4. Built Ford Tough by Annie Keough Alternatives to Violence builds momentum on Nations Ford Road
5. Behind the Numbers by Annie Keough CMPD report provides look at 2024 crime stats in Charlotte
ARTS & CULTURE
6. The Tin Man by Ryan Pitkin
Jeff Howlett’s art has no lack of heart
MUSIC
8. Soundwave
9. An Act of Self-Defense by Pat Moran Ali Forrest delivers a knockout with ‘Cagefighter’
10. Lifeline: Ten Cool Things To Do in Two Weeks
FOOD & DRINK
11. Food for Hope by Kayleigh Ruller
Sam Diminich partners with HopeWay for new culinary mental health programming
LIFESTYLE
12. Horoscope
12. Puzzles
14. Nerve Endings
15. Savage Love
Thanks to our contributors: Josh Rob Thomas, Peter Taylor and Dan Savage.
BUILT FORD TOUGH
Alternatives to Violence builds momentum on Nations Ford Road
BY ANNIE KEOUGH
When Robyn Lake Hamilton, president and CEO of Urban League of Central Carolinas (ULCC), spoke at Charlotte City Council’s public forum on Jan. 13, minutes after a presentation from CMPD Chief Johnny Jennings saw council members frustrated with recent crime stats, she was surprised nobody had asked about her work.
It was city council, after all, that funded and assigned ULCC to spearhead the latest Alternatives to Violence program (ATV) along the Nations Ford Road corridor in June 2023.
In the time since, Hamilton said her team is making progress in its efforts to detect and interrupt conflicts, identify and manage high-risk individuals, and change group norms around violence.
“While it’s true that Charlotte, like many other cities, has experienced an increase in homicides, we are seeing encouraging signs of progress within the Alternative to Violence Program,” Hamilton told council.
The program, run by the Youth Advocates Program, utilizes evidence-based violence reduction training by Cure Violence Global, a model that analyzes violence clusters in the community and uses culturally sensitive paraprofessional health workers to interrupt the violence epidemic.
The model is based on an epidemiologist’s research into violence trends and risk factors to figure out how to keep local violence from spreading.
“We’re now trying to work a little bit backwards,” Hamilton said of ATV’s proactive approach. “We’re like, ‘Okay, how do you keep it from getting started?’”
The program on Nations Ford Road is the city’s third following previous roll-outs on Beatties Ford Road near LaSalle Street and on West Boulevard. Each separate ATV team is staffed by area residents trained and hired to practice evidence-based methods of mediation, persuasion, behavior change and norm change.
The Nations Ford’s program oversees a 1.5-mile area on and around the corridor. Though active for well over a year now, Hamilton said people still don’t know that the south side is home to one of these initiatives.
The neighborhood has been plagued with gun violence in recent years, contributing to a bad reputation among residents and city leaders. In 2024, Queen City Nerve tracked 12 murders in the area bordered by East Arrowood Road, Nations Ford Road, Archdale Drive and South Boulevard, including three homicides in December alone.
Hamilton referred to the area as a “resources desert.” For example, the corridor was left out in 2020 when the city launched its Corridors of Opportunity program, pumping money into six historically under-invested corridors.
Transforming Nations Ford — a nonprofit community coalition that advocates for southwest Charlotte’s 28273, 28277, 28217, and 28210 zip codes — spent much of 2024 lobbying council and other local officials to help turn a piece of city-owned land into a park and incubator space for local nonprofits.
As the year drew to a close, the group began advocating for the development of a regional recreation center at Ramblewood Park to help address the community needs facing the corridors: economic challenges, linguistic isolation, community violence,
Stopping violence before it starts
Even longtime residents involved with the ATV team have found “a different vibe” in the neighborhoods where they’re working than anticipated, said Hamilton. The communities are particularly transient, with folks frequently moving in and out of long-term and extended-stay motels.
They’ve found a correlation between hotspots where multiple criminal incidents are reported and the areas where certain long-term stay providers are. One of the ATV program’s goals is to pinpoint which long-term and extended-stay providers see the most incidents and bring them together.
“We want to talk to [community leaders and residents] and foster some sort of understanding of what we’re trying to do and equip them with … tools that address resident needs proactively,” Hamilton said.
ATV program-provided tools could mean training community leaders and hotel/motel owners and managers with violence-interruption training to mediate potentially lethal conflicts and address follow-up steps to ensure conflicts don’t rekindle.
These violence clusters are not unique to long-term stay providers but are also prevalent within apartment communities.
educational gaps, health and safety.
The December announcement that the area would lose its nearest YMCA location drew more concern around the lack of options for young people in the Nations Ford/Arrowood corridor, where 30% of residents are under the age of 18.
For Hamilton, the lack of resources presents an opportunity for the program to work directly with neighborhood residents and get them what they need. The historic disinvestment in Nations Ford drives her work at ATV.
“[That] is why we want to start doing a lot more,” Hamilton said, “so the violence doesn’t start as opposed to having to respond in a reactive way.”
The team has identified three strategies that it wants to implement in 2025 to decrease conflict on Nations Ford Road: convening long-term stay providers, empowering apartment communities, and creating space for community members to connect.
Similarly to extended-stay providers, certain apartment complexes are linked with a disproportionate amount of violence in the area. Hamilton wants to empower these complexes by equipping apartment managers with proven strategies to boost resident engagement and resolve issues before they escalate.
The program’s goal is to convene affected long-term stay providers and apartment community administrators to discuss possible solutions.
The responsibility of prevention and intervention doesn’t just fall on the provider and manager’s shoulders, Hamilton said. Because violence affects a variety of people, it’s the community’s responsibility to have open and honest dialogue on how to properly address and get ahead of violence.
But without designated spaces to connect, communication throughout a community becomes stagnant. The ATV program’s third and final strategy is to
build spaces for community members to celebrate their diversity and community pride.
Hamilton said the community has long felt disconnected, segregated into three groups: the Latinx community, the African American community and the commercial community. ATV has worked to connect these communities by building relationships with local churches and growing its bilingual staff to communicate with Spanish-speaking residents.
“It’s been nice to be a center focal point of bringing all those scenarios together,” Hamilton said.
ATV is now looking into creating funding for lot cleanups to create much-needed space for these different communities to connect. Gathering volunteers to clean up vacant lots is a proven strategy to not only discourage vagrancy but give the community something to take pride in.
“From our activity, what we’re seeing on the ground is increased community integration and stronger support networks,” she said. “And what we’re trying to do is grow a sense of hope, which I believe that we’re doing.”
Curing a violence epidemic without police intervention
During CMPD’s annual end-of-year report on Jan. 17, officials detailed the work of the Coordinated Overlap Response Effort (CORE), which launched in the fourth quarter of 2024 to increase officers’ presence in areas with high crime rates. The program deploys officers from CMPD’s 13 patrol divisions into three main hotspots including the Nations Ford/Arrowood Road corridors. CMPD reported the effort led to 75 seized firearms and 123 arrests in two months, which CMPD Chief Johnny Jennings believed played a key role in the 4% decrease in violent crime citywide in the fourth quarter of 2024.
The Cure Violence Global model that ATV facilitates in southwest Charlotte does not include integration with local police departments. In fact, the model intentionally remains separate from CMPD in order to maintain the credibility needed to work with those at highest risk, the website states. ULCC offers additional programming to address the root causes of violence by offering workforce development, education or something as simple as a ride for a neighbor to get their driver’s license reinstated. Hamilton’s presence at the city council meeting’s public hearing, though cut short before she could finish, was meant to encourage council members to take the program into consideration while planning for the Fiscal Year 2026 budget.
For now, ATV staff’s focus remains on uniting, improving and creating environmental collaboration within the Nations Ford community. That’s where Hamilton feels the difference has begun compared to the disjointed community she saw in the beginning of the program. And as a result of ATV’s focus and attention, Hamilton believes we’re going to see reduced violent crimes.
“We’re not going to wait until 2026,” she said. “We’ve identified [these strategies] and we want to keep the momentum we’ve got going.”
AKEOUGH@QCNERVE.COM
PHOTO COURTESY OF ULCC
ATV TEAM MEMBERS WITH YOUTH AT A COMMUNITY EVENT.
BEHIND THE NUMBERS
CMPD report provides look at 2024 crime stats in Charlotte
BY ANNIE KEOUGH
CMPD held a press conference Thursday morning to go over its annual end-of-year report documenting crime stats in Charlotte, reporting a 3% drop in overall crime even as violent crime rose by the same percentage.
Department officials credited the overall decrease to the department’s work in its main focus areas: juvenile crime, automobile thefts, street takeovers and the curtailing of violent crime in localized areas of high victimization.
Though violent-crime victimization was up 3%, the number of violent crimes reported throughout the city in 2024 was actually down by a single percent.
CMPD’s data, consistent with the National IncidentBased Reporting System, focuses on victimization as opposed to incidents. A press release from the department explained how the number of incidents reported differs from the rate of victimization.
“If someone fires a gun at a home and eight people are inside of that home, all eight are considered victims,” CMPD’s press release said. “In this example, there was one shooting incident, but eight victims, and that is reflected in CMPD’s reporting system.”
One catalyst for the increase of victimization was a 4% rise in aggravated assault by pointing a firearm.
“We learned a lot about each other in 2024. We are a close group and a resourceful one,” CMPD Chief Johnny Jennings said of his department on Thursday morning. “Each day, our officers are out trying to make the community safer, and the data shows they are doing an excellent job providing the type of service our neighborhoods need.”
Some on Charlotte City Council, however, feel that more needs to be done to bring crime rates down and make residents feel safer.
Youth diversion initiatives see some success
The department launched its Coordinated Overlap Response Effort (CORE) in the fourth quarter of 2024 to increase officers’ presence in areas that had seen the highest rates of victimization.
The CORE 13 program deploys officers from CMPD’s 13 patrol divisions into hotspots in and around the Nations Ford/Arrowood Road corridors, North Tryon Street near Tom Hunter Road, and the Beatties Ford Road corridor.
This effort led to 75 seized firearms and 123 arrests in
two months, which Jennings believes played a large role in lowering violent crime by 4% in the fourth quarter of 2024.
CMPD reported a 9% decrease in juveniles listed as suspects and credited that achievement to the department’s Juvenile Accountability and Diversion Empowerment (JADE) team.
JADE monitors at-risk youth by conducting home visits and providing resources to juveniles and their families to prevent recidivism. In 2024, 200 home visits were conducted and 122 juveniles were arrested.
CMPD officials stated that, in 2024, its Community Engagement Division offered 12 programs meant to provide healthy outlets and mentorships for teens and young adults, including CMPD’s Youth Diversion Program for youth aged 8 to 17.
That program diverts first-time offenders from the criminal justice system toward rehabilitation courses, leading to a 6% recidivism rate with 475 participants.
Other youth diversion programs that CMPD is involved with include Reach Out, Envision Academy, and REACH Academy. With 3,768 participants across all four programs, an analysis found a total success rate of 88% based on whether the participating youth reoffended, according to SAFE Charlotte data.
Despite the success of these programs, CMPD Lt. Erik Tran-Thompson touted the controversial House Bill 834, which rolled back the bipartisan Raise the Age legislation passed in 2019 by authorizing law enforcement agencies to charge 16- and 17-year-olds as adults for high-level felonies.
Then-Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed the bill in 2024, though conservative lawmakers later overrode that veto. It took effect on Dec. 1, 2024.
“I remain concerned that this new law would keep some children from getting treatment they need while making communities less safe,” Gov. Cooper said of the bill. “Instead, the legislature should invest significantly more in our juvenile justice system to ensure resources are available to help prevent crimes and appropriately deal with children who break the law.”
A rising homicide total raises alarm among elected officials
Despite the decrease in juvenile crime overall, the department saw the number of juvenile homicide
suspects nearly double while the number of juvenile homicide victims went up by 50%.
In fact, the 110 homicides reported in Charlotte in 2024 marked a 25% increase compared to the year before.
During a presentation to Charlotte City Council on SAFE Charlotte programming during its Jan. 13 meeting, Jennings downplayed the high homicide total as being better than other cities close to Charlotte’s size and not representative of the whole picture regarding crime in Charlotte.
“If you look at a city like Baltimore, they are praising a drop from 300-something homicides to 200-something homicides in a year,” Jennings said. “We definitely don’t want to be sitting at that number and celebrating 200 homicides in a year.”
“I understand that compared to other large cities, Charlotte is safer,” responded at-large council member Dimple Ajmera, “but our numbers have gone up significantly from where they were so something has to be done to address these issues at the root.”
Council member Ed Driggs of District 7 appeared frustrated that, despite the seeming success of certain programs and initiatives, violent crime didn’t seem to be
“SAFE Charlotte has been going for four years now and we can’t point to big success,” said Ed Driggs. “A lot of these problems are social … therefore … what your understanding is of the root causes of these issues is critical.”
Driggs added that “based on the experience of other cities like New York, there is a tradeoff between how aggressive your policing is and what kind of crime you have, and the tension there is the rights and the First Amendment and so on so how do you conduct effective policing and keep people safe and not either offend an ethnic group or trample on someone’s rights?
“I don’t speak out of any desire to oppress any members of the community but simply to talk about what works and what doesn’t as opposed to … actions
we are taking that don’t result in observable changes,” Driggs continued. “People are expecting to see a decline in these crime rates … and that’s hard to do.”
Jennings will be back in front of council for a presentation on violent crime at its Feb. 10 meeting.
Vehicle-related crimes and other stats
According to CMPD’s annual report, vehicle-related crimes were also down, with auto thefts decreasing 8%. Thefts involving Kia and Hyundai cars, which have been targeted as the result of a popular TikTok trend in recent years, were down by 15%.
Reported cases of “street takeovers,” in which car owners shut down intersections or parking lots to perform stunts like drifting, burnouts and wheelies, significantly declined by 71% for pre-arranged events and 88% for pop-up takeovers. The decrease is in large part due to a new law criminalizing takeovers and adding new penalties, the press release claimed.
The department’s Stolen Car and Recovery Law Enforcement Team (SCARLET), which was launched in 2023, recovered 338 stolen vehicles, seized 225 firearms, made 221 felony arrests, and seized $4 million in narcotics.
Civilian initiatives like the Civilian Crash Investigation Unit (CCI) and Connect Charlotte also aided CMPD. CCI was made to reduce the time patrol officers spent responding to minor crashes that don’t involve injuries, accounting for 71% of crashes officers responded to per year. Between Dec.12-31, CCIs responded to 306 minor crashes, CMPD said.
Visit qcnerve.com to view the full 2024 Annual Report. Ryan Pitkin contributed reporting to this story.
AKEOUGH@QCNERVE.COM
COURTESY OF CMPD
JOHNNY JENNINGS ADDRESSES MEDIA AFTER THE SLAYING OF FOUR LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS IN APRIL.
THE TIN MAN
Jeff Howlett’s art has no lack of heart
BY RYAN PITKIN
Her knees and arms bent, midriff showing over black jeans with a studded belt, a black tank top matching the wisps of hair that fly toward her face running counter to the eye makeup that shoots toward the back of head, one fist clenched tightly by her side with the other wrapped around a microphone, Clarissa Badini is caught in a primal scream.
The vocalist for the all-woman death-metal band Castrator is onstage at The Kraken in Chapel Hill, performing in the 2023 Carolina Chainsaw Massacre festival. The fact that Badini holds her mic by her side indicates that she is not belting out on of her deathrattling vocals but instead caught in a moment between the lines in which she’s acting on pure adrenaline and emotion.
These are the points in time that Jeff Howlett looks to capture in his concert photography.
“Sometimes it’s the moments in between the beat, if you will,” Howlett explains. “In music, it’s like that moment in between a beat when she’s whipping around … In that photo, she’s not singing per se, she has the mic down by her side, but the action of the mic, it’s in between the beat of what’s going on and the movements of what’s going on. It’s just capturing those moments in between that I think are really special.”
We’ve pulled two chairs from a hallway at the York County Center for the Arts in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and are sitting in the middle of Dalton Gallery fronting East Main Street, surrounded by dozens of Howlett’s black-and-white live-music photographs and portraiture.
His exhibit, Dreams of Silver Shadows, opened on Jan. 6 and will remain on display through Feb. 8, including during the upcoming Black and White Gala, York County Arts Council’s annual fundraising event scheduled for Feb. 1.
It’s a point of pride for Howlett, who’s called Rock Hill home for the last 12 years and has enjoyed watching the Center support the active but lesser-known arts scene in town. It’s also a fitting theme, as Howlett shoots almost exclusively in black-and-white (his popular tintype photographs can be described more as sepia-toned but mostly fit the bill).
As noted in the exhibit name, it’s the shadows of the old-style imagery brought into contemporary times that speak to him.
“You really catch really interesting moments in those shadows, textures and stuff, and I just love how that comes across … in black and white,” he explains. “I don’t
really see it as much in color photography.”
The exhibit shares photos of musicians from a range of genres at different ages and different levels of fame, from George Clinton during his stop at The Fillmore Charlotte on his farewell tour to Charlotte rapper MAVI in the midst of a Hopscotch Festival performance with a promising career ahead of him.
From the time he was 12 years old, Howlett has had a passion for telling stories through one medium or another. Beginning with music and moving through filmmaking and photography, his journey has taken him through different dimensions of time and space, always in search of an outlet.
If one thing is clear, his story is anything but black and white.
his first band at age 12. He continued to play music, usually as vocalist and/or bassist, through his time at Burlington College, which is how he landed in Vermont and helped launch the band that would become his most successful music project, Five Seconds Expired.
The alt-metal band signed to Profile Records in New York City, joining labelmates like hardcore punk acts CroMags and Murphy’s Law and legendary hip-hop pioneers Run DMC. They saw success on college radio stations, touring for a few years and releasing their solo full-length album Null in 1996.
Howlett went on to play in Non Compos, which signed to a few different labels but flamed out after a year and a half when some of the members went on to play in different bands and Howlett started a family in Vermont.
“I became a father and music drifted off a little bit,” he recalls. “That’s when photography really kicked in.”
Howlett had experimented through the lens of a Yashica point-and-shoot camera that his father gave him at age 17. He carried it around for years before, as tends to happen to one’s possessions in their twenties, “it disappeared into the ether,” as Howlett tells it.
The birth of his first child in 2002 got him back into the artform, learning new tricks as he shot portraits of his kids, the second of whom was born in 2005. Meanwhile, he returned to Burlington College, where he had previously earned a degree in psychology. After years of social work that he enjoyed, his return trip to the school setting inspired an epiphany.
Storytelling in multiple mediums
Since the time Howlett’s parents took him to a John Denver show at the age of 6, he’s known he wanted to be around music.
“They took me to that concert and that was definitely a game changer,” he recalls. “I was like, ‘I want to do what that guy’s doing.’”
Growing up in Waynesboro, Virginia, Howlett joined
“I was like, ‘This really sucks. I really don’t like psychology,’” he says.
He did, however, considerably enjoy his film production class. He took up that medium and began shooting music videos, eventually doing commercial work and making a job out of it.
In 2012, he released his first full-length documentary, A Band Called Death, which tells the story of three Black men from Detroit who launched a band (called Death)
that some credit as the first punk-rock band ever. Howlett moved to Charlotte shortly before the documentary was released and has lived in the area since.
In mid-2023, just as Howlett had put in his two-week notice at his IT job to pursue filmmaking and photography full-time, a motorcycle wreck on I-77 nearly took his life. He broke nine bones but says he left the hospital just two days later determined to make his dream a reality. Many of his photos are from the time period around that incident, which seemingly marked a turning point in his life.
Four days after the wreck, he was at Rabbit Rabbit in Asheville shooting Queens of the Stone Age. He insists he only took Advil to help him through his recovery.
“I think that when you go through something like that, it’s pain, and pain is just pain,” he says. “I’ve dealt with painful things in life, and it’s just, you bear with it. You just go through it.”
Bringing back the old style
Since his early days experimenting with the medium, Howlett has always been inspired by old-style photography.
One of his greatest inspirations is Arthur Fellig, known by his pseudonym Weegee, a photographer and photojournalist known for his stark black-and-white street photography highlighting life in early-to-mid20th-century New York City.
Another is Vivian Maier, a street photographer who shot tens of thousands of photos of the people and architecture of Chicago, New York City, and Los Angeles during the same time period and later but whose work wasn’t discovered and recognized until after her death in 2009.
Howlett was drawn to the grimy feel of early-20thcentury crime photography and enjoyed the process
PHOTO COURTESY OF JEFF HOWLETT JEFF HOWLETT WITH HIS LARGE-FORMAT TINTYPE CAMERA.
PHOTO BY JEFF HOWLETT CLARISSA BADINI OF CASTRATOR
of rifling through old photos with the family of Death’s members while putting his documentary together.
Much of his concert photography shows these inspirations, but it wasn’t until around 2014 that Howlett discovered the work of Ellen Susan, who uses wetplate collodion photography to create captivating and sometimes haunting portraits of US Army soldiers, many of whom have returned from deployment.
Howlett had seen Matthew Brady’s famed Civil Warera wet-plate portraiture of Abraham Lincoln and other leaders of the time, but seeing the process implemented in the present day was new to him.
“Seeing it in contemporary times and somebody was actually doing it, I was like, ‘Oh, man, I got to contact her,’” he recalls.
He reached out to Susan to ask if she held workshops and she invited him to her home for a day of learning.
“She taught me soup-to-nuts how to do it — how to mix the chemistry, how to photograph outside, inside, natural light, artificial light,” he says. “It was a one-day download, and it was so much information. I just fell in love with it and the whole process.”
He spent about a year in his backyard offering free portraits to any friends who would come and sit for him, perfecting the craft through trial and error until he felt comfortable enough to book his first gig at the Asheville Tattoo Convention.
It’s a wonder to watch Howlett work at one of the many pop-ups and art fairs he shows up to around Charlotte and beyond. He spends some time sitting the subject(s) then scrambles back under a cloak known as a darkcloth to shoot on his large-format tintype camera.
A large flash of light and some chemical mixing creates a captivating image that catches a remarkable amount of detail.
There was a time in the beginning when Howlett was so anxious about simply capturing any worthwhile image that he didn’t bother much with direction, but now he can help his subjects create the best image possible.
The challenge is getting folks who are so familiarized with quick iPhone shots to sit still and look relaxed long enough to let the process work.
“Just having the person relax, being comfortable, because it is pretty intense ... It’s a lot of light, generally speaking, when I’m doing them indoors, and it’s a big flash,” he explains. “I like to prepare people for what’s going to happen. So when people come and they usually sit down and get comfortable, I’m like, ‘Stay right there. Don’t move. The way you just sat down is the best way we’re going to execute this photograph,’ because that seems to me to be always the best approach so far. I’m still learning, though.”
Howlett has turned his creative passions into a full-time job since the accident, continuing to shoot music videos and do commercial filmmaking while splitting his photography work between tintype gigs and live music shoots.
He’ll often book a tintype job somewhere out of town to work during the day then find out what interesting bands are playing in the area so he can shoot the show by night.
His recent purchase of a sprinter van means he’s in it for the long haul, enabling him to travel farther out for shows and other jobs. He’s intrigued to see what 2025 might have in store.
“I’m just excited to be creative,” he says. “2025 is going to be a really creative year. It’s a lot of fucked up shit in the world that is going on and I think, out of all that, a lot of creative folks and resources will come together as one and really create some magic.”
He just has to look for the moments between the beats.
RPITKIN@QCNERVE.COM
PHOTOS BY JEFF HOWLETT
A SELECTION OF JEFF HOWLETT’S TINTYPE PHOTOGRAPHS
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 22
ROCK/PUNK/METAL
Violent Life Violent Death w/ Jealous Mind, Voices in Vain, Crooked Cult, Bridgeburner (The Milestone)
Twin Flame: DJ She’s A+ and DJ Maal (Petra’s) COVER BANDS
JD Presents: Every Little Step (Middle C Jazz) Jazz is Led (Neighborhood Theatre)
FRIDAY, JANUARY 24
ROCK/PUNK/METAL
Jackyl w/ 50 Watt Freight Train (Amos’ Southend) Cleansing of the Temple w/ Cadaver Delende, Wither the Fallacy, Hermaeus Mora, Screwed Ends (The Milestone) Donna the Buffalo (Neighborhood Theatre)
Stone Whiskey (The Rooster)
JAZZ/BLUES
Black Notes Project: Purple is a Beautiful Thing (Booth Playhouse)
Norman Brown (Middle C Jazz)
COUNTRY/FOLK/AMERICANA
Tyler Ramsey w/ falllift (Evening Muse)
Woody w/ Leopard & The Diamond Sky, The Normas (Snug Harbor)
Kuff w/ Lemonz, Jerm Jelly (Blackbox Theater) Club 90s: Justin Bieber Night (The Underground)
HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B
Dru Hill w/ Jon B, Case, Changing Faces (Ovens Auditorium)
The Soundwave is Queen City Nerve’s comprehensive guide to live music happening in Charlotte every night of the week. This list is pulled together by our editorial team every other week from combing through Charlotte music venue calendars and separated by genre. None of these listings are paid advertisements. We understand that many non-traditional music venues offer live music like coffee shops, breweries, art galleries, community events and more.
This list may not have every event listed. To have a venue included in the editorial compilation of this list, please send an email to info@qcnerve.com with the subject “Soundwave.”
SATURDAY, JANUARY 25
ROCK/PUNK/METAL
My Blue Hope w/ A Life Worth Taking, Caught Off Guard, Lilith Rising (The Milestone)
Once Below Joy w/ Read-Only Time Travel, Aluminum 6, Fernandina (The Rooster)
Willingdon w/ Camisole, Schmooze (Snug Harbor)
The Bleeps w/ ShotClock, Evergone (Tommy’s Pub)
JAZZ/BLUES
Black Notes Project: CSYO (Booth Playhouse)
Black Notes Project: The Evolution of Jazz feat. SAINTED Trap Choir (Knight Theater)
Norman Brown (Middle C Jazz)
SINGER-SONGWRITER/ACOUSTIC
Open Hearts Open Minds Showcase (Starlight on 22nd) POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ
DJ Icey (Blackbox Theater)
Family Video w/ North By North, Cassettiquette (Petra’s)
Gimme Gimme Disco (The Underground) COUNTRY/FOLK/AMERICANA
Arts Fishing Club w/ ZG Smith (Evening Muse)
Niko Moon (The Fillmore) COVER BANDS
The Rush Experience (Amos’ Southend)
Kindred Cult w/ Big Fun (Goldie’s)
School of Rock Charlotte Showcase (Visulite Theatre)
SUNDAY, JANUARY 26
ROCK/PUNK/METAL
Hyperloops w/ Leaving for Arizona, Regence (The Milestone) JAZZ/BLUES
Eddie 9V (Neighborhood Theatre) CHRISTIAN/GOSPEL/RELIGIOUS
Winter Jam ‘25 (Bojangles Coliseum)
SINGER-SONGWRITER/ACOUSTIC
David Childers (Free RangeBrewing) COVER BANDS
School of Rock Charlotte Showcase (Visulite Theatre)
MONDAY, JANUARY 27
JAZZ/BLUES
The Bill Hanna Legacy Jazz Session (Petra’s) SINGER-SONGWRITER/ACOUSTIC
Hot Tuna (Booth Playhouse) OPEN MIC
Find Your Muse Open Mic feat. Emanuel Wynter (Evening Muse)
Red Rocking Chair (Comet Grill)* LATIN/WORLD/REGGAE
Molchat Doma (The Fillmore) OPEN MIC
Tosco Music Open Mic (Evening Muse)
Open Mic Night feat. The Smokin J’s (Smokey Joe’s Cafe & Bar)*
*WEEKLY EVENTS THAT MAY BE SUBJECT TO CHANGE. VISIT QCNERVE.COM FOR THE FULL SOUNDWAVE LISTING
AN ACT OF SELF-DEFENSE
Ali Forrest delivers a knockout with ‘Cagefighter’
BY PAT MORAN
Ali Forrest’s harrowing, compulsively catchy single “The Maze,” which dropped in October 2024, is the perfect teaser for her debut album Cagefighter, the much anticipated LP by the artist Queen City Nerve called the city’s best new singer-songwriter in our 2024 Best in the Nest issue.
The accompanying video for “The Maze,” shot and directed by Josh Rob Thomas (Dipstick) at Ultimate Gym in Belmont, begins with an upbeat electronic riff that belies the tune’s emotional brutality. As Forrest stalks a dimly lit, well-worn gym, she delivers the tune’s poetic and devastating lyrics with a smoky yearning vocal accented with her subtle lilting yodel, a fluttering registration change between head and heart.
“You said I’m beautiful just long enough that I believed you/ Then you tore me down till I was desperate to please/ You’re just a pattern in a cycle that I keep repeating/ I only love the ones who smile while I bleed...”
Forrest dons boxing gloves and hits a punching bag — a central metaphor for the toxic relationship the song depicts. She connects with the bag on the drumbeat, signaling a segue to the song’s chorus: “I’m sick of the chase/ I’m sick of naively begging you to change/ If I ever escape this maze/ My self-respect will never be the same...”
Both song and video pack a visceral punch, climaxing with an emotional knockout: Forrest, looking exhuasted, delivers her final words lying flat on her back in a boxing ring.
The combative tune depicts a psychic thread that runs through much of Forrest’s music, including her upcoming LP, which is set to drop Jan. 24.
“As a concept, Cagefighter is a visual representation of a way that I have lived my life,” Forrest says. “Going into every scenario ... romantically, with my friends, even with the band, sometimes [I had] this idea that I’m bringing a deficit. When I was writing these songs, living my life, [I felt like] I had to do millions of things just to be on common ground with everybody.”
The album is a powerful and empowering journey, a real-life character arc for Forrest in which she struggles with feelings that she’s different and inadequate.
“The front half of the record is me coming to terms with [those feelings] through romantic context, and the back half explores acceptance and … evolving out of that survival mentality,” she offers.
The boys in the band
When it comes to setting her turbulent muse to music, Forrest has found reliable collaborators whom she fondly refers to as “the boys”: guitarist Ben Burrows; bassist, guitarist and engineer Cole Covington; drummer and engineer Caleb Whitlock; and guitarist Eric Maust.
The boys are pros. Burrows also plays with Charlotte artists Joe May and Ethan Regan, Covington plays with musicians including Winston-Salem singer-songwriter William Hinson, Whitlock does production work and also plays with local artists including Regan while Maust records and releases original music under his name.
Like Forrest, the band members draw on their backgrounds in folk rock and gospel, and they accompany Forrest’s inspired songwriting with precision and a sense of space. Although Forrest writes the tune’s lyrics, melody and chord changes, she says the contributions from the four experienced musicians are invaluable.
“It’s the most magical thing in the world,” says Forrest, who still plays the guitar. “It sounds awesome.” One man’s “trash,” as they say.
All members of the current band happened to be in attendance. A few had played together previously, some had fleeting familiarity with each other, but all had huge respect for Forrest’s songwriting skills.
With the exception of Covington, who was on a skiing trip in Canada, all these players came together later that same month to record Forrest’s breakthrough five-song EP Body in the Plaza Midwood house where Forrest lived at the time. (Gabe McKinney handled bass duties for those sessions.)
Forrest had previously dropped the Raised Wrong EP, a collection of songs featuring Forrest on vocals, guitar, and Logic software, in summer 2023. Jacob Blizard, guitarist for alternative-rock artist Lucy Dacus, mixed the set. Blizard has gone on to mix all of Forrest’s subsequent projects, including Cagefighter, for which he worked as
“Everyone who plays with me also wrote their parts on [Cagefighter],” Forrest notes, but “the boys” also offer her support and validation. “The men in this band are technically proficient, but they [also] create space for me, the girl in the band, to speak up and have opinions ... I’m surrounded by feminist allies.”
The group’s friendship and collaboration are rather new. It was an Evening Muse show in April 2024 that brought them all together, though they didn’t know it at the time. Forrest played a solo set on what she calls “a $100 trash Ibanez acoustic guitar” that belonged to her father in high school.
lead producer. Whitlock and Covington did additional production while Forrest and Maust produced the album cut “The Alarm.”
For Body, Forrest and the band went for a live feel, trying to capture what the recording room sounded like, says Whitlock, who was engineer and lead producer on the EP.
“Each song is one take through, no click track, very minimal editing — just shooting for the most raw, live thing that we could,” Whitlock says.
Though the band had just 36 hours to track the EP, Forrest
wouldn’t send demos of her songs to them prior to recording.
“I wanted them to write [the songs] live,” Forrest says. “They figured them out, and then we would just do our three takes, and then we would have to move on.”
Maust calls the results amazing, even though the band members never played with each other before.
“Everybody really listens [to each other],” Burrows says. “Nobody was stepping on each other’s toes. That speaks volumes to the musicianship that everyone carries with them from years of experience.”
“I feel like we built a lot of trust in each other after that,” says Forrest.
Another part of the Forrest
In late July and early August 2014, the band entered Greensboro studio 2eleven, where Whitlock had done previous production work, to record Cagefighter. This time, Covington was on board. Forrest says the band took a half-and-half approach, recording some of the songs live on the floor like they did on Body, and shaping others, like the album’s title track, in the studio.
“The demo I brought [in] was with electric guitar, and the vocal was sent through a Logic guitar amp,” Forrest says. “[It] started weird and we were able to dial it up with everybody’s additions.”
The track kicks off with twanging spaghetti western guitar and Forrest’s electronically treated vocals tumbling in free fall.
“When you feel pain I splinter/ So I numb us till we’re dull/ But it’s not you that’s broken...”
Despite its combative-sounding title, “Cagefighter” represents a progression from “The Maze.” In contrast to that tune’s exhausted protagonist, “Cagefighter” depicts a heroine embarking on a healing process, a progression toward self-acceptance.
“A thing that was told to me a lot when I was a kid was if you would just be better, [you] wouldn’t be treated [badly],” Forrest says.
By surrounding herself with supportive people like her bandmates, Forrest says she has come to realize that she can be herself and the scripts she grew up with were false.
As “Cagefighter” comes to a close, Forrest’s ethereal vocal threatens to dissolve in harmonics, yet her words endure amid a soundscape of distorted razor-wire guitars and a distant drill-like whine.
“I finally surrender/ Let my shame out to face the world/ I’ll be a better mother/ Oh I’ll hold you when I’m strong/ And I’ll hold you when I’m not...”
“There’s a rawness of Ali’s writing,” Maust says. “There’s so much in there that people can grab onto.”
“The title track is me talking to my younger self, saying, ‘I’ve got your back,’” Forrest maintains. “I hope people who are chasing a moving goal post of selfimprovement for the purpose of proving they’re worthy of love can listen and feel some relief from that chase.”
Amid that relief there is a message for everyone else who is sick of the chase: You are not alone.
ALI FORREST & HER BAND
PHOTO BY JOSH ROB THOMAS
DABABY AND FRIENDS
DaBaby celebrates his birthday with an all-star bash lineup a month after the fact. The star-studded bill boasts 50 Cent, Sexyy Redd, Boosie, Moneybagg Yo, fellow NC artist Toosii, a reunion with rapper Stunna 4 Vegas and more. With his massive tour, the single and Nutty Professor-inspired video for “PHAT” blowing up on TikTok, plus the rapper’s claim that he’s working on a new Panthers anthem, it looks like DaBaby’s staging a comeback after his underperforming 2024 album HOW TF IS THIS A MIXTAPE? It remains to be seen how fans will respond this time.
More: $67 and up; Jan. 22, 7 p.m.; Spectrum Center, 333 E. Trade St.; spectrumcentercharlotte.com
TANTRUMCON
If you’re a fan of “Losing at Monopoly” memes — our favorite is the one showing Jesus flipping over the moneylenders’ tables in the temple — this is the con for you. Launched by board-game media group Tantrum House, the event features new game releases, a massive game library, exhibit hall, flea market, prototypes and more. The con’s namesake mainstay is the Table Flipping Tournament, where competitors vie onstage and actually flip the tables at the end.
More: $40-$250; Jan. 23-26, times vary; Le Méridien, 555 S. McDowell St.; tantrumcon.com
BLACK NOTES PROJECT
Launched to celebrate and amplify Black music and artistry, the second annual weekend-long festival will follow-up on last year’s orchestral theme with a weekend centering jazz. Highlights include “The Evolution of Jazz” featuring Atlanta ensemble Trap Jazz and Charlotte’s SAINTED Trap Choir collaborating
UPCOMING EVENTS IN THE QUEEN CITY
on tributes to Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald infused with rap and hip-hop; “Purple Is A Beautiful Thing” celebrates the legacy of Prince through jazz with host Mayte Garcia, dancer/actress/vocalist and former Prince spouse performing with her partner, Danish jazz pianist Niels Lan Doky; and the Charlotte Symphony Youth Orchestra playing a jazz-inspired repertoire from a diverse array of composers.
More: Prices vary; Jan. 23-26, times vary; locations vary; blumenthalarts.org
QUEER ICON DANCE PARTY
From the folks who brought you the quarterly Ultraviolet Sapphic Dance Party at Petra’s, the annual Queer Icon Dance Party is all about those legends who walked so Gaga, Chappell and Nas X could run. Specifically, this late January party celebrates two iconic Capricorns (yes, the party takes place in Aquarius season, just ignore that) in Dolly Parton and David Bowie. Regardless of your sign, put on your red shoes and dance the blues for an ’80s-inspired get-down that will serve as a source of empowerment needed all the more as we prepare for four more years of presidential attacks on the LGBTQ+ community. Take part in the Dolly & David lookalike contest or just enjoy the glam station, drag performance and themed cocktails.
The Stan Greenspon Holocaust and Social Justice Education Center hosts rock legend Geddy Lee, born Gershon Eliezer Weinrib, for a special program commemorating International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The vocalist and bassist for Canadian prog-rock band Rush whose parents Mary and Morris Weinrib endured Auschwitz and survived the Holocaust will delve into his family history, the enduring lessons of the Holocaust, and his perspectives on how art and music can help preserve history and combat hate.
More: $68 and up; Jan. 27, 7 p.m.; Sarah Belk Gambrell Center for the Arts, Queens University, 2319 Wellesley Ave.; stangreensponcenter.org
ECLECTIC SOUL SESSIONS: RESPECT THE MIC, VOL. 2
This special edition of poet Sir Abstraxxx’s popular live spoken-word and music series will make for a unique twist to the Gantt Center’s weekly Eclectic Soul Sessions. In celebration of the Gantt’s latest exhibition, American Gurl, nine featured artists will each present work inspired by identity, culture and the complexities of the Black American woman’s experience.
More: Free; Jan. 29, 6-9p.m.; Harvey B. Gantt Center; 551 S. Tryon St.; tinyurl.com/RespecttheMic
BODHI LOVE YOGA GLOW RAVE + SOCIAL
Come in your best and brightest neons to enjoy this fusion of yoga, HIIT, free movement and music to celebrate life and energy. Spend the first couple of hours at the event getting decked out at the Glow accessories station, strolling through a market of local vendors, grabbing a drink, taking some pics at the interactive photo booth, and vibing to the event’s live DJ. Then make your body move and glow under the black lights during Bodhi Love Yoga led by founder Rachel Dahlstrand Behn, who will lead grounding exercises, warm ups, energizing and freeing flows and relaxing stretches.
On tunes like the soaring “Heart-Shaped Craters,” Boone’s Peach Rings employ power pop, distortion, angst-ridden lyrics and beautiful melodies. Blaire Fullagar’s Motocrossed is her latest project since dissolving sayurblaires. The Charlotte singersongwriter’s previous band questioned identity and acceptance amid disconcerting screaming, childlike vocals and catchy K-pop style choruses. Charlotte’s Froggy Nights crafts cyber-pop anthems for the socially awkward introvert in us all. On Boone combo Something Comforting’s “Idle,” grunge-punk guitars collide with yearning pop melodies and vocals.
Winey Grapes Indoor Wine Festival offers a selection of more than 100 wines from around the world, catering to everyone from sommeliers and oenophiles to casual drinkers during a day of flavorful wine, various local vendors to shop from, and tasty appetizers. General admission includes unlimited samples of wine, a commemorative tasting glass and a raffle drawing. VIP admission includes all that plus early entry at noon, exclusive wine for sampling, light appetizers and extra raffle drawings. From bold reds to crisp whites, there will be something to please every palate.
More: $51; Feb. 1, 1-4 p.m.; Slate Charlotte, 200 E. Bland St.; tinyurl.com/WineyGrape
SAM MORRIL
Vulture lauds Sam Morril as “a good comedian who … can get as big of a laugh on a pause as [on] a punch line.” You can see it in a YouTube video where Morril addresses the problematic animated classic Snow White (1937), specifically where the prince kisses the heroine without consent while she’s asleep. “If you’re unconscious [a Prince] is most likely not who’s going to kiss you,” Morril says. “Maybe Prince Andrew.” The real humor, however, comes when unsuspecting morning television show hosts have him on as a guest in whatever city he happens to be touring in, allowing him to create as awkward of a moment as he can on any given show. Here’s hoping he gets a chance to prank someone here.
Sam Diminich partners with HopeWay for new culinary
mental health programming
BY KAYLEIGH RULLER
At first glance, a collaborative project between renowned chef Sam Diminich and HopeWay, a nonprofit mental health treatment center in southwest Charlotte, might seem like an unlikely pairing.
For those involved, however, it’s a wonder the partnership didn’t come sooner. From their perspective, a mental health treatment center teaming up with a culinary organization creates a symbiotic relationship that can possibly be transformative for both.
It was leadership at HopeWay, launched in 2014 to broaden the scope of mental health care and education for adults in the area, who sought out Your Farms Your Table (YFYT), a farm-centered and generally people-centered restaurant group led by chef Sam Diminich of Restaurant Constance, to launch a new onsite food program at the organization’s 20-acre campus in southwest Charlotte.
Starting Feb. 1, Diminich’s team will dish out more than 100 daily meals to the residential patients, outpatient clients, visitors, and staff on HopeWay’s campus. The team will manage HopeWay’s 9,000-squarefoot, in-house kitchen, emphasizing fresh, local ingredients from its farm partners and fresh herbs grown on-site for menus designed to support clients’ diverse dietary and therapeutic needs.
These meals are nothing of the standard medical center sort — stark, bland, dense, nutritionally lackluster food — but the type of vibrant, local, seasonal food that’s made Diminich and Restaurant Constance into popular names within Charlotte’s culinary scene.
Having worked with YFYT since 2022, with more than 36,000 meals delivered from where it was cooked and packaged offsite to those receiving inpatient recovery and psychiatric services, HopeWay CEO and Chief Medical Officer Dr. Alyson Kuroski-Mazzei is making an “intentional, purposeful decision to integrate” nutrient-rich food and further the food education at the organization’s campus.
Now Diminich and his team will play a bigger role in the organization’s holistic, evidence-based model integrating nutrition into treatment. Clients will spend time in the Learning Kitchen as part of HopeWay’s integrative therapy, building skills and confidence through hands-on meal preparation, group therapy and meeting with dietitians.
For the accomplished chef, working with HopeWay is just one more step forward in his own personal mission — one that goes far beyond business interests and more into helping his community.
Diminich has been open about his own personal struggles and journey through recovery.
“I was in more than a dozen treatment centers and detoxes myself,” he told me. “I experienced depression, alcoholism, substance abuse.”
Now, more than 10 years sober, he attributes his success in recovery thus far to many factors including treating his body better and becoming increasingly mindful of what he puts in it. That’s one reason why he didn’t have to consider it for long when the HopeWay team approached him with an offer to partner up.
The center’s whole-person, compassion-based care hits home for him, Diminich emphasized.
World Health Organization highlighted nutrition as a key component in reducing the life expectancy gap between people with psychiatric disorders and the general population.
She also pointed out that many individuals with mental health issues have been found to have excessive caloric intake in their diet or some other form of poor nutritional status. Altering and expanding food choice is a modifiable risk factor for improved care.
Thirdly, while it may seem like a buzzword by now, the brain-gut connection is real, Kuroski-Mazzei insists; the gastrointestinal tract and the microbiome are directly related to mental health.
“Nutritional psychiatry research shows that diets rich in whole foods like vegetables, fruits and lean proteins can reduce the symptoms of depression up to 30%,” Kuroski-Mazzei said.
And finally, for folks on psychiatric medications that may affect appetite and/or weight, the need for balanced, nutritious meals is pivotal in aiding recovery.
HopeWay’s choice to improve the facility’s food quality makes it a pioneer in the Food as Medicine movement, which prefers to a science-backed approach to care that has been gaining steam for a few reasons.
According to The Rockefeller Foundation, Food as
“I was immediately moved. It immediately spoke to me … it’s like hospitality personified from the minute you walk in the door,” he said.
The partnership helps him live out the idea that “food is the connector between worlds,” as good food offers real advantages for the health and wellbeing of patients at HopeWay.
The Gut-Brain Connection
Dr. Kuroski-Mazzei is an avid believer that food quality has a direct impact on mental wellbeing.
“When you are looking at the quality of your food and you’re intentionally making it healthier … you’re modifying your risk for depression and anxiety,” she said. She pointed to a few notable findings. One, the
Medicine programs “use food-based interventions to help prevent, manage, and treat diet-related diseases,” enabling “doctors to prescribe healthy food, reducing the need for invasive health services while lowering healthcare costs.”
Programs can include medically tailored meals, produce prescriptions, and general culinary education.
Kuroski-Mazzei said that, throughout her time in medical school and her residency at Duke University, she didn’t take a single course focused on nutrition, despite the fact that leading health issues — eating disorders, anxiety and depression — all affect and are affected by one’s relationship to food.
Now HopeWay is integrating the movement into its treatment in a few ways.
“I do think we’re a leader in this area,” Kuroski-Mazzei shared. “Nutrition is rarely integrated into psychiatric practice and it needs to be.”
That’s where Diminich and his team come in. The meals will be an active part of the patients’ dietary and therapeutic needs.
HopeWay already has a horticultural therapist working on site, using plant-based activities as a form of healing. Registered dietitians are there too, providing nutritional guidance for clients while sharing tangible skills like how to prepare their own food.
Now that they are also working on the campus, Kuroski-Mazzei hopes to have Diminich and his team become an active, educational part of the Learning Kitchen, filling in a large piece of the Food as Medicine puzzle.
Food for and with community
Reflecting on his past as an addict and the related mental health effects that came with that, Diminich emphasized that each problem one faces due to addiction can be isolating in its own way.
Dr. Kuroski-Mazzei noted how the type of isolation Diminich references is a primary driver of depression. That’s why the food itself is just a starting point at HopeWay; real magic happens when she and her patients actually gather around that food — whether in the process of cooking it or eating it.
“Having that opportunity to bond with other people and to share experiences and find comfort is really important to us,” she said.
Talking to Diminich today, it’s hard to imagine a time when “isolation” would be a word that describes his aura. He is connected to the extreme — highly active in the community with an energy surrounding his work at Restaurant Constance and now HopeWay that’s contagious.
This he credits in large part to his sobriety and the food he consumes.
“The regulation and the mental acuity and the availability to be present in the moment is directly impacted by what we consume,” he told me.
Diminich and his staff members — about 25-30% of whom are also in recovery — “get to lean on each other as we move through our daily tasks …. we get to channel that super optimistic, recovered energy into what we do,” Diminich said.
The proactive decision to integrate food into mental health care has rippling effects that move outside of individual health into the entire food ecosystem.
“We’re helping the farmers in the community, employing team members who have had their own issues with substance use disorders, helping the clients, supporting the staff,” Kuroski-Mazzei said.
As she rattled off the positive, downstream effects of this work, she paused. “It just truly gave me goosebumps.”
Add another physical effect to the list.
Learn more about HopeWay at hopeway.org. Find Your Farms Your Table Group at yourfarmsyourtable.com. INFO@QCNERVE.COM
SAM DIMINICH AT RESTAURANT CONSTANCE
PHOTO BY PETER TAYLOR
HOROSCOPE
JAN. 22 - Jan. 28 JAN. 29 - Feb. 4
ARIES (March 21 to April 19) Shutting people out to avoid distractions, even under a deadline, can cause hurt feelings. Instead, return calls and messages, and explain why you need a zone of privacy for now.
TAURUS (April 20 to May 20) Although your keen Bull’s eyes can usually discern what’s fact from what’s faux, an upcoming decision will need really solid data before you can risk a commitment.
GEMINI (May 21 to June 20) As your confidence grows, you should be able to work toward your goals with more enthusiasm. Open your mind to suggestions; some of them might even work for you.
CANCER (June 21 to July 22) Reconnecting with someone from your past stirs up an old sense of adventure. But before you do anything else, be sure to get answers to any lingering questions.
LEO (July 23 to August 22) Some people might resent the way you plan to resolve a difficult situation. But your commitment to making tough but fair decisions soon wins you their respect and support.
VIRGO (August 23 to September 22) Mixed signals could be causing a vexing workplace problem. Before you choose to leave a project, ask for a meeting where you can get things out in the open.
LIBRA (September 23 to October 22) Your good intentions could backfire if you’re not careful with other people’s feelings. Try using persuasion, not pressure, to get others to see your side of the situation.
SCORPIO (October 23 to November 21) Your dedication to finishing the task at hand is laudable. But be careful not to overdo the midnight oil bit. Instead, take time for relaxation with someone very special.
SAGITTARIUS (November 22 to December 21) Although your intuition will help you make some tough choices during the first half of the month, you’ll need more facts to back up your actions later on.
CAPRICORN (December 22 to January 19) All your hard work and research in the workplace finally pays off as you’d hoped it would. Ignore comments from jealous types who are out to get the Goat riled up.
AQUARIUS (January 20 to February 18) An unfair decision creates unnecessary problems, but avoid anger and move carefully as you work this out. Expect to get support from an unlikely source.
PISCES (February 19 to March 20) A fuzzy financial vista persists until the end of the month, when things begin to clear up. You’ll also gain a better perspective on how to handle some pesky personal problems.
BORN THIS WEEK: You have a wonderful way of being there for those who need your help in difficult times. You’re a very reliable person.
ARIES (March 21 to April 19) Your batteries should be fully recharged by now, making you more than eager to get back into the swing of things full-time. Try to stay focused so that you don’t dissipate your energies.
TAURUS (April 20 to May 20) You’re eager to charge straight ahead into your new responsibilities. But you’ll have to paw the ground a little longer until a surprise complication is worked out.
GEMINI (May 21 to June 20) Rival factions are pressuring you to take a stand favoring one side or the other. But this isn’t the time to play judge. Bow out as gracefully as possible without committing yourself to any position.
CANCER (June 21 to July 22) Reassure a longtime, trusted confidante that you appreciate their words of advice. But at this time, you need to act on what you perceive to be your own sense of self-interest.
LEO (July 23 to August 22) You need to let your warm Leonine heart fire up that new relationship if you hope to see it move from the “just friends” level to one that will be as romantic as you could hope for.
VIRGO (August 23 to September 22) There’s still time to repair a misunderstanding with an honest explanation and a heartfelt apology. The sooner you do, the sooner you can get on with other matters.
LIBRA (September 23 to October 22) Expect a temporary setback as you progress toward your goal. Use this time to reexamine your plans and see where you might need to make some significant changes.
SCORPIO (October 23 to November 21) Some missteps are revealed as the cause of current problems in a personal or professional partnership. Make the necessary adjustments, then move on.
SAGITTARIUS (November 22 to December 21) Jupiter’s influence helps you work through a pesky problem and allows your naturally jovial attitude to reemerge stronger than ever. Enjoy your success!
CAPRICORN (December 22 to January 19) Set aside your usual reluctance to change, and consider reassessing your financial situation so that you can build on its strengths and minimize its weaknesses.
AQUARIUS (January 20 to February 18) Some recently acquired information helps open up a dark part of the past. Resolve to put what you’ve learned to good use. Meanwhile, travel plans continue to be favored.
PISCES (February 19 to March 20) Act on your own keen instincts. Your strong Piscean backbone will support you as someone attempts to pressure you into a decision that you’re not ready to make.
BORN THIS WEEK: You embody a love for traditional values combined with an appreciation of what’s new and challenging. You’re quite well-rounded.
LIFESTYLE PUZZLES
SUDOKU
BY LINDA THISTLE
TRIVIA TEST
BY FIFI RODRIGUEZ
1. TELEVISION: Who created the retro TV series “Stranger Things”?
2. U.S. STATES: Which state is the home of Yellowstone National Park?
3. ASTRONOMY: Which is the only planet in our solar system to rotate on its side?
4. MOVIES: What is the given name of the large bird in the animated movie “Up”?
5. GENERAL KNOWLEDGE: Which three zodiac signs are considered earth signs?
6. LITERATURE: What is the name of Hagrid’s half-brother in the “Harry Potter” book series?
7. GEOGRAPHY: What is the capital city of Australia?
8. FOOD & DRINK: What type of nut is used in the chocolate spread Nutella?
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.
9. SPORTS: What kind of sports match is divided into 7-minute periods called chukkas?
10. ADVERTISEMENTS: What type of horses often are used in Budweiser beer ads?
The attempt to overturn the NC Supreme Court election result is anti-democratic and dangerous
BY CHANTAL STEVENS
Here in North Carolina, we are still dealing with the fallout of one of our closest electoral races, more than two months after the fact. Why? Because of baseless attempts to overturn the results of a legitimate election.
The election for a seat on our state Supreme Court was very close but underwent rigorous scrutiny and verification through a statewide canvass performed by bipartisan county boards of election, a machine recount, and a partial hand-to-eye recount, all overseen by the NC Board of Elections. These methods are tried and true, and the results are clear: Voters chose to retain Justice Allison Riggs as an associate justice on the North Carolina Supreme Court.
In response, her opponent sued, seeking to disqualify 60,000 votes on unfounded claims that they are invalid. On Jan. 10, the NC Supreme Court issued a temporary stay
preventing the results of the contest from being certified so they can evaluate the legitimacy of the claims. Two dissenting justices, one Democrat and one Republican, argued that the stay is not legally justified and has dangerous implications that go far beyond this one race.
As Republican Justice Richard Dietz wrote in his dissent, “permitting post-election litigation that seeks to rewrite our state’s election rules — and, as a result, remove the right to vote in an election from people who already lawfully voted under the existing rules — invites incredible mischief.”
This decision on the part of the state Supreme Court to interfere in the ordinary course of the electoral process sets a dangerous precedent. Public trust in our elections has already been eroded by disinformation and bad faith attempts to limit voting access. Lending credence to
unfounded claims of improperly cast ballots only add fuel to the fire.
Close elections and recounts are a normal part of our democracy. What’s not normal is ignoring the results of those counts and attempting to strong-arm the electoral process for personal gain.
Fair and impartial elections are one of the cornerstones of our democracy. We must trust in this process or it is rendered meaningless. There is no room for gaming the system when our most fundamental freedoms are on the line. North Carolinian voters made their choice and attempting to undermine that choice blatantly disregards the will of the people.
Democracy in its simplest form means “rule by the people.” The people have spoken. No candidate should be allowed to disqualify votes just because they don’t like the results of an election.
We urge Jefferson Griffin to respect the democratic process, and for the court to dismiss these baseless accusations and uphold the results of the election.
Chantal Stevens in the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina. The Fourth Circuit appeals court will begin hearing oral arguments to decide whether Jefferson Griffin’s challenge should be settled in state or federal court on Jan. 27. This commentary originally appeared at ncnewsline.com.
INFO@QCNERVE.COM
SAVAGE LOVE FEAR FACTORS
A second transition
BY DAN SAVAGE
My wife and I are a lesbian married couple in Chicago. We are also proud moms to our wonderful, dynamic 17-year-old trans son. “Michael” is a great kid, and we have always enjoyed a close relationship. It has recently come to light that he is engaging in penetrative sex with men he meets on a gay hookup app. We discovered this because of bloody laundry which we thought was breakthrough bleeding, then a trip to his gender doc and a subsequent chlamydia diagnosis brought it all out. Since this revelation — and after a lecture about safe-sex practices — I am now living in a state of terror. I’m terrified our son will be a victim of sexual violence. I am terrified that he will be emotionally scarred by some fetishist. I am terrified he will get a life-threatening STI. My instincts are telling me to take leave from work and whisk him away from the city and talk and talk until he sees the danger of this behavior. Is that an overreaction? Are there therapists who specialize in this? Is there any way this will work out well for him? I desperately want to do right by my son and he is acting like this is “no big deal,” but my mama instincts are screaming shut this down!
MANIC OVER MY SON
The stage of life your child is going through — the transition from childhood to adulthood autonomy (which kids do without a fully functioning prefrontal cortex) — is filled with risk, and you can’t protect your child from all of it.
Zooming out for a second: The age of consent in Illinois is 17. I don’t wanna get derailed by a debate about whether that number is too low, but that’s the number. So, no laws were broken here. But polices were violated; your son is too young to be on Grindr or Scruff or Sniffies — you have to be 18 to get on those apps, and it’s inarguably far too easy for minors to get on them. And while meeting strangers is always risky, the apps are a normal part of gay life and they’re where most queer people find their partners, life and otherwise. And most gay and bi men I know under 35, both cis and trans, got on the apps the moment they turned 18; they had good and bad experiences and sometimes their moms had to get involved, but most survived and learned from their mistakes.
Moving on…
Your instinct to “shut this down” is understandable — you love your son and you wanna protect him from the kind of shitty adult man who gives chlamydia to teenagers — but your plan won’t work. Even if you were to whisk your son off to Peoria, he can download hookup apps just as easily downstate. And he’s 17, MOMS, not 14 … which means he’s almost an adult and will soon be free to make his own choices. So, instead of locking your son in the basement for the next year (or 10), get him on PrEP, keep communicating (you can talk and talk and talk at home), and let him know his moms are ready, willing, and able to swoop in an emergency. Lecture him about regular STI testing, ask him where he’s going and who’s he’s seeing, and tell him — from me — that adult men who fuck teenagers can’t be trusted. And then go find him a therapist, if you haven’t already, who specializes in working with trans teens, and identify one or two adults in his life — people you know and trust — that your son can turn to for confidential advice.
As for being emotionally scarred by some fetishist…
Your fears are understandable. Unfortunately for you and your son, it’s hard to draw a clean line between cis men who are attracted to trans men for the right reasons and cis men who fetishize trans men. (Your son has probably encountered both types already.) But not every man who is drawn to trans men is a fetishist. So, he’s going to meet some men who are attracted to everything about him — including the fact that he’s trans — and others who are only interested in him for one reason. The sooner he learns to tell these guys apart, the better. And like all gay and bi men, your son is going to walk away from some experiences feeling used in ways that leave him feeling demeaned and dehumanized and walk away from others feeling used in ways that make him feel powerful and desirable. (And if he’s on PrEP before he walks in, you don’t have to worry about him walking out with a life-threatening STI.)
In addition to getting your son on PrEP right now and off the apps until he’s 18 (he agrees to phone spot checks or he loses his phone), you should encourage your son to recognize his own sexual worth. Some trans people are convinced no one will want them, MOMS, so they jump at — or jump on — anyone who shows interest. One of the lessons your son should take from his experiences on the apps thus far is this: There are men out there who are interested in him, which means he can hold out for guys who aren’t just interested in him as a trans man, but
also as a person; he can hold out for guys who will have a conversation with him about safety, not just guys who wanna know how soon he can get to their apartments; he can hold out for guys who might be interested in dating him, not just hooking up with him. I’ve personally watched trans friends go from a scarcity mindset (“No will want me, I have to take what I can get”) to an abundance mindset (“Lots of people want me, I can afford to be choosey”) and it transformed their lives.
It’s going to be a rocky few years, MOMS, but with you and your wife on his side, I’m confident your son will make it in one piece. Good luck.
My partner and I have been together for nearly 20 years. While our love for each other is as strong as ever, our sex life has hit some bumps. We’ve talked about it a lot, and while we’re both feeling the disconnect, it’s been particularly frustrating for them. One thing that has always sparked our imagination is the idea of them being with someone else. Over the years, we’ve explored this in playful ways: checking out profiles on apps, sharing photos, and even role-playing scenarios about them having an adventure with someone else. It’s thrilling in the moment, but eventually, we fall back into old routines. Recently, though, something shifted. A colleague has caught their eye. They’ve mentioned being attracted to this person, and the interest seems mutual. This colleague, while shy, has been flirting back — buying thoughtful little gifts and inviting them out for drinks. Because of our shared fantasy and my deep desire to make them happy, I’ve been letting this play out. But here’s the thing: I’m feeling increasingly jealous and worried. What if this becomes something bigger? What if I end up pushed aside? Even though my partner reassures me that I’m the only one they want to come home to, those fears keep creeping in. How can I navigate these feelings without losing the connection we’ve worked so hard to build?
APPREHENSIVE NOW GETTING SUPER TENSE
Just wanna make sure I’m following you: You and your long-term partner are still in love but you don’t fuck much anymore and that’s a bigger problem for your partner than it is for you. But the one thing that reliably inspires you to fuck your partner are shared fantasies about them getting with someone else. Not you getting with someone else, ANGST, just them getting with someone else. Enter someone else.
Zooming out for a second: I don’t know if you’re a cuckold (a man who gets off on being cheated on) or a cuckquean (a woman who gets off on being cheated on) or a cuck (a non-gendered term for someone who gets off on their partner cheating on them) because there’s no data in your letter about who was assigned exactly what at birth. While I respect nonbinary identities and they/them pronouns —because I’m not Mark Fucking Zuckerberg — it can be hard to craft practical sex advice
when you don’t know the sexes (assigned or otherwise) of the parties involved. For instance, ANGST, male socialization might impact your reaction to your partner getting with their colleague (if you’re male); conversely, if your partner is a woman or they were assigned female at birth and socialized as a woman, having a sexual adventure might expose them to more risk of violence, pregnancy, sexually-transmitted infections, etc.
Anyway…
I’m going to assume you’re a cuck or cuck-adjacent, ANGST, because there’s something about your partner fucking around — but not you fucking around — that turns you on. Venus, the host of the Venus Cuckoldress Podcast and perhaps the smartest person on the planet about cuckold relationships, describes cuckolding as a “one-sided open relationship,” and that’s essentially what you’re talking about here. Venus also talks a lot on her show about something she describes as “cuck angst,” ANGST, which seems to describe you perfectly.
“One of the things that attracted me to cuckolds was their ability to turn something potentially painful and uncomfortable — their partner having a sexual experience with someone else — into something pleasurable and fun,” said Venus. “And while cucks can experience intense feelings of jealousy, doubt, and anxiety, ‘cuck angst’ is a part of the thrill for the cuckold. But it can be very scary and uncomfortable, particularly before that first experience.”
How do you get over the angst and learn to enjoy your partner fucking around on you in actual-fuckingaround-on-you practice and not just fantasizing-aboutthem-fucking-around-on-you theory?
“The only way to get the post-cuck glow on the other side is to lean into it,” said Venus. “That’s not to say that you have to navigate these powerful emotions all on your own! Your partner has a role to play in helping you through it. They can write a little lovely reassurance letter for you to open when you absolutely need it, or make a point to set aside time each week to have a check-in conversation, and spend some extra quality time with you.”
I would also recommend your partner fuck the shit out of you immediately after they get with this colleague — setting aside whether getting with a colleague is advisable — because reclamation sex, according to cucks, is the best part.
“I’ve also found that cucks supporting other cucks during those anxious times has been really helpful,” said Venus, “so, consider reaching out to other couples with similar dynamics who may be open to friendships. Lastly, I would suggest a somatic sex coach who can give you some exercises you can do at home to help you relax your body and your mind when the angst gets difficult. Ultimately the whole dance of emotions and feelings involved with being a cuck gets easier over time and you can both enjoy the next-level love, trust, and connection that this kind of relationship is known for.”
Follow Venus on BlueSky @CuckoldressV and check out her podcast atvenuscuckoldress.com.
