Author Monica Byrne bids adieu to the city that gave her her start The Long Goodbyeb Raleigh | Durham | Chapel Hill August 24, 2022
2 August 24, 2022 INDYweek.com Out of the Woods: Opening Reception Friday, August 26, 6 p.m. Hillsborough Gallery of Arts. Art by Ellie Reinhold. IMAGE COURTESY OF THE GALLERY Raleigh W Durham W Chapel Hill VOL. 39 NO. 34 COVER Photo by Brett Villena | Design by Nicole Pajor Moore PUBLISHER John Hurld EDITORIAL Editor in Chief Jane Porter Arts & Culture Editor Sarah Edwards Managing Editor Geoff West Staff Writers Jasmine Gallup Lena ThomasiGellerMcDonald Copy Editor Iza Wojciechowska INDY Week | indyweek.com P.O. Box 1772 • Durham, N.C. 27702 919-695-4848 EMAIL ADDRESSES first initial[no space]last name@indyweek.com W E M A D E T H I S Interns Hannah Kaufman, Mari Fabian, Caryl Espinoza Jaen Contributors Madeline Crone, Grant Golden, Spencer Griffith, Lucas Hubbard, Brian Howe, Lewis Kendall, Kyesha Jennings, Glenn McDonald, Nick McGregor, Gabi Mendick, Dan Ruccia, Rachel Simon, Harris Wheless CREATIVE Creative Director Nicole Pajor Moore Graphic Designer Jon Fuller Staff Photographer Brett Villena Contents © 2022 ZM INDY, LLC All rights reserved. Material may not be reproduced without permission. ADVERTISING Publisher John Hurld Sales Digital Director & Classifieds Mathias Marchington CIRCULATION Berry Media Group ADVERTISING SALES Durhamadvertising@indyweek.com 919-286-1972 Classifieds 919-286-6642 CONTENTS THE REGULARS 3 Backtalk | 15 Minutes 4 Op-Ed 20 Culture Calendar 6NEWS A Durham woman's crusade to stop the county's child protective services from separating kids and their parents BY THOMASI MCDONALD 8 Residents fear displacement from their Old North Durham apartments. BY LENA GELLER 10 The city of Raleigh owns land around Moore Sqaure. Will it develop it equitably? BY HANNAH KAUFMAN 12 The NC Supreme Court rules on the NC NAACP's challenge to voter ID. BY LYNN BONNER 13 U.S. Senate candidates Ted Budd and Cheri Beasley are running neck and neck according to a new poll. BY KIRK ROSS ARTS & CULTURE 14 Author Monica Byrne bids adieu to the city that gave her her start BY SHELBI POLK 15 Sylvan Esso's new album is a winsome pairing of improv and pop BY LINNIE GREENE 16 Hillsborough's fledgling new dance troupe is collaborative and creative BY BYRON WOODS 18 The Gathering Place is a draw for tabletop fans BY JASMINE GALLUP
CABKTALK
I had a photo shoot lined up and some video stuff, and then I got to go live from a branded studio within their headquarters. It was like a red room—you went in and it was all branded TikTok and they set me up, they had TikTok film content for their page. A videographer filmed me, and I was live to my audience from their headquarters. I played for an hour, and I let my fans see, like, “Hey, you guys are part of this success, because of you and your dedication as a fan, you’ve afforded me this opportunity.”
BY CARYL ESPINOZA JAEN backtalk@indyweek.com
“My heart goes out to them. Just terrible luck,” wrote Facebook commenter D RYAN ANDERSON about Saint James. “They open then that gas leak blows up most of the block. They reopen then COVID hits. They reopen again and face an even more destructive force than explosions or pandem ics: venture capital. Props to the owners for fighting so hard to make this happen. Sorry it didn’t work.”
The way that I have had success is by connecting people to my journey—it’s very kind of American Idol. I use Scotty McCreery—like, he came from nowhere—but people want to buy his story. That’s the model of how I’ve done my lives and built my fans. I give them full transparency into every aspect of all the pains.
“Another day, another teardown, if you can call the razing of an entire block a ‘teardown,’” wrote @HASCONCERNS on Twitter.
Somebody mentioned TikTok—there was something called TikTok Live, and that’s a huge part of what I do. What kind of music do you usually play?
INDYweek.com August 24, 2022 3
“Sad to see Garland close and looking forward to new Cheetie ventures,” wrote commenter @SNOOPDAVE on Instagram. “Can’t wait to see the Anisette concept in full.”
What made you choose TikTok as a platform to play guitar?
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE SUBJECT
I have a pretty big repertoire—when I started TikTok I had maybe 600 songs that I could call up and play, and now I’m over 1,000. I love the acoustic guitar, so stuff like Jack Johnson and John Mayer, but also James Taylor and Coldplay, even some country music and ’80s/’90s rock. I grew up in the 1990s, so Nirvana, stuff like that, was my influence, but I got really excited about playing music again when I was in college and John Mayer came along and made acoustic guitar cool again.
Do you have any future plans as far as your music career is concerned?
In happier food and beverage news, we also wrote about 321 Coffee, a coffee shop that employs workers with disabilities, opening in Raleigh last week. “Cant wait to support this and get some great cof fee,” wrote AMY MILLER on Twitter. “read this as ‘321 new coffee shops open in down town raleigh’ and barely even flinched,” wrote com menter CALVIN SPOOKMAN “You forgot to mention that there’s one open ing at Durham ID too,” wrote commenter ROCK N OLD RACH on Twitter.
Luke Reynolds, 43 Guitarist and rising TikTok Live star
I recently opened up an Instagram. I diversified because I was afraid something would happen to TikTok, you know, as well as to reach a younger crowd. It’s a little harder to get followers there, but I’m trying to shuffle people from my TikTok account. TikTok chooses certain creators once or twice a month to post on the Live account. They’ve given me a guarantee that I’m going to take over the account for an hour that day, so I’ll get probably the largest amount of exposure that I’ve had. But the songs is not an end-all be-all. It’s just one piece of the puzzle that’s been missing to my story. W
Rach is right—321 Coffee will open a location at Durham ID later this year. So, while we’re sad to lose Garland and Saint James, we’re taking the good with the bad and we’re excited to support 321 Coffee in all its Triangle locations.
WANT TO SEE YOUR NAME IN BOLD? indyweek.com backtalk@indyweek.com @INDYWeekNC @indyweek Wake Forest 15 MINUTES
You visited the TikTok headquarters last spring. What was that like?
I had the urge to perform and play for people, but I couldn’t go out … so I started messing with virtual reality, and Microsoft had a platform called AltspaceVR, a social [virtual reality] platform. And you had people hanging out by the campfire, and one day I started playing music at the campfire for people in VR. I was doing that for two years, and just playing for no monetary value, but right around December of last year, [the platform changed] the way they were featuring different persons that became like a real free fall. I started looking for another platform.
There was lots of news on the hospitality front last week, with reports of acclaimed Durham restaurant Saint James and acclaimed Raleigh restaurant Garland planning to close. Saint James will be lost to redevelopment, and Garland’s owners, Cheetie Kumar and Paul Siler, announced a collaboration with Raleigh’s Anisette Sweet Shop.
described the pro cess as nebulous and opaque. Require ments changed, information requested by the city was deemed to be insufficient, and applicants were denied further consider ation, even though the information provid ed was within the parameters articulated by the City of Durham. Coalition members attended city council and county commis sion meetings, where they were disrespect ed, rudely interrupted, and told that they were unprepared. With the charge from the “Is there
Meanwhile, the county’s focus on RFPs for the August 15, 2022, deadline articulates the work of multiple coalition members— who have been denied funding. The funding priorities identified by the county address extremely import ant social challenges such as crime inter vention, social-emo tional well-being, and childcare. As active parts of our commu nity, we are grate ful to see these pri orities named, as we have been ask ing for investment in these areas. Tying these funding priori ties to federal funds automatically cre ates large barriers for small, innova tive, and Black- and brown-led initiatives. We ask, “Is there any commitment to identifying other sources of funding for these priorities to afford Blackand brown-led organizations and business es the opportunity to build capacity?”
BY MEMBERS OF THE BACK IN THE BLACK COALITION backtalk@indyweek.com I n response to the pandemic and partic ular challenges faced by Durham lead ers and community members, a concerted effort called the Back in the Black Cam paign was born to address disparities creat ed by the historic underfunding and defund ing of Black-led organizations and business es in Durham.
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Another goal of the BITBC was to slow down the city and county’s process in order to center the Equitable Community Engage ment Blueprint the City of Durham drafted in 2018 as well as the resolution passed by the county commissioners in 2020 identi fying racism as a public health crisis. In that report, the City of Durham states, “The City has not executed a stan
Durham’s Black community needs dedicated resources to ensure equity.
The Back in the Black Coa lition (BITBC) for Equitable Funding is a group of Black community members and Black-led organizations that have united in order to demand a more equitable distribu tion of federal funding to support closing the racial wealth gap in Durham.
The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) 2021 was signed into law by President Biden on March 11, 2021. The City of Durham will receive more than $50 million as part of this allocation to help offset reve nue losses resulting from the pandemic and to fund other community needs. Durham County will receive $62.4 million. Durham County Public Schools received $168.9 mil lion, with the mandate that funds must be obligated by December 31, 2024, and spent by 2026. This funding is the largest amount of federal investment into local communi ties since the New Deal. One of our initial demands called for 45 percent of federal ARPA funds to be distributed to Black-led nonprofits, businesses, and organizations. This 45 percent was determined to help redress the wealth gap, based on the fact that Black people make up 38 percent of the population demographic in Durham.
with one another, as there are likely simi lar challenges with capacity and history of government funding and contracts. If the priority is to fund initiatives that would further equity, it seems we are swimming against the current when we hold people to inequitable requirements.
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identifyingcommitmentanytofundingtoaffordBlackandbrown-ledorganizationstheopportunitytobuildcapacity?”
4 August 24, 2022 INDYweek.com Money Talks
city to dream big and put forth bold new ideas to meet community needs and inspire innovation, members face ongoing and con sistent barriers to understanding the appli cation process, and infrastructure required to obtain federal funding from the city.
There is additional concern that the local government is now requesting pro posals for work that will heavily affect (and involve) Black and brown commu nities, but most eligible organizations are white-led. If the most eligible organizations to do the work would come from outside of our communities, that, in and of itself, could cause larger problems and even commu nity harm. It could also encourage orga nizations that do not have an intentional focus on enhancing BIPOC communities— but primarily serve BIPOC communities (i.e., those serving low-income folks or subsidized housing residents)—to sub mit proposals for the money and create new outreach programs for Black/brown communities rather than investing in the existing, genuine efforts in those spaces.
How can we leverage this opportunity to create more equity when we are enabling white-led and affluent organizations to tar get our communities but not empowering those on the ground to scale and improve theirThework?Equity Blueprint is the answer. Until the city and county are willing to put their money where their mouths were in 2018, we will continue to see inequity and a wid ening wealth gap.
The Back in the Black Coalition is a group of Black community members and Blackled organizations that have united in order to demand a more equitable distribution of federal funding to support closing the racial wealth gap in Durham.
As it stands, the county ARPA pro cess would force smaller organizations (likely Black- and brown-led) to partner with larger, more recognizable, and afflu ent (likely white-led) organizations to be eligible and seen as viable applicants for funding. This discourages BIPOC, commu nity-rooted organizations from partnering dardized process for conducting communi ty engagement that is shared or adopted by all Departments.” The resolution states that the board will “work to progress as an equity and justice-oriented organization, with the Board of Commissioners and its staff leadership continuing to identify spe cific activities to further enhance diversity and to ensure antiracism principles across Board of Commissioners leadership, staff ing and proposalthe2021,priorthemunitytheprocessty’sthecriticalthetenresolutioncommunitiesinvestmentestallocationthreereportGivencontracting.”thatthewaswrittenyearsbeforetheofthelargamountoffederalintolocalandthewaswritoneyearbeforepandemic,itistounderstandcity’sandcounapproachestothetodisbursefunds.Thecityheldcommeetingsinsummerof2021totheJuly31,deadlineforfirstrequestforcalls.Coalitionmembers
INDYweek.com August 24, 2022 5
Wallace says CPS investigators normally expect refer rals to “crank up” in August when children return to school and are asked the seemingly innocuous question, How was your summer?
6 August 24, 2022 INDYweek.com N E W S Durham
A Lonely Crusade
ast year, Amanda Wallace started a one-woman cru sade against officials with Durham County’s Depart ment of Social Services (DSS). One would think that Wallace, given her rhetoric and tone, was waging battle against the Trump administration and its draconian zero-tolerance policy that separated chil dren from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border. But no, Wallace, a former investigator with child protec tive services (CPS) who worked at offices across the state, including in Lincoln, Buncombe, and Wake Counties, is pro testing the policies of CPS, her employer for years.
“They haven’t given her a reason,” Wallace replies when the INDY asks her why.
On June 7, Smith received a letter from DSS that named all three of her children before informing her that there was no indication of maltreatment of her youngest son.
The angry, frustrated, and desperate mothers fire off a series of bothersome allegations of profound mistreatment of their children and themselves at the hands of workers with the county’s CPS department.
On February 14, 2018, Wallace started working as a CPS investigator in Wake County. In May 2021, she founded Operation Stop CPS after witnessing the unjustified sep aration of children from their parents. Shortly after, Wake officials placed her on administrative leave and she was terminated later that month.
Wallace has taken her crusade all over the state. On Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, she’s joined in the down town Durham district by a handful of women who have lost custody of their children to CPS. The women stand in the road along the sidewalk curb of the 400 block of West Main Street in front of the county health department.
PHOTO BY MICHAL PARZUCHOWSKI
CPS investigators also field referrals from law enforce ment officers, who may visit a home where parents are arguing while a child is present, and from hospitals, where physicians report evidence of abuse and neglect.
BY THOMASI MCDONALD tmcdonald@indyweek.com
Wallace says about 50 percent of referrals to CPS come from the public school system, where teachers report sus pected abuse and neglect upon learning a child didn’t eat the night before or was spanked. While well intentioned, Wallace says the reports create “a very strong and vibrant pipeline from school to CPS.”
Wallace says CPS “is trying to adopt [Smith’s] other children out.”
Wallace worked as a CPS investigator in North Carolina for 10 years before starting Operation Stop CPS, a state wide nonprofit that works to hold child protective service agencies accountable while advocating on behalf of parents with children in the foster care system.
Wallace points to the case of Kelli Smith, a young mother of three children. Two were taken out of her home.
Last week, Smith stood behind a podium during a reg ularly scheduled meeting of the Durham County Board of Commissioners. She fought hard to not cry, but tears spilled out of her eyes. CPS in 2019 removed Smith’s daughter from her home. They took her son in 2020, soon after he was born. Wal lace called CPS’s decison to remove Smith’s son “a common practice” if the parent has a history with DSS. “I’ve done everything that CPS has asked me to do,” Smith said. “And my children still haven’t been placed back with me in my home. CPS closed the case on one of my children. They basically said it’s OK for me to be a great mother for one of my children but not the other two.”
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The distraught mothers, with the support of Wallace and other family advocates, say that far from protecting their children, CPS workers place them in foster homes, where they are often subjected to abuse, neglect, and trauma.
A former child protective services investigator accuses Durham’s agency of “kidnapping” and “genocide.”
“Our children are kept in a system for longer than they should,” KeKe Woods, who holds a master’s degree in social work, told Durham County commissioners during their reg ularly scheduled meeting on August 8. Woods was at the meeting to speak on behalf of near ly a half dozen women whose children are in foster care, and to oppose $33,000 in state funds available to former and current foster care children as a back-to-school allow ance for clothing and uniforms. A portion of the funds were also available for young adults who have aged out of
The letter also expresses “deep con cerns” about the precedent the New Hanover court would be setting by hold ing Wallace in contempt of the no-contact order, whose enforcement “would unlaw fully suppress” her First Amendment right to free speech.
Last week, Wallace, a cheery woman who wore her hair in braided extensions, was out fitted in a red T-shirt, shorts, and red sneak ers. She held aloft an oversized sign that accused Durham County CPS of kidnapping a 23-year-old woman’s two children. Wallace gripped a red-and-white mega phone in one hand and handed out leaf lets with the other, before she paused to stridently mouth into the megaphone the point of her protest: the kidnapping and genocide of impoverished Black and brown children from their homes by workers with the county’s CPS. “CPS, you can’t hide,” Wallace chanted. “We charge you with genocide.”
MFP also listed the support of educa tors, scholars, family advocates, activists, and attorneys, including Jamie Marsicano, who is president of the UNC-Chapel Hill chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.
Wendy Jacobs, the county commission ers’ cochair, declined comment last week and referred all questions to the county attorney’s office. Acting county attorney Willie Darby told the INDY that he was “turning over” the INDY’s question about the allegations to Bettyna Abney, the county’s chief attorney who is “handling this matter.” But Darby added that as a general rule, the county doesn’t comment on court matters.
Indeed, the permanent no-contact order states that Wallace poses a threat to all of CPS when she said “she will take action, by any means necessary,” and notes as evi dence an unrelated photo of Wallace at a gun range “and other gun images.” Wallace in May was served a similar no-contact order in New Hanover County.
The letter also points to a series of racebased disparities that take place in the fos ter care system, including a 2021 report by the Children’s Bureau that reported Afri can American children are overrepresented in the foster system. In 2019, the letter notes, African American children made up about 14 percent of the total child popu lation but 22 percent of the total foster system
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“Her peaceful protests, and first hand per spectives are necessary to ensure account ability to a system that is riddled with racial and economic injustice. We urge the court to allow free expression against racial dis crimination and dismiss the case against Ms. Wallace or grant her a continuance to get more support,” wrote MFP directors and cofounders Erin Miles Cloud, Lisa San goi, and Ali Diaz-Tello.
Before leaving the podium, Wynn looked at DSS director Ben Rose, told him to look in her eyes, and asked, “How can you sleep at night, knowing that my children are beingLastabused?”week,DSS took action.
The MFP letter, in urging dismissal of the case against Wallace notes that she—a Black woman, social worker, and former CPS caseworker—has supported Black families and led peaceful protests against racial discrimination in the child welfare system.
The “no-contact order pursuant to the Workplace Violence Prevention Act” accus es Wallace and others of “aggressively shouting defamatory statements” including, “kidnapping,” and “you are stealing Black children,” along with “you are committing genocide of Black children” in front of his home, where he divides his work schedule with time at his DSS office.
INDYweek.com August 24, 2022 7 foster care and now need help to become self-sufficient.“Theydon’tneed transitional housing and all of these things in foster care,” Woods told the commissioners. “They need to be reunited with their families and given the necessary resources so they can mend and be made whole.”
“Moreover,population.systematic discrimination plagued African-American children at every decision point,” MFP officials state in the letter. “Black children were more likely to be removed from their families, and relative to other children Black kids are more likely to spend more time in fos ter care. These national trends extend to NorthWallaceCarolina.”iselated by MFP’s letter of support to New Hanover County judicial officials. “One will be drafted for Durham County as well,” Wallace told the INDY Wallace is scheduled to appear in Durham district court on Wednesday for the no-contact order. Meanwhile she says there was increased security at the county commissioners’ regularly scheduled meet ing this week. They were reportedly checking people for weapons before allowing them into the“Theymeeting.were wanding people because they said the people who came with us showed up with guns,” Wallace told the INDY this week. “They are really trying to paint this narrative.” Despite the ongoing legal obstacles and challenges the foster care system poses, Wallace says she’s “good.” “I’m ready to speak my mind,” she told the INDY last week while standing in front of the county health building. “I’m ready to get into good trouble.”
On Thursday, Wallace was joined by Jessica Platt, the mother of a 16-year-old daughter who disappeared from the residential treat ment center where she was living in Raleigh. Thursday was her daughter’s birthday, and Platt hadn’t heard from her in months after she went missing from the cen ter, where she was assigned to reside by Durham County’s DSS.
Rose signed a no-contact order that barred Wallace, the Operation Stop CPS founder, from protesting in front of his home, at the county courthouse, and at the DSS offices.
Last week, an influential nonprofit, Move ment for Family Power (MFP), filed a let ter in New Hanover District Court urging judicial officials “to either dismiss this case entirely or give Ms. Wallace adequate time for a Thedefense.”MFPletter of support for Wallace described her as “a tireless advocate for Black families that are being separated by a deeply flawed system.”
Platt says the teen was raped and abused in foster care. Platt also has two sons who live with her. Her daughter had been in foster care for a decade before she disappeared in February. Nearly a half dozen women last week made public what they have endured to have their children returned to them and taken out of the custody of Durham’s CPS. Last week, Alexis Wynn, the 23-year-old mother of the two toddler children in foster care whose photos were displayed on Wal lace’s sign, told members of the Durham County Board of Commissioners that her children are in a household where a con victed felon who is also a registered sex offender is present. “CPS stands for ‘child protective services,’ but it’s not protecting children,” Wynn told the commissioners. Wynn said her two sons in foster care are “being abused physically and sexually.” “I have proof of the bruises on my chil dren: black eyes, busted lips, and where my children are placed with a child abuser and convicted felon sex offender,” Wynn added as a sob formed in her throat. “My children cry out to me every visit I have with them, telling me devastating stories of what they are going through, with them being only three and four years old.” Wynn told the commissioners that she has reported what has been going on to her children’s caseworker with CPS, but the official “chooses not to protect my children and do her job.”
A proposed development in Old North Durham threatens to wipe out more affordably priced rental units near downtown.
PHOTO BY BRETT
While the development is set to slightly increase the area’s housing density, Constantine says, it will destroy some of the last naturally occurring affordable housing near downtown Durham.
“I like the neighborhood. Nobody messes with you here,” says Gomez, who is also eight months pregnant. “My son can play outside and I don’t have to worry about ‘Oh, no, the neighbors’ or ‘Oh, no, the cars.’” Her son, Ishmael, recently got off the waitlist for Global Scholars Academy, a K-12 charter school located down the street. Gomez can now walk Ishmael to school—“No wasting gas!” he chimes in excitedly—but if her family is displaced, Gomez isn’t sure whether she’d be able to find housing close enough for Ishmael to continue attending Global Scholars. She wouldn’t even know where to look, she says.
Gomez is one of the last tenants who—at least to Gomez’s knowledge—is still on an annual lease, according
VILLENA
Three years later, while living in Houston and scan ning Durham rental listings, Washatka discovered a two-bedroom unit in a duplex on Geer Street that was priced at $950 a month. She signed the lease and made the move. Now a full-time artist and puppeteer at Paperhand, Washatka has spent recent weeks performing in this sum mer’s production, The Meanwhile Clock and Other Impos sible Dances, which, per the show’s site, revolves around one main question: When time is running out, we stop to wonder, “Where do I belong?”
1119 Gurley Street
The developer has not yet revealed whether the townhomes will be occupied by owners, renters, or a mix of both, but one bit of the project’s application hints at the former.
Since buying several parcels of land on Gurley, Geer, and Roxboro Streets for $3.25 million last December, local developer Matthew Lee and a handful of investors under the limited liability company Geer TH Owner have submit ted plans to replace the site’s 25 existing affordable rental units—four duplexes, a single-family home, and a 16-unit apartment complex—with 33 townhomes.
The development is still undergoing the approval process but will almost certainly be cleared by the end of the year. (In an email to the INDY, the Durham City-County Plan ning Department writes that the development’s site plan will likely take several more months to be approved, adding that the department is legally required to approve the plan if it meets city requirements. Lee did not respond to the INDY’s request for comment.)
While the bonus can be used for both rental and for-sale properties, Durham’s Community Development Department confirmed with the INDY that this particular developer has applied for the latter—the five units will be reserved for buy ers with a household income up to 80 percent AMI, around $61,000 a year for two people—which suggests that the other 28 units will also be for sale to buyers. (Similar town homes in the area have sold for upward of $600,000.)
BY LENA GELLER lgeller@indyweek.com W hen Kelly Washatka visited Durham in 2017, she realized it was the kind of place where she could “scrape by as an artist.” At the time, she was completing a 20-week intern ship at Paperhand Puppet Intervention—the annual pag eant that uses giant hand-painted puppets to tell stories about community building and environmental activism— and found herself entranced by Durham’s culture, com munity, and affordability.
The proposed project is utilizing Durham’s affordable housing density bonus—a provision of the city’s zoning code that enables developers to increase the size of their projects in exchange for providing housing for low-income residents—which means that five of the townhomes are required to remain affordable for a minimum of 30 years.
When I knock on the door of one Gurley Street duplex, a wide-eyed six-year-old boy answers before running into a back room. He reappears with his mother, an adminis trative assistant named Isabel Gomez who moved into the unit with her family earlier this year.
Durham Displacement
In a poignant case of art imitating life, Washatka—who recently learned that she will likely be displaced from her Durham home in coming months—is asking herself the sameWashatkathing. is one of more than two dozen residents in her Old North Durham neighborhood whose rental units have been purchased by a developer who hopes to tear them down.
Even with the density bonus discount, it’s unlikely that any existing tenants will be able to afford the new townho mes, according to Lucia Constantine, a Gurley Street home owner who has spent the past month distributing copies of the site map to her neighbors and encouraging them to contact the developer with their concerns.
“In many ways, the way that the street is set up is already an example of good planning,” says Constantine, a member of the city’s Affordable Housing Implementation Commit tee with a degree in urban planning. “I’m angry that our current zoning effectively allows someone to come in, buy the whole block, and then tear it down.”
A 10-minute walk from the Main Library, the units at risk of demolition house a close-knit community of young parents, retired city employees, artists, and construction workers, almost all of whom pay less than $1,000 in rent each month and at least one of whom is a Section 8 hold er. One family has lived in their rental unit for 12 years.
8 August 24, 2022 INDYweek.com N E W S Durham
Most renters remember receiv ing a letter from the property manager in July that notified them of the develop ment’s filing and informed them that their rental agreements had been changed to month-to-month. If the development is approved, the letter said, tenants will be notified of their displacement six months in advance. (That’s not a guarantee; the city of Durham does not have the legal authority to implement notification requirements for residents at risk of displacement, according to Community Development Department director Reginald Johnson.)
INDYweek.com August 24, 2022 9 to Constantine. (Gomez’s lease expires in November.)
Only seven developers have applied for the bonus since 2015, she says, and none of their projects have been completed yet.
“If we use zoning, we could protect some of these buildings from at least the eco nomic incentive to tear them down by say ing something like, ‘You can only have a multifamily building on this site,’” Baker says. “That automatically rules out the whole teardown-for-townhouses thing. And we could say, ‘It’s got to be within these dimensions on the parcel.’ That would rule out resizing the dimensions on the parcel and reusing the shape of the site.”
“We’re trying to build a house with a hair brush,” he says. “Our tools are extremely limited, but we have to do something.”
While there are a few local grassroots organizations that work to help tenants advocate for themselves, their hands are full at the moment, according to Constan tine; Bull City Tenants United has advised that she brings tenants together for a meet ing, but the group doesn’t have any workers available to take on the case, she says. So far, Constantine has been unsuccess ful at getting tenants to organize. “There is a fairly defeatist feeling among us all,” Washatka says. “It’s just like, yeah, we knew Durham was booming—what did we expect? What power do we have to combat that?” In short: not much. The city does not offer formal opportuni ties for tenants to provide input on admin istrative site plans, and there is “no suffi cient recourse” for tenants facing displace ment when a landlord is exercising their legal right not to renew leases, says Karen Lado, assistant director of the Community Development Department. That said, the city is using “every tool at its disposal” to maximize affordable hous ing, according to Lado. The city only has enough subsidy funding to purchase and maintain a tiny fraction of its naturally occurring affordable housing, she says. “So then you say, ‘Okay, that’s what we can do with our direct money,’” Lado says.
“The next step becomes, what can we do with our zoning code?” This is where the density bonus comes in. The planning and community development departments make an effort to articulate the importance of affordable housing to developers, Lado says, laying out the differ ent ways they can contribute: applying for the density bonus, say, or contributing fund ing to the city’s affordable housing fund.
Nate Baker, an urban planner who serves on Durham’s planning commission, says the city could be doing more to create affordable housing. (Earlier this year, Baker applied to fill the at-large city council seat left vacant by Charlie Reece, emphasizing the city’s need for new zoning regulations. The council ultimate ly chose Monique Holsey-Hyman, an NCCU professor with a background in social work.)
“[We try] to use every lever you have in the face of a flood of capital into our market,” Lado says. “But we can’t make them do anything.”
There are tons of state and federal laws that disempower tenants, he says—the North Carolina legislature has banned rent control, for instance—and zoning is one of the few ways that our local government can prevent renters from displacement.
Wilson Property Management did not reply to a request for comment. A num ber of tenants declined interview requests from the INDY for fear of retaliation from property management.
Gomez doesn’t remember receiving a let ter—all of her information has come from Constantine—but says she recently went to the property management office to ask for an me, ‘Well, we don’t know what’s going on over there,’” she says.
W BILL ATTORNEYBURTONATLAWUncontestedDivorceMusicBusinessLawIncorporation/LLC/PartnershipWillsCollections 967-6159 MUSICUNCONTESTEDAGREEMENTSSEPARATIONDIVORCEBUSINESSLAWINCORPORATION/LLCWILLS(919)967-6159bill.burton.lawyer@gmail.com
Several weeks ago, Arthur called the property manager about a fixture in his unit that needed a repair. Toward the end of the call, he says, the property manager asked if anyone had told him that his building was going to be torn down and replaced byConstantinetownhomes.had, so he said yes. “She told me, ‘Don’t listen to that. That’s a lie.’ So I didn’t pay too much attention to that, but now I’m getting somebody else telling me the same thing,” Arthur says. “I know it’s gonna happen. That’s why I’m hus tling and bustling trying to find me some where to go before it’s too late.”
“Theyupdate.told
Another tenant—who preferred that we don’t use his real name, so we’re calling him Arthur—had a similar experience.
“How long will Durham stay the place that drew me to it in the first place?” Washatka says. “I’ll find the next foothold, but it feels very much like being at the mercy of the system. There’s no interest in the world for just defending individuals’ rights.”
Peeler isn’t alone in this belief, says Wanda Hunter, a community advocate who grew up minutes from these sites on Bloodworth Street and is running for a seat on the Raleigh council in District C, which includes the Moore Square parcels.
“That land would be much better served being in the hands of the people of Raleigh,” Peeler says. “It’s right downtown; it’s walk able; it’s close to the main bus station for GoRaleigh and GoTriangle.”
Raleigh City Council candidate Wanda Hunter at the redevelopment site for Moore Square East
Young says the goal of the RFP is to gain additional resources by leveraging the value of the land so that the private sector can help support the goal of affordable housing.
Affordable housing advocates say more public input is needed as the city of Raleigh moves forward with redevelopment plans near Moore Square.
In selling that land to a private developer, though, Peeler says the city loses all control over its future use and long-term affordability.
“Overall, we were very, very pleased with the proposals and [are] thinking that there’s certainly at least one that will meet the goal of council to promote affordabili ty and to create a signature redevelopment affordable housing that is most worrying, says“WhatPeeler.they say is ‘We will encourage affordable housing at East Moore Square,’ which is the slightly bigger of the two parcels, but they don’t give any AMI lev els,” Peeler says. “They don’t say if it will be for 30 percent AMI and under or 80 percent AMI.”
BY HANNAH KAUFMAN backtalk@indyweek.com
The council will vote on a recommenda tion that is decided on through the city’s request for proposal (RFP) process, by which developers were encouraged to sub mit site plans for a mixed-use development project with the options of office, retail, res idential, and hospitality spaces, plus afford able housing, that would contribute to the vibrancy and vitality of downtown.
“The value of the land is the way that we are getting the funds to create what hopeful ly will be a deep subsidy, so not just 80 per cent AMI, but also 50 percent and 30 per cent,” Young says. “I understand and appre ciate the interest to have as much affordable housing on the site as we can get. And we share that goal, but we feel like the only way to go at that effectively is to maximize the value of the land to help support the afford ability, and that can only be done with a pri vate partner or private partners.”
10 August 24, 2022 INDYweek.com N E W S Raleigh
The RFP describes redevelopment as a “once-in-a-generation opportunity,” says Reeves Peeler, a volunteer at Wake County Housing Justice Coalition who attended the press“Weconference.wouldagree it’s a once-in-a-gen eration opportunity but not for the rea sons they’re saying. They’re saying it’s a once-in-a-generation opportunity to flip land and bring a bunch of money into city coffers,” Peeler says. “We think it’s a once-in-a-generation opportunity to give citizens of Raleigh permanent affordable housing that’s right downtown, close to resources, close to restaurants, close to the urban center of the city, close to the cultur al center of the city.”
“We intentionally did not specify the number of units or anything else because we wanted people to come back with their own creative solutions,” Baldwin says. “We told them in the RFP that affordable hous ing was important to us and please incor porate this into your model, but we did not want to stifle creativity.”
Nine proposals were submitted by the June 27 deadline, and a committee com posed of city staff from the planning, hous ing and neighborhoods, and parks depart ments intends to bring its initial recommen dations to council on September 9 before submitting a final recommendation in Octo ber, says Patrick Young, Raleigh’s director of planning and development.
I t’s not every day that a parcel of valuable land right in the middle of downtown Raleigh opens up for redevelopment—much less two sites at the same time. This October, the Raleigh City Council will receive a final recommendation for the rede velopment plan for two parcels of city-owned land: Moore Square East and Moore Square South. The eastern parcel encompasses 2.5 acres of land located at 215 South Person Street, while the southern site includes a 0.9-acre site at 225 East Davie Street and 228-230 East Martin Street.
The RFP states that the city is commit ted to prioritizing and maximizing afford able housing units on these parcels to address a certain unspecified percentage of area median income (AMI), which is the household income of the median, or “mid dle,” household in a given region. It’s the RFP’s language surrounding
Peeler says that the RFP also men tions that organizations submitting plans could decide to integrate affordable units into mixed-income buildings by utilizing an 80/20 structure, where 80 percent of units are market rate and 20 percent are afford able units reserved for those at or below 50 percent AMI. “For just the east parcel, they say some thing along the lines of ‘We will strong ly consider proposals that have an 80/20 split,’” Peeler says. “It doesn’t guarantee AMI level; it doesn’t guarantee that it’s per manentMayoraffordability.”Mary-AnnBaldwin says the RFP’s lack of details around AMI level and other affordability factors was intentional.
PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA in downtown,” Young says. Not everyone is so pleased with the development plans in the RFP, though. On July 5, many local Raleigh groups, includ ing Emancipate NC, Wake County Housing Justice Coalition, Food Not Bombs, Meals for the Masses, Muslims for Social Justice, RREPS, and PSL Carolinas, met outside city hall for a press conference where they criticized the city’s priorities for the Moore Square redevelopment plan.
Moore Square, Less Fair?
“The Moore Square South and East par cels that we’re talking about are owned by the people of the city of Raleigh,” Peeler says. “They’re public property, and we feel, among many other things, that there’s been absolutely no public input into what’s going to happen to this public property.”
“My hope is that it will show the city’s commitment to remaining accessible and affordable to all,” Young says. “Downtown’s a really high-demand area. The price has accelerated massively, and we want to make sure that all the folks that live, work, and play downtown can live downtown.”
Hunter says that the sale of this land would also exacerbate the issue of home lessness in downtown Raleigh.
INDYweek.com August 24, 2022 11 RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER Shop local!
Despite the many concerns surround ing the future of this site, Young says he believes the final Moore Square redevelop ment plan will demonstrate the city’s com mitment to affordability for its residents.
Peeler says what matters most isn’t just the imminent impact of the council’s deci sion on the redevelopment plan but also securing a viable and affordable future for residents.“Making that [land] available for genera tions to come, and [for] people of all races, of all classes,” Peeler says. “That’s really important, and if you sell it off—especially in a market like now—you lose that forev er. The city probably won’t ever be able to afford to buy back land that’s that close to downtown ever again.”
“Who knew about this?” Peeler says. “Who even knew the RFP was posted, much less when was the public input period? And then of course the third and really biggest issue on all of this is: Does this council and mayor even give any attention to the publicWhileinput?”there wasn’t a public input period after the RFP was posted, Baldwin says that the city’s planning department led an extensive public engagement process before the land was considered for rezon ing and that the council will take public comment before making a final decision.
“We know that if the city sells these peo ple land, it’ll go to a developer who will not have the city’s best interest at heart,” Hunt er says. “Right now, when it comes to hous ing, the city’s best interest is to house those people whom we have a lack of housing for, which tends to be people [at/under] 50 and 30 percent of the AMI, because we do not have enough housing stock for those people.”
“The number one step is creating an actual public input process that’s real, and showing there’s some accountability that the city is considering it—because that’s square one and we’re not even there yet,” PeelerBaldwinsays.says that people should wait for the process to play out before alarm bells start ringing and that she has many goals for how the city can prosper from this land.
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“Those people end up with nowhere to go, so that’s why we see them in the Moore Square area, out around the park,” Hunter says. “Selling the land off doesn’t solve that problem or make poor people move away; it just exacerbates it.”
Identifying opportunities for public input wasn’t always so convoluted, Hunter says. Formerly, citizen advisory councils (CACs) would have served to inform the public about such issues within the municipal gov ernment, but the council abolished CACs in 2020. Although the council promised to replace them with an improved system for citizen engagement, that promise so far remains“Whenunfulfilled.theyrepealed [CACs], they took away the citizens’ opportunity to weigh in on development, because that was one of the first stops that developers had to go through … to see how the community felt about whatever that development was in their particular community,” Hunter says.
Peeler says that it’s important that the public has a platform or space to voice opin ions, and that when residents take the time to speak on city matters, they’re actually heard.
“The value of that land is about $25 mil lion, so we want to make sure we’re getting the biggest bang for our buck,” Baldwin says. “I want to see how plans integrate with the park; I want to see what the commitment is to good architecture, open space, all the things that matter to people, and then obvi ously the affordable housing piece.”
Though this question of whether the city will retain the property primarily impacts the people of Raleigh, Peeler says the pub lic has been almost entirely excluded from conversations about this plan.
Ultimately, Hunter says much of the problem with this plan and redevelopment as a whole lies in the misconstrued defini tion of what the “affordable housing piece” really“Themeans.council’s current definition of afford able housing is 80 percent of the AMI, and I’m just going to be honest with you: I don’t make 80 percent of the AMI,” Hunter says. “A lot of developers for rezoning cases have said that they are including 80 percent of the AMI and that checks off the box for affordable housing for them. But the question remains: Affordable to whom?”
Peeler says that while normally there would be a public input period for such a significant city matter, his organization was not able to identify any opportunity for the public to voice their opinions about the redevelopment plan.
Court Check
Lawyers representing Republican legislators argued that elected officials are presumed to be acting properly and that voter-approved changes to the constitution should be left Justicealone.Anita Earls wrote the majority opinion that says, in short, that process matters. “Respecting the people’s will means respecting the process they saw fit to include in their fundamental law,” the opinion says.
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Justice Phil Berger Jr. writing in dissent said that the major ity considered questions that the legislature should decide.
12 August 24, 2022 INDYweek.com N E W S
The N.C. Justice Building in PHOTO NCCOURTS.GOV
Raleigh
The case will go back to the trial court for another hear ing because the Democratic majority said there are still questions that need to be answered to determine whether the constitutional amendments stick.
The supreme court’s Democratic majority wrote that proposed constitutional amendments aren’t automatical ly considered valid if they are proposed and put on the ballot by legislators elected from unlawful districts. The court’s three Republicans dissented.
North Carolina
The NAACP wanted Berger, who is senate leader Phil Berger’s son, and Justice Tamara Barringer, who voted to approve the constitutional amendments when she was a member of the state senate, to recuse themselves or be disqualified from hearing the case. In the end, all seven justices participated.
The order told the trial court to consider whether the proposed amendments immunize legislators from demo cratic accountability; perpetuate the ongoing exclusion of a category of voters from the political process; or intention ally discriminate against a particular category of citizens who were also discriminated against in the political process leading to the legislators’ election. If the answer to any of these questions is yes, the amendment should be invalidated, the opinion says. If the answer to all the questions is no, or if there were not enough legislators elected in unconstitutionally gerryman dered districts to make a difference in getting proposed changes to voters, the amendments must stand.
The NAACP won in trial court but lost 2-1 in the state court of appeals. The state supreme court heard oral argu ments in PuttingFebruary.aproposed constitutional amendment to voters requires three-fifths majorities of both the state house and senate, and the Republican-led legislature pushed through the proposed amendments the summer before it lost its supermajorities in the 2018 election. Some legislators who voted on bills to get the proposed amendments in front of voters were elected from districts federal courts deter mined were unconstitutional racial gerrymanders.
Meyer, a lawyer with the Southern Environmental Law Center, said the ruling was a huge win for the NAACP. “At the beginning of this case, we were told that the case was unwinnable,” she said. “The NAACP is always the group that has to stand up in these situations.”
This story was originally published online at NC Policy Watch.
“We now have a North Carolina Supreme Court deci sion declaring that our legislature does not have unlimited authority to amend the constitution,” Kym Meyer, a lawyer representing the NAACP, said in an interview. “It’s a huge win on that point.”
BY LYNN BONNER backtalk@indyweek.com The state supreme court in a 4-3 vote agreed with a central argument the North Carolina NAACP made in its challenge to controversial constitutional amend ments, keeping alive the case against voter ID and an income tax cap.
The case dates to 2018, when the legislature voted to put six proposed constitutional amendments on the ballot, includ ing an amendment that required photo ID for in-person voting and an amendment reducing the state’s 10 percent cap on personal and corporate income taxes to 7 percent.
The NAACP’s lawyers argued that legislators elected from unconstitutional districts cannot propose valid con stitutional amendments.
The state supreme court is keeping the NC NAACP’s challenge to voter ID alive.
Cheri Beasley
Cheri Beasley and Ted Budd tied in the U.S. Senate race.
A new poll shows
Last February, Cook changed its rating in the North Carolina race from a toss-up to leaning toward Budd. A fresh analysis of the race is set for next week. Ads and tours Both candidates have been on the road thisBuddweek.has been traveling to events with law enforcement organizations and recently picked up the endorsement of the NC State Troopers Association. At an event in Raleigh he pitched himself as the law and order candidate and said it’s time to “push back against false narratives” about law enforcement. Beasley is continuing to work her way through small towns and rural commu nities, including a recent swing through coastal counties. With a clear fundraising advantage, her campaign has increased its on-air presence over the month with ads on health care costs and criticisms of Budd’s recent votes in BuddCongress.was among a handful of House Republicans who sought unsuccessfully to amend the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act, calling for funds for the Internal Revenue Service to be moved to borderEarliersecurity.thismonth, he launched his first major ad buy since the primary, criticiz ing the Biden administration’s handling of inflation. This story was originally published online at NC Policy Watch.
The poll of 615 likely voters also found
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Biden’s low approval ratings and his torical trends that run against the presi dent’s party in this cycle have driven pre dictions that the GOP will likely retain Carolina Toss-Up Status
the seat being vacated by retiring senator Richard Burr in the GOP. That started to change earlier this month when two new polls showing Bea sley ahead shifted the polling aggregate. In their combined polling analysis, FiveThirtyEight shows Beasley slightly ahead and Decision Desk shows Budd with a small lead. In both cases the differences are well within the margin of error. Taylor said one key metric that showed why the race is tightening is that for the first time Beasley has moved ahead of Budd with seniors. The trajectory of the race has caught the attention of national media as well, with the National Journal’s power rank ings calling the race a toss-up, pointing to Budd’s struggles in fundraising in the cru cial stretch ahead of early voting. Beasley outraised Budd more than three to one in the last quarter. The direction in North Carolina is part of a national trend that has increased the chance of Democrats maintaining their Senate majority.
In his presentation on the poll, NC State University political science professor Andy Taylor said it’s an increase but still dismal.
a shift in the generic ballot toward Demo crats as well as a small bump in President Joe Biden’s approval rating from 32.9 per cent in June to 38.7 percent.
On Wednesday, Cook Political Report shift ed races in Pennsylvania and Colorado in favor of Democrats and increased the chances that the party could retain control of the chamber.
PHOTO BY JENNY WARBURG
Anew Civitas poll that shows Cheri Beasley and Ted Budd tied is the lat est in a string of indications that North Carolina’s U.S. Senate race has reached toss-up status.
The poll was released Thursday at a brief ing by the conservative John Locke Founda tion. It showed Beasley and Budd with 42.3 percent each with 12.6 percent undecided. Libertarian candidate Shannon Bray was at 1.9 percent. Green Party candidate Mat thew Hoh, in his first poll after being added to the ballot, drew 0.8 percent. The margin of error is 3.9 percent.
“Right now, we see the range between Democrats picking up one seat and Repub licans gaining three. However, the most probable may be a net change of zero or a GOP pickup of one to two,” Cook’s senate analyst Jessica Taylor wrote.
“This is an improvement for President Biden even though he’s wildly underwater,” Taylor said Thursday. “What can you say? He went from very bad to quite bad.”
BY KIRK ROSS backtalk@indyweek.com
But now? “Things seemed possible then in a way that they don’t now,” she says. During her tenure in Durham, Byrne has published two novels and seen five of her plays performed in theaters from Durham to Dublin. Her latest book, The Actual Star, follows three timelines, with stories set in 1012, 2012, and 3012. In the first timeline, a trio of royal Maya sib her friends with permission, “because that would be really exploitative otherwise.”
14 August 24, 2022 INDYweek.com N E W S Durham
The Long Goodbye
Byrne, who grew up with two progressive Catholic religion scholars for parents and has a sister who followed in their footsteps, realized the religion, La Viaja, had to be complex, partly because the first draft was “incredibly boring.” La Viaja purists don’t communicate with anyone who isn’t stand ing in front of them, they don’t stay any where for more than nine days, and they have future-tech suits that heal any inju ries. Most of the eight million people left on earth are looking for their own entrance to Xibalba. There are deviations from the norm of course, as all of Byrne’s most visionary characters are always balanced by a foil with equally plausible ideas. Byrne is glad to leave some things open to interpretation though. “This was what Monica Byrne photographed in her East Durham apartment
BY SHELBI POLK backtalk@indyweek.com
“Everything about Belize is real except for the actual characters, and the names of the rival tour companies have been changed. Everyone who’s down there knows who they are,” she says. The novel has not been pub lished in Belize, but Byrne sent over a dozen copies to thank her friends and treasures the photos they sent back with their copies. Even though Belizean friends have told her to stop “overthinking it,” Byrne is careful not to use any proprietary language when it comes to Belize, “because white people have for so long felt entitled to or at home in tropical places and the global South. And that’s just another manifestation of colonialism.”
lings try to steady their crumbling empire. In the second, a troubled teenager visits Belize to connect with her father’s culture and meets a pair of twin tour guides who show her an ancient cave. In the last, soci ety as we know it has been replaced by a Maya-inspired global religion of pacifist travelers called La Viaja, and there may be dissent among the ranks of the faithful.
“I expected to go to Belize and just see where she taught, see some of the plac es that she had mentioned while she was still alive, and never go there again,” Byrne says. “And instead I just fell head over heels in love with the land, and the air, and the people, and the cave, in particular the cave.” She reserved another flight as soon as she landed back in Durham.
W hen I reached Monica Byrne over Zoom, she was in the midst of pack ing up an East Durham apartment she’d lived in for more than a decade. “I got the golden ticket 11 years ago,” she says. “I moved into this apartment 11 years ago when East Durham was not what it is now, and my landlords are amazing. They knew I was a struggling artist, and they kept my rent low.” Byrne’s immediate destination is her hometown of Annville, a Pennsylvania com munity of 5,000 as of the 2020 census. In January, she’s headed to Ireland and Portu gal until her tourist’s visa runs out. Then, probably somewhere in the Middle East. She’s not really sure. Byrne’s feelings on the move are com plicated. She’ll miss her cozy apartment and relatively cheap rent. But, she says, “even given that, it will be cheaper for me to live on the road than it will be to live in ButDurham.”more than a home office, she’ll miss the Durham arts culture that she says peak ed in 2014. After putting on, say, Byrne’s play Tarantino’s Yellow Speedo, “which was a sex farce about polyamory,” she and her friends would walk over to Motorco for a night of drinking and arm wrestling. When she looks back on that time, Byrne high lights the feeling of possibility. “We’re in this wonderland where anything we think of we can do,” she says. “And it’s wonderful.”
In a recent talk for Flyleaf Books, Byrne said she initially pictured this story as another play, with the three stories hap pening on three unique floors on a stage. Then this novel was three novels, until one publisher both rejected the trio and sug gested they become one. Today, it’s a 576pageLong,voyage.slow travel is partly the subject of and partly the inspiration for both of her novels. In 2012, Byrne took a trip to Belize to visit the place where her mother taught in 1963. Byrne’s mother had talked about going back for years and never got the chance, so the trip was part tribute.
Byrne uses The Actual Star to interrogate many of her interests and anx ieties. One of the 21st-century tour guides, Xander, wants to study the tourist gaze and the agency of landmarks like the once-sa cred cave he shows to visitors all over the world, but he can’t get a visa to study any where. The 31st-century travelers reflect her interest in a society that values a mystic freedom, conscientious travel, and indepen dence over any ties: to place, belongings, culture, or even biological family. That world was a direct response to Trump’s election. In 2016, an ebullient Byrne had attended an election-night party at her and Hillary Clinton’s shared alma mater, Wellesley, and left devastat ed. “My art thereafter could not be unaf fected by what had just happened, so my way of coping became inventing a future world where everything that had gotten us to this moment was undone,” Byrne says. “And that just required a radical reexam ination of everything we take for granted. Permanent homes, personal belongings, biological family, everything was up for dis charge. The reviews mostly love Byrne’s imagination, but the readers are split over whether La Viaja is a dystopia or utopia.
PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA
Author Monica Byrne bids adieu to the city that gave her her start as an artist.
The cave is Actun Tunichil Muknal, a rumored entrance to the Maya afterworld, Xibalba, in traditional Maya belief and in all three timelines of The Actual Star After “seven or eight” trips to Belize, a dozen to the Cayo cave, and years of read ing (she’d packed up three boxes of research books right before our call), Byrne embarked on the writing process. She based sever al contemporary Belizean characters on
Byrne first moved to Durham in 2005 after a horrible experience in graduate school at MIT. She’d thought she wanted to be an astronaut for years, but her time in grad school revealed she really want ed to be a writer. “Why can’t I just allow myself to do what actually gives me plea sure?” she asked herself. And where is a 24-year-old aspiring writer going to go? A free room in her sister’s dorm in Durham seemed the safest choice. “My oldest sister, Julie, was a professor-in-residence at Duke in religion, so she had a whole apartment on the ground floor of one of the East Cam pus dorms,” Byrne says. From that dorm room, Byrne began to find her first artistic home within Durham’s theater community. She fondly recalls put ting on shows in condemned garages and in the middle of the street around Rigs bee and Foster Streets. “We were the ones who were making [Durham] cool,” Byrne says. “Manbites Dog [Theater] did three of my plays, and now I can’t even walk down that street because the developers are gouging my former life out of the earth. It’s so depressing.”
That decision, to become an “itinerant writer,” was partly fueled by frustration with shrinking COVID precautions and a lack of affordable health care. “I need to find a place that has a baseline expecta tion of communal care already,” she says. It was also partly an homage to her mother, who spent years looking through atlases and dreaming of travel. Byrne’s own inher ent restlessness, which friends attribute to her Cancer sun, Sagittarius moon, and Taurus rising astrological signs, also played a part. But Byrne says the decision was largely forced by the changing climate of life in Durham. In Durham County, which is tied with Wake as the third-most-expensive coun ty in the state, the median home pric es have risen by nearly 30 percent in the last year, while available housing has declined by almost 12 percent. Rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Durham proper rose by nearly 40 percent in 2021, higher than Raleigh’s 21 percent rise for the same period.
Durham establishments Arcana, Copa, and Cocoa Cinnamon and Open Eye Café in Carrboro all earned a nod in The Actual Star’s acknowledgments. “There’s nowhere in Durham I feel like I haven’t worked on it,” Byrne says. But the numbers are hard to deny. Right before the pandemic hit, Byrne was looking at either moving down town or buying a house in East Durham, while helping run a campaign advocating for increased funding for the arts. Today, those same houses are out of reach, and she’s too burned out to go back to the Durham CityAfterCouncil.theclosing of the Carrack in 2019, Byrne began organizing artists to speak to the Durham City Council at every meet ing. Three of those speakers—Byrne, Mar shall Botvinick, and Akiva Fox—created a proposal asking for $1,325,750 “to create a direct granting program for arts orga nizations and individual artists.” Unfortu nately, the council discussed it in Febru ary 2020. Any positive momentum was quickly crushed by the urgency of fixing the carbon monoxide leaks at McDougald Terrace and the onset of COVID-19. Now, Byrne says, she’s just too tired to start the process over again. “Nobody with power cares,” she says. “Nobody with real power cares that we came very close to getting some money for even just the start of an artists funding program. It just went away and the window closed.”
She’s tried to manufacture it. “I keep ask ing myself, like, ‘Well, why don’t you just do it? Why don’t you just round up your friends and do act 2 of Romeo and Juliet on Rigsbee?’” she says. “One of the things about capitalism and poverty is just that it keeps you ground down constantly, so that you have so little energy …. And those forces have just taken over in Durham.”
W M U S IC SYLVAN ESSO: NO RULES SANDY | HHHH [Loma Vista, August 12, 2022]
INDYweek.com August 24, 2022 15
PHOTO BY BRIAN KARLSSON
BY LINNIE GREENE backtalk@indyweek.com Since their self-titled debut in 2014, Sylvan Esso has delivered a steady stream of folksy, singsong melodies backed by pulsing electronica, songs that sound as at home in an Anthropologie dressing room as they do in a dark bar after midnight. Amelia Meath’s guileless vocals meet Nick Sanborn’s tremoring, eddy ing synth, and it sounds like flirtation, the easy partnership of two genres tucking into bed together. On No Rules Sandy, the group’s latest, they forgo some of this coziness for discovery, and the result is revivifying, letting air into the rooms where they’ve produced the world’s most palatable, tasteful dance music. Opener “Moving” sets the tone, a skittering ode to compensatory numbness. Meath’s flat, confessional style matches the song’s content, in which she asks, “How can I be moved / When everything is moving?” It’s the less pointed coun terpart of 2016’s “Radio,” trading a searing critique of sex and consumption for anxiety and anhedonia, an emotional glitch that matches its glitchy sound. This discomfort is, counterintuitively, Sylvan Esso’s most welcome departure. Where previous albums have been winsome or playful, No Rules Sandy feels a little more jagged, carries more dirt under its fingernails. That leaves room for discov ery upon repeat listens, less polish and more process. “Your Reality,” a jumble of strings, patches, and incantatory melody, illustrates this texture. It’s nice to wit ness a band’s expansion, to follow a signature style into more exploratory terrain. The album’s highlight, though, is the driving “Echo Party,” whose looping bridg es build to a dubious, timely chorus: “There’s a lot of people dancing downtown / Yeah, we all fall down / But some stay where they got dropped.” Meath’s flat, affectless delivery adds to the song’s ominous power. Like Nora dancing the taran tella in A Doll’s House, it’s a stark nod to dance as a bodily release, a way to skirt the darkness. Sanborn’s pinging, circular synth forms the perfect complement, a syncopated beat laced with wobbly bass. It evokes other end-of-summer jams that manage to distill the present while hearkening back to dance music’s past—Drake’s “Massive,” Beyoncé’s “Break My Soul.” At their best, Sylvan Esso is still playing with duality—up and down (see 2014’s “Coffee”), move ment and stagnation, con tainment and release. “Sunburn” reverts to a tried and true sound that’s less propulsive and more somnambulant. “Didn’t Care” is a bright, poppy track about fate that needs a jolt of urgency. Still, No Rules Sandy wanders into darker rooms, and it’s a welcome divergence from the band’s precedented formula, an exploration of unprecedented times.
But Byrne, who says she’ll always be thankful to Durham for facilitating her artistic development, acknowledges that indulging her disappointment is a privilege. “I can afford to feel very pessimistic about it because I’m leaving,” she says. “There are still people in Durham who are pushing very hard and advocating, so I don’t want to take that hope away from other people.”
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No Rules Sandy is a winsome pairing of improvisation and earworm pop.
Darker Rooms
With a third novel drafted and her next project, a travel memoir, in mind, Byrne is turning the rest of her energies to writing and travel, seeking community with a sense of possibility on the road.
I wanted to convey: how accidental most of history is. None of it is predetermined. None of it. Climate forces so much of it.” Byrne laughs as she sheepishly acknowl edges the similarity between her upcom ing adventures and her imagining of our world’s future. “I don’t want to be L. Ron Hubbard, bringing an actual religion into existence,” she says, “but I can’t say that writing The Actual Star has not been influ ential on this decision.”
A collaborative dance group takes flight in Hillsborough. BY BYRON WOODS arts@indyweek.com
New Troupe
16 August 24, 2022 INDYweek.com
PHOTOGRAPHY
“What we are right now is a living organism,” Aumiller says, “and we’re trying to carefully define where the next stepTheis.”reasons have as much to do with the dynamics of collaboration and community as they do with sustainability.
When Barker became the first artist DIDA presented, in November 2014, she calls the experience “an amazing lifeline” for an artist who’d never presented work at that level of professionalism before. “We were given all these resources … the nuts and bolts of how to self-present, and self-produce,” Barker recalls. But it wasn’t particularly collaborative. With HIDA, she doesn’t feel like she’s being given tools and then dismissed to do her own thing. “It’s much more how we can come
Jasmine Powell, Jess Shell, Renay Aumiller, and Aubrey Griffith-Zill
After a coffee date around the same time with Stepha nie Woodbeck, another Hillsborough resident and cofound er of the dance mentorship project Tobacco Road Dance Productions, both began noticing how many dancemakers had always lived in or recently moved to the town. Cho reographer Jasmine Powell, who’s danced with Philadanco, had grown up here, as had Tobacco Road director Jess Shell and Aubrey Griffith-Zill, whose Living Arts Collective initiat ed the Dancewave series last spring. Within the last year, choreographer and dance filmmaker Anna Barker, artistic director of real.live.people, had also moved to the town.
PHOTO BY WHITSITT
T hough Renay Aumiller had lived in Hillsborough for six years, the award-winning choreographer had never produced work there. At the time, it made sense: the town had no venues for dance and no prior tradition of public performance in the genre. Instead, for decades before the pandemic, regional modern dance had largely been cen tered in Durham, longtime home of the American Dance Festival, one of the largest and oldest modern dance festi vals on earth. Given the festival’s gravitational pull, Aumill er helped found Durham Independent Dance Artists, or DIDA, a coalition of choreographers that changed the face of local dance, raising visibility and production standards when they banded together to co-produce each other’s work in seasons from 2014 to 2020. Then COVID hit, and independent dance mostly went dark. Stirrings to initiate new works were repeatedly thwarted by the pandemic’s unpredictable waves. But during a lull last summer, Aumiller had an unexpect ed experience while taking in a Last Friday art exhibition along Hillsborough’s Riverwalk. Turning a bend, she came upon a large group who’d gathered for one of the town’s first Dancewaves—a free monthly get-together of drum mers, musicians, and community members to dance out doors before dusk. Seeing some 200 people dancing in a Hillsborough park “just took me off-guard,” Aumiller recalls. “It was absolutely huge. And I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, there is an audience here for dance!’” month’s Dancewave. The troupe then decided to self-pro duce its first showing, a collection of individual works, for this month’s Last Friday event at River Park. Beyond that, this canny supergroup of veteran dance makers is keeping their options open, carefully making unconventional choices for the rest of their first year in existence.Theyaren’t presenting a formal season of performances in their first year; after Friday’s showing, local audiences will have to wait for word on future shows. They’re not buying into the strictures of traditional company structures. And despite paying homage to DIDA in their name, they are being very careful not to copy their predecessor.
“I don’t think the arts community here is quite aware yet of the dance artists that have established themselves,” Woodbeck observes. “But we can do something about that.”
As the pair looked around at all the local talent, Wood beck and Aumiller wondered why they all needed to keep taking their art elsewhere. “It’s almost similar to when I lived in Brooklyn,” Woodbeck says. “I didn’t want to go to Manhattan on weekends anymore.” Though she’s happy to work in Durham and Chapel Hill sometimes, “I’m in Hillsborough for a reason. My investment and my family’s here. The art-making I do and the people I know are here in Hillsborough by design. Why can’t we be planting those seedsAfterhere?”Aumiller arranged a meetup for the sextet in May, they formed a group, Hillsborough Independent Dance Art ists (HIDA), and gave a brief sneak showing during that
STAG E
HILLSBOROUGH INDEPENDENT DANCE ARTISTS River Park, 228 S. Churton St., Hillsborough | Friday, August 26, 7 p.m. | Free | hidadance.wixsite.com/hida
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Deconstructing the traditional consum er model of performance is also important to Shell. “We’re not producing a prosceni um show that you have to pay money to come to,” Shell says. “That makes it more accessible, to re-engage with the commu nity as a whole. To me that seems really importantTantalizingnow.”future projects might involve collaborations and installations in the town’s visual arts community. “There are more galleries in Hillsborough than gro cery stores,” Aumiller says. “That says a lot about where the values are here.”
Company staff will also hand out ques tionnaires at Friday’s performance, asking the Hillsborough audience what they want to see in the future. Shell notes that the flexibility and openness in the new company’s first steps stems in part from a truism she, Grif fith-Zill, and Powell encountered as stu dents at Carolina Friends School. Under the Quaker concept that the truth is continually revealed, the group can freely evolve, change, and fluctuate, responding to the needs and desires of the group and the surrounding community.
together, lean on one another for support and create something that is fluid,” Barker says. The group’s work seems “much more like a collage” than a concert. By this point in their careers, everyone in HIDA is aware of the stressors that inev itably play out when artists attempt to produceWoodbeckthemselves.vividly recalls having to use “all of my energy and all of my money” to produce her work. She acknowledges the stakes with HIDA are still high; from an art-making standpoint she feels account able to bring her best ideas to the group.
“But because we’ve created this ‘I lean on you, you lean on me’ dynamic, it still feels very low-risk,” she says. By now, these artists are also savvy to the drain the forced march of a formal sea son can impose. For Aumiller, the compa ny’s efficiency with its resources and energy is important, “so whatever we do produce, we aren’t going to burn ourselves out.” In the group’s conversations, she finds the emphasis is “less about consumption and more about invitations into experiences.”
For Powell, whose Friday dancework will focus on the history of the Black com munity in Hillsborough, HIDA is about presence. “It’s about sharing our faces, our bodies, and our stories. I didn’t know that dance could happen in Hillsborough, because it wasn’t an integral part of the art scene. But we have the people, we want to plant the seeds, and we’re not going anywhere.”
W
“We grew up having a craft beer education that was pretty unique, because in New Jersey you weren’t allowed to have a taproom until 2012,” Tiver says. “So we con stantly were inundated with stuff from all over the coun try, because the craft beer market was strong but you couldn’t go local.”
In North Carolina, it’s almost the reverse, Tiver says. Many of the bar’s patrons are familiar with local brews but have never tried, say, a Narragansett lager from Rhode Island. Regardless, Tiver likes to have things on tap that are a lit business model. Even if nobody walks in the bar for the first year, we’ll still make money if we’re doing our online sales.’”
“We have a bunch of people that come in just for the atmosphere in here,” Goodsell says. “Even if you’re not a gamer, not a Magic nerd, you don’t know anything about D&D …. There’s just a weird vibe in here that’s very wel coming and warm and fuzzy.”
“Then we found this space,” Goodsell says. “Me and Don nie walked in and we were instantly like, ‘Oh, this could actually work. If it’s a bar and a game store’ …. I started running numbers and I was like, ‘This is actually a viable gy-based board game Azul. The Gathering Place is a gaming geek’s paradise, but it’s also a good place to “dip your toe in” if you’ve never tried tabletop, Goodsell says.
Case in point: Kendall Lee, a Chapel Hill resident with long braids and painted nails who wandered into the Gath ering Place by accident. “What do you think, Donnie, about two months ago?” Lee asks now, turning to Tiver. Since then, Lee has been a daily visitor, warming a stool directly across from the bar’s 30 taps.
Ablock behind Franklin Street, upstairs from a Mexi can grill, there’s a place: a warehouse-esque bar with concrete floors, wooden booths, and steel shelves packed with tabletop games.
“It reminds me of all of my friends’ basements com bined,” says Zach Thomas, a regular who is about to sit down for his weekly Dungeons & Dragons campaign. “Like, we were doing the exact same activities. It feels very homey. It feels nostalgic.”
The Gathering Place definitely doesn’t pretend to be something it’s not. Goodsell, who has a classic mohawk, jumps from customer to customer in a scuffed pair of Adi das, selling dice and answering questions about the new est Magic release. Tiver, a guy with sleeve tattoos, bright blue earplugs, and a 1980s cult science-fiction T-shirt, is behind the bar pulling pints. The speakers pump out a mix of hip-hop and metal.
“It’s not your typical local game store that might feel pretentious or exclusive, where if you look a certain way or act a certain way or talk a certain way, you might feel out of place,” he says. “We’re a bar.”
“We’re all kind of like a family around here,” Lee says. “We have trans people, we have nerds, we have people who don’t game at all, it’s all different walks of life. It’s a safe place to be and not be looked at differently. Whenever I need to decompress from work, I come here. It’s my local hangout spot.” Lee’s not a big gamer, but he quickly bonded with their fellow regulars, even trying their hand at the classic, strate Dungeons & Dragons meetup at the Gathering Place
E TC.
Goodsell’s restaurant background allows him to provide what he calls “white-glove service for nerds.” He’s hands-off when he needs to be and always right there when someone needs something. The consensus among the bar’s regulars, of which there are many, is that the place is “welcoming.”
PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA
The Gathering Place in Chapel Hill is a welcoming gaming haven for tabletop fans and the curious.
Tabletop Locale
Goodsell got into the Magic business full-time in 2020, after he lost his job as an executive chef, a casualty of the coronavirus pandemic. He was doing a ton of sales with a pretty thin profit margin, but it was enough to live off of, he says. In 2021, he recruited Tiver, a guy he’s known since the fifth grade. Together, the two started thinking about opening a brickand-mortar store so they could expand their online busi ness. Running a cost-benefit analysis, though, it looked like renting a physical space would be too expensive.
BY JASMINE GALLUP jgallup@indyweek.com
The bar itself has a smorgasbord of local brews, from a Belgian Tripel made in Sanford to a saison made in Saxap ahaw. Tiver likes to include out-of-state offerings too, he says, like an ale from Oregon and wheat beer from Maine.
Although it’s undoubtedly a gaming store, selling minia tures and RPG rule books, it’s also a bar.
18 August 24, 2022 INDYweek.com
The Gathering Place—so named by cofounders Don Tiver and Josh Goodsell—is exactly that: a place in Chapel Hill for people to come together and hang out after a long day at work, drink a beer (or a hibiscus tea), and talk.
The Gathering Place, which opened in February, started as a place to sell Magic: The Gathering cards, says Good sell. He’s been playing the massively popular tabletop card game since he was eight. Today, some of the rarest cards in the game are worth thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, of dollars. “I was selling Magic cards as a side hustle since the beginning of 2019—just to collect [limited-edition cards] I didn’t get a chance to collect when I was a kid,” Goodsell says. “I started buying small collections, keeping the cards I wanted, and then flipping everything else. By the end of 2019, I had amassed a pretty modest $25,000 collection with an initial investment of $500. I just kept turning it over in my free time.”
“We wanted to make the best of having 30 taps, because it’s a lot,” Tiver says. “We didn’t want to just have beer. We want ed to have our wine on draft, ciders, even nonalcoholic stuff, because there’s a lot of younger players, there’s a lot of people that don’t drink, and it’s still nice, socially, to be able to walk around with a goblet of coffee or root beer or something.”
“We do a modern-format Magic tourna ment on Wednesdays, which is pretty much the most popular constructed format in the Triangle, so it’s got a pretty big draw,” Good sell says. “Then on Thursdays, we’ve got two D&D one-shots and a few campaigns that run, and there’s always new faces coming in.”
The bar also holds nerd trivia on Fridays and alternates between stand-up comedy showcases and karaoke on Saturdays. In a reverse of the normal struggle, Goodsell and Tiver are trying to get more people to stick around on weekends. Whether it’s on a game night or a weekend, however, the vibe is the same.
“It’s a very welcoming atmosphere,” Shef field says. “I wouldn’t go out and just buy a concert T-shirt for somebody if I didn’t feel like I was part of a community.”
PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA
Contrary to traditional business patterns, Wednesdays are one of the bar’s busiest nights. This week, there are some 25 peo ple bustling around, some at the bar, some at long card tables in the back. The draw? Tabletop games, of course.
Josh Goodsell and Don Tiver of the Gathering Place
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“Oh, yes! You’re the best dude,” Good sell responds, cradling the Run the Jewels T-shirt in his hands. “Hey, Colin’s drink is on the house.”
tle bit different—unique alternatives to wellworn beers like Blue Moon and Miller Light. Some of those alternatives are even nonbeers. In addition to the multitude of local brews, the Gathering Place offers wine, sake, and cider on tap. It also has coffee, soda, kombucha, and tea. The in-house cold brew is particularly delicious.
“I like to think of it as the Foot Clan hideout from the first [Teenage Mutant] Ninja Turtles movie,” he says with a chuck le. “Except for offering children cigarettes. And I guess there’s not a skate park inside. Other than that, it’s the exact same.”
ArtsTriangle’sthe&CultureNewsletter
Tiver’s description of the Gathering Place is a little more colorful.
“It’s got that clubhouse sort of feel,” he adds, on a more serious note. “Especial ly if people don’t come here on purpose. They see nerd stuff on the wall and usual ly there’s hip-hop on, and they’re just like, ‘What the hell is going on here?’ So I imag ine it’s just very unusual for a lot of people. But that’s what we like about it.”
Tiver immediately pauses in his explana tion of how he and Goodsell founded the bar, moving to pour the man his drink. He already knows Sheffield’s order.
The Gathering Place is your classic downthe-street haunt, a place where everybody knows your name. And it seems like Good sell and Tiver really do know everyone’s name. Goodsell is quick to greet the next guy who comes through the door—Colin Sheffield, a middle-aged man with a thick beard. In response, Colin simply unfolds a bright pink T-shirt, some merch from a recent concert he attended.
20 August 24, 2022 INDYweek.com C U LT U R E CA L E N DA R FOR OUR COMPLETE COMMUNITY CALENDAR: INDYWEEK.COM
Please check with local venues for their health and safety protocols.
music
North PotterMusicSymphony:CarolinaTheofHarry $40+. Sat, Aug. 27, 3 p.m. Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh. Packapalooza Sat, Aug. 27, 2 p.m. NC State Belltower,MemorialRaleigh. Tenille Towns $23. Sat, Aug. 27, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro. Fandango de Durham Sun, Aug. 28, 7 p.m. The Fruit, Durham. Jazz Brunch Sunday with Al Strong Sun, Aug. 28, 12 p.m. Alley Twenty Six, Durham. Comedy Showcase Wed, Aug. 24, 9 p.m. Vecino Brewing Co., Carrboro. Women’s ShowcaseComedy Wed, Aug. 24, 8 p.m. Devine’s, Durham. SpotlightChoreographersSeries $14. Fri, Aug. 26, 5:45 p.m. NCMA, Raleigh. stage Jo Koy: Funny Is Funny World Tour SOLD OUT. Sat, Aug. 27, 8 p.m. DPAC, Durham. Our Youth Matter: Black Tie Gala and Comedy Show $45+. Sat, Aug. 27, 6 p.m. Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh. School of Rock Chapel Hill’s End of Season Showcase $10. Sun, Aug. 28, 12 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro. Sights and Sounds Concert Series: Pan Harmonia $17. Sun, Aug. 28, 2 p.m. NCMA, Raleigh. Live Jazz with Danny Grewen & Griffanzo Mon, Aug. 29, 6 p.m. Imbibe, Chapel Hill. MNML Mon, Aug. 29, 7 p.m. The Fruit, Durham. Black Label Society $35. Tues, Aug. 30, 6:30 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh. Boris $25. Tues, Aug. 30, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro. Live Jazz with the Brian Horton Trio Tues, Aug. 30, 9 p.m. Kingfisher, Durham. North Carolina Jazz OrchestraRepertory $25. Tues, Aug. 30, 8 p.m. Sharp Nine Gallery, Durham. Songs for BenefitEmpowerment:MusicalAConcert Tues, Aug. 30, 6 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham. 2022 Drag Soir’ee: Night of Beyoncés1,000 $10. Sun, Aug. 28, 6 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill. Terrence K. Williams and Steve McGrew $35+. Sun, Aug. 28, 6 p.m. Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.
Al Strong performs at the Durham Hotel on Thursday, August 25 PHOTO BY ALEX BOERNER Jessye Desilva $10. Wed, Aug. 24, 8 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham. Live Jazz with Marc Puricelli and Friends Wed, Aug. 24, 7 p.m. Imbibe, Chapel Hill. Reed Stutz & Friends: Old Time & Bluegrass $10. Wed, Aug. 24, 7:30 p.m. The Fruit, Durham. Thornhill $16. Wed, Aug. 24, 7:30 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill. Al Strong: Jazz on the Roof Thurs, Aug. 25, 7 p.m. The Durham Durham.Hotel, Below Decks $10. Thurs, Aug. 25, 8 p.m. The Fruit, Durham. Hops for Hope ’80s Party Thurs, Aug. 25, 6 p.m. Tobacco Road Sports Cafe, Durham. Jon Pardi: Ain’t Always CowboytheTour $82+. Thurs, Aug. 25, 6:30 p.m. Red Hat Raleigh.Amphitheater, Mellow Swells Thurs, Aug. 25, 7:30 p.m. Imbibe, Chapel Hill. Niito ReleaseAlbumShow $20. Thurs, Aug. 25, 9 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh. Acisse Jay Fri, Aug. 26, 7:30 p.m. The Oak House, Durham. Bedroom Bops Listening Party and Open Mic $15. Fri, Aug. 26, 7 p.m. The Nest, Raleigh. Booty Break Dance Party $8. Fri, Aug. 26, 10 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham. Bring Out Yer Dead $12. Fri, Aug. 26, 8 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh. Celaris $10. Fri, Aug. 26, 8 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill. Jamey Johnson $26+. Fri, Aug. 26, 6:20 p.m. Red Hat Raleigh.Amphitheater, My RomanceChemical$150+. Fri, Aug. 26, 7:30 p.m. PNC Arena, Raleigh. Phil Allen Octet $15+. Fri, Aug. 26, 8 p.m. Sharp Nine Gallery, Durham. Pianos Become the Teeth $20. Fri, Aug. 26, 7:30 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham. An Emo and Pop Punk Pajama Party $12. Sat, Aug. 27, 9 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham. Bad Boy Bill $15+. Sat, Aug. 27, 9 p.m. The Fruit, Durham. Bear Grillz $20+. Sat, Aug. 27, 10 p.m. Lincoln Raleigh.Theatre, Call It Quits! $15. Sat, Aug. 27, 7:30 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill. The Hipocrats Sat, Aug. 27, 7:30 p.m. The Oak House, Durham. Keith Ganz Quartet $25. Sat, Aug. 27, 8 p.m. Sharp Nine Gallery, Durham. The Lenny Marcus Trio $22. Sat, Aug. 27, 7 p.m. RambleRill Farm, Hillsborough. Night Nation Run $35. Sat, Aug. 27, 8 p.m. Koka Amphitheatre,BoothCary.
INDYweek.com August 24, 2022 21 Available8.22THUR9.1 7PM 8.30TUES 7PM Latest on EventsBookin’ Raleigh's Community Bookstore Register for Quail Ridge Books Events Series at www.quailridgebooks.com Peter C. Baker, Planes 8.28SUN 2PM IN-STORE Carrie Jane Knowles, Shifting Forward IN-STORE Jim Sonefeld, Swimming with the Blowfish: Hootie, Healing, and One Hell of a Ride IN-STORE Rachel Simon, Pickleball For All: Everything but the “Kitchen” www.quailridgebooks.comSink•919.828.1588 • North Hills 4209-100 Lassiter Mill Road, Raleigh, NC 27609 Offering FREE Media Mail shipping and contactless pickup! Get cultureyour x. Follow @INDYWeek on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for breaking news. C U LT U R E CA L E N DA R FOR OUR COMPLETE COMMUNITY CALENDAR: INDYWEEK.COM GuardianGamera: of the Universe $8. Wed, Aug. 24, 7 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham. screen Vishwesh Bhatt: I Am from Here Thurs, Aug. 25, 6 p.m. Garland, Raleigh. Carrie Knowles:JaneShifting Forward Sun, Aug. 28, 2 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh. Alexis Rockman: Artist Talk Thurs, Aug. 25, 6 p.m. Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill. Roy 1960Making,HistoryLichtenstein—inthe1948–:
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Thurs, Aug. 25, 5:30 p.m. The Nasher, Durham. art page Out of the Woods: Opening Reception Fri, Aug. 26, 6 p.m. Hillsborough Gallery of Arts, Hillsborough. Obstructed View: Opening and Gallery Talk Tues, Aug. 30, 5:30 p.m. Hanes Art Center, Chapel Hill. Legend and Ladyhawke $10. Fri, Aug. 26, 7 p.m. Durham.CarolinaTheTheatre, Black Kung Fu Cinema and Movie Loft present: Melinda Sat, Aug. 27, 7:30 p.m. Shadowbox Studio, Durham. Outdoor Film Series: West Side Story $7. Sat, Aug. 27, 8:30 p.m. NCMA, Raleigh. Rachel Simon: Pickleball for All Tues, Aug. 30, 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh. Directed by Debbie Vu: Short Film Screening Sun, Aug. 28, 7 p.m. The Fruit, Durham. Ackland Film Forum: Life of Pi Tues, Aug. 30, 6 p.m. Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill.
22 August 24, 2022 INDYweek.com INDY CLASSIFIEDS classy@indyweek.com 720 Ninth Street, Durham, NC 27705 Hours: Monday–Friday 10–7 | Saturday & Sunday 10–6 In-Store CurbsideShoppingPickUp DISCOUNT CLUB FREE FOR EDUCATORSALL & HEALTHWORKERSCARE If you just can’t wait, check out the current week’s answer key at www.indyweek.com, and click “puzzle pages” at the bottom of our webpage. P U Z Z L E S su | do | ku © Puzzles by Pappocom There is really only one rule to Sudoku: Fill in the game board so that the numbers 1 through 9 occur exactly once in each row, column, and 3x3 box. The numbers can appear in any order and diagonals are not considered. Your initial game board will consist of several numbers that are already placed. Those numbers cannot be changed. Your goal is to fill in the empty squares following the simple rule above. If you just can’t wait, check out the current week’s answer key at www.indyweek.com, and click “puzzle pages.” Best of luck, and have fun! www.sudoku.com this week’s puzzle level:8.24.22solution to last week’s puzzle #17MEDIUM#17 2348 763 49 64 8679 95 75 352 4276 239745168 758216943 614398257 572961384 186432795 943857621 821674539 367589412 495123876#18MEDIUM#18 419 653 8295 43 162 27 5986548 472613859932 695478123 318295764 246357981 731869245 859142376 124986537 563721498 397987534612#19 8562 437236897145 978541632 145263978 457319286 621485793 389672451 792138564 563924817 814756329#20 MEDIUM#20 15 91 23874 3785 619279 49527 24 63843195726 795426318 261387954 374219685 589764231 612538479 438952167 926871543 Page157643892www.s5of25 udoku.com30/10/2005
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Chatham Cares Community Pharmacy (Siler City NC) is hiring a part-time Executive Director/Pharmacy Manager. Must be a licensed pharmacist and located in the Piedmont region of the state. Bilingual English/ Spanish skills a plus. For more information or to apply: ChathamCares.com/executive-director. Commercial Director Commercial Director - Help grow Latin America business for technology co. that optimizes the electric grid. Reqmts: Master’s deg in Engg, Engg Mgmt, or closely related; writ ten & spoken Spanish fluency, intermediate Portuguese; 1 yr of exp w/ Digsilent Power Factory & working w/in the South American utility sector. Work Locations: 50% work/travel in Latin America, 40% telecommuting from any U.S. location, 10% at HQ in Durham, NC. Resume to: Smart Wires, Inc., 1035 Swabia Ct., Durham, NC 27703, Stephanie.Cooper@smartwires.com
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