Queen City Nerve - January 12, 2022

VOLUME 4, ISSUE 4; JANUARY 12 - JANUARY 25, 2022; WWW.QCNERVE.COM

NeWs: COVID magnifies existing issues at Uptown jail pg. 4

FoOd: Chocolate with a

conscience pg. 10

ThRoUgH A NeW LeNs Two photo exhibits share different aspects of the Black American experience

By Karie Simmons & Ryan Pitkin

Featuring music from Star Wars, E.T., Star Trek, The X-Files, and more!

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@QU EEN CIT YN ERVE W W W.QCN ERVE .C OM PUBLISHER JUSTIN LAFRANCOIS j l af ranc ois@qc ne r ve . c om EDITOR-IN-CHIEF RYAN PITKIN r pit k in@qc ne r ve . c om ART DIRECTOR JAYME JOHNSON j j ohnson@qc ne r ve . c om

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

NEWS&OPINION

4 ON THE INSIDE BY RYAN PITKIN

COVID-19 magnifies existing issues in Mecklenburg County jail

ARTS&CULTURE

6 THROUGH A NEW LENS BY KARIE SIMMONS & RYAN PITKIN Two photo exhibits share different aspects of the Black American experience

MUSIC

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8 A YOUNG MAN’S JOURNEY BY RYAN PITKIN Ahmir comes of age in new ‘Timeless’ album 9 SOUNDWAVE

No Plastic Bags

FOOD&DRINK

10 THE CONSCIOUS CACAO BY PAT MORAN The Underground Truffle teams with CocoaEthika in making morally rich chocolate 12 LIFELINE: 10 COOL THINGS TO DO IN TWO WEEKS

LIFESTYLE

13 PUZZLES 14 THE SEEKER BY KATIE GRANT 14 HOROSCOPE 15 SAVAGE LOVE

NEWS & OPINION FEATURE

ON THE INSIDE COVID-19 maginifies existing issues within Mecklenburg County jail

to take specific actions “to have order and control restored in the jail.”

On Jan. 3, the NC Department of Health and Human Services released a report recommending that MCSO depopulate the jail by nearly 33% from 1,407 incarcerated people to less than 1,000. In the report, Chris Wood, chief jail inspector with NC DHHS Division of Health Service Regulation, wrote, “Staffing shortages exist that pose an

certain policies and procedures.

For Abraham, who said she was forced into an early retirement in March 2021, this all comes back to the way McFadden has approached his position since his swearing in on Dec. 4, 2018.

“What he don’t realize, the people who work under you, they make you or break you,” Abraham told Queen City Nerve. “You’re only as good as your crew is, but he came in there so arrogant and just didn’t care.”

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BY RYAN PITKIN

The first time Hope Abraham laid eyes on Mcklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden was directly following his swearing in on Dec. 4, 2018.

McFadden was doing his rounds to introduce himself to all his new officers and staff. Abraham, then a 22-year veteran of the Mecklenburg County Sheriff ’s Office, was working at what was then called Jail North, where she would pick up overtime shifts on top of her normal shifts at the central jail in Uptown Charlotte. Her first impression of her new boss was not great.

According to Abraham and several other detention officers who have told similar stories, McFadden’s first speech was a challenge to his staff.

“He got up in front of everybody, he said ‘Who don’t want to be here? Let me know now so I can go ahead and give you your walking papers.’ I was like, ‘Well damn, this is how you start off?’ It was very arrogant.”

McFadden’s introduction speeches don’t all that out of the ordinary for an incoming sheriff who wanted to change the culture in the department.

In fact, McFadden enjoyed plenty of popularity as he began his term, following through on his campaign promise to end the 287g program that partnered MCSO with ICE and pushing through progressive policies to help people incarcerated in his jails.

In what would have been unheard of during previous administrations, local activist groups called a press conference in January 2019 to mark McFadden’s first 30 days in office and thank him for ending 287g. Queen City Nerve recognized him as “Best Rabble Rouser” in our 2019 Best in the Nest awards, citing his proclivity to shake up the status quo in law enforcement.

However, happenings over the past year have cast McFadden’s tenure in a new light, as violent incidents inside the Uptown jail have become more frequent and dozens of former staff members have begun to speak out against his policies.

In late 2021, 11 former staff members sent an open letter to local elected officials calling on them

sworn into office, announced her candidacy for sheriff. Though now employed by the Gaston County Sheriff ’s Office, Hicks told Queen City Nerve she could no longer stand by while her former MCSO colleagues were attacked, incarcerated people were placed in unsafe conditions, and the department she once took pride in was allowed to fall into disrepute.

Hicks said she has stayed in close touch with people who are still employed in MCSO facilities, and decided to run due to calls from those who used to work under her calling on her to do so.

“These people are like family, and they’re suffering greatly,” she said. “I just had to do something. I don’t know where it will go, but people need people that know the operation. People need people that care about the people that run the operation and the people that are incarcerated, and are going to do it in the most humane and dignified way. This is not happening right now. People are reaching out and I have to do something.”

Attacks increase on the inside

AUJIENA HICKS ANNOUNCES HER CANDIDACY FOR SHERIFF ON JAN. 7.

PHOTO COURTESY OF WCCB CHARLOTTE

imminent threat to safety of the inmates and staff at [Mecklenburg County Jail Central].”

While McFadden has responded to the report by blaming COVID-19 outbreaks and pointing to similar staffing shortages across the country, the NC DHHS report also cites recent interviews in which McFadden has blamed staff for not complying with

Now as McFadden approaches his first reelection campaign and a crisis in his jail, at least one former MCSO staff member has announced their intentions to run against him.

On Jan. 7, former MCSO assistant facility commander Aujiena Hicks, who was fired by McFadden in December 2018 before he was even

Hicks said she had only met McFadden once in passing before learning he was running for sheriff.

She had no reason to believe her job was in trouble when he was elected in November 2018, just as she marked her 18th anniversary working with MCSO. However, on the day before McFadden was sworn in, she began to see posts from colleagues who were being called into the jail one by one and let go. Soon she got a call asking her to come in.

“Garry didn’t talk to me about it, he sent the chiefs to do that, and they were very upset about it,” she recalled. “They didn’t understand it themselves.”

In a termination letter signed by McFadden on Dec. 3, 2018, McFadden writes that Hicks’ services are no longer required, and unemployment paperwork from the NC Department of Commerce states the reason for her termination as “lack of work.”

Though McFadden turned down requests for an interview for this story, MCSO did respond to a request for comment on specific claims and concerns, including the firing of Hicks and others before McFadden took office.

An MCSO spokesperson cited NC law that gives sheriffs the exclusive right to hire, discharge, and supervise the employees in their respective office and to do so “at will,” which means they can legally let go of employees without giving them a reason.

Within three days after her firing, Hicks had a job at Gaston County Sheriff ’s Office. She brought over another person who had just been let go, and another the next week. She estimates that in the

NEWS & OPINION FEATURE time since, at least a dozen people have left MCSO for GCSO despite the significant decrease in pay.

Since then, she has watched from the outside as attacks on her former colleagues have risen.

Jail records show a more than 400% increase in attacks on guards by detainees from fiscal year 2019 when there were 13 recorded attacks to 2021 when there were 68.

Reporting by WCNC’s Nate Morabito in late 2021 uncovered email correspondence between staff members who were concerned about “dangerously low” levels of staffing within the jail. Responding to those concerns, McFadden stated that he had been “putting out fires that I believe supervisors should be handling” then continuing to “put out more fires that go on unattended because staff are tired.”

In the emails, dated September 2021, McFadden says some of his staff are out “because the government give them that option.”

It’s not just the detention officers who are put in dangerous situations by the conditions inside the jail.

Reporting by the Charlotte Observer in September found that MCSO violated state regulations designed to ensure the safety of detainees connected to the deaths of two people incarcerated at the Uptown jail within eight days of each other in May 2021.

The violations came in staff’s failure to check on detainees as often as they are required to.

In an open response to the NC DHHS report in January, McFadden stated, “We have been very transparent about the shortages facing the agency and we are exhausting all options to ensure the safety and security of [Mecklenburg County Detention Center-Central]. These are unprecedented times. Our staff has worked through the COVID-19 Pandemic since the beginning of 2020. They are fatigued, coping with loss due to the virus or battling the virus themselves while still fulfilling their duties at MCSO. We must take all of these factors into account, but we will not cease in our efforts to adequately operate our detention facility.”

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A refusal to act

Attempting to look past McFadden’s aggressive introductory speech, detention officer Hope Abraham continued to do her job the way she had always done it upon his swearing-in. However, it was upon the onset of the pandemic that she began experiencing issues with leadership.

It began with a supply of masks for detention officers that came in a box with an expiration date

six years past. Abraham told Queen City Nerve that, upon questioning her superiors about the expired masks, she received a call from McFadden himself, who asked her full name and details about what she did and where in the jail she worked, then abruptly ended the call without addressing the issue.

The incident that led to her retirement also involved a mask, though under much different circumstances. Abraham recalled that she got into it with a detainee about his refusal to wear a mask while he was on the phone, and after he got off the call he told her that if he saw her outside of the jail he would “blow her motherfuckin’ head off.”

Abraham filed a report for communicating threats but it went ignored, and when she went to her superior, he told her there would be no repercussions for the incident, calling Abraham “a hothead.”

She was moved to a new pod, where an inmate began giving her trouble by allegedly masturbating in front of her and throwing urine and feces through a hole in his cell door any time she or other officers would get near. She said officers could have put the man in solitary confinement or at least forced him to close the hole through which he was targeting them, but she was told to laugh it off and the detainee would eventually get tired.

“As long as I’ve worked there, I have never had urine or feces thrown at me,” Abraham said. “You can talk junk all day long, as long as you keep your hands to yourself. You don’t approach me, we’re fine.”

Things came to a head soon thereafter when the detainee who had threatened to shoot her attacked one of her coworkers, injuring them. She said she felt guilty for the incident even though she had done what she could to raise the alarm about the detainee. She blamed the issue on policies implemented by McFadden.

“They let everything go over. ‘Just stand down, be easy, don’t do this, don’t do that,’” Abraham said, referencing her superiors. “Why? This is our job. I told them to give the keys to the HNICs [slang for detainees who call the shots in the jail] and let them run the pod. What do y’all need us here to work for? You are leaving the institution to be run by the inmates.”

Abraham decided she couldn’t take it anymore and took paid leave. She saw a doctor who diagnosed her with post-traumatic stress disorder, then requested a new position within MCSO that did not involve engaging with detainees, citing ADA accommodations.

She was offered a secretarial job that would bring a $15,000 pay cut, which she declined, insisting that

she be given one of the other open non-detaineefacing job positions that had been posted publicly and wouldn’t force her to take a pay cut.

By March 1, 2021, Abraham had run out of paid time off and bills were piling up. Four years short of receiving her full pension, she retired. She now works at Charlotte-Douglas international Airport. A case she filed against MCSO with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is still pending.

Concerns for the incarcerated

An open letter sent to local elected officials and signed by 11 former MCSO staff members — which do not include Hicks or Abraham — cites the rise in attacks on detention officers as a reason for action, though staffing shortages and COVID-19 outbreaks also pose a grave risk to those incarcerated in the facility.

Queen City Nerve spoke with two men who we confirmed were recently incarcerated at the jail in Uptown. One man, who asked not to be named due to pending charges and concerns that he may end up back inside, spent three weeks in the jail in December. He described spending the first seven days in a pod with 14 other men, all of whom were made to sit and sleep on the floor.

He recalled watching one man suffer from four seizures during his first day in the pod, claiming that after each seizure staff would simply take the man out of the room for a short time for treatment then roll him back into the pod in a wheelchair.

Once he was finally placed into a cell, the man said he was kept there for 23 hours a day for the next two weeks, only let out to shower, use the phone or socialize for one hour. He noticed a lack of detention officers compared to past times he had been incarcerated, and said lunch would come later and later in the day as time progressed.

Another man who was incarcerated at the jail in December said there was a lack of COVID-19 testing for detainees.

“Through the processing they don’t know if you have corona they just take you into the quarantine room,” he said, adding that he quarantined with three to five people at a time.

At the time of a state-run inspection carried out on Dec. 21 that led in part to the NC DHHS report, a fourth of the incarcerated population was reported as being infected with COVID-19.

The December detainee said that many of his fellow detainees didn’t shower because they wanted to use their time outside of the cell to call family, but gang members would tie up the phones and claim them for themselves and fellow members.

Queen City Nerve spoke with defense attorney

Tim Emry, who is currently running for district attorney against incumbent Spencer Merriweather.

Emry said he was concerned when he received the open letter from former MCSO staff, as it appeared to be calling for more harsh treatment of detainees, something he stands strongly against.

Speaking after the release of the NC DHHS report, however, he said the conditions described within were worrisome for both staff and detainees.

Since the pandemic started, Emry said he’s had multiple clients who felt like they were assaulted or targeted by staff, ignored when they were having a medical emergency, and/or not adequately advised or protected from the risk of COVID-19.

“The concern with staff shortages and low staff morale centers around safety, both for the people who are locked up and the people working inside the jail,” Emry wrote in an email. “If staff feels unsupported or without adequate assistance, they may start going it on their own, not following protocol or best practices. If this happens and they become assaultive or aggressive to the people who are locked up, I would imagine it could get very ugly.

“Being incarcerated is traumatic and stressful enough, even when conditions are normal. In the situation we have now: pandemic, lockdowns due to exposure and infection, staff shortages, it can escalate quickly and threaten the safety and security of all parties.”

It’s a situation that Hicks warned can lead to an “old-school jail mentality,” one that she’s concerned has already taken hold within the Mecklenburg County Detention Center.

“The Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office has always operated under direct supervision principles, and there’s a strategic and specific way that things were done to minimize the impact of incarceration for individuals by treating them humanely and building rapport and respect with those individuals,” she said, “and when you do not practice within those principles what happens is you get the old-school jail mentality and it creates chaos.”

She credits this chaos to McFadden’s policies and his inexperience running jails, adding that he has spent too much of his tenure focused on photo opportunities and press events.

“You should be concentrating on the safety of the detainees, staff and the community, and not be selfserving but continue to do what you’re required to do as a sheriff by serving,” she said. “Serving the community means maintaining safety in those facilities around this community. If you have a lack of staff to do so, you’re inadequate at the job you were voted in to do.”

RPITKIN@QCNERVE.COM

ARTS FEATURE

THROUGH A NEW LENS

Two photo exhibits share different aspects of the Black American experience

BY KARIE SIMMONS & RYAN PITKIN

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“I saw that a camera could be a weapon against poverty, against racism, against all sort of social wrongs,” iconic Black photographer Gordon Parks told an interviewer in 1999, just three years from his 90th birthday. “I knew at that point that I had to have a camera.”

Parks got himself a camera, and before passing away in 2006, built a lasting legacy that lives on in the images he captured from the 1940s to ’70s.

His legacy also lives on in those who have followed in his path — photographers and artists of all mediums who have documented the African American experience. To kick off 2022, Charlotte will host two exhibits that use photographic imagery to tell different aspects of what it means to be Black in America through different artistic mediums and in different times.

JOHN ‘TREY’ MILES III AT THE AMERICA GENTRIFIED OPENING. PHOTO BY GRANT BALDWIN

Collage for the culture

The collages are composed of pre-selected Eighteen Nine through Jan. 30. It is the first exhibit The Merriam-Webster definition of gentrification photographs that Miles chose for how they represent in Nine Eighteen Nine’s new 13,000-square-foot is “a process in which a poor area (as of a city) gentrification in one way or another. He constructed space inside the VAPA Center.

In 2021, a cooperative of diverse artists experiences an influx of middle-class or wealthy each piece by manipulating the photographs on including BLKMRKTCLT, people who renovate Jazz Arts Charlotte, and rebuild homes and McColl Center and more businesses and which worked with Mecklenburg often results in an increase County to transform an in property values and the underutilized county displacement of earlier, building, the former Hal usually poorer residents.”

Marshall Center, into the In the 11 years since VAPA Center.

Joanne Rogers moved to Located on North Charlotte from New York, Tryon Street, the VAPA she has seen gentrification Center currently features run its course in the five galleries, theaters, rapidly growing city. rehearsal space, practice Little by little, space and art studios for developers have been individual artists. changing the character Nine Eighteen Nine of Charlotte’s oldest has 8,000 square feet of neighborhoods, many gallery space at the VAPA of which are historically Center, plus an event Black, and pricing out the venue, classrooms, a wood people who’ve lived there shop and a print shop. for decades.

ONE OF 50 PIECES IN THE NEW AMERICA GENTRIFIED EXHIBIT AT NINE EIGHTEEN NINE STUDIO. The gallery is also ARTWORK BY JOHN ‘TREY’ MILES III And what’s worse, home to nine studios Rogers said, is that some that will host artists participating in The Palette a computer then cutting and arranging them to people — usually those who benefit — see Table, a “roundtable” group Rogers founded in recreate a hyper photorealistic collage. gentrification as an improvement.

The art within the America Gentrified exhibit 2016 with a mission to provide information and “It’s not really an improvement. It’s not really moving forward. And if it is moving forward, at was heavily influenced by Romare Bearden, a increased opportunities for artists of color through what cost?” said Rogers, owner of Nine Eighteen multimedia artist native to Charlotte who began mentoring, skills training, administrative support and networking.

Nine Studio Gallery in Uptown’s newly created creating collages in his mid-twenties.

Rogers originally ran The Palette Table out of a Miles’ artistic journey began similarly to that of Visual and Performing Arts Center (VAPA).

4,000-square-foot home-turned-gallery near Mint Bearden, and his most recent work is reminiscent “These are human lives that have existed here.

Hill. of the Queen City icon.

In it, Miles has coalesced This has been their home for how long and should The additional space inside the new VAPA Center people be just allowed, investors be just allowed, to traditional scenery into abstract artwork in a way location will allow for more collaboration and access that demonstrates the true imagery and precision of do such damage? There’s a heavy collateral in these to artists with strong messages like Miles. the collage process. so-called improvements.”

It is Rogers’ goal that America Gentrified Miles’ earlier pieces focused on the aesthetic The soul of Charlotte is not being nurtured, it’s being destroyed, Rogers said, and it’s not just relationships between shape, form and color, presents people with a new perspective on the happening here; gentrification is a story so constant while his current works are influenced by political impacts of gentrification, not just in Charlotte but in across the United States that it’s on the verge struggles affecting the Black community in the past cities like it across the country.

And hopefully, through art, the message will of becoming normalized to the point that even and present. sink in.

“America Gentrified tells the story of opponents see it as inevitable.

“You’re not writing. You’re not screaming in gentrification everywhere,” said Rogers, who Rogers is hoping her gallery’s newest exhibit, America Gentrified by Charlotte artist John “Trey” curated the show. “People are disenfranchised, they someone’s face. You’re putting your art out there for Miles, III, will help people see gentrification for lose their home, they lose their investments because people to see and I think people respond faster, or other people are coming in and investing in the land. more comfortably, to art than they do other forms,” what it truly is.

“The artist tries to make you feel like it’s only one Rogers said. “It’s a louder, but softer voice.”

America Gentrified is a 50-piece collage series constructed on 11-by-14-inch panels that place. He shows you the story of the changes going showcase the various forms of gentrification within on in one neighborhood throughout all 50 series.

America Gentrified will be on display at Nine a community.

ARTS FEATURE Documenting a forgotten era

Tucked away into a corner of University City in northeast Charlotte, off an unassuming side road that connects to the busy Mallard Creek Church Road, sits a building that is somewhere near its 100th birthday.

apartment complex that overlooks it.

For five years now, staff at the Charlotte Museum of History has been leading an effort to restore and relocate the Siloam School, a wooden structure that, beginning in the 1920s, hosted African-American students ranging from first to seventh grade.

In that time, the Save Siloam School Project has raised more than $660,000 toward its $1-million goal – along with an immeasurable amount of

FORMER ROSENWALD SCHOOL STUDENT AND TEACHER ELLIE J. DAHMER, WIDOW OF SLAIN CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER VERNON F. DAHMER SR.

Along the way, he interviewed former Rosenwald School students and teachers, as well as preservationists and community leaders.

That work became A Better Life for Their Children, a book of photographs, stories and essays published in early 2021, then inspired the accompanying exhibit.

“We often see America’s challenges as intractable, especially those related to race,” Feiler said. “Booker T. Washington and Julius Rosenwald reached across divides of race, religion and region, and they changed this nation. Their accomplishment still speaks to us today, showing that individual actions matter.”

While the Siloam School was designed using the Rosenwald plan, there are no records indicating that the school received Rosenwald funds.

It is likely that the local Black farming community in the Mallard Creek area raised money for the school and donated time and labor to build it.

In 1890, African Americans in what would become University City began fighting for control of their schools. A petition by the “Colored Citizens of Mallard Creek” was brought before the Mecklenburg County Board of Education calling on the board to appoint a “committee of colored men

to look after the interests of the colored school in said district,” adding that “the present committee of white men fail to take that interest in the welfare of their school.”

In 1903, the board purchased a one-acre lot on John Adams Road, then made of dirt. The lot would become the site of Siloam School.

Despite not being officially considered a Rosenwald School, staff at the Charlotte Museum of History and other advocates hope the exhibit will highlight the importance of preserving historic educational landmarks like Siloam School. The relevance doesn’t stop there.

“A Better Life for Their Children offers us the opportunity to explore the history of education in Charlotte and across the South,” said Fannie Flono, Charlotte Museum of History trustee and chair of the museum’s Save Siloam School Project. “This history has never been more relevant, as our city and county work to improve equality and opportunity. The Rosenwald Schools story can help us understand how we got here and how we move forward.”

The exhibit will open Feb. 26 and run through June 18, included in museum admission.

INFO@QCNERVE.COM

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PHOTO BY ANDREW FEILER

Its rich history is unbeknownst to almost all of awareness around the history of the school. the thousands of people who drive near it every Yet to those not in local government, day, or the hundreds who live in the Mallard Glen philanthropy, education or journalism circles, the words “Siloam School” may ring a bell but rarely garner any real acknowledgement. A new historic photo exhibit that opens Feb. 26 at Charlotte Museum of History will give the full context around the Rosenwald era, which helped inspire the construction of Siloam School sometime in the early 1920s.

Based on the book by photographer Andrew Feiler, A Better Life for Their Children tells the story of one of the most significant moments in the history of education in the rural South: the ambitious Rosenwald Schools program, launched by educator Booker T. Washington and Julius Rosenwald, president of Sears, Roebuck & Company.

Of the nearly 5,000 schools built for Black children with the support of the Rosenwald Fund, only about 500 survive today, and many of those are threatened by decay and neglect.

A photographer and fifth-generation Jewish Georgian, Feiler drove more than 25,000 miles across the South to document the fragile history of ANDREW FEILER Rosenwald schools.

PHOTO BY PAUL PERDUE

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MUSIC FEATURE

A YOUNG MAN’S JOURNEY Ahmir comes of age in new ‘Timeless’ album

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BY RYAN PITKIN

When I first met Isaiah Ford in the food court at SouthPark Mall back in February 2017, he was only an adult by legal standards. Three weeks past his 18th birthday and two days past the release of his debut album, Black Tape, which he dropped under the pseudonym Ahmir the King, the young rapper had yet to finish high school.

Upon listening to his latest release, Timeless, which dropped in December 2021, it quickly became clear that Ford has officially entered adulthood.

Not only had he dropped the King from his name, using just his middle name Ahmir for a moniker, but true personal growth was apparent in his lyrical content.

Sure, on Black Tape he had tackled adult content such as police violence, having just witnessed the local unrest that followed the police killing of Keith Lamont Scott in north Charlotte.

While he did dive into some drama between friends in Black Tape, in Timeless Ahmir truly becomes introspective, looking back on a transition into adulthood that saw him finding and losing love, becoming disconnected from his childhood friends for the first time, and losing one of his closest family members to incarceration.

“Life changed,” he tells me. “You know how they say life hits you fast after school? Life really changed.”

We’re sitting at a table on the mezzanine above Starbucks in Harris Teeter on Central Avenue, where it’s clear that the degree to which his life has changed since we first met is only just setting in as he says it.

“It was like when you go from a space where you’re around everybody you know for your whole life, you’re around all your people, and then everybody kinda left,” he says of the time after he graduated from Rocky River High School.

Not only did most of his friends go off to college, but he moved with his mother to a suburb of Charlotte well outside of Mecklenburg County.

He was out of touch and out of sorts. His relationship with his girlfriend went bad and he

missed his friends. He took his first full-time job at Target and hated it.

Charlotte was calling him, so he moved back to the Queen City, living with his uncle until he was kicked out over what he calls a misunderstanding.

He still valued being around his people and his recording studio, so he lived out of his car for a bit. And such was the backdrop for the making of Timeless, a record that sees Ahmir battling with themes of love, loss, loyalty and insecurity.

“This album was just the progression of what I

thing, and so after doing it for so long, you think you want these things, you want to get outta the house, you want to live, and then you get tired of that shit,” he says. “You grow out of it and you start to understand what people been saying when you was younger but you had to see it for yourself.”

During the time he was writing and recording Timeless, Ahmir watched friends get hooked on drugs and alcohol.

He then saw his cousin caught up in a scary situation that resulted from an attempted robbery.

AHMIR PHOTO BY @KNXWLEDGEISPOWER

thought at the time, and you really hear me grow up,” he says. “Then ‘Timeless’ [the outro track] at the end, it’s just more of a reflective standpoint.”

In that titular track, Ahmir reflects on what he once coveted — money, cash, clothes, hoes — and asks if it’s worth it.

“It’s a cycle you get stuck in and it’s not a good

Three men tried to rob his cousin, one of them ended up dead. His cousin went to jail.

Ahmir references this and other personal experiences in Timeless, fully expressing his fears and frustrations in tracks like “Hold Us Down” and “Til the Casket.”

In our conversation, he’s not as ready to dive into

specifics, understandably in the situation regarding his cousin, who’s still caught in legal limbo.

Yet it’s not hard to see just how much that one tragic incident has affected the way he looks at the world.

“It was just a layered situation when it comes to the people and parties involved; it will make you reconsider who you have around you,” he says. “It was one of those things where you’re like, damn, you really never know how deep shit go, people looking into you and things like that.”

These issues manifest in the track “Questions,” in which Ahmir confronts the listener with a litany of questions that test their loyalty — be it a love interest or a friend.

It’s something he’s struggled with his whole life.

“I think you hear that on Black Tape even,” he recalls. “It’s easy not to trust people. A lot of people, they don’t really stand on their word, and I feel like a lot of people, they don’t live by the same morals that I do. So it’s easy for miscommunication to happen, because what you think is right and what I think is right might not be the same.”

Yet still, there are some friendships he’s held onto through the tough times, and over the past year, he’s been able to see the work of his peers pay off.

Charlotte rappers Reuben Vincent and MAVI — both friends of Ahmir’s who appear on Timeless — have seen great success in recent months. September saw MAVI join Jack Harlow’s Crème De La Crème Tour while, in December, east Charlotte’s own Reuben Vincent was signed to Jay-Z’s Roc Nation.

Watching the success of his longtime friends has only vindicated Ahmir, justifying his drive and pushing him to keep moving forward.

“I know 1,000% it’s possible because we’ve seen it — I’ve seen it,” he tells me. “I’m proud of these boys. You’ve seen us being supportive of each other from day one. Just knowing that what I’ve seen in them came to fruition, I know what I see in myself is also going to come to fruition.

“Everybody, like our entire generation, we’re really trying to change shit,” he says of his local peers. “These next couple of years in Charlotte, we really want to do things different as far as shows and community and really building, so that’s a big, big focus. But them making the accolades that they’ve been able to achieve and things like that, that’s definitely going to open doors.”

Now he just has to stay prepare to walk through them.

RPITKIN@QCNERVE.COM

MUSIC SOUNDWAVE

COUNTRY/FOLK/AMERICANA

Jason Isbell w/ Adia Victoria (Ovens Auditorium) Corey Smith w/ Simerson Hill (Coyote Joe’s) Urban Soil (Thomas Street Tavern)

HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B

POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ

POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC

Two Friends (The Fillmore)

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 12 ROCK/PUNK/METAL

Jocelyn & Chris w/ Falllift (Neighborhood Theatre)

HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B

Phaze Gawd w/ B-Villainous, Pet Bug (Snug Harbor)

THURSDAY, JANUARY 13 JAZZ/CLASSICAL/ INSTRUMENTAL Brandon Stevens (Middle C Jazz)

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

Oberlin w/ Rugg, Flat Out Insult, Dylan Innes (The Milestone)

JAZZ/CLASSICAL/ INSTRUMENTAL

Jay D. Jones: Classic ‘70s (Middle C Jazz)

COUNTRY/FOLK/AMERICANA

HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B

POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ

POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ

Adam Ezra Group (Neighborhood Theatre) Prolix w/ Jade, Mob Tactics (SERJ)

FRIDAY, JANUARY 14 ROCK/PUNK/METAL

Neil Jackson Band (Amos’ Southend) Lenny Federal Band (Comet Grill) Leaving for Arizona w/ Sunday Boxing, Fantomex, Hey Richard (The Milestone) Tim Reynolds TR3 (Neighborhood Theatre) Wolves X4 w/ Neckscars, Celebration Summer, Totally Slow (Skylark Social Club) Seven Day Haze EP release party w/ Kyle Kelly Band, Red Dress Amy (Snug Harbor) Hope Nicholls’ Birthday Bash feat. It’s Snakes, Space Daddy & The Galactic Go-Go’s, Them Pants, Kadey Ballard (Tommy’s Pub) Seth Winters Band (Thomas Street Tavern) Courtney Lynn & Quinn w/ Late Night Special, Ryan Armstrong (Visulite Theatre)

HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B

Anderson East (The Fillmore)

SINGER-SONGWRITER/ACOUSTIC

Drayton Farley w/ Jonathan Peyton (Evening Muse) Jon Ward Beyle (Primal Brewery)

POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ

Pip the Pansy w/ Florecita (Evening Muse) Ashlyn Uribe w/ Name Unknown, DJ Javes (Petra’s)

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SUNDAY, JANUARY 16

SATURDAY, JANUARY 15 ROCK/PUNK/METAL

Baroness (The Milestone) Citizen Cope (Neighborhood Theatre) Sail the Rain w/ Rest Ashore, Sometime in February, Jordyn Zaino (Petra’s) Reed Turchi (Thomas Street Tavern)

POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ

Sidewinder w/ Shotgun Saints (Amos’ Southend)

HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B

Terminator X of Public Enemy (Crown Station) Salute the Soldier w/ RacetrackA$h (Evening Muse)

Natalie Carr (Evening Muse)

AfroPop! Charlotte (Crown Station) SAINTED feat. DJ Fannie Mae (The Underground) Crystal Skies (SERJ)

(Neighborhood Theatre) Signal Fire w/ Seranation (Skylark Social Club) Gasp w/ Faye (Snug Harbor) James McMurtry w/ BettySoo (Visulite Theatre)

JAZZ/CLASSICAL/INSTRUMENTAL

Quiana Parler feat. Charlton Singleton (Middle C Jazz)

SATURDAY, JANUARY 22 ROCK/PUNK/METAL

Sam Burchfield & the Scoundrels w/ Taylor Winchester (Evening Muse) Donnie Doolittle w/ Worsen, Guilty View (The Milestone) The Wormholes w/ Ancient Cities, Pleasure House

The Breakfast Club (’80s retro band) (Amos’ Southend) Dissonance/Resonance feat. Raph, Starlitmire, Brennan Fowler, Stand Gibson, Micah Troublefield (Petra’s) VISIT QCNERVE.COM FOR THE FULL SOUNDWAVE LISTING.

Omari & the Hellhounds (Comet Grill) Hazy Sunday (Petra’s)

TUESDAY, JANUARY 18 SINGER-SONGWRITER/ACOUSTIC

Cory Branan w/ Andy Bilinski (Evening Muse)

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 19 ROCK/PUNK/METAL

Nonpoint w/ Dropout Kings (Amos’ Southend) Illusions of Grandeur w/ Offensive, Detest the Throne, Messy Stains (The Milestone)

HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B

Phaze Gawd w/ FOKIE Dope, Dotwav (Snug Harbor)

THURSDAY, JANUARY 20 ROCK/PUNK/METAL

Indigo de Souza w/ Truth Club (Amos’ Southend) Zephyrantes w/ Wild Trees (The Milestone) Sports (Neighborhood Theatre) The New Creatures w/ North by North, David Taylor & the Tallboys (Snug Harbor)

JAZZ/CLASSICAL/INSTRUMENTAL Shelley Ruffin (Middle C Jazz)

SINGER-SONGWRITER/ACOUSTIC

Carolina Songwriters Showcase w/ David Childers (Petra’s)

FRIDAY, JANUARY 21 ROCK/PUNK/METAL

Lenny Federal Band (Comet Grill) Abyssal Frost w/ Holyroller, Grave Next Door, MNRVA, Tommy Stewart’s Dyerwolf (The Milestone) Tiny City w/ Juniper Avenue, Caffeine Daydream (Petra’s) Punk Rock Pizza Party feat. On the Cinder, Pink Eye, Sibannac, Bog Loaf, Good Good Grief, Dead Senate (Skylark Social Club) Are You In? (Incubus tribute) w/ American Theory (Amos’ Southend)

JANUARY 2 0 2 2 F R I , JA N UA RY 1 4

DRAYTON FARLEY & JONATHAN PEYTON PIP THE PANSY’S “A BUMPIN GOOD TIME TOUR” W/ FLORECTIA

S A T, J A N U A R Y 1 5

SAM FRIBUSH ORGAN TRIO

M O N , JA N UA RY 1 7

FIND YOUR MUSE OPEN MIC

T U E , JA N UA RY 1 8

CORY BRANAN W/ ANDY BILINSKI

F R I , JA N UA RY 2 1

G DAVIS COMEDY SHOW W/ MO HILL (18+)

NATALIE CARR S A T, J A N U A R Y 2 2

SAM BURCHFIELD & THE SCOUNDRELS W/ TAYLOR WINCHESTER

SALUTE THE SOLDIER W/ RACETRACKA$H

eveningmuse.com

3 3 2 7 n d av i d s o n s t, c h a r l o t t e n c

FOOD & DRINK FEATURE

THE CONSCIOUS CACAO The Underground Truffle teams with CocoaEthika in making morally rich chocolate

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BY PAT MORAN

“You want to taste it?” Esa Weinreb asks. She breaks off a piece of the chocolate bar and I pop it in my mouth. The earthy mélange of flavors is smooth yet biting, bright and fruity. It’s a taste that stretches back across centuries and continents.

We’re at The Underground Truffle in Plaza Midwood where founder Weinreb makes chocolate bars, truffles and other desserts from cacao beans; gives classes on the beanto-bar process; and hosts tastings and special events like a recent open house with local Vietnamese coffee company Robusta.

The bulk of Weinreb’s business is online and made to order, because The Underground Truffle is not a retail shop.

“I make everything fresh,” Weinreb says. “I don’t want it to be on a shelf.”

It turns out that crafting fresh chocolate is a time- and laborintensive process. Weinreb shows me seven steps, including roasting, cracking, winnowing, grinding and tempering, that help take cacao beans, the fruit of a tropical evergreen tree, to an attractively packaged chocolate bar. And that might be the easy part.

To get the beans to a chocolate maker like Weinreb, the cacao fruit must be hand-harvested, each bean extracted from the surrounding fruit, then fermented and sun-dried before an artisan like Weinreb can go to work turning them into chocolate.

Weinreb is currently working with a quarter-ton batch of beans from CocoaEthika, a Costa Rican company run by married couple Ben Henderson and Blanca Margarita Lopez Luchaire.

“It’s the least industrialized agriculture on the planet,” Henderson says of cacao farming. “It’s a human with a machete cutting a cacao pod off a tree

and opening it up.”

In Charlotte, Corrado Gelato makes chocolate gelato with Weinreb’s chocolate. Mano Bella Artisan Foods, which creates artisanal Italian food products, use Weinreb’s chocolate for their cannolis.

In addition, Jessica Henderson, who conducts online chocolate tastings, has used Weinreb’s truffles.

On Feb. 12, Weinreb will partner with UNC Charlotte Botanical Gardens for “Ganache in the Garden.” For past iterations of the event, the Gardens have sold orchids while Weinreb sold her chocolates to help raise money for the self-funded facility. Weinreb has also talked about chocolate and chocolate making under a live cacao tree on the grounds.

CocoaEthika and Weinreb have partnered in the chocolate-making process because both are dedicated to paying farmers a fair price for growing cacao, then helping them harvest it in an efficient and sustainable manner.

Four connoisseurs converge

Weinreb has fond memories of being in the kitchen with her father, who was a chef. Many of those memories revolve around tasting and cooking with chocolate. Weinreb’s Maltese father and Sicilian mother immigrated to England, where Weinreb was born in London, before later coming to the United States.

As a 12-year-old growing up in Charlotte, Weinreb was constantly on the lookout for the kind of European chocolate she enjoyed previously, but never could find it in the Queen City. As she grew to adulthood, Weinreb found a solution to her chocolate problem.

“I always loved to cook,” she says. “About 20 years ago, I thought, ‘I bet I can make chocolate.’”

Weinreb didn’t start from scratch with cacao beans. Instead, she worked with couverture, a chocolate created during the bean-to-bar process that contains a higher percentage of cocoa butter so that it melts and pours more smoothly. Chefs and chocolatiers use it creating truffles, bon bons and other confections.

Weinreb ordered couverture from a Venezuelan company that sent it along with a VHS tape on the chocolatemaking process. She was blown away.

“I had no idea that chocolate came from these pods and these beans,” she says.

Weinreb was bitten FROM LEFT: DAMIAN LOPEZ, BLANCA LOPEZ LUCHAIRE AND BEN HENDERSON. by the cacao bug. In 2015, PHOTO BY MAGICANDO LA VIDA she started working in a friend’s commercial Based in the tiny town of La Palma on Costa kitchen with cacao paste, adding coconut sugar Rica’s Osa Peninsula, CocoaEthika aims to bring to make chocolate bars and truffles. She sold her ethics back to an industry noted for its exploitation chocolates at a farmers market behind Pure Pizza of workers and farmers. Weinreb compares the in Plaza Midwood. By 2017, Weinreb and her work she, Henderson and Luchaire do — trading husband Gary decided she needed a bigger space directly with small farmers for a fair price — to closer to their home. When the couple discovered an the commodity cacao grown in West Africa for available space on Fulton Avenue, Weinreb saw the big companies like Nestle, Hershey and Mars. In possibilities.

October, Fortune reported that the Ivory Coast and “I had a vision,” she says. “Then I created this Ghana, which supply about 70% of the world’s space.” cocoa beans, exploit nearly 1.56 million children Weinreb learned that more people were looking — many as young as 5 — who do the back- into making chocolate from cacao beans. She joined breaking work of harvesting cocoa for commodity an organization called Yellow Seed, founded by chocolate. socially conscious entrepreneur Nancy Zamierowski,

who worked to get a fair cacao price for farmers.

“It didn’t work out, because they still weren’t charging enough,” Henderson says of Yellow Seed.

In 2018, Yellow Seed shut down. By then, Weinreb was already familiar with CocoaEthika, and in 2018, some friends invited Weinreb and her husband to visit Costa Rica. They went, determined to meet Henderson and Luchaire.

Born in Kansas, Ben Henderson grew up in Austin, Texas. In 2009, he was working in San Jose, Costa Rica. Blanca Luchaire was born in Cuba to a Cuban father and Costa Rican mother. When she was 5, her family moved back to Costa Rica. She followed her family’s tradition in the arts, working as a camera operator and video editor at Studio @ Musica, a facility owned by Latin Grammy winner Pipo Chavez.

As Henderson tells it, the couple was fated to meet. Driving with his friend Francella Rainfow to hear a DJ, he suddenly had a premonition that he was going to meet a woman who would mean much to him. At the club, Rainfow noticed Luchaire dancing and pointed her out to Henderson.

“I was instantly in love,” Henderson remembers.

He and Luchaire stepped outside to talk. Luchaire was impressed with Henderson’s perfectly accented Spanish, then she noticed a tattoo of Salvador Dali on his bicep. At the time, Luchaire was obsessed with Dali, particularly because she discovered depictions of visions she had experienced on an LSD trip in some of Dali’s paintings. (Luchaire’s greatgrandmother was also involved with the Dadaists in 1920s Paris, including Dali, and appears in photographs by Man Ray.) After this promising meeting, the couple lost track of each other. They had not exchanged phone numbers, and Henderson could not find Luchaire on Facebook. He kept searching, and after several months was ready to give up. That’s when they met passing in a narrow dark hallway at a club called La Chica. The couple was married under the stars at Playa Hermosa, and Henderson has raised Damian, Luchaire’s son from a previous relationship, as his own.

Henderson and Luchaire became obsessed with cacao after moving to the town of Santa Ana. They discovered a pile of cacao pods at a local farmers market and bought them all.

“It was just curiosity,” Luchaire says. Both chocolate lovers, they started researching the chocolate-making process, and experimented with fermenting the beans. Like Weinreb, they had never known that cacao comes from pods or that it grows in Costa Rica.

Pg. 11 JAN 12 - JAN 25, 2022 - QCNERVE.COM

FOOD & DRINK FEATURE The couple launched CocoaEthika in 2012.

Meanwhile, they were working in the city, and growing tired of the traffic, congestion and their careers. They bought property in the Osa Peninsula, one of the most biodiverse places on the planet and site of Corcovado National Park. They quit their jobs, and after a year-long family vacation that took them to the Netherlands, France, Argentina and Uruguay, they moved to a rustic house on the Osa Peninsula in 2015. The plan was to make and sell chocolate made from cacao. “[We wanted to] work at something that we love,” Henderson says. “We decided to take our passion and turn it into something of greater benefit to everyone.”

For their first harvesting season, they worked with wild cacao they found growing in the forest.

Henderson realized it would be difficult to keep finding cacao, so they posted flyers in town to attract farmers they could do business with.

One of the first farmers they met was Don Castro, who went out into the Parque Corcovado to do some illegal gold mining and came back with a few cacao pods. Castro started his plantation with 100 seeds he got from those pods. CocoaEthika now works primarily with two farmers, Aldolfo Vindas Rojas, known as Don Popo, and Marcos Jimenez, better known as Don Marcos.

Henderson and Luchaire buy beans from the farmers, paying them five times more than they would get at the local market. Cost-effective cacao also encourages farmers to keep growing the crop instead of replacing it with palm oil trees, Henderson says. As practiced, palm oil plantations require clear cutting the forest, which has a devastating impact on a huge number of plant and animal species.

“Cacao needs shade so you don’t have to clear cut and burn everything down just to plant it,” Henderson says. “It’s an alternative for farmers who would otherwise cut down trees to grow this monoculture palm oil.”

One important step in chocolate making is fermentation. The all-spontaneous, organic process requires enough wet mass, the volume of cacao beans, to introduce bacteria and raise the temperature in a fermentation box. The ideal amount is roughly 2,000 pods of cacao, or about 200 kilos of wet mass. Fermentation takes anywhere from 90 to 126 hours for the small-sized beans, says Henderson. It can take more than four days for larger beans, depending on the variety.

CocoaEthika also shares their zero-waste

post-harvest practices with the farmers. During fermentation, juice from the cacao fruit runs off.

Instead of tossing it out, CocoaEthika boils it down and makes caramel out of it. They also make vinegar, “cacao champaign,” and gummy bear-style fruit reductions that go into the bars. They share all this information with the farmers, and also teach them to make gourmet chocolate.

After Henderson and Luchaire ferment the beans they buy, they sun-dry them.

“We have sun drying tables,” Henderson says.

“It’s an outdoor solar dryer.”

The 18-meter-long building is covered with the netting used to dry coffee. The drying period is slow, lasting between a few weeks to a month. Then CocoaEthika sells its chocolate at local markets.

THE UNDERGROUND TRUFFLE DARK BAR.

A meeting in the forest

Word of CocoaEthika’s sustainable chocolatemaking made it to Yellow Seed, who profiled the couple in a 2016 newsletter, eventually prompting Weinreb’s visit to Costa Rica. When Henderson and Luchaire welcomed the Weinrebs to their small home, they treated their visitors to their wares.

“It was the best chocolate I ever tasted,”Weinreb says. The chocolate bar contained the caramel made from the juice from the cacao pod’s pulp. “It was like I’ve died and gotten to heaven.”

Next, hosts and visitors alike loaded into a jeep to visit Don Castro. Weinreb remembers driving down a dirt road, then disembarking to wade in waist-high water to cross a river. Don Castro was waiting on the other side. The farmer cut down a cacao pod with his machete, opened it up and offered it to Weinreb.

“I’m trying the pulp that surrounds the seed, and

it’s so sweet. I thought it would taste like chocolate but it didn’t.”

The Weinrebs made subsequent visits to the Osa Peninsula. Eventually, they had a cacao bean roaster made specially for CocoaEthika, a big barbecue drum that can be cranked by hand, so the beans roast evenly. The Weinrebs also helped fund a drying facility for CocoaEthika. Weinreb says they’re motivated to help Henderson and Luchaire because of the work they do.

“They’re passionate about the environment,” Weinreb says. “Their main thing is they want to designate the Osa Peninsula as the Champaign of cacao.”

In December, Henderson and Luchaire had a surplus of beans, a quarter ton, so the Weinrebs

PHOTO BY PAT MORAN

bought them and had them shipped back to Charlotte.

Though Weinreb has worked with beans from several sources, she’s now primarily crafting chocolate with CocoaEthika’s beans. Back at The Underground Truffle, she takes me though the chocolate-making steps. First she roasts them for 20-35 minutes at 255 degrees in a convection oven to assure air flow. Every 10 minutes, she takes the beans out, takes their temperature with an infrared thermometer and hand-turns them.

Then she cracks the beans by dropping them in a juicer, making sure to place a pillowcase over the machine to catch the flying cacao nibs and husks.

Next the nibs, the remnants of the beans’ shells, are separated by a winnower, which resembles a series of PVC tubes going into and out of a large plastic bucket. Weinreb hooks up a shop vacuum cleaner to

the contraption and switches it on. This creates “the Venturi Effect,” causing the lighter husks to separate from the heavier nibs. The husk-free nibs go into a melanger, where heated wheel-like stones grind and convert the nibs to a heated liquid couverture.

After the couverture cools for 24 hours, Weinreb pours it into trays. When she’s ready to make chocolate bars from the couverture, Weinreb puts the refrigerated product into a tempering machine. Depending on what you’re making, there’s a different tempering profile, because the heating temperatures are different for dark chocolate, milk chocolate and white chocolate, Weinreb says.

Extra ingredients, such as the coconut milk and panela (unrefined cane sugar) in the milk chocolate I tasted, can be added to the chocolate at different points during the chocolate-making process, depending on what you’re making. The completed chocolate is poured into molds. The mold Weinreb uses depicts the profile of an Olemec figure. The pre-Mayan Olemec civilization, dating from around 1000 BCE, created a chocolate drink called Xocolatl (pronounced sho-co-lattle).

Once the bars have cooled, Weinreb packages them in wrapping that depicts the Central American jungle. In subsequent packaging, she plans to display the name of the farmer who grew the beans that became the chocolate bar. Henderson applauds that decision.

“You can eat a chocolate and if you don’t know the name of the farmer that grew it, how can you even know if they got a fair shake?” he asks.

He is thankful that fate — or Yellow Seed — somehow brought the Weinrebs in partnership with CocoaEthika. “They’re an inspiration. We’ve become good friends. They’re not just business partners, they’re great friends. We consider them family.”

For now, the couple’s beans have gained a foothold in the US through The Underground Truffle.

For her part, Weinreb hopes consumers become more aware of chocolate and where it comes from.

Perhaps fine chocolate can reach the point that quality coffee, whiskey and wine have attained in the marketplace.

“Just be aware and conscious in general where your food comes from,” Weinreb says. “It’s good for you. It opens up your heart.”

“It’s not really our dream to have a successful chocolate company,” Henderson says. “It’s our dream to support the farmers and make beautiful chocolate. Every time it’s the same ingredients, but every single time we make a bar it can taste different, and in different beautiful ways.”

PMORAN@QCNERVE.COM

WEDNESDAY NIGHT LIVE: VISUAL VANGUARD CELEBRATION

To coincide with the Visual Vanguard exhibition, which examines 25 contemporary Black Carolina artists who create in a variety of vibrant and versatile media, this edition of Wednesday Night Live celebrates the power, passion and allure of the spoken word. Featured artist de’Angelo Dia, acclaimed as a poet, theologian, doctoral candidate at Union Presbyterian Seminary and self-described comic book scholar, joins fellow poets and spokenword masters Angelo Geter and Cedric Tillman to share reflections on the year 2021, along with works that embody a connection to the exhibit.

More: Free; Jan. 12, 7 p.m.; Gantt Center, 551 S. Tryon St.; ganttcenter.org

‘BRASILIA: LIFE AFTER DESIGN’

IT’S SNAKES

CHARLIE PARKER: REVERBERATIONS BARONESS

Arguably the greatest saxophonist of all time, Charlie Parker changed the course of jazz music.

His genius reverberated well beyond the musical circles of his time to inspire masterful players like John Coltrane, writers like Ralph Ellison and visual artists as disparate as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Romare Bearden. In partnership with the UNC Charlotte Department of Music’s Charlie Parker 101 project, this event includes live music, a spokenword performance by Hannah Hasan, and a panel conversation featuring internationally acclaimed saxophonist Charles McPherson.

More: Free; Jan. 13, 6:30 p.m.; Gantt Center, 551 S. Tryon St.; ganttcenter.org

Pg. 12 JAN 12 - JAN 25, 2022 - QCNERVE.COM

HOPE NICHOLLS’ BIRTHDAY BASH

Forming and fronting the bands Fetchin’ Bones, Sugarsmack, Snagglepuss and, currently, It’s Snakes, Hope Nicholls is a musical treasure. Fetchin’ Bones has been filed with the likes of Pylon, R.E.M., and the dBs, yet were unlike anything else on the American music scene. Grunge before Nirvana, riot grrrl before Bikini Kill, Nicholls’ band kept faith with the primal blues rock of Janis Joplin. It’s Snakes follows in that tradition, bringing punk attitude and Nicholls’ earthy vocals to the party, joined in this celebration

by Space Daddy and the Galactic Go-Gos, Kadey Ballard, and Them Pants.

More: Free; Jan. 14, 8 p.m.; Tommy’s Pub, 3124 Eastway Dr.; facebook.com/tommyspub

Early in its career, Savannah DIY metal band Baroness was filed away in the doom metal category, but maybe — like presumed metalheads Opeth and Ghost — they’ve just been closet prog rockers all along. The band, which seemed to rise from the dead in 2012 when a horrific bus crash prompted two members to leave, continues to rely on a whiplash-inducing mix of styles tied together with thundering percussion, but the music has gotten more complex, melodic and prog. Their 2019 release Gold & Grey summons comparisons to such disparate influences as King Crimson, The Cure and Killing Joke.

More: $60; Jan. 15, 7 p.m.; The Milestone, 400 Tuckaseegee Rd.; themilestone.club

MLK DAY 2022: COMMUNITY DREAMS

The Gantt celebrates MLK Day with a full day of programming that includes an interactive dance performance, a written dreams workshop hosted

by Boris “Bluz” Rogers, panel discussions featuring icons of Charlotte history such as Dorothy CountScoggins and contemporary activists like Kass Ottley, theatrical readings of Dr. King’s epic speeches, film screenings, live music and other interactive programs.

More: Free; Jan. 17, 9 p.m.; Gantt Center, 551 S. Tryon St.; ganttcenter.org

COURTESY OF HORIZON RECORDS

‘SON OF THE WHITE MARE’

A psychedelic masterpiece of world animation, Marcell Jankovics’ Son of the White Mare sits amid the august company of Yellow Submarine and René Laloux’s Fantastic Planet. A 1981 Hungarian production, Son of the White Mare pits three brothers, spawned from a horse goddess, against three evil dragons in a quest to rescue three princesses while also reclaiming their ancestral kingdom. The quest is set among a maelstrom of motion and vivid color.

Jankovics’ labor of love has been a holy grail for film buffs, often talked about but seldom seen — until now.

More: $10 donation; Jan. 19, 8 p.m.; VisArt Video, 3104 Eastway Dr.; visartvideo.org/events

‘LA BESTIA’

In a cloud of smoke, the train flies through the air above the stage as aerialists and acrobats depicting the train’s passengers and moving parts defy gravity.

For Charlotte circus arts ensemble Nouveau Sud the train is La Bestia — or “The Beast,” which can offer an avenue toward a new life or kill you outright.

La Bestia is a contemporary circus show about the immigrant journey from Latin America to the US. The harrowing yet eerily beautiful journey treks through near-psychedelic scenes that capture the heart of the landscape and its culture.

More: $10 and up; Jan. 20-22, 7:30 p.m., 8 p.m.; Booth Playhouse, 130 N. Tryon St.; blumenthalarts.org

What would it be like to live in someone else’s 70-year-old-dream of the future? A concrete Utopia designed by architect Oscar Niemeyer and urbanist Lucio Costa, the city of Brasilia sprang from the desert sands in the 1950s, along with the rebirth of Brazil’s democracy. Director Bart Simpson traces the history of this visionary — and perhaps naive — planned metropolis, but the bulk of the 2017 documentary traces the lives of people living in Brasilia today. The city now serves as a backdrop to people’s feelings of isolation and their changing values.

More: Free; Jan. 20, 7:30 p.m.; hosted on Zoom, screened on Vimeo; bechtler.org

CHARLOTTE SYMPHONY: HARRY POTTER

CSO’s homage to film composer John Williams is a strategy to teach the little ones about the different sections of the orchestra through “The Boy Who Lived.” The idea is to rope the youngsters into classical music appreciation though Hufflepuffs, Hagrid and Quiddich. A contemporary refinement of Benjamin Brittan’s 1945 classic The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, the original “classical for kids” composition, designed to teach children the tone colors and capacities of the various sections of the orchestra. William’s chock-full-of-leitmotifs score should do the trick.

More: $41-$69; Jan. 22, 11 a.m.; Knight Theater, 430 S. Tryon St.; blumenthalarts.org

JAMES MCMURTRY

“Talking to the wallpaper/Wandering the halls/I burned a lot of bridges/And I dropped a lot of balls/It’s wonder I can go back to any place I’ve been,” James McMurtry sings in his hazy singlemalt baritone on “If It Don’t Bleed” off his latest album The Horses and The Hounds. The lyrics are peak McMurtry: plain-spoken poetry of a chaotic life that defies understanding, but may be ready for acceptance. Like his father, Texas novelist Larry McMurtry, this singer-songwriter excels at telling humorous stories of hardscrabble lives, but this isn’t ruminative music. It’s ballsy rock ‘n’ roll.

More: $20-$25; Jan. 22, 8 p.m.; Visulite Theatre, 1615 Elizabeth Ave.; visulite.com

LIFESTYLE PUZZLES

TRIVIA TEST

SUDOKU

1. LITERATURE: What was the title of Stephen King’s first published novel?

2. ADVERTISING SLOGANS: Which restaurant chain has the advertising slogan, “Have it your way”?

3. U.S. PRESIDENTS: Who was the first president whose likeness appeared on a U.S. coin?

4. TELEVISION: What is the family’s last name in the “Family Ties” sitcom?

5. LANGUAGE: What does the Latin phrase “lupus in fabula” mean?

6. GEOGRAPHY: What did the city of Mumbai, India, used to be called?

7. MOVIES: Which movie features a character called Rooster Cogburn?

8. LITERATURE: Which 20thcentury novel features a type of language called “newspeak”?

9. SCIENCE: What temperature is the same on the Celsius and Fahrenheit scales?

10. FOOD & DRINK: Where was Coca-Cola first sold?

BY FIFI RODRIGUEZ

BY LINDA THISTLE

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. ©2020 King Feautres Syndicate, Inc. All rights reserved.

CROSSWORD ACROSS 1 Cries noisily 5 Stuff in steel 9 Horse cousin 12 Often-smoked food 15 U.K. neighbor 18 “As above,” in citations 19 Extremely deep sleep 20 Pavarotti of opera 22 U.S. neighbor 23 Make every effort to be obliging 26 Vivacity 27 Mosaic work 28 -- -TURN (road sign) 29 -- Mason (asset management firm) 30 BLT offerer 31 To any extent 32 Revolution of Triton with respect to Neptune 36 Author Anais 37 Twosome 39 Not tidy 40 Two-pip card 41 Pressing it moves a cursor to the previous character 46 Shorelines 47 Off the shore 48 Justice Sotomayor 49 Program using “.doc” files, for short 52 Mu -- pork 54 Horace Greeley’s advice for American expansion 60 Huge aid 64 In base eight 65 She’s a star aria singer 66 Palme -- (Cannes film award) 67 Bus driver’s order

73 Ship like Capt. Nemo’s 74 To -- (exactly) 76 Marisa with an Oscar 77 Cadences 79 Irritate 85 Suffix with hell 86 More pasty 87 Horse opera 89 Arthur of tennis 93 Singers Idol and Ocean 96 Sticker message on a rented VCR tape 99 At full speed, old-style 100 A deadly sin 103 “Patience -- virtue” 104 Pro vote 105 Do a 180, say 110 Rapper with the album “Press Play” 112 Old Italian stage actress Eleonora 113 1953 Leslie Caron film 114 “-- always say ...”

115 Jeopardy 116 “-- my fault” 117 Parent’s mind game with a child (or what you have to use to solve this puzzle?)

122 Even score 123 Guys rowing 124 Smartphone downloads 125 Suffix with well 126 States, informally 127 Singular of “Mmes.”

128 Beltway VIP 129 Watery castle protector 130 Once, in olden days DOWN 1 Bro’s kin 2 Strange things 3 Former Fed head Ben

4 Little 5 “Ugh”-worthy 6 Bird of myth 7 Muscat resident 8 Honcho 9 Lager cousin 10 Nissan Rogue, e.g.

11 Bawls out 12 Irritable from being ravenous, slangily 13 Lay -- (really fail) 14 Wild crowd 15 Stimulus 16 Vote in for a another term 17 Lapses 21 Notions 24 Ralph -- Emerson 25 1921 Karel Capek play 30 Feared a lot 31 Author Seton 32 Bull in a ring 33 Cockney’s residence 34 Often-smoked food 35 Stenches 38 Actress Andress 42 Do laundry 43 Jillian of TV 44 Spanish aunt 45 Relatives, informally 46 Light bed 49 Mixed breed 50 Zest or Ivory 51 “Ben-Hur” director William 53 The woman 55 “Understood” 56 S.Sgt., e.g.

57 Yearn (for) 58 Female cell 59 Talks idly 60 Yrly. gift-giving time 61 Greek “I”

JAN 13

Pg. 13 JAN 12 - JAN 25, 2022 - QCNERVE.COM

2022

Double India Pale Ale brewed with Honey

TURNABOUT ©2020 King Feautres Syndicate, Inc. All rights reserved.

62 Heightened 63 -- dish (bio lab item) 68 T. -- Price 69 The “E” of EMT: Abbr.

70 Snide snicker 71 Sixths doubled 72 Method: Abbr.

75 “Liberte, --, fraternite” (France’s motto) 78 Bangkok citizen 80 “Bye Bye Bye” band 81 Exclamations of surprise 82 “Sk8er --” (2002 hit) 83 Assembly line labor org.

84 Tpk., e.g.

88 Actor Idle 90 Parachute user 91 Unmindful 92 Online bidding site 93 Roving robbers 94 “Gotta go” 95 -- faire 96 ‘50s prez 97 Not pos.

98 “Raider” Ralph 100 Previous convictions 101 Little brooks 102 Tough-to-translate phrases 106 Composer Edward 107 Opposite of 104-Across 108 Tea-growing Indian state 109 River giant, for short 111 Dunne of film 115 Covert “Hey!” 117 -- Kippur War 118 Half of a bray 119 Wolf Blitzer’s channel 120 Clean air gp.

121 Q-U linkup

LIFESTYLE COLUMN

AERIN IT OUT BUMBLING FOR BFFS

Not in search of new friends

Pg. 14 JAN 12 - JAN 25, 2022 - QCNERVE.COM

BY AERIN SPRUILL

A month or so ago I was sitting at a very empty bar enjoying an easygoing conversation between my boyfriend, a girlfriend, and the bartender. It’s rare you can steal those intimate moments so I’m always anticipating who will intrude first. *Enter an unfamiliar face.* A sweet young woman with a gentle spirit walked in and scanned the room to get her bearings. Though there were a plethora of seats for her to call her own, she pulled up and parked one chair away from us — a surefire sign that silence wouldn’t follow.

She ordered a whiskey on the rocks and exchanged a few quiet glances between sips, smiling ever-so-slightly as to not come across as eavesdropping.

“Maybe she’s an exception to the rule,” I thought, but then 3… 2… 1… and out comes some version of, ”I just put in my two weeks notice so I needed a drink,” followed by a nervous chuckle, almost as if there was a slow air leak coming out of a tire. Consider the ice broken.

After that, we learned that she was new to Charlotte and was having trouble making friends. She had even tried Bumble BFF to no avail.

You read that right; there’s a Bumble app “mode” specifically created for people to find platonic relationships not built around our incessant, can’t-fightthe-urge-to-find-a-soulmate culture. And it was released in 2016, 14 years post-Meetup shenanigans?! What’s the definition of insanity again…?

This poor woman wasn’t the only one. In recalling the events of her own experience with the app — which came to a lightweight-induced, abrupt end — another table bystander said, “Oh no, wait, I have that too!”

Thankfully, she pointed this out before my foot (read: complete and utter confusion on who is partaking in this friendship “dating”) went all the way into my mouth. I quickly pivoted and replied with an embarrassed chuckle and questions around her success stories, to which her response was also … bleak.

Spoiler alert: I did not download Bumble BFF. Maybe you were hoping I would, but my bucket list for 2022 is not littered with excursions featuring new acquaintances.

It may sound broody or condescending, but I promise it’s not; I’m a Taurean introverted extrovert which makes me turtle slow to trust and make new friends.

After a visit to Hydrate Medical for a “reset” and serious contemplation of “Dry Rest of January” spurred by lengthy, empty conversations with drunken patrons too eager to accelerate the traditional arc of friendship development, you can imagine why Bumble BFF is my literal nightmare.

If the “damndemic” has taught me anything, it’s how truly weird we humans are. As if we weren’t weird enough already, now we’re upended in a moment where we’re not just struggling to navigate how to not be awkward with new platonic relations IRL, but also online!?

Case in point.

“Imma call you kitchen,” I heard someone state, presumably in my direction, while I was enjoying some solitude on the Connolly’s patio.

I lifted my eyes from my phone, which I had been studying so earnestly in an attempt to avoid a certain tipsy stranger, only to find him staring right at me with a grin that conjured a memory of Shrek attempting to woo Fiona.

I sighed, knowing he was referring to the kinky state of the typical bun in my hair #rude.

Prepared to fully continue to ignore him as my boyfriend tried distraction tactics to divert his attention away from me, this lovely creature continued with, “I want to get to know you. You are so interesting. What’s your story? Let me do your hair.”

It seemed a platonic series of statements but when I stared back at him in disbelief thinking this could not be happening in real life, his facial expression remained unchanged as if his backhanded ass compliment with a hint of shade would lead to a budding friendship.

I cannot. I simply fail to can.

And I can’t even begin to describe another couple I encountered years ago who I actually “fell for” in platonic terms.

They were funny, witty, wild, and often downright outrageously honest, which in small doses, always made for an entertaining night. Oh boy, was I bamboozled.

The next thing I know, their relationship was publicly devolving into a cross-street yelling match that involved every innocent bystander in sight and earshot.

Needless to say, we broke up and that relationship confirmed that not every person should be a friend, but a mere acquaintance.

All that to say, given our current flux of social interaction completely dominated by COVID, are y’all making friends online right now? Success stories?

Because it’s a hard pass from me, dog.

INFO@QCNERVE.COM

HOROSCOPE

JAN 12 - JAN 18

JAN 19 - JAN 25

ARIES (March 21 to April 19) A hectic period begins to wind down. Take time to draw some deep breaths and relax before getting into your next project. A longabsent family member makes contact.

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 move forward with a new challenge that suddenly dropped in your lap. But you’d be wise to take this one step at a time to allow new developments to come through.

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) You’re almost ready to make a commitment. A lingering doubt or two, however, should be resolved before you move ahead. An associate could provide important answers.

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) Caution is still the watchword as you move closer toward a decision about a new situation. If you act too fast, you might miss some vital warning signs. Go slowly and stay alert.

CANCER (June 21 to July 22) Reassure a longtime, trusted confidante that you appreciate his or her 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) Your new goal looks promising, and your golden touch does much to enhance its prospects for success. In your private life, Cupid does his best to make your new relationship special.

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) That impatient side of yours is looking to goad you into moving before you’re ready to take that big step. Stay calm and cool. Let things fall into place before you act.

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) A legal matter you hoped could finally be settled could be a pesky problem for a while, until all the parties agree to stop disagreeing with each other. Be patient.

LIBRA (September 23 to October 22) Expect a temporary setback as you progress toward your goal. Use this time to re-examine your plans and see where you might need to make some significant changes.

SCORPIO (October 23 to November 21) Partnerships — personal or professional — which began before the new year take on new importance. They also reveal some previously hidden risks. So be warned.

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 and then move on.

SAGITTARIUS (November 22 to December 21) Your associates are firmly on your side, and that persistent problem that has caused you to delay some activities should soon be resolved to your satisfaction.

SAGITTARIUS (November 22 to December 21) Jupiter’s influence helps you work through a pesky problem, allowing your naturally jovial attitude to re-emerge stronger than ever. Enjoy your success.

CAPRICORN (December 22 to January 19) Favorable changes continue to dominate, and you should be responding positively as they emerge. Someone wants to become more involved in what you’re doing.

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) A friend wants to share a secret that could answer some questions you’ve wondered about for a long time. Meanwhile, travel aspects continue to be strong.

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.

Travel plans continue to be favored.

PISCES (February 19 to March 20) Stay on your new course despite so-called well-meaning efforts to discourage you. Rely on your deep sense of selfawareness to guide you to do what’s right for you.

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 you’re not ready to make.

BORN THIS WEEK: You have the capacity to meet challenges that others might find overwhelming, and turn them into successful ventures.

BORN THIS WEEK: You embody a love for traditional values combined with an appreciation of what’s new and challenging.

2021 KING FEATURES SYND., INC.

LIFESTYLE COLUMN

PG.19 PUZZLE ANSWERS

SAVAGE LOVE HARD FOR THE MONEY Looking for inclusivity in cash-draining FinDom sessions

BY DAN SAVAGE

Pg. 15 JAN 12 - JAN 25, 2022 - QCNERVE.COM

I’m a gay man in his forties. I very much love my husband but two years ago we acknowledged that our desire for each other sexually just wasn’t there anymore.

Thanks in part to reading your column for many years, we were able to have a calm conversation about whether we wanted to remain together in a companionate marriage or split up. We decided to stay together and I’m glad we did. Sex was the thing we fought about most, and our relationship improved when we took that conflict off the table. My husband has a couple of fuckbuddies that he sees while I do most of my playing online. (We had this conversation at the start of the pandemic and playing online feels safer.) One of the things I’ve been able to explore in the last year is FinDom. I really get off on sending money that we can spare to younger, hotter guys and being degraded for my pains. Thing is, almost all the guys doing FinDom are straight. It’s often a part of their persona they play up; they’re hot straight guys demanding cash tributes from “pathetic fags” that they would never touch in real life. As much as I like having my wallet drained by a hot young straight guy calling me a fag, I would so much rather give my money to a hot and dominant young gay man. Why do so few gay young men get into this? Do young gay men realize how much money they’re leaving on the table? Could you please tell them?

CHANCES ARE SOME HOT FINDOMS ARE GAY

to a significant segment of the gay finsub community. “There are a lot of gay men who fetishize being bullied by straight men,” said AJ. “And a lot of gay subs enjoy the idea that they are tributing to someone who will never be attracted to them, which I find kind of laughable because being gay doesn’t necessarily mean a guy has a chance with me.”

There’s also the issue of anti-gay slurs in FinDom play and how those slurs land.

“Slurs get used a lot in the FinDom/kink scenes,” said AJ, “and they really can sound and feel different depending on the sexuality of the speaker.” Meaning, for some gay men being called a fag by a straight guy in a safe, controlled, and consensual way — like during a cash-draining session — feels more degrading (in a sexy way) than being called a fag by another fag ever could. “But other gay men prefer gay FinDoms because they don’t like hearing slurs from straight men,” said AJ. Zooming out for a second…

While it may be the case that a small handful of gay FinDoms pretend to be straight to attract gay subs, CASHFAG, I think something else is going on here. Namely, financial domination and other forms of online sex work have so lowered the “gay for pay” bar that the kind of straight man who wouldn’t have been able to profit off gay male lust 20 years ago — because he wouldn’t have sex with other men on camera for money — is now posting photos of his feet on Twitter, flipping off the camera, and ordering his gay followers to pay “fag tax” for the privilege of looking at him.

Just as straight gay-for-pay porn stars managed (and still manage) to get off doing gay porn, there are straight male FinDoms getting off on what they do. “I know I enjoy draining cash from men I find unattractive,” said AJ. “Being dominant turns me on even if I’m not into the person. So, there could be straight male FinDoms out there who get some sort of sexual satisfaction from draining gay men but are still straight.” And it’s easy to see why a straight male FinDom who got a little turned during an online draining session with a gay male sub might make a point of emphasizing his straightness — not just to rub his sub’s nose in it, CASHFAG, but to reassure himself.

Still, even though there are more straight FinDoms out there than gay ones, AJ’s bank account and spotlessly clean bathroom proves you don’t have to be a hot straight guy to be a successful FinDom. He’s always been very open about being gay, CASHFAG, and not only do gay male subs all over the world send him cash, but local gay male subs clean his apartment and run errands for him.

“I’ve had a good experience with this,” said AJ, “it’s been both profitable and enjoyable and I’ve made great connections with so many people, including other gay Doms. I’ve always really liked talking to other gay men — whether they are submissive and into FinDom or not or just intrigued by my profile.”

And if you really want to attract other gay men like him to the FinDom scene, CASHFAG, AJ suggests making an effort to find out gay FinDoms who are already online, diligently promote their content with likes and retweets, and — of course — sending your favorite FinDom(s) all the money you can reasonably spare.

“Because when you think about it,” said AJ, “tributing to a gay FinDom is like supporting a small queer business, and that’s something we should all be doing.”

“I don’t know why there aren’t more gay FinDoms out there,” said Master AJ, “but I’m certainly not the only one.”

AJ is a 23-year-old sexually dominant gay man who lives, works, and drains gay subs all over the world from his home base in the Pacific Northwest. He first stumbled over the the FinDom scene on Twitter (follow him @CashMasterAJ1) when he was a kinky gay college student struggling to pay his rent.

“I was working two jobs, and while I wasn’t desperate, I was thinking about money a lot,” said AJ. “So, the idea of being in control, which I was already really into, and dominating someone by demanding cash from him that he’d earned? It was a huge rush.”

Most male FinDoms go to such great lengths to emphasize how straight they are that AJ sometimes wonders.

“There are no male Doms I’ve seen draining cisgender women,” said Master AJ. “So, if these guys really are straight, they would have to stumble on the gay FinDom scene or have the idea to start targeting a community they weren’t a part of in order to establish themselves.” And having seen how much pleasure so many straight-identified male FinDoms get out of dominating gay men, “it seems possible that at least some of these guys Follow Dan on Twitter @FakeDanSavage; questions@ aren’t being completely truthful about their sexualities.” savagelove.net; columns, podcasts, books, merch, and more at Why would a gay or bi male FinDom claim to be straight? www.savage.love.

Because, as AJ points out, it’s going to make him more appealing

TRIVIA ANSWERS: 1. “Carrie” 2. Burger King 3. Abraham Lincoln

4. Keaton 5. The wolf in the story 6. Bombay 7. “True Grit”

8. “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” by George Orwell 9. -40 degrees C and and -40 degrees F 10. Atlanta

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