Queen City Nerve - December 14, 2022

@QUEENCITYNERVE WWW.QCNERVE.COM

PUBLISHER

JUSTIN LAFRANCOIS jlafrancois@qcnerve.com

EDITOR - IN - CHIEF RYAN PITKIN rpitkin@qcnerve.com

DIGITAL EDITOR

KARIE SIMMONS ksimmons@qcnerve.com

STAFF WRITER PAT MORAN pmoran@qcnerve.com

AD SALES EXECUTIVE RENN WILSON rwilson@qcnerve.com

TO PLACE AN ADVERTISEMENT EMAIL INFO@QCNERVE.COM

QUEEN CITY NERVE WELCOMES SUBMISSIONS OF ALL KINDS. PLEASE SEND SUBMISSIONS OR STORY PITCHES TO INFO @ QCNERVE.COM. QUEEN CITY NERVE IS PUBLISHED EVERY OTHER WEDNESDAY BY NERVE MEDIA PRODUCTIONS LLC.

QUEEN CITY NERVE IS LOCATED IN HYGGE COWORKING AT 933 LOUISE AVENUE, CHARLOTTE, NC, 28204.

FIRST ISSUE OF QUEEN CITY NERVE FREE. EACH ADDITIONAL ISSUE $5.

NEWS & OPINION

ARTS & CULTURE

FOOD & DRINK

Pg. 3

LET’S TALK TRASH

Understanding how Mecklenburg’s waste systems work

BY KARIE SIMMONS

When you put items into trash or recycling bins, have you ever thought about where they go next? If you’re anything like me, many of you might be surprised to learn that the actions you’ve been taking, which you thought were helping — or at least not hurting — were actually putting a strain on our current waste management systems and negatively impacting our environment.

It’s no secret that we’re producing more trash today than ever before. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Americans in 1960 generated 2.68 pounds of garbage per person each day. By 2018, the most recent data available, that number had grown to an average of 4.9 pounds per person.

To put things in perspective, that’s as much as a bag of flour, six pairs of jeans, or two and a half 12-inch pizzas.

We dutifully put items into our recycling or trash bins thinking that’s where our responsibility ends — we’ve done our job and the rest is out of our hands — but experts in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County’s solid waste management say that final step could be doing more harm than good.

A lot of it has to do with confusion about what is acceptable for curbside trash and recycling, and how we’re supposed to dispose of certain materials. But in order to understand the impact of what we’re doing wrong, we must first understand how everything works.

Recycling right

In Charlotte, recyclables are picked up by the City of Charlotte’s Solid Waste Services department and brought to the Metrolina Recycling Center, also called a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF), located in Charlotte’s Sugar Creek area.

The facility, which is owned by Mecklenburg County and operated by Republic Services, processes and sorts all of the single-stream recyclable materials collected from residential, schools and commercial recycling programs across Mecklenburg

and neighboring counties.

The MRF processes roughly 400 tons of recyclables every day. Materials received there are sorted by employees, along with specialized equipment designed to separate some recyclables.

According to Aaron Caudle of the county’s Solid Waste Management department, dealing with contamination — when non-recyclable items, aka trash, are mixed in with recyclable items — is a constant battle at the MRF.

Contamination is often caused by what’s called “wishful recycling,” or assuming something is recyclable when it’s not, according to Caudle. In Mecklenburg County, the most common examples of items involved with wishful recycling are takeout containers, wide-mouth plastic containers (margarine, cottage cheese, yogurt, Cool Whip), clamshell produce containers, Styrofoam and plastic bags.

Caudle said MRF employees see diapers, metal chairs, tables, even a bowling ball coming through the facility, put in bins by residents who “wish” for them to be recycled.

“When materials go to our recycling center, they go through all of these very expensive sorting machines that can get damaged and broken from something metal going through, or like a bowling ball, and that tears up the machinery and that costs us more money, which in turn costs everybody else more,” Caudle said.

The only plastic items that are currently recyclable in Mecklenburg County are containers with necks such as beverage bottles. This is due to an overall decline in the global market for recyclables, especially since China stopped accepting the bulk of the world’s plastic waste in 2018. Plastic containers with necks are the only plastic for which there’s still a domestic market.

“We no longer accept all the things that we used to, so the numbers on the bottom don’t really mean anything in Charlotte,” said Brandi Williams with City of Charlotte’s Solid Waste Services, which collects Charlotte’s garbage, recycling, yard and bulk waste.

Williams is referring to the resin identification code, a number between one and seven stamped inside a small triangle made of arrows located on the bottom of plastic products that’s used to help recycling plants sort materials.

Mecklenburg County doesn’t follow this plastic numbering system and most of the numbered plastics fail to meet the Federal Trade Commission’s classification of recyclable because there aren’t enough facilities that process them to make new products.

In addition to plastic containers with necks, curbside recycling bins are also for cardboard, aluminum cans, milk and juice cartons, glass bottles and jars, and paper items like magazines and junk mail — but not shredded paper because it falls through the screening equipment at the MRF and contaminates the glass.

Though well-intentioned, Caudle said wishful recycling creates contamination in the system and is counter-productive to the overall effectiveness of the recycling program because any material received by the MRF that can’t be sorted, baled and sold ends up in a landfill.

Caudle said the county spends $1.9 million each year on contamination at its recycling facilities.

“And that’s just people popping in a bag or tossing in some Styrofoam or any material that isn’t recyclable and can’t be ran through our system. It’s separated out and then landfilled anyways, and that costs the county,” Caudle said.

“If you kind of think it’s recycling, and you throw it in there, you might be adding to this problem. We’d rather you just go ahead and throw it in the trash.”

However, before you throw the item in the trash, Caudle said first consider taking it somewhere else. Mecklenburg County operates four full-service dropoff centers around the county that accept a range of materials not welcome in curbside bins including yard waste, batteries, tires, household hazardous waste and scrap metal, among other items.

Plastic bags and plastic film can often be recycled at national grocery store retailers, and unwanted working electronics can be donated to Goodwill or The GRID, Goodwill’s discount technology store, located on its Wilkinson Boulevard campus.

The plastic clamshell containers used to package fruits and vegetables at the grocery store, which are not recyclable in Mecklenburg County, can be brought to The Bulb, a donation-based, nonprofit food justice organization housed at The Innovation Barn in Charlotte’s Belmont neighborhood, which you can read more about on page 16. The Bulb

reuses the containers to package food for their weekly mobile markets across the Charlotte metro area.

Although glass bottles and jars are accepted in curbside recycling, Caudle said it’s better if residents bring them to designated bins at the county’s dropoff centers or The Innovation Barn so they can be shipped to glass-only recyclers.

“Glass is very abrasive and it’s running through our machines constantly,” Caudle said. “It wears them down quicker, which causes stoppages and breakdowns, so we’re trying to keep glass out of our recycling facility.”

Mecklenburg County ultimately makes the decision about what materials the city can and cannot collect for curbside recycling based on global and domestic markets and what materials the MRF can handle.

Williams said that very short list of acceptable items is part of the reason why the amount of recycling in Charlotte hasn’t increased by much over the years, despite more people moving to the city than ever before.

In Fiscal Year 2022, the city of Charlotte collected 46,449 tons of recycling from curbside bins, just 2.8% more than FY17 and 5.6% more than FY13, far lower increases than the corresponding population growth (8% and 14%, respectively).

Williams said part of the reason is that city ordinance does not make it mandatory for multifamily complexes to offer recycling services for residents. Those that do are doing it because “it’s advantageous and they have certain standards to maintain,” she said. For others, it’s more trouble than it’s worth.

The city collected approximately 2,510 tons of recycling at multi-family residences, which include apartments, condos and townhomes. That’s 47.3% less than the amount collected in FY17, despite there being a remarkable overall increase in multifamily units across the city.

“What we find a lot of times is the residents aren’t disposing of the right things and the complexes are actually getting in trouble for what the residents are doing, so it’s easier to not offer it,” Williams said.

At the landfill

While recyclables in Mecklenburg County are processed, sold and shipped away to (hopefully) be made into new material, our garbage — plus what’s deemed not recyclable at the MRF — goes into the landfill.

Charlotte’s garbage is brought to the Speedway

NEWS & OPINION FEATURE

Landfill, a 550-acre municipal solid waste (MSW) landfill next to Charlotte Motor Speedway in Concord that’s filled with decomposing household trash from Mecklenburg, Cabarrus and surrounding counties.

Municipal solid waste landfills can accept normal household waste and are built to comply with state and federal regulations, providing protection for ground water, air quality and adjacent properties.

They’re constructed in layers, with each layer consisting of a protective liner, garbage compacted into a dense form, and a cover of soil. The garbage decomposes over time as bacteria and other microorganisms break down the materials in the landfill.

MSW landfills are a major generator of methane gas due to the mixture of non-food waste and organic waste (food scraps, yard and garden trimmings) decomposing together.

Methane is a greenhouse gas that’s more than 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere, which contributes to global warming and climate change.

Rather than leaking into the atmosphere, landfill methane can be captured, converted and used as a renewable energy resource for generating electricity or heat. Still, the best climate defense would be to keep as much organic waste out of the landfill as possible, which can be accomplished through composting.

Caudle said landfill space is always a concern in the solid waste industry.

“The landfill is not going to be around forever. Once the landfill is all filled up, your trash has to go somewhere and that unfortunately means costs for citizens are going to go up because you have to pay to transport your trash somewhere,” Caudle said. “Right now, we’ve got room at the landfill. The landfill is not a problem. But you know, that’s not to say it won’t be in 20 years or however long.”

Unlike recycling, the amount of trash collected by the city is only increasing. In FY22, the city of Charlotte collected approximately 297,799 tons of garbage from residential curbside bins and multifamily residences. That’s 11.5% more than FY17 and 31.2% over FY13, meaning Charlotte’s garbage is growing faster than the population itself.

Caudle said the goal is to maximize landfill airspace — the total amount of material that can go into the landfill — through different ways of compaction, to extend the life of the landfill and keep costs down.

Of course, Caudle said, reducing the amount of waste would also extend the life of the landfill, as would diverting more materials away from the landfill through recycling, repurposing, composting and donating.

One man’s trash

The Innovation Barn is doing a lot of work to divert materials by making new products and finding new uses for trash otherwise slated for the landfill. In other words, one man’s trash is the Innovation Barn’s treasure.

The former horse barn turned sustainability lab, located on Seigle Avenue in the Belmont neighborhood, is ground zero for Circular Charlotte, a joint project between nonprofit Envision Charlotte and the city with an aim to transition Charlotte to a circular economy.

Unlike our current globalized economy — a linear economy in which we extract resources, make products, use them and then throw them away — a circular economy hinges on extending the life cycle of products as long as possible. Everything gets reused with the goal being zero waste.

The Innovation Barn houses a combination of entrepreneurial businesses and zero-waste initiatives, and showcases several closed-loop systems as an example of what a circular economy could look like.

There’s also a taproom, local coffee kiosk and plastics lab that’s turning trash into new products.

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Envision Charlotte made filament for 3D printers out of plastic takeout containers, which are not recyclable in Mecklenburg County. The filament was donated to organizations producing face shields for frontline medical workers.

Amy Aussieker, executive director of Envision Charlotte, said that need has since died down and engineers at the Innovation Barn have found a new way to upcycle the material.

The plastics lab is currently experimenting with turning the takeout containers — plus the plastic PakTech beer can carrier used for 4- and 6-packs at local breweries — into benches and bricks to build sheds and tiny homes.

Residents on the south side of the city can still donate their washed black and clear clamshell takeout containers to the Innovation Barn’s plastics lab using receptacles at the barn and the South End Farmers Market on Saturday mornings.

On the bottom of the black containers, there must be a #5 “PP” material identifier triangle, Aussieker said.

As of Nov. 11, five tons of plastic takeout containers and 16,000 PakTech can carriers weighing 350 pounds have been diverted from the landfill through these initiatives.

“All of this will be from plastic currently destined for the landfill in Charlotte. If it comes to the barn, it gets a new life,” Aussieker said. “And if you don’t need your bench anymore, you literally just grind it up again and make a new product.”

Other projects include weaving leftover shirts from Goodwill into acoustic sound panels for noisy restaurants and event spaces, which is helpful in diverting textiles from the landfills — an effort Aussieker said is critical due to the recent explosion of fast fashion.

So, now that we understand how it all works, one question remains: Can one person reducing their waste and recycling right really make a difference?

Aussieker says absolutely.

“This is the one thing that individuals can do around climate change,” she said. “They can’t do a lot around renewable energy. Yeah, you can put solar panels on your roof, you can electrify your fleet, but it’s still the energy source of where it’s coming from. But this gives people an opportunity to make a difference on our planet.”

In part two of this series, we will examine the zero-waste lifestyle as a means to lessen our trash production by switching to sustainable alternatives and reevaluating our consumerism.

GARBAGE IN THE CITY OF CHARLOTTE IS GROWING FASTER THAN THE POPULATION ITSELF.

PHOTO BY KARIE SIMMONS

A SEARCH FOR ANSWERS

BY DEZANII LEWIS

It was about two years ago that Francis Wabibi, known around Charlotte’s art scene as Francesko the Artist, made the jump that every artist frets over and aspires to; inspired by a trip to Charlotte Art League, Wabibi quit his job in retail and decided to pursue his art career full-time.

“I was inspired,” he told the Charlotte Observer in a profile published in February 2021. “I had the money. I had the means. I said, ‘Why don’t I invest in myself?’ ”

Now, not even two years after the article highlighting Wabibi’s bright future in the arts was published, that future has been snatched from him. On November 23, 2022, the 32-year-old Wabibi was found dead in a jail cell in Atlanta, where he had been booked two months prior on a loitering charge.

While limited information coming from jail

officials, Wabibi’s friends and family say he was killed, which would make him the latest victim of deadly violence in a jail that’s faced controversy regarding overcrowding, intimidation and beatings during the past year. Now his family is calling for justice.

Remembering an ‘optimistic’ soul

Born June 27, 1990, Francis Wabibi leaves behind a host of friends and family who cared deeply for him. He was a son, brother, cousin, uncle and friend to many.

“Francis was optimistic,” his sister Shana Wabibi told Queen City Nerve. “He never took life too seriously.”

Francis also served as Shana’s support system, as she recalled from the time their dog passed away.

“This was, I want to say maybe 3 in the morning or so. I was so distraught,” she said. “But Francis, he

was so great. I was like, ‘Francis, I can’t touch her. I don’t want to touch her.’”

Francis then handled the dog, drove with his sister to the emergency room where their dog was pronounced deceased, and consoled her.

“I was so thankful that he was there for me at that time because I couldn’t have done that by myself,” she said.

Shana said she’s been overwhelmed with support since her brother’s passing, stating that many people have reached out to her since his death, including people she never knew her brother had been in contact with — friends from middle school, artists from around Charlotte and others.

“He touched so many different people,” she said.

Queen City Nerve also spoke with Lavonte Hines, known around Charlotte’s hip-hop scene as producer and rapper FLLS. Hines was a close friend of Francis and also emphasized his optimism, adding that the young artist was “into being his own person.”

Hines and Francis had been traveling in the same circles since middle school, but it wasn’t until 2011 that they became friends. Hines said he and Francis shared an interest in gaming, music, art and anime.

Hines was always impressed with Francis’ wide range of knowledge, he said. He was able to work

with different computer programs, then switch over to maneuver social situations with people as well.

“He just knew how to go about making his choices effectively,” Hines said, adding that Francis made sure he knew who everyone was when he was in a room with them.

“[He said] ‘because you got to know who’s who in the room so you can get the most out of your opportunities,’” Hines recalled.

He spoke in present tense about his friend for much of the interview.

“Everyday with this guy is something new,” Hines said.

Francesko the Artist

Francis Wabibi developed a passion for art at a young age. The Charlotte Observer reported that he often skipped nap time during preschool to draw or sketch.

Shana told Queen City Nerve she was astonished by his love for art and his propensity to work toward becoming a better artist.

“Francis had a great work ethic,” she said. “He was working on his craft everyday.”

He dabbled in several different artistic mediums, picking up the moniker Francesko the Artist. He did street art, murals, sketches, photography, and comic books. He also produced two series of webcomics on the popular site Webtoons, one of which garnered almost 10,000 views and over 100 subscribers.

Hines said Francis’ art meant everything to him.

“He couldn’t live without it,” he said.

Hines recalled a time when Francis couldn’t afford a canvas to do artwork. Rather than do something else, Francis went to an abandoned building and removed the door. He had his canvas.

Occasionally, Francis took his art to new heights.

“I remember him telling me how he took [our friend] Josh on top of some skyscraper and showed him how he was able to tag this one skyscraper off Independence [Boulevard],” Hines said, most likely referring to the Varnadore Building. “It was an abandoned building and he got to the top. I was like, ‘Wow.’”

Because of how prolific his art was, and how many different scenes he connected with thanks to his talents and interests in different mediums, he quickly developed a reputation.

“He was friends with everyone,” Hines said.

Hines and Shana agreed that Francis’ loss was immeasurable for the Charlotte community.

“Francis was literally on the verge of getting to where he needed to go. Imagine where Francis would have been 10 years from now,” Shana said.

The tragic death of a Charlotte artist in Atlanta leaves a family seeking justice

FRANCIS WABIBI

COURTESY OF SHANA WABIBI

NEWS & OPINION FEATURE

“The impact that he already started having now, it would have been so much more if he was still here. I’m surprised by the amount of people that knew him through his artwork because I didn’t realize how much that he was impacting people, not even just in the Charlotte community, but also in Atlanta as well.”

While Francis was well-known throughout Charlotte for his art, he often traveled for projects and to promote his work. Atlanta was often one of his destinations.

A family yet to find closure

Francis Wabibi was booked into Fulton County Jail on a loiter/prowl charge on Sept. 21. His family worked tirelessly to have him released, but they say they experienced a lot of resistance. His court date was pushed back several times and they were unable to physically visit him due to COVID restrictions.

Shana flew down to Atlanta with their mother, and because they weren’t allowed in to see him, they asked the guards about his well-being.

“As far as the guards who were there, they never said not once that he was combative or anything

like that,” she said. “[They said], ‘He follows all the directions. He just keeps to himself. And he loves to draw. He just draws.’

“So even when he was in jail, he was still doing what he loved,” Shana said, crying at this point in the interview. “That’s one thing that I admire about him, because he knew his purpose. There’s a lot of people who don’t ever get to find their purpose in this life, but he knew his purpose was to create. And that’s what he did, even up until he passed away.

“No matter where he is, he’s always going to be creating something,” she continued.

After being in custody for around two months, Francis was found dead in his cell. The jail has not yet publicly released a cause of death, and calls to multiple numbers at the jail were unanswered at the time this paper went to print. Shana told Queen City Nerve her brother was strangled by a fellow inmate.

The case is still under investigation, so there is much that his family doesn’t yet know. One thing they do know is that the scenario is eerily similar to something that happened a month before his death.

On Oct. 19, Shamar Mcelroy was found in his Fulton County Jail cell, strangled, according to 11 Alive. An inmate had also been killed in the jail by two other inmates in September.

The Mcelroy family went to the Atlanta jail to protest because they didn’t want that to happen to anyone else. “And then not even a month later, that same thing happens to Francis,” Shana said.

Now Francis’ family is looking for answers and justice. They feel similar to Mcelroy’s family and don’t want this to happen again. Both families want change. A GoFundMe set up by Shana following her brother’s death has a stated goal to “help us properly lay my brother to rest and seek justice on his behalf.”

Shana said she wants to use money from the GoFundMe to hire a lawyer to help pursue an independent investigation of how Francis was killed, and to join with the Mcelroy family to find broader answers about the issues within Fulton County Jail.

“Honestly, if it wasn’t for those family members that went to go do that protest, I would have never heard about them at all,” Shana said. “I would have

just thought that Francis was the first case that this happened to, but apparently he wasn’t the first one. So that’s why even me and my family members, after the funeral and after things kind of calm down, that’s something that we want to do. We want to go down and protest, too, because who knows?”

For now, Francis’ family takes solace in the memories they cherish. Shana has heard so many stories from people expressing how Francis impacted their lives, and without her brother to turn to, those are what she now clings to.

“The thing that really touches me is hearing different stories from people about my brother, like how they got to experience them and all the good memories that he’s given them,” she said. “That part makes me smile — it makes me smile to know that’s going to live on forever.”

INFO@QCNERVE.COM

“UNTOLD STORIES OF OKLAHOMA PIMP”

ARTWORK BY FRANCESKO THE ARTIST

NOIR SIDE OF THE MOON

Murderous musical transitions to the silver screen

BY PAT MORAN

Inspector Pierro is having a very weird night, and it’s only going to get stranger.

The gruesome murder of singer Lily Des Moines is all over the news; a client, Des Moines’ sister Pilar, arrives, convinced the police are behind her sister’s slaying. Pierro takes the case. What choice did he have? The down-at-his-heels detective is literally washed up, struggling to keep his business afloat by moonlighting as a dry cleaner downstairs.

Lily’s fate reminds the increasingly forgetful Pierro of the grisly killing of another young woman two years ago. He launches into a pensive gypsy jazz-inflected tune that describes the crime scene: “So, there we were, apartment 13/ No superstition, just a crime scene/ I looked at her/And asked for a light/She was a beauty/So was the kitchen knife/ Jabbed in her eye/ Private investigators don’t cry...”

As the case unfolds, Pierro gets more and more distracted, confused and muddled by moonlight. Instead of finding a neat solution, the moonstruck detective descends into madness.

Murder & Moonbeams, a macabre black comedy musical, debuted at Petra’s in 2019. Created by musician, playwright, songwriter and former educator Molly J. Brown for her company, A Beautiful Day in Hell Productions, the dinner theatre experience featured cuisine by chef and producer Julia Simon. The show satisfied discerning audiences with an appetite for delicious vegan cuisine and relatable yet outré entertainment.

Brown says she had been hankering to take on the chiaroscuro feel and rainswept mood of film noir for some time.

“I love the aesthetic of noir [even though] I couldn’t name you an actual noir movie I’ve seen,” she says. “I like the grittiness and the smokiness of [the genre]. Some of my favorite renditions of [jazz standard] ‘Round Midnight’ have this noir feel.”

If you missed the show, performed by a talented cast headed by musician/actors Bo White (Patois Counselors) and Liza Ortiz (Chócala), you can check out a full-length video of the show, shot by filmmaker Krizia Torres, or you can attend the upcoming premiere of a new and expanded version of Murder & Moonbeams, an independent feature film directed by Torres and

adapted from Brown’s original musical, scheduled for Dec. 29 at Petra’s. The evening is rounded out with live performances by Blue Dunes, one of tuba player and trombonist Brown’s many past-and-present Charlottearea bands, and Zodiac Lovers.

To the moon & beyond

Two years in the making, the film retains stars White and Ortiz. It is a change of pace for Brown, who has served as creator, playwright and songsmith for three previous fringe theatre productions staged at Charlotte venues including Snug Harbor and Petra’s. Brown’s previous shows, featuring her original tunes, have aimed satirical barbs at America’s ever renewing self-improvement industry, as well as pop culture sci-fi favorites Predator and Star Trek.

Murder & Moonbeams also tweaks genre conventions — the murdered singer is dubbed the White Lily, Brown’s nod to the 1947 Black Dahlia murder case that inspired a handful of neo-noirs — by taking a decidedly darker turn. As the murders

mount into a string of serial killings, each clue Pierro stumbles across is distorted by the ever-present moon, flooding Pierro’s mind with unnatural thoughts. A trip to an absinthe bar doesn’t help either.

Until now, Brown has never returned to rework any of her previous properties. Instead, she’s poured her energies into each project, so she can move on to the next.

”If I don’t do the thing that’s in my head, it just stays with me,” Brown says. “I have to get it out so I can come up with a new thing.”

That approach to her work had to change this time around, Brown offers, because filming the reboot of Murder & Moonbeams brought new creative elements to the table.

She wrote extra scenes for the film version, including one inside the absinthe bar.

“The film version gets to leave the stage and take place all around Charlotte,” says Torres. “We follow Detective Pierro as he haphazardly wanders in and out of familiar places looking for clues.”

Torres, who designed the noir-style poster that was reworked into the cover of this Queen City Nerve issue, promises surprise cameos from other local musicians and says visual artists like Paige Reitterer and Taylor Knox produced original artwork featured in the film.

“Pierro even unknowingly gives us a tour of some of Charlotte’s public art murals,” Torres adds.

A further artistic touch was unplanned. Shot partly outdoors during the COVID-19 pandemic, the film has no synchronized sound. Dialogue has been looped and dubbed-in during post-production.

“It’s a creative decision I made mostly out of necessity,” Torres says. “It also serves as a slight nod to early filmmaking.”

Despite being firmly placed in the film noir tradition, Murder & Moonbeams also includes the kind of absurdist elements that characterized other productions from A Beautiful Day in Hell. Detective Pierro is loosely inspired by Pierro Lunaire, the protagonist of a melodrama by Austrian-American composer Arnold Schoenberg, presented as 21 selected verse pieces by Belgian symbolist poet Albert Giraud. The work is written for a reciter who delivers the poems in an atonal vocal style called Sprechstimme.

“Pierro Lunaire goes back to my classical music upbringing,” Brown says. “There’s this tragic clown figure who gets increasingly intoxicated by the moon.”

If you are a student of music or had to suffer through a music appreciation class, Brown says, you had to learn about Schoenberg’s atonal song cycle.

Brown insists she’s no fan of atonal music and Sprechstimme. Instead, her takeaway from Pierro Lunaire is that she likes the idea of the moon slowly driving a character insane.

“I wanted to do something with this tragic figure,” Brown says. “The question arose, how does this tie into a murder mystery? How can I make this tragic for the detective investigating murders?”

Brown’s answer to this question dictates the climax of both stage and film versions of Murder & Moonbeams. It is both devastating and thoroughly in keeping with a noir sensibility.

PHOTO BY JAKE YOUNT

FROM LEFT: LIZA ORTIZ, BO WHITE AND MOLLY J. BROWN ON THE SET OF ‘MURDER & MOONBEAMS.’

Life coach to moonstruck shamus

Growing up in Anchorage, Alaska, Brown says she was not academically ambitious. She was inspired, however, by music. Enthralled by the way musicians can captivate people, Brown started playing trombone in 6th grade and picked up tuba the following year. In high school, even as she shot videos and wrote a screenplay for a school project, she earned a reputation as a class cut-up and trouble maker. In 2004, she earned a bachelor’s degree in Music Performance and Education at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Nevertheless, she felt stifled in Anchorage.

She decamped for Bellingham, Washington, and earned a Master’s in Music Performance from Western Washington University in one year. As part of her major, Brown performed ensemble work at the university.

“I would volunteer to be in the opera. I did summer stock. I always have a hard time turning down the gigs,” Brown says.

As a result, she became extremely burnt out. Then came her fateful meeting with the woman who inspired Frannie.

“I was broke as a joke … in a college town where there weren’t too many jobs. So, I ended up working for the life coach,” Brown remembers. “She refused to learn how to use the computer. So, [for] the bulk of my day, she would read her emails over my shoulder, start barking out a response to each email, and I would type it up.”

Brown soon realized that her employer was a bully to everyone, Brown included.

“She was very tight-fisted with her own money, but if people couldn’t afford her tuition she’d [say], ‘The money will come to you if you manifest it,’” Brown says. “These poor people who didn’t have a strong personality like her, she just bulldozed them.”

In 2006, Brown left the life coach behind and drove with her then-boyfriend from the Pacific Northwest to the opposite end of the country: North Carolina.

To make ends meet, Brown took on teaching jobs, eventually landing at Queens University.

Brown continued her practice of saying yes to too many music gigs, playing tuba or trombone with Seth Bolton and the Dream Machine; Bruce Hazel; Benji Hughes; The Houstons; Buschovski, featuring one of her favorite songwriters, Todd Busch; and Brent Bagwell’s Ten-Speed Orchestra.

Brown also formed jazz trio The Fat Face Band. She currently plays with The Mike Strauss Band and Blue Dunes, a duo with guitarist Troy Coon.

Many of Brown’s music connections came to her aid when she recruited talent for Frannie’s Feel-Good

Farm — a fringe theatre musical she wrote that was inspired by her experience with the life coach — which debuted at Snug Harbor in 2016 and was reprised for the BOOM arts and performance festival in 2019.The show is suitably outlandish and apocalyptic, with Frannie introducing her group of acolytes to the motivational speaker from hell.

Ironically, the vegan menu complemented a show where a key character is one of pop culture’s most notorious meat-eaters. Predator: The Musical, a loose parody of the 1987 movie Predator, went up at Petra’s and was so successful the show was restaged at the venue in 2018.

In 2019, Brown and Simon returned with

The adaptations

More recently, while working on Moonbeams, Brown has been inspired to also revisit and reshape Frannie’s Feel-Good Farm

“With Frannie, I had a really good story, and I wasn’t doing it the way I wanted to do it. I wanted it be bigger,” Brown says.

In 2021, she applied for and received an Arts and Science Council Emerging Creators Fellowship grant that enabled her to expand the initial stage production into a full-length film with a bigger cast. The grant allowed Brown to hire Haley Nelson, a freelance writing coach, so she could script what will be her largest musical production to date. She received a follow-up Artist Support Grant in 2022 to record a cast album, which was tracked at White’s home studio.

The Frannie’s Feel-Good Farm film is still a work in progress for Brown, but for the time being, she’s focused on moon-muddled detective Pierro’s cinematic debut at Petra’s.

During these years, Brown’s life has gone through some changes. She started dating fellow musician David Kim in 2008. The couple got married in 2017, and had their baby in 2018. She stepped away from teaching at the end of 2020.

“Despite teaching full-time at a private liberal arts university, I realized I was just slowly going broke,” Brown says.

For the first time in her professional life, Brown is no longer in education. Instead, she’s working on instructional design for a small business. She is also contemplating the next step for her completed fulllength musical version of Frannie’s Feel-Good Farm. The production is far too big for A Beautiful Day in Hell, and she hopes a local theatre company would be enticed to take on the project and collaborate with her on the show.

Last August, Brown and her family moved from Charlotte to Elkin, but she comes back to the Queen City frequently and is looking forward to the screening of Murder & Moonbeams. Although Brown has been actively involved in the film’s production, she insists that the film is very much the result of the input and vision of director Torres and her crew, aided by White’s inspired sound design.

Torres hopes the screening audience will be swept up in the project’s off-beat outlook.

“Looking back, it’s a very flat show,” Brown says. “It was a proto-musical/rock opera [with] some good tunes. Where it was lacking was the story and the dialogue — the thing that makes a show a musical.”

In 2017, Brown brought a new wrinkle to the fringe musical experience, teaming up with her friend and then-neighbor chef Julia Simon to produce a unique vegan dinner musical experience.

another sci-fi parody, tackling the trekker universe with St4r Tr3k: The Conway Maneuver. The numbers in the title are included to ward-off Paramount’s litigation-happy legal department, Brown says.

“One of the reasons Julia and I first became friends was because we both love Star Trek,” Brown says. “I wanted to set [the show] in that universe but have entirely unique characters.”

“I hope they have a good time and think back on it fondly as one weird night,” she says.

Brown hopes the film entertains and surprises.

“I don’t think you can see the ending coming,” she says. “I want people to like the songs, and walk away with the sense that this was something different; something sincere.”

DESIGNED BY KRIZIA TORRES

‘MURDER & MOONBEAMS’ MOVIE POSTER.

12/16

ENVISION ME FILM SHOWCASE

In September, the Gantt Center partnered with Julius L. Chambers High School to offer filmmaking instruction to a group of 20 interested and invested students. EnVision Me, a 12-week project that uses the arts to empower and educate youth, trained those students in every step of film production via a blend of virtual and on-site sessions. The fruits of those sessions are on display in this celebration of Charlotte’s emerging filmmakers — the premiere of original documentaries created by EnVision Me participants. Their extraordinary narratives range from personal stories to triumphs and future dreams.

More: Free; Dec. 16, 6:30 p.m.; Harvey B. Gantt Center, 551 S. Tryon St.; ganttcenter.org

NODA KRAMPUS KRAWL

It turns out that Krampus, the half-goat, half-demon monster that derives his name from “krampen,” the German word for claw, got his gig punishing misbehaving children through nepotism. Like many of the worst bosses you ever had, Krampus is the boss’s offspring, specifically the son of Hel, the Norse god of the underworld. That explains the bullying behavior. Anyway, a cadre of Krampus come out of their lairs and roam the streets of NoDa for a night of music, dancing, drinking and punishing “naughty” boys and girls. That may sound like any old holiday office party, but bands like Faye, It’s Snakes and Evergone aren’t performing at those.

More: Free; Dec. 17, 5 p.m.; NoDa; tinyurl.com/ KrampusKrawl

‘THE FLIRT BAR’

Forget Cheers, a joint where everyone knows your name, check out a place where everyone is beautiful. Writer Susan Lambert Hatem teams with Charlotte’s Off-Broadway (COB) producer Anne Lambert and singer-songwriters Amy Ray and Michelle Malone to stage The Flirt Bar, a new musical comedy — and work in progress — about finding love while freely flirting. Theatergoers themselves also get a chance to flirt ... with the creative process, because their feedback could help shape the final production.

COB and musical director Zach Tarlton of QC Concerts present this special concert reading of the show for two nights only.

More: $35; Dec. 17-18, 7 & 3 p.m.; VAPA Center, 700 N. Tryon St.; theflirtbar.com

AVANT GOODYEAR: MAI SUGIMOTO

That warbling, red-line blare is not a phantom freight train bearing down at you from the other side of Camp North End’s overgrown tracks. Rather it’s the sound of jazz saxophonist, composer and improviser Mai Sugimoto. Her fluttering, free-flowing and elastic lines signal the last hurrah of Goodyear Arts’ third annual series of avant-garde events. Drawing inspiration from her upbringing in Japan, Sugimoto’s tone has been compared to dry champagne; her technique suggests reverberations from a delicately plucked koto as well as the shuddering doppler effect from a bullet train speeding by.

More: Free; Dec. 16, 7:30 p.m.; Goodyear Arts, 301 Camp Road; camp.nc/events

FRI DEC WED-FRI

THE INDIE HOLIDAY SERIES: ‘HOME ALONE’ & ‘COZY DENS’

The Independent Picture House rings in the holidays by pairing American Christmas favorites with foreign Yuletide classics. With classic Home Alone, producer John Hughes tweaks his teen movie formula, reducing his signature Brat Pack to one preteen brat who welcomes home invaders with the gusto of Dustin Hoffman in Straw Dogs. Heartwarming coming-of-age Czech drama Cozy Dens follows two families’ fraught Christmas celebrations. Meanwhile the 1967 Prague Spring plummets to a deep freeze as the Soviets and their Warsaw Pact allies prepare to invade.

More: $10-$12; Dec. 17-27, times vary; Independent Picture House, 4237 Raleigh St.; independentpicturehouse.org

CHARLOTTE SYMPHONY’S ‘CIRQUE DE NOEL’

Back by popular demand, the circus meets the symphony to celebrate the holidays. The gravitydefying feats performed by Cirque De Noel’s aerialists, gymnasts, jugglers and strongmen will be matched by the musical acrobatics performed by the Charlotte Symphony. Past Cirque and Symphony match-ups have featured mimes, contortionists, dancers and a hand-balancing act, complemented by Alan Silvestri’s Suite from The Polar Express, the Troika from Sergei Prokofiev’s Lt. Kije Suite, and Duke Ellington’s take on The Nutcracker Suite. The show retrofits holiday favorites while staying true to the spirit of the season.

More: $10 and up; Dec. 21-23, 7:30 p.m.; Knight Theater, 430 S. Tryon St.; blumenthalarts.org

Courtesy

MAI SUGIMOTO

Photo by Chad McCullough 12/16

FRI

12/21 - 12/22

SOULFUL NOEL 10

In its 10th year, OnQ presents a Soulful Noel, directed by Quentin Talley with musical direction by Tim Scott Jr. Back in 2006, OnQ Productions set out to produce classic, contemporary, and original performance works that reflect the Black experience. In that vein, Soulful Noel reframes the tale of the reason for the season in a contemporary way. Talley’s singular musical revue celebrates Christmas through the lens of contemporary families who gravitate to holiday music by James Brown, the Temptations or Mariah Carey over Bing Crosby, Elvis or The Beach Boys.

More: $28; Dec. 21-22, 1:30 & 7:30 p.m.; Booth Playhouse, 130 N. Tryon St.; blumenthalarts.org

12/23

WED & THUR DEC-JAN

SUN12/25

INVADER HOUSES, TELEPATHICS, THE REAL DOLLS

Invader Houses is the quintessential pop expression from Phil Pucci (Pullover, Modern Moxie). Here he forsakes rocking out and insidious grooves for melody, mood and the most gorgeous vocals you’ve ever heard. We defy anyone not to get swept up by “With You,” featuring Petrov’s Mary Grace McKusick. It’s that rare tune when everything is impossibly perfect yet emotionally relatable. Rock Hill’s Telepathics enfold their go-for-broke garage rock with woozy cult sci-fi movie synths. Self-described Apocalypse-proof glam rockers The Real Dolls round out this eclectic bill.

More: $10; Dec. 23, 10 p.m.; Snug Harbor, 1228 Gordon St.; snugrock.com

12/27 - 1/1

AN ALAN CHARMER CHRISTMAS

SPECIAL

Intimate and direct, the smooth piano-driven pop that Terrence Richard creates as Alan Charmer forges a connection with listeners that’s rare in any genre. Richard’s poetic lyrics allow you to imprint your own feelings on his elegant uncluttered songs, which makes his music ideal for the holidays, when we all need a respite from the Christmastime hustle and hassle. An Alan Charmer Christmas Special conjures images of a classic holiday-themed TV variety show from the ’80s or ’90s, with Charmer as your charming host — a Nat King Cole for the 21st century.

More: $7; Dec. 25, 8 p.m.; Petra’s, 1919 Commonwealth Ave.; petrasbar.com

‘TINA: THE TINA TURNER MUSICAL’

In addition to a ridiculous amount of amazing music, Tina Turner’s life story contains all the elements of a gripping drama. In Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, the titanic talent born as Anna Mae Bullock fights back against her sadistic Svengali-like husband Ike. When the show focuses on the struggle between these two larger-than-life characters, and on Turner’s comeback after she gains the strength to abandon her abuser, a well-crafted jukebox musical becomes riveting theatre. It’s the inspiring journey of a woman who broke barriers and became an icon.

More: $25 and up; Dec. 27–Jan. 1; Belk Theater, 130 N. Tryon St.; blumenthalarts.org

PHIL

Photo

Photo

WON’T BACK DOWN

Hope Nicholls and It’s Snakes prepare new album and look to the future

BY RYAN PITKIN

There’s a moment on an as-yet-unreleased It’s Snakes track called “Cup Full of Coins” in which drummer, vocalist and songwriter Hope Nicholls goes into a call-and-response with bassist Darrin Gray.

“Is it time to give up?” sings Gray, to which Nicholls responds, “Oh no, not yet.”

“Is it time to lose hope?” Gray asks, to be met with the same response by Nicholls again.

The moment is meant as an affirmation to keep moving forward during strange and sometimes demoralizing times. It goes along with the theme of the album it will be included on, titled Yes, the fourth full-length from It’s Snakes, a foursome rounded out by guitarists Aaron Pitkin and Greg Walsh.

The songs were all written and recorded during the pandemic, which could have sent them in a dark direction, but Nicholls said this album is going in a more “evangelical” direction — not in a sense of religion but one of inspiration.

“It is a really positive thing because I love these songs and it’s just kind of a document of this particular strange time in world history,” said Nicholls when I visited her at Boris & Natasha, the boutique she runs with Pitkin, her husband (and my own eighth cousin, once removed, full disclosure).

Nicholls’ back-and-forth with Gray could also be seen in another way: an affirmation of the actual band’s forward momentum. Legends of the local rock scene, Nicholls and guitarist Pitkin have played in a slew of local bands, beginning with Fetchin’ Bones, which dissolved shortly after breaking into the national spotlight in the 1980s. They went on to form Sugarsmack, Snagglepuss, and now It’s Snakes, though the furthest they’ve gone with any of those lineups is four albums.

Now with their own fourth record, It’s Snakes is showing no signs of slowing. In fact, Nicholls, who turns 63 on Jan. 14 (with a birthday show scheduled for Tipsy Burro), still sees “unlimited horizons” for the band.

With two big shows coming up to close out the year — Dec. 15 with Wilmington’s The Great Indoors at Snug Harbor, and Dec. 17 at The Chamber at Wooden Robot in NoDa as part of Krampus Krawl — we discussed the upcoming album, Nicholls’ legacy in the local scene, and why she believes four albums is just the beginning for It’s Snakes.

Queen City Nerve: Where are you all at now in terms of this new project? How long have you been recording?

Hope Nicholls: The third record [LX] was done and in the can when COVID hit and then we didn’t really get to have an album release party or

anything. We just put it out that year, so like, fall of 2020 the vinyl was ready and we just put it out.

But we’ve steadily been playing music throughout the whole tenure of COVID because we play places that are outdoors a lot. So during all that, we were just writing songs. We had enough songs to do another record. So this is album number four. It’s going to be called Yes because we need affirmations and we need things that are positive in the world today.

And how would you describe the tone, the mood? Is it affirmative in that sense?

There’s one song that’s kind of gripy that was written in a response to the Trump era, which luckily we’re past, although we’re not past all that bitterness and division that we’re staring at still. So there’s one song that’s like that, and then a lot of them are really positive. That’s one reason why I wanted to call it Yes. Because it’s like, things are messed up, but we’re still here and we’re all going forward.

Any sort of sonic changes in Yes? It’s still in mixing and I haven’t heard it. Could you describe the sound to me?

No, not really any changes to our sound. I told you about “Cup Full of Coins.” That’s kind of got almost like a hillbilly sound mixed with — I don’t

want to say Irish because everybody will think we’re trying to do Mumford & Sons or some crap like that, but it’s got this little Celtic vibe that’s more legit. (laughs)

You mentioned there are more slow songs than usual.

There’s some slowness. We’re not a jam band, but we listen to kind of psychedelic music and, you know, Bob Seeger and everything. I guess maybe ballads ... kind of just weird and slow versus weird and fast (laughs). Weird always is somewhere in there for us.

It seems like this has got to be the longest band tenure that you’ve been a part of, no?

Thank you for noticing that! The most records we’ve ever made with any band is four with Fetchin’ Bones, and four with Snagglepuss. So we’re right there. So if we get past this album, we’ll be in brand new territory! Wooohooooo! (laughs)

After four albums with other bands, they were coming to an endpoint, did you see that coming each time?

I think so. I think creatively there’s always that place where people run out of steam. But I don’t even see that here with this band. Greg is

IT’S SNAKES (FROM LEFT): HOPE NICHOLLS, DARRIN GRAY, JAMES WALSH AND AARON PITKIN.

PHOTO BY JIM MCGUIRE

MUSIC FEATURE

an amazing guitar player and he’s a really creative guy. He would never say that he was, he’s extremely modest, but he comes up with cool ideas. And Aaron, when Aaron wants to chill out at the casa, he picks up that acoustic guitar that sits in our living room and he plays. So he’s constantly writing new riffs — constantly.

That’s what always seemed to happen in other bands was we’d run out of ideas somehow. That little arrangement of people had kind of just run out of creative steam. But I don’t feel that way with this band at all.

So having been together for a while now, where do you want to see this band go next?

I think our first show was in 2015, so we’ve been doing it a while. It doesn’t seem that way to me at all, it seems like no time at all. I couldn’t play drums when we started, so we would get together (and jam), so yeah, I feel like there are unlimited horizons for me learning to play drums.

I’d also like to kind of solve the mystery of how to get people to know about your music without making a physical product like vinyl or cassettes or CDs, whatever it is. I’d like to make some videos.

We’re a part-time band. This is not a career band, and there’s no pressure because of that. And the cool thing is if you can just get some shows and make music with your friends, and that’s the fuckin’ jam right there to me.

And that was always your take since I first met you. And we talked about the end of Fetchin’ Bones compared to where you stand now, about not really concerning yourself with trying to run the rat race to get a big record deal, but finding the sweet spot where you’re happy both personally and musically.

The whole exercise of It’s Snakes, my participation is really good for my brain. It’s good for me. I’m almost 63. I just like pushing it because it feels good as an artist to not [worry about making it big]. There were many opportunities in our life where we could have been, like, playing “Satisfaction” for the 437,000th time kind of thing. I’m not going to name bands, but a lot of ’80s and ’90s bands, that’s what they do.

For Aaron and I, we don’t define ourselves just as musicians, we define ourselves more as artists. So it’s not really about going out and getting that money. It’s about getting to still make music and write songs. That is the only thing that we care about.

And you are still a fan as much as an artist. I heard the excitement in your voice when you told me you’re playing Krampus Krawl with Faye, a relatively newer band, for the first time. Or The Great Indoors from Wilmington.

Yeah, I went out of my way to beg [The Great Indoors] to come to Charlotte. I’m a music fan first and foremost, so as artists, Aaron and I both are kind of this way, because we were always so much fans that just bubbled into participating as artists.

I’m always super flattered that other bands kind of like us and that we get to play with bands we love. That’s usually why we try to play early in the night (laughs), so we can hang out and have a beer and watch the other bands.

Do you have a timeline yet for this Yes release?

We’re still mixing. We recorded everything at our house. Don Dixon came down from Ohio where he lives and brought all his equipment and we just recorded in different parts of the house. We were able to take days and days to do it. So then he takes it all back and sends us mixes. So we’ve already got a couple of mixes. There’s 11 tracks and so I think April is realistic. We’ve got a big crazy thing we’re doing in March.

What’s that?

Barbecue Grills. It’s me and Travis [Laughlin] and Scott Weaver and we all dress in drag and we take familiar songs from the radio and I create like a Broadway show out of it. We haven’t done one since maybe like 2010 at Visulite. No one can even remember when the last one was because it predates everyone’s cell phones.

That’s going to be fun. I mean, that’s just like we get drunk together for a week and learn all these stupid covers of 38 special or Queen or whatever and make costumes and our friends fly in from San Francisco — Michelina [Mattarese], she’s the bassist. So that’s super fun. I think we’re going to do it at Starlight [on 22nd].

So you’re in this mixing process with Don Dixon. How involved and tuned in are you all in terms of feedback in that process and telling him to fix this or that?

We’re pretty involved. We tell him, “Turn this down a little bit. Turn this up a little bit.” He adds some spice and sometimes we’re like, “That’s too much spice.” (laughs) Some keyboards or a backup vocal or something. But we’re giving him a little more leeway with this record. We’re not being as precious about it. I think partially because, for LX,

the last record, it was the first one we’d recorded with him and we kind of knocked it all out at Mitch Easter’s studio.

But this one, doing it more at home and just less pressure on him, it almost sounds more studio because he has more time — even though we’re not in a particular studio, he has more time to kind of marinate. Because we had it all done and mixed for LX so we could have it pressed because we were going to do a release party at Camp North End. So it was all in the pipeline.

At that time, it was like six months, I think, to get a vinyl press. Now it’s almost a year. So we won’t do vinyl this time, either. I’m just excited because it’s not going to sound like us live. I mean of course it will, because it’s us live, but there’ll be some production stuff.

How do you view your legacy in Charlotte’s scene? And I don’t say legacy as if to imply that you’re done by any means. I’m excited to see where you guys go from here, as well. But just in terms of having played in all these great bands that have all been popular here in their own way. How do you view your legacy as someone who’s still playing regularly and getting to see the scene evolve?

I guess I want to make sure people know how lucky Aaron and I feel to have an audience for our art after five decades. It’s an honor. And as a female in rock, it’s also not common. Only Iggy and Jagger get to be senior rock statesmen. I just want to be able to express my ideas and have fun with my friends — no dreams of stardom. It’s come full circle for me.

RPITKIN@QCNERVE.COM

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 14

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

blankstate w/ I and the Lad (Evening Muse)

Edge of Destiny feat. Lilith Rising, Here Lies Wes, Hemlock Theory, Gasoline (The Milestone)

Somekind of Nightmare w/ Careless Romantic, Busy Weather (Skylark Social Club)

POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ

Thievery Corporation w/ Emancipator (Neighborhood Theatre)

Shindig! ‘50s and ‘60s Dance Party w/ Cory Wigg (Tommy’s Pub)

EXPERIMENTAL/CROSS-GENRE

Quinn Rash w/ C.I. Ape, Groundscore, DJ George Moshington (Snug Harbor)

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 15

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

Porter Blue (Comet Grill)

From Ashes to New (The Underground)

The Great Indoors w/ It’s Snakes, Neon Deaths (Snug Harbor)

HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B

Monica w/ Tevin Campbell, Tamar Braxton, 112, Next, H-Town (Spectrum Center)

JAZZ/BLUES

Jay D. Jones (Middle C Jazz)

COUNTRY/FOLK/AMERICANA

Young Mister w/ Ethan Nathaniel (Evening Muse)

SINGER-SONGWRITER/ACOUSTIC

Lukas Delgra (Birdsong Brewing)

FUNK/JAM BANDS

Neighbor w/ Sicard Hollow (Visulite Theatre)

OPEN MIC

Open Mic Night w/ Chase & “Sug” Brown (Tommy’s Pub)

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 16

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

Letdown. with LOWBORN (Evening Muse)

Kevin & the Bikes w/ Plan B, Nukelele, Ink Swell (The Milestone)

Witch Motel w/ Occult Fracture, Stormwatchers (The Rooster)

Dead Letter Office (REM tribute) w/ Caligula Blushed (Smiths/Morrissey tribute) (Amos’ Southend)

JAZZ/BLUES

Kirk Whalum (Middle C Jazz)

COUNTRY/FOLK/AMERICA

Chris Knight (Neighborhood Theatre)

Blue Dogs (Visulite Theatre)

SINGER-SONGWRITER/ACOUSTIC

Rasmus Leon w/ Taylor Winchester, Family Friend (Petra’s)

POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ

Reflexions w/ DJ Velvetine (Tommy’s Pub)

HOLIDAY

Charlotte Symphony: Holiday Pops (Knight Theater) Black Metal XMas (Skylark Social Club)

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 17

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

E-Rock Jam feat. Death Of August, Savage Empire, Blackwater Drowning, Annabel Lee, Laniidae (Amos’ Southend)

Krampus Krawl feat. Evergone, Hipgnostic, Dad Bod (Evening Muse)

Krampus Krawl feat. It’s Snakes, Faye, Plastic Flamingos (Chamber at Wooden Robot)

Krampus Krawl feat. Ultralush (JackBeagle’s)

Futurebirds w/ Tyler Ramsey (Neighborhood Theatre)

Thousand Dollar Movie w/ Cal Folger Day, Top Achiever (Petra’s)

Scars Remain w/ Fifty Flies, Witness Marks (The Rooster)

Mercury Dimes w/ Flame Tides, Monsoon (Skylark Social Club)

Dipstick w/ Funeral Chic, deaconBlues (Snug Harbor)

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

JAZZ/BLUES

CHARLOTTE SYMPHONY: HOLIDAY POPS RUNS FROM DEC. 16-18 AT KNIGHT THEATER.

PHOTO COURTESY OF BLUMENTHAL ARTS

HOLIDAY

Charlotte Symphony: Holiday Pops (Knight Theater)

Grateful XMas feat. Long Strange Deal (Smokey Joe’s Cafe & Bar)

CHRISTIAN/GOSPEL/RELIGIOUS

El Lambert w/ Gospel Sunday Alumni (Middle C Jazz)

MONDAY, DECEMBER 19

OPEN MIC

Find Your Muse Open Mic feat. Jay Van Raalte (Evening Muse)

JAZZ/BLUES

The Bill Hanna Legacy Jazz Session (Petra’s) Patt’s Monthly Jazz Jam (Tommy’s Pub)

HOLIDAY

Tosco Music Holiday Party (Knight Theater)

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 20

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

Red Rocking Chair (Comet Grill)

POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ

Destroy Lonely (The Fillmore)

HOLIDAY

A Christmas Cabaret feat. Jessi Little w/ Opera Carolina (Middle C Jazz)

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 21

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

The Sour w/ Bhava, Wet Basement Project (The Milestone)

EXPERIMENTAL/CROSS-GENRE

Quinn Rash w/ Raatma, South Side Punx (Snug Harbor)

HOLIDAY

Charlotte Symphony: Cirque de Noel (Knight Theater)

Soulful Noel (Booth Playhouse)

A Charlie Brown Christmas feat. Sean Mason Trio, Tyra Scott (Middle C Jazz)

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 22

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

The Vegabonds w/ Supper Club, Seven Day Haze (Amos’ Southend)

Percolator w/ Bog Loaf, sayurblaires, Nothing Makes Sense Without It (The Milestone)

MySpace Night feat. Petrov (Snug Harbor)

Moose Kick w/ The Holdouts (Visulite Theatre)

COUNTRY/FOLK/AMERICANA

Flat Tire Trio (Comet Grill)

Caleb Wolfe w/ Bailey Marie Griggs (The Rooster)

SINGER-SONGWRITER/ACOUSTIC

Kristen Ford (Birdsong Brewing)

Karla Davis (Evening Muse)

OPEN MIC

Open Mic Night w/ Chase Brown & Aleeia “Sug”

Bolton Brown (Tommy’s Pub)

HOLIDAY

Charlotte Symphony: Cirque de Noel (Knight Theater)

Soulful Noel (Booth Playhouse)

A Charlie Brown Christmas feat. Sean Mason Trio, Tyra Scott (Middle C Jazz)

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 23

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

Lenny Federal (Comet Grill)

Invader Houses w/ Telepathetics, The Real Dolls (Snug Harbor)

HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B

Enoch Lenoir w/ Young Deathgod, Goat City, Eugenius, Nige Hood, Semaj Sinclair (The Milestone)

FUNK/JAM BANDS

Dilworth Hustlas (Visulite Theatre)

COUNTRY/FOLK/AMERICANA

Shawn Mann Band (The Rooster) HOLIDAY

Charlotte Symphony: Cirque de Noel (Knight Theater)

Christmas Crooners feat. Joey Sant (Middle C Jazz)

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 25

JAZZ/BLUES

Omari & the Hellhounds (Comet Grill) HOLIDAY

An Alan Charmer Christmas Special (Petra’s)

MONDAY, DECEMBER 26

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

Michael Tracy w/ The Tune Hounds (Primal Brewery) JAZZ/BLUES

The Bill Hanna Legacy Jazz Session (Petra’s)

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 27

POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ

Lost Cargo: Tiki Social Party (Petra’s)

VISIT QCNERVE.COM FOR THE FULL SOUNDWAVE LISTING.

A LIGHT IN THE DARK

BY RAYNE ANTRIM

Like onions, food insecurity is an issue with layers. The surface layers can be peeled away to reveal the internal causes and solutions that may not be apparent right away: systemic societal issues, intersectionality, and community. The more you peel away, the closer you get to the root, or in this case, The Bulb.

The Bulb is a donation-based nonprofit organization in Charlotte that provides barrierfree access to mostly local produce as well as education on health and wellness to food insecure neighborhoods. They partner with local farms, grocery stores and communities to work toward a world in which fresh and nutritious food is a right and not a privilege.

First founded in 2016 by Alisha Street, The Bulb has partnered with Trader Joe’s, American Heart Association, Veggie Van Mobile Market, Wooden Robot and others to help fight food insecurity.

Ebonee Bailey, executive director of The Bulb since 2020, remembers the organization’s humble beginnings, when it consisted of just five volunteers for the first few years of its existence.

Now, the team has grown into five full-time

employees and 12 members across the board, and are currently looking to hire a food rescue assistant to join the staff and work with grocery and farm partners to pick up, sort and store food that would have otherwise gone to waste.

“We are still heavily, heavily, heavily operated with volunteers. Volunteers are everything for us,” Bailey said.

Bailey recalled how Street kicked things off on her own. Working as a social worker housing homeless veterans, Street (then named Pruett) quickly recognized the issues surrounding food accessibility in certain communities around the city, as many of the people she helped find housing were not located anywhere near food resources.

Even when she would go to the food pantries herself to pick up food for her clients, she realized that all of the food was processed.

“Even though that was a great resource, it was just not healthy food for the people I was serving. Diabetes was rampant in my caseload,” Street said in 2018. “I didn’t feel comfortable with that, so I started going to farmer’s markets and gleaning off of what they couldn’t sell.”

Street would load up the back of her truck, drive out to neighborhoods and give the fresh produce away. She eventually purchased a mobile market so she could carry more food to the neighborhoods she served, as well as plan pop-up markets at spots like the Charlotte Transportation Center in Uptown.

Fast forward to 2022, a year in which The Bulb has organized 559 mobile markets and 23 delivery routes. The organization has served over 17,000 area residents and impacted more than 52,000 individuals along with distributing more than 209,000 pounds of food this year alone.

The Bulb recognizes that food insecurity intersects with a lot of different issues within the Charlotte area. Along with their distribution of fresh produce at their mobile markets, they work with Hope Five to provide toiletries and Promising Pages to offer books to fight literacy inequality at their 14 weekly mobile markets, including a new one in Wadesboro that was announced in early December, expanding The Bulb’s presence to Anson County.

The holiday season is one of the most intense times for food pantries around the country. The Bulb has two ways of stepping up during the cold season: an annual winter clothing drive and a holiday catalog, a registry of sorts to allow donors to see exactly what The Bulb’s clients and teams need, this year ranging from tablecloths and tents to a new tractor.

The winter clothing drive is held at The Innovation Barn, with large pink bins set out for drive-by drop-offs of items like scarves, gloves, coats and winter foods that will be distributed throughout the various mobile markets.

The Bulb is also offering a “Party HEARTy New Years Box” full of fresh produce that serves as a gift idea for friends, family, or neighbors, with proceeds going toward local farmers and The Bulb’s mission to fight food insecurity.

Fighting food insecurity

Based on the USDA’s definition of the term, food insecurity means the disruption of food intake or eating patterns because of a lack of money and other resources. This disruption may be influenced by a number of factors including unemployment, race and ethnicity, loss of transportation, or disability.

One term that has become a common refrain in most discussions around food insecurity, and wrongfully so according to staff at The Bulb, is “food desert.”

Lisa Wendling, communications director at The Bulb since 2020, explained why the team tends to steer away from using that term, as what they’re fighting for doesn’t encompass a singular entity or area.

“A food desert is only looking at your general proximity or a person’s general proximity to fullservice grocery, so places that are more than a convenience store,” Wendling said.

As Bailey further explained, food insecurity has is a broader issue with many more causes than just location.

“It can be illness, if you’re disabled, you know what I mean?” she said. “You don’t have the proper resources to get to the bus stop or whatever it might be. Food insecurity is bigger. For example, income is

The Bulb continues to serve residents, fight food insecurity in the cold season

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE BULB

THE SELECTION AT ONE WEEKLY MARKET.

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE BULB

THE BULB VOLUNTEERS WORK AT A LOCAL POP-UP MARKET.

FOOD & DRINK FEATURE

bigger than just one area. You could live in the area that’s not considered a food desert based on the average income and still be food insecure.”

Food justice — a term that refers to communities exercising their right to grow, sell and eat healthy food — is a large part of The Bulb’s overall mission. Healthy food means food is fresh, nutritious, affordable, culturally-appropriate and grown locally with care for the well-being of the land, workers and animals.

“Food justice is serving the communities,” Wendling said. “It’s increasing access. It’s removing barriers. It’s empowering sovereignty. It’s empowering people to take charge of their own health, well-being, nutrition and offering that sort of education to people. We’re not looking to impose our personal views of what healthy is on a community.”

Their weekly mobile markets are another key aspect in serving Charlotte and surrounding areas. The Bulb’s mobile market team comes in Tuesday through Friday to load up their van with produce designated for that market then set up a table with anything ranging from four to 10 different options of produce, including milk, eggs and bread, depending on the market.

Prior to the pandemic, the mobile market team hosted cooking demos at the pop-ups, teaching recipes and best practices, and could be bringing them back soon.

While they haven’t been leading classes, per se, the team has worked with Johnson and Wales University, collaborating with students and professors to provide recipes and nutrition cards for the seasonal produce they offer at markets.

“We can say, ‘Hey, this is how you slice and dice roasted butternut squash,’ and then ‘This is how you prepare Swiss chard, and these are the benefits of them,’” Bailey said.

Everything at the mobile markets is set-up like a traditional farmers market — baskets are set out on the table for bulk items, a headcount is taken, and folks walk down the line to tell an employee or volunteer what they’d like. Based on household size, they have their groceries bagged for them and are sent on their way.

The Bulb follows a no-barriers approach, which means there is no money expected from individuals coming to the markets and no terms that neighbors need to meet to receive food.

“No referral is required to come to the market. I don’t care if you make $0 or you make $100,000 …

whatever,” Wendling said. “Everybody is welcome to come shop with us. We’re not asking for any sort of identification or proof of anything. Nobody has ever had a concern about people abusing the process.”

A few of The Bulb’s partners host the markets with their own volunteers, and all Bailey’s teams need to do is drop the food off.

“We are fortunate enough to work with four churches that we just deliver the produce and with their own volunteers, they execute markets. They’re a partner, a sponsor, an extension of serving and food justice,” Bailey expressed.

There are some communities where The Bulb has offered services for a couple of years only to see the need in that area diminish. For The Bulb, that’s the best-case scenario, and with their mobility, they can move wherever the need is.

But The Bulb also understands that the act of consistency goes a long way for those in need. Reliability is important when it comes to this kind of work. Every day from Tuesday to Friday, The Bulb hosts its markets at the same times and places so clients can build a sense of regularity with them.

So as long as the need is there, The Bulb is there.

“As weeks go by, more and more people hear about us and then they come to rely on the fact that this is where we’ll be — that we are here to serve you,” Wendling said. “Even if it’s raining or if it’s 20 degrees outside, we’ll still be here.”

INFO@QCNERVE.COM

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE BULB

THE BULB IS A NO-BARRIER ORGANIZATION.

SUDOKU

BY LINDA THISTLE

TRIVIA TEST

BY FIFI RODRIGUEZ

1. MOVIES: What was the name of the fictional kingdom in “Frozen”?

2. HISTORY: How many people died as a result of the Boston Massacre of 1770?

3. GENERAL KNOWLEDGE: What was the name of Scrooge’s business partner in “A Christmas Carol”?

4. TELEVISION: In what city is the long-running drama “Grey’s Anatomy” set?

5. GEOGRAPHY: Which two cities were the original endpoints of the Orient Express?

6. ANIMAL KINGDOM: How many legs does an ant have?

7. LITERATURE: What is the title of Toni Morrison’s first novel?

8. MATH: How many minutes are in a week?

9. BUSINESS SLOGANS: Which company’s slogan is, “Expect more. Pay less”?

CROSSWORD

PLACE A NUMBER IN THE EMPTY BOXES IN SUCH A WAY THAT EACH ROW ACROSS, EACH COLUMN DOWN AND EACH SMALL 9-BOX SQUARE CONTAINS ALL OF THE NUMBERS ONE TO NINE.

10. EXPLORERS: What is the home country of Roald Amundsen, the first to reach the South Pole?

AERIN IT OUT NO CHEESE WITH THIS WINE

Gimme cav with my cab at Bar à Vins

BY AERIN SPRUILL

Call me insane, but I think charcuterie boards are overrated. If I must be the one to face a public lashing for saying it, I volunteer as tribute. *insert three finger salute* And as for wine, it has yet to satisfy this inexperienced palate unless I’m ready to slip into something cozy with the full intention of drifting off to sleep — with the expectation that the glass will still be half full when I wake the next morning.

But, unfortunately for me, I have to accept the fact that meat, cheese, and wine will forever be perceived as the perfect threesome, giving to one another without jealousy. So when a wine bar dares to defy the rules of engagement between snacks and wine in an unpretentious and totally approachable environment with a side of hip-hop, curiosity will kill this cat. Enter Bar à Vins.

Located on North Davidson Street, next to the fire station, this swanky, not-so-little wine bar had me in a chokehold from the moment I discovered that the snack menu included tinned fish and caviar. You can take the girl out the country, but you can’t take the country out the girl; this lil lady has been eating canned fish her whole life.

So when bae suggested we check it out, I started practicing my “wine swirl” with my pinky up in all my wannabe sommelier glory.

As we closed in on the front door, the warm light spilled into the street from the window and I could feel my jowls watering along with that warm, fuzzy feeling you get when you’re getting buzzed at a holiday house party. Just inside the door, I felt the moody ambiance pulling us toward two empty bar seats patiently waiting for us to settle into them.

My eyes darted around the room like a kid in a candy store. Was anyone else eating the “Even Fancier Caviar” so I could window shop and visually taste test the snack I was getting ready to pay 36 whole-ass dollars for.

The remnants of the dish: a crumpled Lay’s potato chip bag; a small, white paper ketchup cup once filled with what I assume was creme fraîche; a plastic spoon licked clean; and a plate of ice holding a completely empty caviar tin missing the brininess of the caviar with every passing minute.

The bartender greeted us in a way that felt familiar versus judgmental and our fears that we would be branded with the scarlet letter equivalent for lowbrow wine drinkers subsided. Per the website, Bar á Vins is “the wine shop and bar you didn’t know you needed.” And after realizing that I was involuntarily bobbing my head to Black Star’s “Respiration” feat. Common, I knew the website was right.

No one who’s obsessed with NoDa ever really talks about what NoDa “needs,” mostly just what they miss about what the neighborhood once was. But this time, it feels like “the powers that be” got something right — like Bar á Vins found a home without even trying too hard.

“What do you have like pinot grigio,” I asked nervously after looking over the menu and seeing that “old faithful” wasn’t available. The bartender brought over two options without even a hint of pomposity and helped me decide on a chenin blanc while the boyfriend opted for the single orange wine on the menu.

On the other hand, Duck Rillettes, Even Fancier Caviar Service, and Spiced Tuna Pâté rolled off our tongues like we’d visited many times before.

I would’ve opted for a cracker of sorts over the crunchy Verdant bread to spread the pâté over, but the rationale works: there is then more room for another tin of fish — like the ever so familiar texture of canned sardines. Though, one could argue, a single spoonful of the spreadable fish and duck didn’t need a cracker or bread, either could be thoroughly enjoyed in solitude.

I was so excited to taste the caviar that I forgot to capture the black balls of salty delight for photo evidence before diligently configuring the perfect “bite” on a single Lay’s potato chip. I’ve never chewed so deliberately in my life, savoring every melt-in-your-mouth cent worth of the “whopping” one-ounce tin.

Don’t get me wrong, I have very little skin in the caviar game, but I can tell you where I’ve had shitty caviar and I can tell you that it ain’t Bar à Vins. I would happily get two all to myself and I’d still want more. When is tax refund season again? Asking for a friend.

INFO@QCNERVE.COM

A NEW BOOK ON BLACK CULTURE IN CHARLOTTE OVER THE PAST 300 YEARS

PURCHASES SUPPORT THE CHARLOTTE BLACK JOURNALISM FUND

December 14 - 20 December 21 - 27 HOROSCOPE

ARIES (March 21 to April 19) Restless Rams and Ewes might want to let others finish a current project while they start something new. But if you do, you could risk losing out on a future opportunity.

TAURUS (April 20 to May 20) The Bovine’s creative forces start revving up as you plan for the upcoming holidays. Some practical aspects also emerge, especially where money is involved.

GEMINI (May 21 to June 20) Moments of doubt disrupt your otherwise clear sense of purpose. Don’t ignore them. They could be telling you not to rush into anything until you know more about it.

CANCER (June 21 to July 22) A planned trip might have to be delayed. Plan to use this new free time to update your skills and your resume so you’ll be ready when a new job opportunity opens.

LEO (July 23 to August 22) A flood of holiday party bids from business contacts allows you to mix work and pleasure. Your knowledge, plus your Leonine charm, wins you a new slew of admirers.

VIRGO (August 23 to September 22) An unexpected act by a colleague complicates an agreement, causing delays in implementing it. Check out the motive for this move: It’s not what you might suspect.

BORN THIS WEEK: You instinctively know when to be serious and when to be humorous — attributes everyone finds endearing.

LIBRA (September 23 to October 22) You might want to cut ties with an ingrate who seems to have forgotten your past generosity. But there might be a reason for this behavior that you should be in the know about. Ask.

SCORPIO (October 23 to November 21) Be careful not to set things in stone. Much could happen over the next several days that will make you rethink some decisions, and maybe change them.

SAGITTARIUS (November 22 to December 21) Your plans to help provide holiday cheer for the less fortunate inspire others to follow your generous example. Expect welcome news by week’s end.

CAPRICORN (December 22 to January 19) You’re in your glory as you start planning for the holiday season ahead. But leave time to deal with a problem that needs a quick and fair resolution.

AQUARIUS (January 20 to February 18) The upcoming holiday season provides a perfect setting for strengthening relationships with kin and others. A new contact has important information.

PISCES (February 19 to March 20) Instead of fretting over a cutting remark by a co-worker, chalk it up to an outburst of envy of your well-respected status among both your colleagues and superiors.

ARIES (March 21 to April 19) Your work on a recent job assignment is impressive and sure to be noticed. Meanwhile, expect to receive news about an upcoming holiday event you won’t want to miss.

TAURUS (April 20 to May 20) Saving the world one person at a time is what you were born to do. So accept it when people ask you for help, especially during the holiday season.

GEMINI (May 21 to June 20) Now that you’ve resolved all doubts about an important decision, you can surprise a lot of people by defending your stand with strong and well-reasoned arguments.

CANCER (June 21 to July 22) The holiday mood stirs your need to nurture everyone, from the family cat to great-grandma. But don’t overdo it, especially with teens, who like to feel grown up.

LEO (July 23 to August 22) Enjoy basking in the warm love of family and close friends this holiday season. But don’t fall into a prolonged catnap yet. There’s still much to do before you can fully put up your paws and relax.

VIRGO (August 23 to September 22) Avoid pushing others to work as hard as you do on a common project. Instead, encourage them to do their best, and they might well reward you with a pleasant surprise.

BORN THIS WEEK: You are caring and considerate — two wonderful attributes that endear you to people of all ages.

LIBRA (September 23 to October 22) Like the sensible Libra you are, you no doubt already started your holiday shopping. But be careful to keep within your budget. Shop around for the best buys.

SCORPIO (October 23 to November 21) Love and friendship remain strong in your aspect over the next several days. This is a good time to develop new relationships and strengthen old ones.

SAGITTARIUS (November 22 to December 21) A beloved family member has news that will brighten your holidays. Also expect to hear from friends who had long since moved out of your life.

CAPRICORN (December 22 to January 19) Family and friends are in for a surprise when you accept the need to make a change without being talked into it. (Bet it surprised you, too, didn’t it?)

AQUARIUS (January 20 to February 18) Restoring an old friendship might not be as easy as you had hoped. You might want to explore the reasons for your former buddy’s reluctance to cooperate.

PISCES (February 19 to March 20) Your partygoing activities pick up as the holiday season takes off. Enjoy your plunge into the social swim as you make new friends and renew old friendships.

PUZZLE ANSWERS

Trivia Answers 1. Arendelle. 2. Five. 3. Jacob Marley. 4. Seattle, Washington. 5. Paris and Istanbul (Constantinople). 6. Six. 7. “The Bluest Eye.” 8. 10,080. 9. Target. 10. Norway.

SAVAGE LOVE THE BIRTHDAY BOY

Box out for the rebound

BY DAN SAVAGE

I’m a 50-year-old cis straight female writing with a question about my son. He’s 19 and in college. I’m a single mom and we are very close. When he was 8, I found him on my laptop looking at videos of “strong women” wrestling with men. Since then, that’s all he looks at online and fantasizes about. There is a particular woman he follows.

For a fee, you can wrestle with her. She engages in other acts as well (BDSM), but according to my son, sex is not permitted. He says her website is very clear about this.

He assures me she’s legit and has only positive online reviews. I asked to look at her website, but he was reluctant to show me due to embarrassment. I didn’t push it. Then for his upcoming birthday he asked if I would split the cost of a session with this woman: $600!

My first concern is for his safety. Maybe I listen to too many true crime podcasts, but I’m worried that something bad will happen to him and I’ll never see him again. I know that many people visit sex workers and live to tell the tale. And now, as I sit here writing this, I realize that it’s sex workers who are the more vulnerable ones. So, maybe his safety is a non-issue.

Still, I’m his mom and I worry. My other concern is that engaging with this woman may mess him up sexually. He hasn’t had any prior sexual experiences and I’m worried that if this woman is his first experience, it will make ordinary, real-life pedestrian sex uninteresting for him in the future.

I have no one to talk with about this, which is why I’m reaching out to you. I’ve always maintained an open and nonjudgmental relationship with my son, but I’m really struggling with this. He already has an appointment and I’m super ambivalent about this and need your reassurance.

THEY GROW UP SO FAST

“I’ve always been kinky,” journalist and author Jillian Keenan wrote in her 2016 memoir Sex With Shakespeare “My fetish appeared early, long before I knew anything about kink or the diversity of sexual lifestyles. As a child, I pored over any book that mentioned spanking, paddling, or thrashing. [The Adventures of ] Tom Sawyer and The Whipping Boy went through many early reads, as did, believe it or not, key entries in the Oxford English Dictionary … I looked up the definitions for spank, paddle, thrash, and whip so often that, after a few years, my dictionary automatically fell open to those pages.”

Keenan’s memoir tracks her two lifelong obsessions: the plays of William Shakespeare (way kinkier than your high school English teacher ever let on) and her love of spanking, obsessions that have intersected and informed each other in surprising ways throughout her life.

Reading Sex With Shakespeare might give you some comfort, TGUSF. Because Keenan, who like your son was raised by a single mom, found a community of likeminded kinksters as an adult, found love and lost love and found love again, and along the way made a name for herself as a fearless foreign correspondent.

And like Keenan, TGUSF, your son is kinky and always has been. Now, not every prepubescent child’s obsession becomes a full-blown kink in adulthood; if that was the way it worked, there would be a lot more dinosaur fetishists out there. (And there are some!)

But your kid’s kinks, like Keenan’s kinks, were hardwired early and a first sexual experience that’s strictly vanilla won’t erase them. He is who he is, TGUSF, and while dating is going to be a little bit more of a challenge for him, TGUSF, your son is gonna have a much easier time finding like-minded perverts out there — friends, play partners, and potential romantic partners — than kinksters did before the internet came along.

All that said, I don’t think you should get your son a sex worker for his birthday (or go halfsies on one), TGUSF, and I don’t think your son should’ve asked you to. Being close is fine — being close is wonderful — but you can

be close and have or establish healthy and appropriate boundaries.

“There are things a mother has a right not to know,” my mom liked to say. She knew her kids, once we were adults, were out in the world taking risks and exploring our sexualities and making mistakes and sometimes getting into trouble. Mom was there for us when the shit hit the fan, but she didn’t want to know where we were, who we were with, or what we were getting up to at all times. Because she didn’t wanna worry more than she, as a mom, was going to anyway. So, when I called my mom once from a sex dungeon in Berlin (on her birthday!), and she asked where I was, who I was with, and what I was doing, I lied to her.

If your son is old enough to book a session with a sex worker, TGUSF, he’s old enough to pay for it himself. And if he needs to talk about it with someone and he doesn’t have a friend he can confide in about his kinks, well, that’s what Reddit and Twitter and sex-advice columnists are for. His sex life isn’t your business, and he shouldn’t make it your business.

Also not your business: how your son chooses to spend his birthday money. If he spends his birthday money on a PS5, that’s something he could share with his mom. If he spends his birthday money on a sex worker, that’s something he should lie to his mom about. If your son doesn’t know he should lie his mom about that kind of stuff yet — if he doesn’t know there are things a mom has a right not to know — then you’ll have to tell him.

P.S. My first sexual experiences were exactly what my mom wanted them to be — very straight and very vanilla — and they didn’t make any less gay or any less kinky. That’s just not the way it works.

I’m feeling a little lost about something. I’m a 42-year-old gay man and I’ve been married for nine years. My marriage has been very rocky, and I should’ve had the courage to end it much sooner. I have now made the decision to do so and will be filing right after the holidays. We took a break last year and separated and during that time I briefly met an incredible guy.

More recently, I’ve come to know him better and I think he is really special. I’m not divorcing because of him, but sometimes it takes meeting a special person to realize what you’re lacking in your own relationship. I’ve talked with him about the situation, and we will remain friends whatever happens, but he doesn’t want to be a “rebound.” I don’t want to be that either. I’ve only come to know him better in the last couple of weeks, and I’m scared of asking him if he’d be open to dating me when the divorce is final. I’m afraid that if I do that, I will scare him off and I don’t want to lose him as a friend.

DREADED REBOUND RELATIONSHIP

Here’s the funny thing about rebound relationships … when they work out, no one remembers they were rebound relationships; they’re just relationships. But when two people get together shortly after one or both got out of prior relationship and it doesn’t work out, everyone stands around saying, “Oh, yeah, those rebound relationships, they never work out.”

I say this as someone who has been in rebound relationship for almost three decades. I met my husband the first night I went out after getting my heart broken. I almost didn’t give the guy who would eventually become my husband a chance, DRR, because I’d heard again and again and again that rebound relationships never work out.

“If it weren’t for rebound relationships, I wouldn’t have been with the incredible man I’ve been with for 19 years and counting,” said my friend Dr. Daniel Summers.

“When we first met, I was still mired in sadness after having been unceremoniously dumped shortly before. Not only did I still have feelings for the other guy, but the man also who would eventually become my husband watched me cry over him. And then, it clicked. The guy who was right in front of me was the one I had been looking for all along. Nobody would ever call him my ‘rebound husband.’ They simply know him as the guy I was lucky enough to meet at the right time.”

Maybe rebound relationships would have a better reputation if people like me and Dr. Summers occasionally referred to the men we married as “rebound husbands,” if only to remind people that, yes, rebound relationships sometimes work out. And since very few of us wind up married to the first person we dated seriously, most of us are in rebound relationships that somehow worked out.

All that said, DRR, it’s Mr. Incredible who has qualms, not you. He’s the one who’s worried about getting into a potential “rebound relationship” with someone who just got divorced. Maybe he believes what everyone assumes to be true, i.e., rebound relationships never work out, and getting into one that does work out might be the only way to convince him otherwise.

Getting into one that doesn’t work out, on the other hand, could wind up confirming his priors. It’s also possible he isn’t interested in dating you — bound or rebound — and his stated wariness about being your “rebound” is a white lie meant to spare your feelings. But there’s only one way to find out how he really feels: Initiate that divorce, follow through, get it finalized, and then ask Mr. Incredible — assuming he’s still single — how much more time has to pass for your relationship to be out of “rebound” territory.

Follow Dr. Daniel Summers on Twitter @WFKARS.

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