Holiday Concert with Joey Calderazzo 9 p.m. Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.

Orchestrating Change: A Concert for Climate Action 3 p.m. Baldwin Auditorium, Durham.

STAGE

Stand-Up Comedy: Colum Tyrrell 7 p.m. Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh.

TUES 12/17

MUSIC

Jeremy “Bean” Clemons Tuesdays at 8 p.m. Kingfisher, Durham.

Jim Brickman 2024 Comfort & Joy Tour

7:30 p.m. Fletcher Opera Theater, Raleigh.

Tiny Moving Parts

7:30 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.

Wednesday (solo) / Cryogeyser (solo) 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

STAGE

Comedy at Slim’s Dive Bar “Say It at Slim’s” 10:30 p.m. Slim’s Downtown, Raleigh.

Stand-Up Comedy: Sammy Obeid 6:30 p.m. Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh.

WED 12/18

MUSIC

Holiday Music on the Roof: Triangle Gay Men’s Chorus 7:30 p.m. The Durham Hotel, Durham.

Live Jazz Music Wednesdays Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m. Slim’s Downtown, Raleigh.

Trans-Siberian Orchestra: The Lost Christmas Eve Tour 7 p.m. Lenovo Center, Raleigh.

STAGE

A Celtic Christmas by A Taste of Ireland

7:30 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

A Christmas Carol Dec. 18-22, various times. DPAC, Durham.

14.

Chatham County Line’s Holiday Tour is coming to Saxapahaw. Catch them at Haw River Ballroom on December

PHOTO COURTESY OF CAT’S CRADLE

Catch jazz/funk musician and 2022 NPR

Tiny Desk Contest winner Alisa Amador at Cat’s Cradle Back Room on December 14.

PHOTO COURTESY OF CAT’S CRADLE

C U LT U R E CA L E N DA R

THURS

12/19

MUSIC

An Evening with Shakey Graves 8 p.m. Haw River Ballroom, Saxapahaw.

Candlelight: Christmas Carols on Strings 7:30 p.m. Aria, Durham.

Rachel Despard 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Tab Benoit / Jesse Dayton 8 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.

STAGE

The Nutcracker 7:30 p.m. Carolina Theatre, Durham.

MUSIC

Fancy Gap 8 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.

North Carolina Symphony: A Candlelight Christmas with The Holiday Brass Dec. 20-22, various times. Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

Rhonda Robichaux and Meaux 7 p.m. Succotash, Durham.

Yarn / Dune Dogs 8 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.

STAGE

The ComedyWorx Show Fridays at 8 p.m. ComedyWorx, Raleigh.

The Harry Show Fridays at 10 p.m. ComedyWorx, Raleigh.

Hush Hush: Comedy Based on Secrets Fridays at 9 p.m. Mettlesome Theater, Durham.

MUSIC

Dillon Fence with George Huntley Band / Alex Lawhon 7:30 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.

Everything Yes 9 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.

He Is Legend Hollywood Holiday Hootenanny 7 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

John Howie Jr. and the Rosewood Bluff 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

The Some of It All 7:30 p.m. Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.

STAGE

The Sensory-Friendly ComedyWorx Show 1 p.m. ComedyWorx, Raleigh.

MUSIC

Natalie Cressman and Ian Faquini 7 p.m. Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.

The Rinaldis’ Holiday Bonanza 6:30 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.

MUSIC

Jeremy “Bean” Clemons Tuesdays at 8 p.m. Kingfisher, Durham.

STAGE

NUTCRACKER! Magical Christmas Ballet 1 and 5 p.m. DPAC, Durham.

Gospel legend Yolanda Rabun is gracing the stage at Missy Lane’s Assembly Room for Songs of Holiday Cheer on December 14. PHOTO COURTESY OF MISSY LANE’S

Enjoy an evening with Austin, Texas, artist Shakey Graves at the Haw River Ballroom in Saxapahaw on December 19. PHOTO COURTESY OF CAT’S CRADLE

CROSSWORD

Los Angeles Times Sunday Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Patti Varol

SU | DO | KU

© Puzzles by Pappocom

level: HARD

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

If you’re stumped, find the answer keys for these puzzles and archives of previous puzzles (and their solutions) at indyweek.com/puzzles-page or scan this QR code for a link. Best of luck, and have fun!

Partake of

“You should believe me!”

Clowns in front of a camera

“Don’t interrupt!” studio sign

Large feather

Summoning, in a way

Language suffix

2011 Marvel film directed by Kenneth Branagh

Pumpkin pigment

Series starter

Highland hill

Flushed, as cheeks

“Yeah, that’s __ from me”

ID with nine digits

Fruit salad fruit

Muscat’s country 15 Tuna roll seaweed

“Hollywood Squares”?

Like adjustable hats and most

sword public smearer a debt graphics that run? __”: pop nickname block of Denmark Washington of 34-Across a plug? suave circulations section Heart,

11/24/24

EMPLOYMENT

Sales Manager Sales Manager (SM-JKC). Oversee aftermarket sales strategy. Travel required 60% nationally and 10% internationally. Telecommuting permitted. Reqs BS+2 yrs rltd exp. Will accept a BS equivalent based on a combo of edu and/or exp as determined by a professional evaluation service. Mail resume to HR Manager, Syntegon Technology Services, 2440 Sumner Blvd., Raleigh, NC 27616. Must ref job title & code.

Sr. Stat Programmer

Sr. Stat Programmer (mult openings), IQVIA RDS Inc., Durham, NC. Mst teleco frm anywh in US. Complete, cond & rev stat prgrm validtn reqs. 9a - 5p w/ occ OT & wknds. Sal Range: $126,390$177,000/yr. Reqs Bach/Mast in CS, Stat, Pharm Sci/rel/equiv. Reqs if bach 4 yrs, if Mast 2 yrs stat prgrm exp incl (if bach 4 yrs, if mast 2 yrs): use comp apps like Base SAS, SAS Graph & SAS Macro Lang; use clin Data Stds (like CDISC, ADaM & SDTM); mng mult tsks & prjcts; wrk w/ clin drug devel proc; use SAS/R prgrm; impl all SOPs, Guidelines & Wrk Instr; intrprt, mod, & adpt co stds, prjct specs, tsks & goals; Pharm clin devel incl undrstnd of sfty delivrbls & efficacy anal supt reg submissns; SAS, proc rprt, expsure to macros, currnt CDISC data struct, standrdztin mthd & debug SAS prgrms; Define.xml, Pinnacle 21, ADRG, & SDRG; SAS Macro prgrm, SAS SQL, XML, RTF, & PDF. Apply: res to: usrecruitment@iqvia.com & ref #115581.