Queen City Nerve - April 19, 2023

News: S.C. hemp shop targeted with raid pg. 4

Music: Pleasure House drops ‘Stoner Song’ pg. 10

Food: THC-infused recipes for your enjoyment pg. 16

issue 4/20 issue 4/20 issue 4/20 issue 4/20 issue

i get high with a little help from my friends. i get high with a little help from my friends. i get high with a little help from my friends. i get high with a little help from my friends. i get high with a little help from my friends.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

NEWS & OPINION

4 Targeted by Ryan Pitkin

Crowntown Cannabis says unclear hemp laws to blame for S.C. raid

ARTS & CULTURE

6 We’ve Got Company by Perry Tannenbaum

New Charlotte Conservatory Theatre treks Mecklenburg County with ‘POTUS’ run

8 Lifeline: Ten Cool Things To Do in Two Weeks

MUSIC

10 For Your Pleasure by Pat Moran

Pleasure House drops ‘Stoner’ single on 4/20

12 Hometown Hero by Ryan Pitkin

Elevator Jay shows growth with first new album in four years

14 Soundwave

FOOD & DRINK

16 The 4/20 Menu

Local contributors share THC-infused recipes for your enjoyment

LIFESTYLE

19 Puzzles

20 Aerin It Out by Aerin Spruill

21 Horoscope

22 Savage Love

Thanks to our contributors: Grant Baldwin, Aerin Spruill, Perry Tannenbaum, Kit Grimes, Jessie Rae, Fenix Fotography, Jonny Golian, Peter Chiapperino, Morgan Shields, Oren Rozen, Julianne Macie, Cherie Thurlby and Dan Savage.

TARGETED

Crowntown Cannabis says unclear hemp laws to blame for S.C. raid

BY RYAN PITKIN

Since opening his first Crowntown Cannabis location — then called Charlotte CBD — in east Charlotte in 2018, Michael Sims has moved comfortably in what could sometimes be considered a gray area.

Sims was under the impression that he was given the green light to sell hemp products by the passing of the 2018 U.S. Farm Bill, followed by a statewide pilot program allowing those who obtain a license in North Carolina to grow industrial hemp.

“Ultimately, we were okay with the gray area at first because we didn’t think it was that gray,” Sims tells Queen City Nerve. “Here’s the clearly defined definition of what hemp is by Congress. It’s no longer under the DEA. It’s now under the USDA. Here’s the rules. Okay, we’ll follow them.”

And follow them he did, as Sims and his partners have rapidly expanded their business, opening a second location in Columbia, South Carolina the following year and opening two more in the Charlotte area since — one in NoDa and another in Concord.

But on Jan. 18, things got a lot grayer for Sims after the Columbia Crowntown Cannabis store was raided by Columbia police and the state’s South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED). During the raid, agents confiscated pounds of inventory from the shop that they “perceived to be marijuana,” arresting the store manager and charging her with conspiracy to sell marijuana.

Sims and his team dispute any such allegations, stating that all product in the store was hemp flower, which he believed to be legal in both North and South Carolina as long as it stayed below the .03% THC level stated in law.

What SLED and other law enforcement agencies are acting on, however, is not law but a 2021 opinion issued by South Carolina’s Attorney General stating that all delta-8 products should be considered illegal.

Delta-8-THC is a chemical compound similar to the delta-9-THC that gives marijuana its psychoactive effect, though it is slightly less potent. While synthetic delta-8 is considered a controlled

substance by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, delta-8 derived from hemp, like that sold by Crowntown Cannabis, is not.

Since the South Carolina Attorney General issued his 2021 opinion, which has not been codified into law, Sims says he has gotten mixed messages about what is allowed and what is not.

“It really comes down to not only interpretation of different law enforcement by county and by division, but I’m even seeing division within the law enforcement offices themselves,” Sims says. “Sometimes you ask questions about the legalities of these things, you could get several different answers from even calling one police department. And I sympathize to a certain point with law enforcement because they’re simply trying to enforce law, but at the same time, they’re left in a gray area, we’re left in a gray area, and it’s just a very disheartening place to be.”

Much of the confusion has involved flower, unprocessed hemp material that resembles marijuana — the “green, leafy-like substance” confiscated by law enforcement during the January raid.

Sims says he has been told by law enforcement in the past that he cannot have flower on display in jars as he once did in the shop, so he moved it to the back and made it so customers had to order from a menu at the front of the shop.

Immediately following the raid, Sims and his team were told that everything that had been confiscated was “hot,” meaning it had tested positive for marijuana, a claim that Sims found to be impossible since the testing process can take a long time.

Nearly a month after the raid, Columbia Police confirmed to The State newspaper that they had not received official results back from any testing carried out by SLED.

Sims says he’s been left to figure out what’s going on by reading news reports about his own store, many of which paint him and his employees as criminals just for doing their job.

According to Sims, an undercover officer came into the store before the raid to attempt to buy flower and was told by the manager that they would

have to order online.

Upon following up for recommendations, the manager allegedly told the officer that one of the options was “fire,” which the officer took to mean marijuana. “Fire” is a slang term meaning “high quality” that’s often used to describe anything from food to music.

After ordering flower online to a South Carolina address, Columbia PD and SLED used the delivery as probable cause for a search warrant, arresting the manager and placing her in jail.

“She’s a single mom of two and pregnant with the third,” Sims explains. “She had to spend overnight in jail and we couldn’t get her out because they don’t have night court, and she’s having to go to therapy for the traumatic stress that she went through over this.”

The manager has only recently returned to work but still suffers from severe bouts of anxiety related to the raid both in and out of the shop.

It doesn’t help that so many local media outlets ran the story without much info, publishing the manager’s mugshot and running with the unchallenged version of events that law enforcement fed them.

“We were portrayed in the news and the media like we were some kind of drug lords, and they plastered my employee’s picture all over everything and just made us

look horrible,” he says. “They were calling it marijuana that day, and there’s no way that testing was done that day within an hour of the raid, so I feel like we were ultimately guilty until proven innocent.”

Crowntown Cannabis was closed for nine days following the raid and have suffered hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses thanks to a drop in sales, which are down 50% at the Columbia shop, on top of lawyers’ fees.

Columbia Police have stated publicly since the raid that flower is illegal to sell in South Carolina and they may soon begin taking action against processed delta-8 products like gummies and cartridges, a move that would likely force Sims to close his Columbia shop.

As an advocate who has spent years lobbying for full marijuana legalization both statewide and federally, the entire experience has been a step backwards for the small-business owner, he says.

“This is not in the public interest,” Sims told Queen City Nerve. “The public is pretty angry and upset anytime these arrests are made for cannabis. The constituents out there, over 90% of America in most polls want some legal access to cannabis, and since 2018, I felt like we were moving forward towards progression and legalization. But really, specifically in 2023, I feel like we’re heading in reverse.”

RPITKIN@QCNERVE.COM

CROWNTOWN CANNABIS IN COLUMBIA, SOUTH CAROLINA. COURTESY OF CROWNTOWN CANNABIS

ARTS FEATURE

WE’VE GOT COMPANY

New Charlotte Conservatory Theatre treks Mecklenburg County with ‘POTUS’ run

BY PERRY TANNENBAUM

After the morning press conference, there’s China, an international meeting on nuclear proliferation, followed by a photo op with blindedand-maimed Iraq War vets and a much-anticipated endorsement of a gubernatorial candidate somewhere out in the Midwest. Pretty typical day at the White House.

But in Selina Fillinger’s frenetic presidential comedy, POTUS, not much else is typical — not the man in the Oval Office nor the playwright’s viewpoint. Fillinger made that clear in her subtitle: Behind Every Great Dumbass are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive.

On opening night of Charlotte Conservatory Theatre’s March production of this romp, seven frantic women directed by Stephen Kaliski had their audience laughing nearly nonstop at Booth Playhouse.

Like their debut in August, Conservatory’s production was reminiscent of the last resident company at the Booth, Charlotte Repertory Theatre, which expired way back in 2005. Members of Actors Equity are back in the mix, along with members of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society working behind the scenes.

Other professional groups are involved, including the local IATSE union and United Scenic Artists. Kaliski and Conservatory Theatre co-founder Marla Brown also harbor the long-term ambition of ascending to the highest rung of regional companies and becoming Charlotte’s first LORT (League of Resident Theatres) company since Rep’s demise.

The birth of Charlotte Conservatory Theatre

Kaliski wasn’t behind the scenes for Conservatory’s debut at the Booth last August. No, he was onstage as a rather charismatic devil named Scratch in a surprisingly amorous faceoff with Elizabeth Sawyer. Jen Silverman’s Witch was the playwright’s fresh 2018 spin on The Witch of

Edmonton, first staged in 1621, and Sawyer was a dramatization of a real-life woman burned for witchcraft earlier that same year.

Brown didn’t join the cast in that “thenish” setting, but her inclination toward making Conservatory a classics-flavored company was certainly present.

With POTUS, it’s Brown who takes the stage — nearly assuming the title role late in Act 2 as she prepares to take the place of her lookalike brother, the Prez, at a posh speaking engagement. Speaking with Brown for this story, I opined that the recent POTUS she most closely resembled was The Donald. Nope, she countered, it was Obama.

You can decide who’s right, for the Conservatory Theatre production, after closing at the Booth several weeks ago, reopens at the new Cain Center in Cornelius for another three-performance run on April 26.

Until her shocking transformation into formalwear, Brown as the drug-dealing presidential sib Bernadette looked to me like a punkish Rob Roy on the skids. Here Brown and I are in much closer agreement, since she has proclaimed, “I got that role because I can rock shorts that are hideous.”

Yet Brown’s shorts may not be the most bizarre or hideous thing we saw in POTUS at the Booth. Iris DeWitt as Chris, a beat reporter fishing for a scoop, multitasked by sporting a pair of noisy breast pumps that reminded me of football fan craziness — helmets retooled to hold beer cans emptying into drinking straws. Katy Shepherd as presidential secretary Stephanie, may be the queen oddball. After unwittingly sampling an overdose of Bernadette’s merchandise, Steph goes so far off the rails that, by intermission, she’s prancing around the West Wing dreamily with a pink swimming pool float around her waist.

The zany, comical mayhem that brings POTUS to the end of Act 1, with all seven women in action and Chris somehow stealing focus from

the ever-twirling-and-spacey Stephanie, is the closest equivalent I’ve seen in many years to the explosive circus that engulfs the stage at the second intermission of George S. Kaufman’s You Can’t Take It With You. And that fizzy moment was the only time in Fillingers’ comedy that I caught anything like a whiff of classical flavor.

Conservatory’s swerve from classicism has been both intentional and fortuitous in terms of POTUS ending its run in Charlotte only to move up the road to Cornelius.

“We want to leave our options open in these early days,” Kaliski says, “so there was a consideration early on of, okay, we’ll always do something that has some sort of anchor in a classical story. Right now, the aesthetic we’re landing on is, you know, how can we be that company? The plays in New York that are either your non-touring Broadway shows or prestige Off-Broadway shows, we want to be the group that picks a lot of those off and brings them to Charlotte. And I think Actor’s Theatre filled this role.”

Yes, it’s clear that the closure of Actor’s Theatre rocked this town — arguably harder than the shuttering of Rep, which left Carolina Actor’s Studio Theatre (CAST) and Actor’s Theatre in its wake. Now? We’ve devolved into a bunch of small black box theatre outfits, counterbalanced by the bigger

PHOTO BY FENIX FOTOGRAPHY IT TAKES SEVEN WOMEN TO KEEP THE PRESIDENT OUT OF TROUBLE IN CHARLOTTE CONSERVATORY THEATRE’S ADAPTATION OF ‘POTUS.’

ARTS FEATURE

Brand New Sheriff (BNS) Productions. They all produce consistently fine work, but none of them can be called “that company.”

Actor’s and CAST hardly messed with the classics at all. BNS, when it isn’t producing works by founder Rory Sheriff, mostly does the classics by August Wilson. So there’s definitely a niche for a major company in Charlotte that plans to straddle recent hits and classics — or any major LORT company at all, since we’re probably the largest U.S. market without one.

Even in its beginnings, Conservatory is flipping the script written by the Queen City theatre behemoths that perished in the past. Whether suddenly or gradually, Rep, CAST and Actor’s all disgorged their founders through actions of their respective boards of directors, who then proceeded to dissolve their companies without even alerting the public that they were in crisis, let alone appealing for aid.

Having founded The Warehouse up in Cornelius in 2009, Brown and her board have not liquidated her brainchild. Utilizing Warehouse’s non-profit 501c3 credentials, they have rebranded as Charlotte Conservatory, upsized their mission and ambition, and — here’s a twist — amicably disbanded their board.

“I love that space very much,” Brown still says of The Warehouse. “But I also knew that after 10 years, if I continued to produce there, I would regret it. Because Charlotte has seen such a de-evolution of theatre since Rep’s demise, and such a deevolution of our talent pool, anybody who works on a professional level or who understands the craft either has to do it for very little money or they have to teach and then do it at theaters, other LORT companies at other cities, or they work for Children’s Theatre only.”

In the wake of COVID, which gave theatre companies plenty of time to pause and reflect; and in the wake of We See You, White American Theatre, a scathing BIPOC-led indictment of American theatre companies’ lack of inclusivity; Conservatory Theatre is intent on being more open-ended and open-minded as it continues to take shape.

Finding a home

Neither cliques nor permanent positions have formed as Conservatory blazes its new path.

“We didn’t start with, okay, here’s our artistic director and the managing director, and here’s our

director of development, etc., etc.,” Kaliski explains.

“We didn’t start with a typical organizational structure. We were kind of thinking, all right, we’re a collective in this room together, and we’re going to take it project by project to start, and each project can have its own set of showrunners, if you will, kind of like a TV show. And they’ll be in charge of that, and then we’ll kind of have a different group of showrunners or a different producing pod for the next one.”

That kind of inclusivity has allowed Kaliski and Brown to reach out, in Conservatory’s formative phase, to Matt Cosper, who still cranks out XOXO productions, and playwright/actor/director Brian Daye, a former member of the Warehouse board. Nor is this core group and others limiting their horizons to the Booth Playhouse and the Cain Center, especially since Conservatory doesn’t have the kind of sweetheart rental deal that would come with official residency at either venue.

Mint Museum, the Stage Door and the new Parr Center are all in play for future reconnoitering and producing, along with whatever the epic renovation of Uptown’s Carolina Theatre winds up offering. Meanwhile at Cain Center, whose stage does not sport a fly loft, there’s a mutual feeling-out process as both newbie organizations find their bearings.

Both Brown and Kaliski were surprised and delighted that rights to perform POTUS became available so soon after the Broadway production closed last August. Many in their circle presumed there might be a national tour in the offing. But POTUS doesn’t make the most discreet or decorous entrance for a Cornelius audience, that’s for sure.

Brown had some trepidations when she

approached Cain director Justin Dionne. “Okay, Justin,” she remembers thinking, “you understand that the first word is the C word. And I know you don’t want people coming and going, ‘This is not what we built the Cain center for.’” She squeals in a high falsetto, half-relishing this possibility.

Yes, before Fillinger’s action even begins, POTUS has used this word at his morning presser — in describing the First Lady, no less … in her presence. He doesn’t know she’s there, due to a couple of additional plot points — one, we’ll learn, involving anal sex — so he explains her absence by saying, “She’s having a cunty morning.”

So Valerie Thames as Chief of Staff Harriet opens the show by storming onstage and exclaiming the offending adjective in its root form. Instantly radiating dignity, morality, and competence — qualities that will not be attributed to POTUS — Thames authoritatively dumps this crisis-of-the-day in Jean’s relatively cool hands.

Slim and conceivably serene, Jennifer Adams as POTUS’s beleaguered press secretary wastes little time in convincing us that poor Jean likely holds the most combustible burnout position in the West Wing.

Harriet and Jean are the women most seriously invested in keeping the dumbass alive and the most adept at getting the job done. This often involves prodding Stephanie, quite intelligent beneath her scared-rabbit exterior, into action. Bernadette, ankle monitor on her leg, is also very interested in keeping her brother alive, if for no other reason than her nefarious enterprises will ultimately require a presidential pardon.

“Harriet,” Jean memorably informs Bernadette,

“is the number one reason this country continues to function.” By this time, Jean has perpetrated a monumental screw-up of her own.

Wielding a blue slushy, Sarah Molloy makes an entrance as Dusty that rivals Harriet’s, rushing across the stage to vomit into a trashcan. Not the subtlest indication you’ll ever see that somebody is pregnant. Yet the West Wing brain trust struggles to put two and together. Bernadette sees it all rather quickly, though. You need to be truly family to understand POTUS

Iesha Nyree as The First Lady sizes up Dusty nearly as quickly as his sister-in-law. Assailed by presidential insult and infidelity, Margaret is also complicit and invested in her dumbass husband’s political machinations. Never playing a victim card, Nyree makes Margaret formidable and conflicted.

But while Fillinger flips the meaning of her subtitle upside down, hinting that impulsiveness and incompetence aren’t confined to POTUS or his gender, she spreads the inner conflict around: lurking among these ladies are two lesbians who will consider rekindling the old flames that once blazed secretly on the campaign trail.

“At least three of the characters must be women of color,” Fillinger prescribed in her script. “Actors can be cis or trans. Age is flexible. Beauty is subjective. So long as they’re fast, fierce and fucking hilarious.”

Kaliski, Brown and Charlotte Conservatory Theatre checked all of those boxes at the Booth. True, POTUS is a bit lightweight and more than a little over-the-top, but if you missed it in Charlotte, it’s worth the trip to follow this production up I-77 to the new Cain Center. Seeing how it all goes over with the Cornelius crowd might be an extra treat.

PHOTO BY FENIX FOTOGRAPHY ‘POTUS’ RUNS APRIL 26-29 AT CAIN CENTER FOR THE ARTS IN CORNELIUS.

SAT

SHWAYZE, THE DESTINATORS, NAT BLACK, DUKE MASSIVE

Reggae rhythms reverberate throughout The Music Yard’s 420 Earth Day party, even though it takes place on 4/22. Blissed-out Malibu hip-hop king Shwayze (born Aaron Smith) hooked up with powerhouse L.A. producer Lou Adler to orchestrate a massive music breakout with Billboard chart topping singles “Buzzin” and “Corona & Lime.” Shwayze’s intoxicating musical cocktail is not authentic but it’s certainly fun. The Destinators provide an infectious blend of soul, R&B and reggae. Roots reggae, dub and hiphop-infused DJs Nat Black and Duke Massive fill the bill.

More: $15 and up; April 22, 4:20 p.m.; The Music Yard, 2433 South Blvd.; eatsouthbound.com/themusic-yard/

FRI

4/21

Goodyear Arts’ monthlong celebration of experimental performances continues with another cache of challenging, offbeat and often outré offerings. This week’s contributors include mixed-media artist Erik Waterkotte, who creates layered imagery that embraces both the beauty and the terror of the sublime; collaborative and exploratory choreographer and movement artist Megan Payne; post-post-punk rockers and earworm tunes terrorists Julian Calendar; unerring avant-garde XOXO dramaturge Matt Cosper; multimedia environmental artist Marek Ranis, who works through sculpture, installation, painting, photography and video; plus improvisatory dance floor artist Eric Mullins, who has researched ecstatic states in charismatic Appalachian Pentecostalism for inspiration.

More: Free; April 21, 8 p.m.; Goodyear Arts, 301 Camp Road; goodyeararts.com

4/24

AWAITING THE VERTICAL RECEPTION

Focusing on the intersections between the biological, the ecological and the spiritual, Dr. Halide Salam compares her work to that of shaman. She paints within and through spaces, tying her work to the stories and rituals of her forbearers. Awaiting the Vertical includes recent paintings from Salam’s series TransPlace, TransLight, and TransMigration, in which she explores her growth as a Muslim immigrant in modern America. At the reception, Salam will hold a discussion with Dr. Hadia Mubarak, Professor of Religion at Queens University of Charlotte. The show continues through May 31.

More: Free; April 24, 6 p.m.; Projective Eye Gallery, UNC Charlotte, 9201 University City Blvd.; coaa. charlotte.edu/

FROM THE GRINDHOUSE TO THE ARTHOUSE: ‘FREEWAY’

GREAT GRIEF LIVE

When Grammy-nominated jazz vocalist Nnenna Freelon lost her husband to ALS in 2019, she felt increasingly at sea. When Freelon’s sister died six months later, Freelon tumbled into uncharted waters. To her surprise, the jazz chanteuse discovered that the tools she developed through musical improvisation helped her navigate grief’s cross currents. Adopting Great Grief, a podcast she developed about love, loss and the shapeshifting force of grieving, as a template, Freelon shares her story. Accompanied by keyboardist Andrew Berinson, she discusses the power of healing through word and song in an intimate setting. More: Free; April 26, 6:30 p.m.; Gantt Center, 551 S. Tryon St.; ganttcenter.org

ZZZAHARA, GASP, MAUVE ANGELS

Zzzahara is the solo moniker of L.A. native and former Simps guitarist Zahara Jaime, who crafts perfect pop gems inspired by queer culture, love, lust, and loss. The adrenalized “They Don’t Know,” off 2022 album Liminal Spaces, is a runaway deep space probe. Riding buzzy synths and a new wave robothumping beat, the tune evokes the lo-fi mania of Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti. “They Don’t Know” is dreamy and affirmative, an evocation of the druggy buzz of falling in love. With lounge pop L.A. gothmeisters GASP and North Carolina witchy synth poppers Mauve Angels.

More: $12; April 27, 8 p.m.; Petra’s, 1919 Commonwealth Ave.; petrasbar.com

Photo by Peter Chiapperino 4/22

MEGAN PAYNE (LEFT), ACTION SERIES

Photo by Morgan Shields 4/21

ACTION SERIES

4/28

SAPPHIC SOCIAL

Legend has it that the very first sapphic social was a ritual devoted to Aphrodite led by lyric poet Sappho in the 6th century BCE. In reality, this yin-energy gathering probably never happened. The Charlotte Gaymers Network’s Sapphic Social, however, is the real deal; a relaxed event open to lesbian, bisexual and pansexual trans femmes, mascs, nonbinary folks and cis women as well as male allies. It’s a welcome celebration in a climate that sees the ongoing decrease of local lesbian bars. The evening incorporates a trivia contest, hosted by the phenomenal drag kings of DKO Entertainment.

More: Free; April 28, 7 p.m.; Hattie’s Tap & Tavern, 2918 The Plaza; charlottegaymersnetwork.com

FRI MON

BELA FLECK, ZAKIR HUSSAIN, EDGAR MEYER, RAKESH CHAURASIA

This concert is a summit meeting of some of the most creative musicians on Earth. Innovative and influential banjoist Bela Fleck draws equally from jazz, bluegrass and improvisational music. Virtuoso double bassist Edgar Meyer possesses uncanny facility with classical and pop idioms. Indian-born Zakir Hussain is master of the tabla, the twin hand drums that underpin much of the subcontinent’s richly rhythmic music. Along with Indian flautist Rakesh Chaurasia, these musical alchemists switch effortlessly between jazz, Western classical and Indian classical. They are sonic shamans transcending and transmuting genres.

More: $24.50 and up; April 30, 7 p.m.; Belk Theater, 130 N. Tryon St.; blumenthalarts.org

NERDY NIGHT OUT: HEROES DEBATE NIGHT

Who’s better at giving dating advice: Daredevil or Gambit? Who’s a better landscaper: Black Panther or The Flash? Which superhero is the best cook? (That’s a trick question. The answer is Batman’s butler Alfred.) Wordsmith and author of So Many Things to Say: A Collection of Poems, Le Juane Bowens hosts a sextet of comedians as they debate which superheroes and villains would be the best for completely random topics. The evening includes a nerdy beer tasting with Divine Barrel Brewery’s newest release, named after a Star Wars species.

More: $20 and up; April 29, 8 p.m.; Carolina E-Sports Hub, 3401 Saint Vardell Lane; blumenthalarts.org

SAT4/29 5/1

RINGO DEATHSTARR, PLEASURE VENOM, LOFIDELS, DJ SCOTT WEAVER

Unfurling successive waves of multilayered introspective psychedelia, Austin, Texas’ Ringo Deathstarr creates a noirish time-displaced corner for haunting dual harmonies by band founder Elliott Frazier and bassist Alex Gehring. Violent outbursts of slashing hardcore guitars erupt around the motorik Krautrock drumming that forms Austin post-punk outfit Pleasure Venom’s supple rhythmic spine. Buoyed by her bandmates, charismatic and ferocious frontwoman Audrey Campbell calls out homophobia, sexism and racism. Lenny Muckle’s post-punk Charlotte quartet Lofidels entwines angular Gang of Four funk and icy yet swooning synth pop.

More: $17.30; May 1, 9 p.m.; Snug Harbor, 1228 Gordon St.; snugrock.com

CAPTAIN AMERICA, HEROES DEBATE NIGHT

Photo by Cherie A. Thurlby 4/29

ONYA NERVES, SAPPHIC SOCIAL

Photo by Jonny Golian 4/28

BELA FLECK

Photo by Julianne G. Macie 4/30

RINGO DEATHSTARR

Photo by Oren Rozen

MUSIC FEATURE

FOR YOUR PLEASURE

Pleasure House drops ‘Stoner’ single on 4/20

BY PAT MORAN

When it comes to first-time videos, a lot of local bands play the party card; we see shots of dancers moving joyously and/or aggressively in a recognizable venue. Onstage, the band gives it their all, sweeping the crowd up into a rapturous state like a shaman raising a cone of power.

As templates go, the party/gig video is effective. How better to show the transcendent and powerful sum of rock ‘n’ roll plus people?

With its debut video for the swaggering, shapeshifting sauropod “Stoner Song,” Charlotte alt-rock foursome Pleasure House steps up to the plate with their version of the party scenario. Reinforcing the theme by dropping the single on the ultimate party day of 4/20, they knock it out of the park with seemingly effortless ease.

True to its name, the epic tune busts out of the gate like a true stoner anthem, with a heavy yet supple Sabbath-ready riff set to a country rockinfused shuffle.

“It’s a rock and rollin’ banger,” says drummer and band founder Ian Pasquini.

“It’s a nasty riff,” adds bassist Alex Hanifin.

In the video, shot in February, the riff seems to lure Derek Allen’s camera into a nearly unrecognizable Snug Harbor. Along with video director and editor Pasquini, Allen eschews shots of Snug’s bar and signage, focusing on the stage and dancefloor, which is photographed in earth tones. There’s palpable energy in the room, but it’s cradled in a warmth and ease that makes the party seem like the real deal.

In the club, which will host a set by Pleasure House on May 4, local artists and friends of the band such as rapper Lil’ Skritt rock out and crowd surf, at one point bearing bassist Hanifin aloft. Meanwhile, local break dancers pivot, spin and do handstands on the dancefloor.

Onstage, Travis Phillips sings and rocks a white cowboy hat as he slashes at his guitar strings. The squealing notes are bolstered and contrasted by Tom Cushing’s bright synthesizer. Buoyed by the band members’ backup singing, Phillips launches into an impassioned gospel-infused rendition of his nearly

hallucinatory impressionist lyrics:

“At the taqueria they’re playing neon nowhere tunes/It was hard to be there but nobody asked me to...”

The tune conjures memories of dirty blues and roots champion Dexter Romweber, indie chameleons Pavement and the lumbering triceratops power of 1970s behemoth Ram Jam. Musically, the song takes unexpected whiplash turns without undercutting the guitar’s bludgeoning power and squealing cries.

“Who played the riff first?” Pasquini asks, trying to remember the genesis of “Stoner Song.”

“Somebody played a riff and then there was a song.”

He credits Phillips with taking the melody in a gospel direction.

“Yes,” Phillips says. “I said [I wanted an] R&B

background like a doo-wop song. [The song] includes some minor chord doo-wop, and then a bunch of fuzz pedal stuff.”

Back in the video, Phillips sings, dropping some more disquieting psychedelic imagery:

“

Caught in a feeling on a red drag afternoon/ Staring at the ceiling stained like tobacco juice...”

The tune comes to an extended feedback-laced crescendo, and we’re left with the feeling that we’ve been to an honest-to-God gig, complete with a postparty sense of unease, courtesy of Phillips’ lyrics. It’s that nagging sense that real-world concerns are waiting just around the corner come Monday.

Despite an initial tendency to sound like avant-rock wizards Devo, Pleasure House has been conjuring up more rock monsters like “Stoner Song,” says Pasquini. The band seems to be sitting at the floodgate of new tunes, devised organically and communally by the players.

“We all have a lot of experience playing different types of music,” Pasquini says. “So, if one of us has an idea [and] plays three notes, someone else will be like, ‘Oh, yes, like this!’ Then someone else jumps in.”

The band’s ability to sound diverse yet distinctively like Pleasure House is the result of each member calling on their varied respective musical histories.

Pathways to pleasure

Pasquini grew up in Greensboro in a musical family. His father studied classical violin and his mother earned a degree playing bassoon. Pasquini started violin lessons at age 4. He moved to Charlotte in 2008 to attend UNC Charlotte.

Pasquini has since played in a “who’s who” of cool and unusual Charlotte bands. Standout acts include Pinky Poodle Doodle, a high-energy, female-fronted rock band from Athens, Georgia by way of Tokyo. Pasquini cherishes his time with the cult band.

“They are great and passionate musicians, genuinely lovely and thoughtful people,” Pasquini says. “I was already a decent player when they hired me, but they leveled up my playing — taught me a lot about rockin’ ‘n’ rollin’.”

Pasquini also played in punk rock theatrical duo Cheesus Crust with his childhood friend Luke Hardy from 2017 to 2022. Pasquini recalls a gig where band members dressed as kaiju characters and demolished a cardboard city the band built onstage. Hardy is currently working as a physicist.

While he was pursuing his musical career, as well as his day job running sound and doing security at Snug Harbor, Pasquini also married his high school sweetheart Ashley. The pair met at a Rob

THE GENESIS OF ANY PLEASURE HOUSE SONG IS IN THE BAND’S JAM ROOM.

PHOTO BY GRANT BALDWIN

MUSIC FEATURE

Zombie/Godsmack concert at what was then called the Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre.

Growing up in Collier County, Florida, Hanifin picked up the bass after his father played some Black Sabbath records for him.

“I thought [Black Sabbath’s] bass was really cool,” Hanifin says. “I wanted to do that.”

Hanifin also started playing guitar when the guitarist for his high school jazz band failed to show up for practice. At age 22, he moved to Charlotte and fell in love with the area. Hanifin has also played with romantic goth duo Buried in Roses and garage rockers Broke Jokes. He recently started playing bass for local daydream rockers Wine Pride.

Raised in New Jersey, keyboardist Tom Cushing joined The Singing Boys of Pennsylvania, a touring youth choir, when he was 8 years old. The choir toured America, performing at Disney World and Disneyland, eventually hitting the stage at the Tokyo Disneyland four separate times.

“It was a rigorous musical education that I got when I was really young,” Cushing says.

Joining and then touring with New Jersey band Terminal Reynaldo, Cushing befriended Charlotte band Sugar Glyder. Regaled with positive tales of the Queen City, Cushing moved to Charlotte with his band. When Terminal Reynaldo folded, Cushing chose to stay, launching his keyboard-based solo project Koosh.

Cushing first met Pasquini when Pasquini was shooting video of a house show where Koosh was playing.

“Koosh is one of my favorite things ever,” Pasquini says.

Growing up in Gaston County, Phillips started playing music in church at age 12. In 2011, Phillips launched punk-blues-infused Charlotte garage rock heroes Modern Primitives with bassist Darien Steege and drummer Phil Gripper. In 2017, Tim Nhu replaced Steege on bass. Modern Primitives then updated its raw meat-grinder sound with a blast of noisy guitar-led R&B. Steege returned on bass before the band called it a day in 2022.

“I hung [Modern Primitives] up,” Phillips says. “You don’t want to repeat yourself and do the same shit over and over again.”

Pasquini and Phillips met when Pasquini was shooting video of blues duo Female Gibson, then comprised of Phillips and Travis Lopshire. Phillips and Pasquini first played together in a country band called Tony Wain & the Neon Leons. The two friends subsequently played together again when Female

Gibson hired Pasquini to play fiddle, but he swiftly moved to the drums.

Songwriting and sucking

Eventually, the paths of the future Pleasure House players crossed often enough that Pasquini’s and Phillips’ plan to form a band came to fruition. The pair recruited Hanifin and Cushing, along with guitarist Joe Boyland, and in August 2021, Pleasure House was launched. Despite the players’ backgrounds in rock, roots and country, the sound the fledgling group most often evoked was the herky-jerky robotic new wave satire of Devo.

The Devo phase lasted a few months. Pasquini says the group evolved their distinctive sound by being dissatisfied with most of what they wrote.

“Everybody kept on bringing songs — solo songs or songs from old bands, and we started learning them,” Pasquini says. “Then, once we’d learned enough songs, we decided they all sucked, and we started writing better songs, and then we decided those also sucked. Then we released the EP, and decided that sucked.”

For the record, the self-tiled EP, released in 2022, emphatically does not suck. The five original tunes on the collection crackle with the energy of longtime friends playing off each other telepathically. The songs are brisk and catchy, evoking the spirit of late 1970s New Wave traditionalist rockers Flamin’ Groovies.

The EP was recorded over a weekend at Baden Lake in a vacation house that belongs to Pasquini’s sister. Pasquini credits his friend Evan Clark, who engineered the sessions, for the smooth and trouble-free recording process. The band and Clark tracked the whole EP Friday and Saturday, leaving

Sunday open for extracurricular activities.

“We drank a billion beers,” says Cushing.

“We watched a Lynyrd Skynyrd documentary on Sunday,” Hanafin says. “We were only going to watch five minutes of it, but then we all just shut up and sat down.”

“It was an opportunity to be really hungover,” Phillips says. “That’s the only time you’re going to watch a three-and-a-half-hour Lynyrd Skynyrd documentary.”

When Queen City Nerve speaks to the band, the members are assembled at Pasquini’s home. As members talk over one and another, yet are still able to hear and understand each other, it’s clear that their friendship and self-deprecating humor is all real. Pleasure House feels like a funny and sarcastic surrogate family unit. The only reason Boyland left the band, Pasquini says, is that he got busy at his day job doing lighting and grip at the Fillmore Charlotte, and that he started booking too many gigs playing guitar with Charlotte pop-rock legends Paint Fumes.

Phillips insists that Boyland, who gets some serious face time in the “Stoner Song” video, is still a band member in spirit.

Another reason to buy the party concept of Pleasure House’s “Stoner Song” video is the unmistakable feeling that all the band members are very close. They even acknowledge Pasquini as “Band Dad,” the group’s de facto manager — the guy that talks to bookers and sets up gigs.

Despite their self-deprecating insistence that most of their songs suck, Pleasure House seems satisfied with “Stoner Song.”

The tune started with the leviathan riff, the one that no one can remember from where it came. The riff would get played at the group’s weekly rehearsal/composing sessions, and simply would

not go away.

“We went on for two months, trying not to make it a song,” Phillips says. “We finally said, ‘Oh fuck, I guess we like this,’ and then it got good. We started to record it, and I was like, ‘Oh shit, this song does rule.’”

Phillips also started writing lyrics for the tune, five full verses, which were whittled down to two.

Outside of a 4/20-appropriate nod to getting baked, he’s still trying to work out the meaning of lyrics like this:

“Babe I get so high/ But sometimes it makes me feel lonely too/ I know I should try to replace grief with gratitude...”

“It’s about being hungover, eating Mexican food by yourself, and … that’s about it,” Phillips says.

“Don’t undersell yourself,” Pasquini counters playfully. “It’s about [novelist and chronicler of a grotesquely violent deep South] Harry Crews in a corner taqueria hungover eating tacos.”

Then Phillips comes up with a second interpretation of “Stoner Song.” It’s about halfway recalled childhood memories, he says.

“It’s little ends of time,” Phillips says, “a bunch of weird shit that happened to me when I was 14, a vignette of my childhood.”

It seems those are the kind of memories with staying power.

Arcane meanings and memories aside, there are plenty more tunes on the way, the band says, including one song that reminds members of Deep Purple, and Hanifin’s tune called “Say It Again” that evokes the laconic nasal drawl of the late Mark E. Smith, vocalist for British post punk institution The Fall.

The genesis of any song, Hanifin says, is in the band’s jam room, and the process happens organically.

“We get together every week and write music and work on it,” Pasquini says. “So, there’s always new material coming out. We have a really good writing relationship where everybody trusts each other and we just do it.”

That’s how the band typically writes, Pasquini adds.

“Someone will occasionally drag in a piece of an idea,” Pasquini offers. “We credit everybody with all the lyrics on all the songs so we’re not fighting over money.”

Hanifin says, “Some things may not come to fruition ---”

“...Because they suck,” Phillips finishes.

PMORAN@QCNERVE.COM

PLEASURE HOUSE

PHOTO BY GRANT BALDWIN

HOMETOWN HERO

Elevator Jay shows growth with first album in four years

BY RYAN PITKIN

When I met James Blackmon, better known around Charlotte as Elevator Jay, at Lancaster’s BBQ on Beatties Ford Road in Huntersville on a recent Saturday afternoon, I couldn’t help but feel like it’s a symbolic spot for an interview.

After all, the Beatties Ford Road corridor is not only such a rich part of Black history in Charlotte, but a critical part of Blackmon’s history. He grew up bouncing between Oaklawn Park, Lincoln Heights, and other neighborhoods in what is now called the Historic West End. West Charlotte High School is also where Elevator Jay first came up as a rapper, recording an album on his computer using a pair of

broken headphones as a mic, burning it onto blank CDs and handing them out in the hallways.

And yet Lancaster’s is such a far cry from what Jay calls “the bottom” of Beatties Ford Road where he grew up. It’s more rural, serving as a spot to get away during his childhood.

“It was kind of like a getaway,” he says of the part of the corridor located in north Mecklenburg County. “My grandma used to take us up to Latta [Plantation & Nature Preserve] and stuff like that. Hornets Nest [Park]. Coming out here it was kind of like a vacation, like a getaway.”

And if one thing’s clear in Elevator Jay’s music,

it’s that both sides of Beatties Ford are present.

Elevator Jay has always had that rural twang in his rap — a country vibe that’s there in the production and the lyrics, featuring lines about fishing and kicking back.

On April 29, Elevator Jay will show that he’s been doing anything but kicking back during the pandemic, as he celebrates the release of his new album, Summer Rooster, with a listening session and live podcast recording at Snug Harbor.

No spring chicken

The album is Elevator Jay’s first project release in four years, after dropping the For Y’all EP in July 2019. It’s his first project ever as a co-producer; after having always produced his own work, this time he teamed up with Texas producer 2nd Prez for each of the album’s nine tracks.

The title is meant to contrast with a “spring chicken,” which Jay makes clear that he no longer is in the lead-off title track of the album. The rapper said his willingness to collaborate on the new project is a sign of growth for him, among other things.

“I feel like with this record, I’m growing in a lot of different areas,” said Jay, who’s now 34. “The way I talk on there, what I’m talking about is kind of like on a different level than what I ever done talked about before. And not saying I was talking some chap shit, being a chap on past records, but we just growing. We just mature. I used to do all my records by myself. Now I’m maturin’ because I’m working with other people. That’s growth for me.”

Jay met 2nd Prez online during the pandemic and the two immediately connected over their similar tastes. The Texas producer was familiar with Jay’s past work and was down to send him a few beats to work with, which Jay hopped on with enthusiasm.

Once this process played out a few times, a partnership began to bud.

“You know how some people, when you tell somebody something, everybody don’t stay true to their word,” Jay said. “I told [2nd Prez], I said, ‘Man, I say we keep at this rate, we ‘gon have a project.’ And that’s what happened.”

The producer’s vibes mixed well with Jay’s laidback style, reminiscent of the UGK and DJ Screw

ELEVATOR JAY

PHOTO BY GRANT BALDWIN

MUSIC FEATURE

sound that came out of the same Houston area where 2nd Prez lives.

“Texas rap has always had a slower BPM [beats per minute] than everybody else in the South, you know what I’m saying?” Jay said. “Just because of the culture and how they like to ride and stuff like that. You had to slow it down.”

The exception comes on the track “Hol Up,” which was Elevator Jay’s way of bringing back a vibe that has all but died out in recent years: crunk music.

When I told him that was the first word that came to mind upon listening to the track, he immediately went into a spiel defending the word and everything it once stood for.

“When you talk about that record, I want the crunk to come back,” he said, excitedly. “I want crunk to remain here like it never left, you know what I’m saying?”

He emphasized that “Hol Up” is the song he’s most excited about playing at during his upcoming release party, just to see how the audience interacts.

Flying the flag

Elevator Jay will team with the guys behind the Jack of All Spades podcast to host his album listening session at Snug on April 29.

The podcast — launched by David Spellmon, Ken Wabibi and Lloyd Whitfield in July 2019 — aims to bring folks together by introducing the audience to the people, places and things they should know, highlighting hidden gems in Charlotte and steeping their information in hip-hop culture.

The partnership is the perfect way to kick off what has become a passion for Elevator Jay: preserving the creative spirit in Charlotte by acting as a connector in that sprawling network.

“You don’t want that creative stuff to disappear outta here, man,” Jay said. “It’s already getting swamped by everything else. You could talk about breweries more than you could talk about music. You could talk about new developments and condos and apartments more than you can talk about the music. That’s all the city got to talk about right now.

“It’s too much going on that ain’t got nothing to do with nothing creative,” he continued. “It’s flooding stuff out to the point where, man, we need to just hang on to this creative stuff, beef it up that way. Just as much as they talk about building up South End and new developments over here, all this other stuff, I just want us to be known for this music, because it’s too much here for it not to be known for no music.”

For Jay, the transplant nature of the city allows for folks in the creative community to remain siloed, working on their own thing when he’d like to see more strong connections being made.

He praised folks like the Jack of All Spades team; Cheryse Terry, who opened Archive CLT on Beatties Ford Road and LaSalle Street; and others who serve as incubators among Charlotte’s oft-dispersed creative community.

“The scene is growing, most definitely, but it’s kind of everywhere right now, it’s all over the place,” he said. “And I’m trying to help keep it in order, keep it in line, you know what I’m saying? People still doing they thing, but it’s still a little bit hard to tap into … I get tired of people coming from out of town and be like, ‘Who we need to see, who we need to look for?’ And then people not really knowing what to say. That ain’t cool.”

It helps that more events are returning to the calendar, allowing folks to come together and connect more often. As an organizers of one of Charlotte’s most iconic hip-hop parties, Player Made: An Ode to Southern Hip Hop, he knows the importance of such functions.

Though it’s been on hiatus since COVID shut it down, Jay promised that Player Made will be back soon. As with his return to releasing new music, he just wants to ensure Player Made comes back strong.

“Nobody on the team is going to allow Player Made to come back half-ass,” he explained.

In the meantime, he’ll continue to represent Charlotte the best way he knows how.

“My thing is I’mma always be the flag flyer; I’mma fly the flag,” he said. “I’m going to be the one who, when people need to know what this is — what Carolina is, what Charlotte is — you going to know it from me. If ain’t nobody else going to tell you, I’m going to tell you.”

Having built himself into a local legend over the past dozen years, I asked Jay if he feels pressure to break through on a national level with Summer Rooster.

As expected, his response put his hometown first.

“I want to, but I’m comfortable … because it don’t matter where I go. Like I say, I’m the flag flyer. If we go do a show in Georgia, I’m going to take the flag with me. We go do a show in Japan, I’m going to take the flag with me,” he said. “A lot of people, they change, you know what I’m saying? It’s almost like the mission change when they get to a certain level. I can’t see my mission ever changing.”

RPITKIN@QCNERVE.COM

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 19

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

Microwave w/ Oso Oso, Delta Sleep, Mothé (Amos’Southend) Ripe (The Fillmore)

MSPaint w/ The Mall, Telepathetics, Clearbody (Snug Harbor)

POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ

DJ Nate (Birdsong Brewing)

COUNTRY/FOLK/AMERICANA

Jarrod Dickenson w/ Chris Kasper, Electric Blue Yonder (Evening Muse)

Caitlyn Smith w/ Alex Hall (Visulit Theatre)

JAZZ/BLUES

Stefan Kallander (Middle C Jazz)

FUNK/JAM BANDS

The Slackers w/ Faintest Idea (Neighborhood Theatre)

CHRISTIAN/GOSPEL/RELIGIOUS

Bethel Music (Ovens Auditorium)

OPEN MIC

Open Mic Variety Show (Starlight on 22nd)

THURSDAY, APRIL 20

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

Physical Digital w/ Miss Bliss, Scrlett (The Milestone) North Mississippi Allstars (Neighborhood Theatre)

Black Belt Eagle Scout w/ Claire Glass & Adobo, Diaspoura (Snug Harbor)

HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B

Lil Wayne (The Fillmore)

COUNTRY/FOLK/AMERICANA

Protectors of the Endangered Fundraiser (Visulite Theatre)

JAZZ/BLUES

Emmet Cohen Trio (Booth Playhouse)

Mandyl Evans (Middle C Jazz)

LATIN/WORLD/REGGAE

Los Dos Carnales (Ovens Auditorium)

FRIDAY, APRIL 21

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

The Thing With Feathers w/ Speak Easy (Evening Muse)

Percolator w/ Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean, Bog Loaf, B, Sayurblaires (The Milestone)

King Cackle w/ Torino Death Ride, Negulators (Tommy’s Pub)

POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ

half alive (The Fillmore)

Royal City Collective Presents: Vibe Sessions (Petra’s)

Deep Fried Disco (Snug Harbor)

SHINE (Starlight on 22nd)

COUNTRY/FOLK/AMERICANA

Kidd G (Coyote Joe’s)

The Lone Bellow Trio (Neighborhood Theatre)

Caleb Wolfe w/ Marie Me (The Rooster)

JAZZ/BLUES

Emmet Cohen Trio (Booth Playhouse)

Persona Bell (Middle C Jazz)

SATURDAY,

APRIL 22

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

Red Dress Amy w/ Regence (Evening Muse)

Similar Kind w/ Crumbsnatchers, Swae, Froggy Nights (The Milestone)

Laura Jane Grace (Neighborhood Theatre)

2nd Annual Bleeding Hearts Ball (The Rooster)

The Minks w/ The Great Indoors (Snug Harbor)

JAZZ/BLUES

Emmet Cohen Trio (Booth Playhouse)

Sam Johnston w/ The Broomestix (Evening Muse)

Peter White (Middle C Jazz)

HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B

Kem & Ledisi (Bojangles Coliseum)

MAVI (The Underground)

POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ

Blue Monday w/ Sweet Leaf (Amos’ Southend)

Church of Sinetology (Petra’s)

Val Merza w/ Kevin Goodwin (Starlight on 22nd)

ACOUSTIC/SINGER-SONGWRITER

JT Ackerman & Crystal Fountains (Primal Brewery)

SUNDAY, APRIL 23

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

Kevin Kaarl (The Fillmore)

Catcher and the Rye w/ Detest the Throne, Until They Bleed, Shoot On Sight (The Milestone)

HOVVDY w/ Whitmer Thomas (Visulite Theatre)

JAZZ/BLUES

Peter White (Middle C Jazz)

Danielle Nicole w/ The Brandon Miller Band (Neighborhood Theatre)

COUNTRY/FOLK/AMERICANA

David Ramirez w/ Anna Rose (Evening Muse)

Cougar Mountain Boys (The Rooster)

POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ

Beatfreaq (Starlight on 22nd)

LATIN/WORLD/REGGAE

Celtic Session Sunday w/ Alan Davis & Friends (Tommy’s Pub)

MONDAY, APRIL 24

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

Serious Matters w/ Wave Break, Oh! You Pretty Things, Evillleaf (The Milestone)

POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ

Sam MacPherson w/ Mikey Ferrari (Amos’ Southend)

JAZZ/BLUES

The Bill Hanna Legacy Jazz Session (Petra’s)

Patt Mostle’s Monthly Jazz Jam (Tommy’s Pub)

OPEN MIC

Find Your Muse Open Mic feat. The Forum (Evening Muse)

TUESDAY, APRIL 25

HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B

Mac Ayres (The Underground)

Ella Mai (The Fillmore)

Band of Heathens (Neighborhood Theatre)

JAZZ/BLUES

Jared James Nichols w/ Tuk Smith & The Restless Hearts (Evening Muse)

FUNK/JAM BANDS

Cosmic Jam Session (Crown Station)

POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ

Lost Cargo: Tiki Social Party (Petra’s)

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 26

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

Bongzilla w/ Wizard Rifle, Cosmic Reaper (Snug Harbor)

HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B

Prof (The Underground)

COUNTRY/FOLK/AMERICANA

Low Groves w/ Descolada (Evening Muse)

OPEN MIC

Open Mic Variety Show (Starlight on 22nd)

THURSDAY, APRIL 27

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

Sam Morrow w/ David Quinn (Evening Muse)

Wastoid w/ Babe Haven, Ink Swell, Beauty (The Milestone) zzzahara w/ GASP, Mauve Angeles (Petra’s)

JAZZ/BLUES

The Ron Brendle Double Guitar Quartet (Middle C Jazz)

COUNTRY/FOLK/AMERICANA

The Cadillac Three (The Underground)

POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ

Something Fun Presents Britney Night (Snug Harbor)

FUNK/JAM BANDS

The Hip Abduction w/ Coyote Island (Visulite Theatre)

OPEN MIC

Every Other Thursday Open Mic Night w/ Finn Castelow (Tommy’s Pub)

FRIDAY, APRIL 28

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

Obituary (The Underground)

The Garden (The Fillmore)

The Eyebrows w/ Them Pants, BNDR (Petra’s) Overthinker w/ Outatime (Skylark Social Club)

Anchor Detail w/ Civil Strife, A Life Worth Taking (Tommy’s Pub)

The Criticals w/ WOAH The Band, blankstate (Visulite Theatre)

COUNTRY/FOLK/AMERICANA

The Lacs (Coyote Joe’s)

Courtney Lynn and Quinn w/ Striking Copper (Evening Muse)

Deb Talan w/ Reeve Coobs (Neighborhood Theatre)

JAZZ/BLUES

Shayna Steele (Middle C Jazz)

HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B

Dear Silas w/ Phaze Gawd, Keenon Rush (Snug Harbor)

Check Your Head (Beastie Boys tribute) (Amos’ Southend)

FUNK/JAM BANDS

Brusied Rhino w/ Switch_User (The Rooster)

CLASSICAL/INSTRUMENTAL

Charlotte Symphony: Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 (Belk Theater)

POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ

Ape Audio Series (Starlight on 22nd)

SATURDAY, APRIL 29

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

Mephiskapheles w/ Violent Life Violent Death, Evergone, The Bleeps (The Milestone)

Roman Candles w/ Ultralush, Kevin Terrell (Petra’s) Flame Tides (Petra’s)

HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B

Snow Tha Product (The Underground)

Elevator Jay (Snug Harbor)

COUNTRY/FOLK/AMERICANA

Austin McNeill w/ Fred Lee IV (Evening Muse)

The Talbott Brothers w/ Fox & Bones (Neighborhood Theatre)

ACOUSTIC/SINGER-SONGWRITER

Brett Milstead (Primal Brewery)

POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ

MUNA (The Fillmore)

CLASSICAL/INSTRUMENTAL

Charlotte Symphony: Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 (Belk Theater)

FUNK/JAM BANDS

Sexbruise? (Visulite Theatre)

SUNDAY, APRIL 30

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

Josiah Johnson (Evening Muse) Ministry (The Fillmore)

Kissyourfriends w/ Noir Noir, Comma Sutra, Jordyn Zaino (The Milestone)

JAZZ/BLUES

Tony Exum Jr. (Middle C Jazz)

HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B

Babyface Ray (The Underground)

POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ

Hazy Sunday (Petra’s)

Mr Atomic w/ Electro Static Discharge (Starlight on 22nd) LATIN/WORLD/REGGAE

Béla Fleck w/ Zakir Hussain, Edgar Meyer, Rakesh Chaurasia (Belk Theater)

MONDAY, MAY 1

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

Ringo Deathstarr w/ Pleasure Venom, Lofidels (Snug Harbor)

JAZZ/BLUES

The Bill Hanna Legacy Jazz Session (Petra’s)

OPEN MIC

Find Your Muse Open Mic feat. Tommy Salami (Evening Muse)

TUESDAY, MAY 2

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

VALLEY (The Underground)

POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ

Seven Lions (The Fillmore)

FUNK/JAM BANDS

Cosmic Jam Session (Crown Station)

JAZZ/BLUES

Joanna Connor (Neighborhood Theatre) VISIT QCNERVE.COM FOR THE FULL SOUNDWAVE LISTING.

The 4/20 Menu The 4/20 Menu The 4/20 Menu The 4/20 Menu The 4/20 Menu

Local contributors share THC-infused recipes for your enjoyment

For this year’s 4/20 issue, we reached out to three Charlotteans we know to be exceptional cooks when it comes to THC-infused foods to see if they’d be willing to share their favorite recipes. They were all happy to do so — under differing levels of anonymity, of course — so hit the store and get in the kitchen with these instructions.

Jessie Rae’s Intro to Decarbing and Infusion

The key to great edibles starts at the root: All cannabis (flower and concentrate) must first be decarboxylated, aka decarbed. This process converts the THCA in the plant into THC. It is what gives edibles the psychoactive effects. Without doing this, you will not feel a buzz when eating edibles. Decarbing is simple. Take the flower and grind it up into smaller pieces, throw it on some parchment paper and a baking sheet. Toss the baking sheet in the oven at 240 degrees. Let the bud bake for about 45 minutes. Remember to gently mix the buds around in the baking sheet every 10-15 minutes. Decarbing concentrate is similar, so still use the parchment paper and baking sheet method. Concentrate does not take as long to decarb — maybe

VEGAN BROWNIES

Ingredients:

• 2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

• 2 cups white granulated sugar

• 1 teaspoon baking powder

• 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

Directions:

around 20 minutes. Keep an eye on the concentrate while it’s in the oven. As soon as you see it start to bubble, it’s been decarbed. Remove the baking sheet from the oven. Place it in the freezer to bring the concentrate back to its normal consistency in about 10 minutes. Do not leave your flower or concentrate in the oven longer than necessary. This will cause the THC to bake off, thus losing its full potential.

Now that your cannabis has been decarbed it’s time to infuse! When baking, I find it easier to infuse butter with flower, and olive oil with concentrate. Obviously, there are many other methods, but these methods have been proven to be the most effective for stoners worldwide.

Simple conversions for edibles based on the average super funk from your local street pharmacy:

• 1 gram of bud = 200 milligrams of THC

• 1 gram of concentrate = 500 milligrams of THC

CANNABUTTER:

Keeping in mind the THC conversion guide just mentioned, decide how much butter you want to make. The average stick of butter is 1/2 cup.

This is where some math is going to be required. Remember it’s always easier to infuse the butter with more THC than you may need for one recipe, so that way you will already have cannabutter for next time! When cooking, you can dilute the weed butter by using half weed butter and half regular butter. Or 1/4 cup of butter and 3/4 cup cannabutter … you see where I’m going with this.

On low heat, melt regular butter in a cooking pot. Once butter has melted, add about a cup of water. Now add your decarbed flower. Let this mixture come to a low simmer. It’s useful here to use a thermometer. You do not want to overcook your butter or else you will lose the THC! Simmer for about two hours at 200 degrees. Never let the mixture come to a boil. After time has passed, remove the pot from the stove. Strain the mixture through cheesecloth into a glass jar or bowl. It’s important to use glass because plastic or wooden containers will cause the THC to stick to the sides. (Pro tip: As tempting as it is, do not over squeeze the remainder of your bud through the cheesecloth. This will pull chlorophyll from the plant into the butter causing your butter to taste bad.) Now it’s time to refrigerate. Let the butter hang out in the fridge for about eight hours. Any excess water collected at the bottom of the bowl can be poured out after eight hours. Congratulations! You now have weed butter.

CANNAOIL:

On low heat, pour olive oil into a saucepan. Allow olive oil to heat up. Add desired amount of decarbed concentrate. Let simmer over a span of about 10 minutes. Constantly stir the mixture with

STONEY TREATS

a nonstick spatula to evenly infuse. Once you no longer see clumps of concentrate, remove the pan from heat. Let cool for a few minutes. Pour the oil into a glass container. Congratulations! You now have weed oil.

Sidenote: If you happen to be an avid concentrate smoker, you may already have decarbed wax just laying around. Any resin found in your rig has already been decarbed. Just use a torch to burn the excess resin out of your piece. Allow the resin to drip onto a sheet of parchment paper. Now you have wax that’s ready for cooking … and a clean rig for smoking!

DOSING:

If you have never used edibles before, it’s important to start small; 5 milligrams of THC is recommended for a beginner dose. Wait at least an hour to feel the full effects. You can smoke cannabis every day of your life, but anytime you eat cannabis it will be a different experience. This is because the THC is broken down in your body through your liver. In large amounts, users report vivid trips, and in some cases panic attacks. Thankfully, if you do overindulge, you’re not going to die. But you might have a bad time.

• 5-10 milligrams: light affects

• 20 milligrams: average dose for users

• 30-50 milligrams: altered reality

• 50-100 milligrams: you’re really feeling it

• 100-500 milligrams: intense psychoactive affects

- JESSIE RAE

• 1 teaspoon salt

• 1 cup of water

• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

• 1 cup cannaoil

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, mix the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt together. Then add in the water, vegetable oil, and vanilla. Mix all ingredients together until it becomes a well-blended consistency. Spread mixture into a well-greased 9x13x2inch baking pan. Bake for 25-30 minutes. You will know the brownies are done when the top layer becomes shiny. Remove from the oven. Let brownies cool for at least 15 minutes before cutting them into even-sized squares. Bong appetite!

- JESSIE RAE

Ingredients:

• 1/3 cup of cannabutter

• 1 10-ounce package of marshmallows

• 6 cups of fruity pebble cereal

Directions:

On low heat, melt butter in a saucepan. Add marshmallows, then stir with nonstick spatula until completely melted. Remove from heat. Add Fruity Pebbles cereal. Stir until evenly distributed. Using wax paper or well greased spatula, evenly press the mixture into a 13x9x2-inch pan that has been previously coated with cooking spray. Let cool. Cut into 2-inch squares. Enjoy!

- JESSIE RAE

Infusion expert Kit Grimes is the founder of The Edible: Incredible!, through which she offers services including hospitality consultation, private cooking, workshops and product manufacturing services. Learn more at kitgrimes.tv.

CRAB-STUFFED MUSHROOMS

Ingredients:

• 1 pound large mushrooms, stems removed

• 8 ounces lump crabmeat, drained and picked over

• 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

• 1/2 cup seasoned breadcrumbs

• 1/8 cup mayonnaise

• 1/8 cannabutter

• 2 tablespoons finely chopped green onions

• 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

• 1/4 teaspoon paprika

• Salt and pepper, to taste

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Clean the mushroom caps with a damp paper towel and place them in a greased baking dish, with the cavity facing up. In a medium bowl, mix together the crabmeat, Parmesan cheese, mayonnaise, cannabutter, breadcrumbs, green onions, Dijon mustard, garlic powder, paprika, salt and pepper. Spoon the crab mixture into the mushroom caps, dividing it evenly among them. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until the mushrooms are tender and the filling is golden brown and bubbly. Serve the crab-stuffed mushrooms hot and enjoy!

-KIT GRIMES

CHOCOLATE-COVERED PRETZELS

Ingredients:

• 1 bag of pretzels (any shape)

• 8-10 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips or melting chocolate

• 2 tablespoons cannabutter (add lecithin to prevent separation from chocolate)

• Toppings (optional): sprinkles, crushed nuts, coconut flakes, etc.

Directions:

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone mat. Melt the chocolate chips or melting chocolate in a microwave-safe bowl in 30-second intervals, stirring after each interval, until fully melted and smooth. Dip each pretzel into the melted chocolate, using a fork to fully coat the pretzel. Tap off any excess chocolate. Place the chocolate-covered pretzels onto the prepared baking sheet. If using toppings, sprinkle them over the chocolate-covered pretzels while the chocolate is still wet. Allow the chocolate to fully set by placing the baking sheet in the refrigerator for 10-15 minutes. Once the chocolate is set, remove the pretzels from the refrigerator and let them come to room temperature before serving or storing. Enjoy your delicious homemade chocolate-covered pretzels!

-KIT

GRIMES

The anonymous author of the following recipe reminds readers that these can be dangerous if you have the munchies. “You’ll get even more stoned and then you’re stuck in a vicious cycle.”

ROSEMARY AND GARLIC ROASTED ALMONDS

Ingredients:

• 3 cups raw almonds

• 3 tablespoons cannaoil

• 6 cloves of garlic, minced

• 3 tablespoons or 1/4 cup fresh rosemary

• 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika

• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

• 1 tablespoon sea salt

Directions:

Pre-heat oven to lowest setting — do not exceed 265-270 degrees. In a bowl, mix the almonds with the cannaoil and sea salt. Pick the leaves of the fresh rosemary sprig, mince garlic by hand (use pre-minced, but never a garlic press, it will make it clumps of garlic), add to the almonds and stir well. Spread out on a parchment lined cookie sheet and bake for 20-30 minutes (may take longer, until almonds are lightly toasted, olive oil has started to evaporate/absorb and almonds have a dryer look to them) stirring halfway.

BUTTERFINGERS

Ingredients:

• 1 cup candy corn

• 1 cup crunchy peanut butter

• 1/4 cup corn flakes

• 2 cups milk chocolate melts

• 1 1/2 tablespoons cannabutter (add lecithin to prevent separation from chocolate)

Directions:

Line an 8x8-inch baking dish with parchment paper and set aside. If you have a silicon multi-square mold, that would work well to create individual bites.

In a microwave-safe bowl, microwave the candy corn for 1 minute, stirring every 20 seconds until fully melted. Stir in the peanut butter until well-combined. Spread the mixture evenly into the prepared baking dish and refrigerate for 30 minutes or until firm. Remove the candy from the baking dish and cut into desired shapes (you can use a sharp knife or a cookie cutter). In a separate microwave-safe bowl, melt the chocolate chips and infused vegetable shortening in 20-second intervals, stirring between each interval, until the chocolate is smooth and fully melted. Vegetable shortening is used due to its ability to mix into chocolate without changing its properties. Dip each candy piece into the melted chocolate, tapping off any excess, and place on a sheet of parchment paper to set. Let the chocolate set completely before serving. This can take up to an hour. If using a mold with individual squares: Pour your chocolate into the molds first and let them set, then place your mixture in the chocolate squares, cover the bottoms of the squares with more chocolate and let it set, pop individual squares out and enjoy!

-KIT GRIMES

COURTESY OF THE EDIBLE: INCREDIBLE!

COURTESY OF THE EDIBLE: INCREDIBLE!

COURTESY OF THE EDIBLE: INCREDIBLE!

SUDOKU

BY LINDA THISTLE

TRIVIA TEST

BY FIFI RODRIGUEZ

1. TELEVISION: Which drama focuses on the inhabitants of Wisteria Lane?

2. GEOGRAPHY: The Aswan Dam is located on which river?

3. LANGUAGE: What is the only word in the English language that ends in “mt”?

4. MOVIES: What is the name of Ryan Reynolds’ Alaskan hometown in “The Proposal”?

5. U.S. CITIES: How many buildings in New York City have their own ZIP codes, including the Empire State Building?

6. SCIENCE: Entomology is the scientific study of what?

7. CHEMISTRY: Which natural element is the most unstable?

8. FOOD & DRINK: What is the condiment tahini made of?

9. LITERATURE: What is the setting for John Kennedy Toole’s novel “A

CROSSWORD

Place your ad h e

AERIN IT OUT GOT THE DOG IN HER

Pinhouse and Cutting Board serve what’s needed on a warm spring day

BY AERIN SPRUILL

“They’ve got transfusions,” my girlfriend said in a seemingly calm voice. I looked up to see the mischievous grin spreading across her face and knew her tone was hiding her genuine excitement. She let out a tiny squeal and I immediately went to texting the boo, convincing him that the short Uber ride to Pinhouse on Central Avenue was well worth tearing him away from the comfort of Hogwarts Legacy

No matter the event or occasion, I’m usually the boo’s No. 1 scout. As the less-introverted of the two, I suss out the venue, examine the drink and food options, and determine everyone’s level of inebriation. If the formula feels just right, I give him the green flag to venture forward. A b-day with girlfriends at an unfamiliar bar definitely called for a bit of recon. First up, snacks.

“There will be a food truck there,” rarely puts my mind at ease when I’m heading to hang with friends at a brewery on an empty stomach. In fact, it usually conjures an obsessive-compulsive desire to hide leftovers in my purse or frantically Google every potential option en route. But a quick review of Pinhouse’s IG delivered a post featuring two odd-looking Korean corn dogs. The first was dusted in neon red Hot Cheetos and the other was peppered with small chunks of potato.

My interest piqued, I prepared to venture into the unknown while hangry.

Though Pinhouse’s neighbor, Lulu’s Maryland-Style Chicken and Seafood, closed its doors at the beginning of the year, I remember thinking it didn’t feel lonely as I pulled up, just waiting to be full.

“Pinhouse, live music, self serve, and duckpin” inscribed on the creamy white brick provides a stark contrast to the black-framed windows surrounding the front door on a sunny day.

Instead of going straight in, I opted to take the stairwell to the left of the entrance down to the “back patio” area where my friends and the b-day girl were waiting.

From the front parking lot, you may not realize Pinhouse is two stories, but as you round the corner at the bottom of the stairs, the showstopper IMO is a charming double-decker walkout patio on the backside of the building.

At 3 p.m. on a Saturday, it was obvious that I wasn’t the only one thinking it was a wee bit early for day

drinking despite the warm weather. There were only a handful of patrons peppered throughout, but for some reason, it still felt cozy — like hanging in a rich homie’s backyard complete with TVs, background music, plenty of seating, table umbrellas, cornhole, and of course, puppies. Needless to say, the “vibes” were a go.

Even on an “I-think-I’m-shvitzing-sitting-still” warm weather day, this cold-natured baby’s eyes are always drawn to a snug corner like the one my friends were waving me over to from right next to the patio fireplace. But after a few minutes of hellos (wherein I confirmed we were still on a sober-ish pace), I noted the scrunched brows and sweat sheen building and knew not to get attached while touring duckpin bowling and the 70+ taps that *fingers crossed* held a cider I would like.

That’s when I realized something was missing from my new outdoor living room: the food truck. Gasp! Dare I ask if it was coming soon? I shuddered at the thought of hearing, “No sorry, they’re not here today.” Hanger settled in as the b-day girl confirmed my fears that Cutting Board CLT was actually at Resident Culture. *insert a bloodcurdling, “Noooo!” before a fade to black*

But before my hangritude could rear its ugly head I went to the food truck’s IG to confirm which Resident Culture they were going to be at and it was at the Plaza Midwood location just across the street. (They’re at Pinhouse on Thursdays and Saturdays, Resident Culture on Central on Sundays, and Hopfly in South End on Fridays for future reference.)

Crisis averted, I volunteered as tribute to pick up an online group order. The food bag was secured and the boyfriend was on the way.

Upon my return, I delivered the greasy bags with corn dog sticks protruding and everyone’s now tipsy squints were teeming with excitement. I unwrapped the foil as carefully as if I were Charlie holding the golden ticket to reveal a hot, crispy wiener the color of Red Dye 40 filled with meat and oozing cheese.

Grunts of satisfaction were the only sounds of note between each crunchy bite. When everyone finally lifted their heads, all that was left was squished mustard and ketchup packets and one of Tide’s worst enemies: Hot Cheeto dust.

april

19 - 25

ARIES (March 21 to April 19) This is a good time to reassess important relationships, both personal and professional, to see where problems might exist and how they can be overcome. Keep the lines of communication open.

TAURUS (April 20 to May 20) It’s not easy to bring order to a chaotic situation, whether it’s in the workplace or at home. But if anyone can do it, you can. A pleasant surprise awaits you by week’s end.

GEMINI (May 21 to June 20) Be careful that you don’t make an upcoming decision solely on the word of those who might have their own reasons for wanting you to act as they suggest. Check things out for yourself.

CANCER (June 21 to July 22) A personal relationship that seems to be going nowhere could be restarted once you know why it stalled in the first place. An honest discussion could result in some surprising revelations.

LEO (July 23 to August 22) That unexpected attack of self-doubt could be a way of warning yourself to go slow before making a career-changing decision. Take more time to do a closer study of the facts.

VIRGO (August 23 to September 22) A workplace problem needs your attention now, before it deteriorates to a point beyond repair. A trusted third party could be helpful in closing the gaps that have opened.

BORN THIS WEEK: You have a wonderful way of offering comfort as well as guidance. You would do well in the healing arts.

LIBRA (September 23 to October 22) A recent family situation could give rise to a new problem. Keep an open mind and avoid making judgments about anyone’s motives until all the facts are in.

SCORPIO (October 23 to November 21) Rely on your always-sharp intuition to alert you to potential problems with someone’s attempt to explain away the circumstances behind a puzzling incident.

SAGITTARIUS (November 22 to December 21) Although you still need to do some snipping off of those lingering loose ends from a past project, you can begin moving on to something else.

CAPRICORN (December 22 to January 19)

With your self-confidence levels rising, you should feel quite comfortable with agreeing to take on a possibly troublesome, but potentially wellrewarded situation.

AQUARIUS (January 20 to February 18) Travel is favored, both for business and for fun. The end of the week brings news about an upcoming project that could lead toward a promised career change.

PISCES (February 19 to March 20) You might feel suddenly overwhelmed by a flood of responsibilities. But if you deal with each one in its turn, you’ll soon be able to hold your head above water and move on.

April

26 - may 2

ARIES (March 21 to April 19) This week offers new opportunities for adventurous Sheep, both personal and professional. Single Sheep could find romance with a Taurus or Scorpio.

TAURUS (April 20 to May 20) Your big break is about to happen in the workplace. Expect to hear more about it within a few days. Meanwhile, enjoy some much-needed fun time.

GEMINI (May 21 to June 20) Your past tendency for breaking promises could be catching up with you. You need to reassure a certain someone in your life that this time you’ll keep your word. Good luck.

CANCER (June 21 to July 22) Watch your tendency to be overcautious in your personal relationships. Give people a chance to show who they are, not who you assume them to be.

LEO (July 23 to August 22) Aspects favor closer attention to family matters, especially where it concerns older relatives who might need special care. A co-worker has information that can help.

VIRGO (August 23 to September 22) A workplace change causes a temporary delay in your plans. Still, continue working on your project so that you’ll be ready when it’s time to start up again.

BORN THIS WEEK: Yours is one of the most emotional signs of the zodiac. You are empathetic and have a deep spiritual core that gives you your great strength.

LIBRA (September 23 to October 22) Stick with your plans despite some recent disappointments. Persistence will pay off. A family member’s health takes a happy turn for the better.

SCORPIO (October 23 to November 21) Your gift for seeing through to the heart of a matter (or the heart of a person) impresses someone who is in a position to make you a very interesting offer.

SAGITTARIUS (November 22 to December 21) Your colleagues believe in your leadership abilities because you believe in yourself. Your strength inspires others to follow your example.

CAPRICORN (December 22 to January 19) A sensitive situation needs sensitive handling. Show more patience than you usually do. This will allow everyone time for some really hard thinking.

AQUARIUS (January 20 to February 18) You are determined to take charge of a difficult situation and turn it around. Good for you. Accept muchneeded help and advice from a Libra.

PISCES (February 19 to March 20) You are able to help people by sensing their deepest pain, but be careful not to let your own emotions get injured. Try to maintain a safe balance.

PUZZLE ANSWERS

10. Four.

9. New Orleans.

8. Sesame seeds.

7. Francium, because it has 49 more neutrons than protons.

6. Insects.

5. More than 40.

4. Sitka.

3. Dreamt.

2. The Nile River.

1. “Desperate Housewives.”

SAVAGE LOVE QUICKIES

Take it to the edge

BY DAN SAVAGE

My partner wants me to give him a ruined orgasm. Where do I go to learn that?

Ruined orgasms are pretty easy — they’re so simple, in fact, that people sometimes give them to (or inflict them on) their male partners by accident. Here’s how you do it: Bring your partner to the point of orgasmic inevitability — get him to that point where there’s no stopping his orgasm; even if Marjorie Taylor Greene were to burst into the room, he’s going to come — and then cease all stimulation. Take your hand off his dick, take his dick out of your mouth, lift your pussy or ass off his dick — whatever you were doing to get him close, stop. He’ll come, but it won’t be anywhere near as pleasurable or intense as his usual orgasms, i.e., the orgasms he has when his cock is stimulated to and through the point of orgasm.

How can I be more fuckable? I put myself out there, but no one bites. I’m done being a 31-yearold gay virgin. I am a clean person, shower every day, wear clean clothes, and was voted “most likely to brighten up a day” in school.

Maybe you’re doing something wrong — but I couldn’t tell you what that might be without meeting you, getting to know you, and making polite inquiries about your voting history. But I can tell you what I would do if I were in your shoes: I would hire a brutally honest “life coach,” a personal trainer, and a hooker, but in reverse order.

What’s your #1 tip for someone who has never been to a sex party before? It includes a wide range of ages, genders, orientations and proclivities — with many nervous newbies on the invite list. Bathe.

Can a person who has always had open sexual relationships become monogamous? Yes.

I never visualize having sex with my husband anymore. In my mind, it’s always someone else. Is that bad? No.

Why is anonymous sex in places like bathhouses and gloryholes so enticing to queer people like me?

Lesbians aren’t exactly crowding into bathhouses or around glory holes — nor are asexuals, demisexuals,

sapiosexuals, etc., etc., etc. So, I’m gonna assume you’re a gay man. Before I write another word: Not all gay men find anonymous sex and/or public sex environments enticing. But the ones who do … they’re not doing it because they’re gay. They’re doing it because they’re men. I mean, if you told straight men there were places where walls had holes in them and women were kneeling on the other side of those walls waiting to suck them off, straight men would go to those places. There’s nothing gay men do that straight men wouldn’t if straight men could but straight men can’t because women won’t. As for why women won’t … the answer is equal parts disinterest (on the part of most women) and an entirely reasonable fear of male sexual violence (on the part of all women).

What do you do when you’re bored with the sexual smorgasbord and just want a few quiet nights in?

You spit the dick out and go home.

Quick etiquette question: Can I use my fucking machine in a hotel room?

You’re allowed to fuck in hotel rooms. But fucking machines — at least the ones I’ve been in the same room with — are pretty fucking loud. They start loud, they stay loud. People fucking, on the other hand, typically only get loud toward the end of the fucking; once you can hear two people fucking in the room next to yours, you know it’s almost over. So, while I think we all have to put up with a little noisy fucking in the next room from time to time, I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect the guests in the next room to put up with the noise of a fucking machine.

I’m in love with my roommate. I think he likes me too. I just fear losing his friendship if I tell him. Any thoughts on how I should handle this?

If you don’t open your mouth … your roommate can’t stick his dick in there. Just don’t open your mouth and say, “I’m in love with you,” as that will instantly dial the emotional stakes up to 11. Instead, tell your roommate you’re attracted to him and reassure him — before he can even respond — that you will get over the awkwardness (and him) if he doesn’t feel the same way about you.

How can I help a quick shooter have a slower draw? This D isn’t lasting long enough for me! Some medications seem to help premature ejaculators — excuse me: Some medications seem

to help persons experiencing premature ejaculation (PEPE). Additionally, some PEPEs can train themselves to last longer by jacking off a few hours before sex with a partner, strengthening their pelvic floors, and edging themselves endlessly. But if nothing helps — and sometimes nothing does — and delaying penetration until after you’re satisfied doesn’t work (because only a good, long, hard fuck can satisfy you) and your guy isn’t insecure about how his dick works, you should get a strap-on dildo. They’re suddenly everywhere in gay porn… and we all know what that means. (It means straight people will be giving each other strap-on dildos as wedding presents by next summer.)

Top tips for being a good/smart third when playing with a couple?

Be clear about your expectations — what you’re into, what you’re not, what you’re comfortable with, what you aren’t — and politely decline if they aren’t clear about their expectations.

I’m a young college professor in New York City and an active Grindr user. Is there a way to block an age range?

In these morally panicked times, it’s probably better to err on the side of not fucking guys young enough to be your students — to say nothing of guys who are your students or who go to your university and might become your students. Unfortunately, there’s no way to block guys by age range on Grindr. So, you’ll have to block them as they come.

Why do people say “ethical non-monogamy” when they just mean “dating”?

Because they mean different things. While some ENM people do date, some people in ENM relationships aren’t interested in dating (or allowed to date) outside sex partners; they don’t describe themselves as “dating” because 1. they aren’t dating and 2. they don’t want to (or shouldn’t want to) mislead potential outside sex partners. And while people who ultimately want a committed ENM relationship can and do date, lots of people who date — lots of people out there fucking around with multiple partners — ultimately want a committed monogamous relationship and identifying as ENM would be misleading.

I love sex but I don’t enjoy getting off or seeing cum. Is that weird? Yes.

If my bisexual husband is fucking men in the ass with a condom but not using a condom with me — his cis wife — am I at risk?

You’re at a slightly higher risk for certain sexuallytransmitted infections — primarily HPV and HSV. But since your husband doesn’t look at you and see the reason why he can’t fuck other men, I’d say you’re at a slightly lower risk of divorce. (If your parents were so negligent that they didn’t get you vaccinated against HPV, go get vaccinated now.)

Any queer-cuck related porn that you’d recommend?

Jack Hornwood’s erotic novellas — jackhornwood. com — come highly recommended.

Would you consider a 67-year-old man who’s had numerous affairs while in what were supposed to be monogamous relationships and more than a few “friends” who turned out to be more than just friends to have a “propensity” for extra-marital relationships, secrets, and duplicity? Asking for a friend.

Honoring a monogamous commitment is going to be a struggle for this guy — assuming he has any interest in honoring a monogamous commitment — and being with him will be torture for your “friend” whether he ever gets around to cheating on her or not.

I’ve always had to beg my partners to hurt me. Now I finally meet a guy who is legit sadistic, and I’m completely freaked out. He’s very sexy and everything is consensual, and he hasn’t violated any of my limits. But unlike my two previous boyfriends — very sweet guys — he doesn’t feel the least bit conflicted about hurting me. Send him my way.

My husband and I have been together for 15 years now. He’s never been with anyone else and has recently opened up about wanting to explore outside. I do not have this desire. I love him and ultimately want him to be happy, but I also don’t want to make myself unhappy in the process! Can you recommend how to find a sex positive therapist for us to help us navigate through this new path?

Check out AASECT.org.

I’m a pretty jacked college student and I get a lot of attention from gay dudes. And that would be great if I was gay but I’m not. Girls expect guys like me to make the first move, but I worry about coming across like an asshole or a harasser. I’m also very submissive but women take one look at me and expect me to be aggressive when what I really want is to be dominated and even punished. I don’t even know how to have that conversation with a girl. Any advice?

Gay guys make great wingmen — so, the next time a gay dude hits on you, tell him you’re flattered but straight and blah blah blah. Then ask him if he knows any hot dominant girls. If he does, ask him to hook a jacked sub up. If he doesn’t, I promise he won’t rest until he finds a hot dominant girl he can introduce you to — particularly if she’s allowed to share all the details with him. Either way, your new gay best friend will be only too happy to have that conversation (at least the first one) for you.

Send your burning questions to mailbox@savage.love; podcasts, columns and more at Savage.Love.