Queen City Nerve - August 26, 2020

VOLUME 2, ISSUE 20; AUGUST 26 - SEPTEMBER 8, 2020; WWW.QCNERVE.COM

NEWS:

Louis DeJoy’s N.C. roots pg. 6

MUSIC:

A heckdangin’ good EP pg. 22

A PINT AT THE TABLE

New Sugar Creek Brewing internship aims to diversify craft beer scene

By Pat Moran

TABLE OF CONTENTS

NEWS& OPINION 10

4 EDITOR’S NOTE BY RYAN PITKIN 6 LOST IN THE MAIL BY JORDAN GREEN

Is new Postmaster General Louis DeJoy hitting the self-destruct button on democracy?

A BLACK HISTORY OF CHARLOTTE PART 3 BY PAMELA GRUNDY Civil rights in the New South

13 MISTAKEN IDENTITY BY PAT MORAN Mother recounts search for son during wrongful incarceration 14 UNION DIVIDED BY RYAN PITKIN Indian Trail man arrested for hate crime against Black farmer 15 BOOZE SERVICE BLUES BY RYAN PITKIN CMPD, ALE not on same page regarding alcohol enforcement during COVID-19

Enjoy a moment of peace on us. www.xcoobee.com

ARTS

16 A BOLD NEW CAMPAIGN BY BRIANNA MONROE Black philanthropists launch storytelling initiative to give voice to the voiceless 18 OFFSTAGE AND BEHIND THE SCENES BY PERRY TANNENBAUM Charlotte’s performing arts scene faces up to adversity and diversity in a dual crisis

Out of this world dentistry finally in your neighborhood!

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Pg. 2 AUG 26 - SEP 8, 2020 - QCNERVE.COM

-Locally owned

7am-7pm and select Saturdays

21 LIFEWAVE A dose of reality

MUSIC 24

22 SAD MUSIC, GOOD TIMES BY RYAN PITKIN Emo rockers heckdang show progress in newest EP

A PINT AT THE TABLE BY PAT MORAN New Sugar Creek Brewing internship aims to diversify craft beer scene

LIFESTYLE No Insurance? No Problem! Ask about our in-house Dental Savings Plan

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FOOD& DRINK

26 PUZZLES 28 AERIN IT OUT BY AERIN SPRUILL 29 HOROSCOPE 30 SAVAGE LOVE

THANKS TO OUR CONTRIBUTORS: PAT MORAN, BRIANNA MONROE, JORDAN GREEN, PAMELA GRUNDY, PERRY TANNENBAUM, TAYLOR JONES, ROBERT PAQUETTE, RORI PRODUCTION CALLIE STUCKY, AERIN SPRUILL, MITCHELL KEARNEY AND DAN SAVAGE. COVER DESIGN BY: JAYME JOHNSON

Don’t Just Recycle,

RECYCLE RIGHT! PUBLISHER JUSTIN LAFRANCOIS jl afra n co i s @ q cn er ve.com

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF RYAN PITKIN

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No propane tanks

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EDITOR’S NOTE

THE WHOLE DAMN LOT OF ‘EM

One hour in an RNC parking lot taught me everything and nothing I needed to know

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BY RYAN PITKIN

I honestly had no idea what to expect as I walked toward the parking lot at First Baptist Church on Monday, Aug. 24. My business partner and publisher Justin LaFrancois and I were heading to check out a rally scheduled for 2 p.m. and hosted by Deplorable Pride, a local pro-Trump and pro-LGBTQ group that likes to play on its seemingly contrasting beliefs to stir shit wherever shit can be stirred.

The Republican National Convention was in town, and though delegates arrived in the city over the weekend and I had already been pepper-sprayed to kingdom come by police during protests on three previous nights, the real crux of the convention was happening during four short hours on Monday, with Trump swooping into town to accept his nomination before leaving for appearances elsewhere in the state.

His fan base had to get out there and wave their flags while they could.

As I’m writing this, I have only just returned from having spent about an hour in the First Baptist Church parking lot (the church itself was not involved in the event) and I’m still reeling a bit from what I did see: the good, the bad, and the weird.

The first thing we came across when we entered the lot was perhaps the last thing I expected to see: a big yellow school bus with a basketball hoop installed on the front that had “Black Lives Matter” painted on the backboard. Tucked into the windshield wipers on the bus was a deflated balloon rendering of Donald Trump in a diaper, with “Stop police murders” written in Sharpie across his

face. Parked 20 feet from the bus was a van wrapped in a collage depicting Black leaders of the cultural, political and athletic realms. The van was blasting music from a sliding door on the other side that read, “Revolution Beats.”

This seemed intriguing.

Upon chatting with a few of the folks hanging out around the bus, I found that they weren’t there just to troll the Trumpers as I had suspected at first, but were actually just taking a break from a much more important mission.

“The Hoop Bus” left from Venice, California, in early August and has been traveling the country helping to restore basketball courts in underserved communities. The bus was restored six months ago in honor of Kobe Bryant, and after showing up to

The group was in Charlotte for an event on Sunday night and when they realized the RNC was in town they figured they’d stick around and play a few jams in the parking lot by day, then join the protests by night.

They even brought along Harry Perry, who stood further off in the parking lot shredding away on his guitar while a group of four played basketball on another hoop installed on the back of the bus. Perry had the biggest smile on his face when I approached him. He wasn’t one for talking in that moment, just riffing, and that was all the more enjoyable. He stopped at one point and handed me a CD, then went right back to noodling.

A Wikipedia search would later tell me that Perry began playing for passersby on the Venice

THE HOOP BUS PHOTO BY JUSTIN LAFRANCOIS

more than 50 protests around the Los Angeles area — even having the bus seized by LAPD at one point — the crew set off on a different type of mission.

In March, cities around the country took down basketball rims as one of the first countermeasures against the spread of COVID-19. Now that parks have been allowed to reopen and basketball is no longer seen as such a high-risk activity, most cities have been slow to replace the rims, especially in disinvested neighborhoods. So The Hoop Bus rides around with its big stock of fresh rims and installs them free of charge. They also help rebuild courts while hosting clinics, games, giveaways and more.

Beach Boardwalk back in 1973, and not only is he considered the most famous musician out there, but also one of the area’s most famous skaters — both roller and inline. I wish I could have seen him on skates, too, but I won’t get greedy.

Eventually I turned my attention to the Deplorable Pride rally, almost forgetting why I came in the first place.

I should have forgotten.

I approached the rally taking place on the sidewalk of South Caldwell Street as a dozen or so folks waved flags or held signs decrying the sin of abortion. I quickly learned upon approaching the

group that not all of the attendees were there to support Deplorable Pride.

I could hear the group’s founder and lead mouthpiece Brian Talbert before I could see him, though his telltale rainbow “Don’t Tread On Me” flag gave him away long before that. He was screaming, of course, but not at any counterprotesters or other libtard on the sidewalk. He was actually yelling at an old man wearing a U.S. Army hat and holding a huge sign with a too-long-totranscribe Bible quote; let’s just say it was fucking ridiculous and move on.

The evangelical veteran had apparently told Talbert what he thought of his sinful lifestyle, and by the time I walked up, Talbert was right in his face in a way that will make anyone who believes in science squeamish for decades to come. What I heard next is what baffled me the most.

Now, I guess there’s a chance he could have yelled maggot or MAGAt or something of the sort, but I’m damn near positive Talbert was calling this old man the f-word, and not the one I used in the previous paragraph.

There’s so much to unpack there and I don’t feel like I’m the person to unpack it. Same with the Latinx man wearing a “Hispanics for Trump shirt” and yelling about how anyone who can’t come to the country legally doesn’t deserve to be here. Same for the older Black man with a QAnon t-shirt and a “Trump: No Bullshit” hat pacing the sidewalk and speaking into his phone about how all lives matter.

The cognitive dissonance on that sidewalk alone was enough to make me thankful that the convention had been scaled back to a four-hour window. I covered the Democratic National Convention in 2012, and while I saw my share of idiocy during that week, the thought of this one small group being proliferated into tens of thousands of people wandering block after block in Uptown made me cringe to the point where I just didn’t want to be there anymore.

Now I’m here writing this, and to be honest I don’t have much of a takeaway from my experience other than to say this: In a parking lot full of deplorables, try to find your Hoop Bus. RPITKIN@QCNERVE.COM

THE OUTBREAK OF CORONAVIRUS DISEASE 2019 (COVID-19) MAY BE STRESSFUL FOR PEOPLE. FEAR AND ANXIETY ABOUT A DISEASE CAN BE OVERWHELMING AND CAUSE STRONG EMOTIONS IN ADULTS AND CHILDREN. COPING WITH STRESS WILL MAKE YOU, THE PEOPLE YOU CARE ABOUT, AND YOUR COMMUNITY STRONGER. EVERYONE REACTS DIFFERENTLY TO STRESSFUL SITUATIONS. HOW YOU RESPOND TO THE OUTBREAK CAN DEPEND ON YOUR BACKGROUND, THE THINGS THAT MAKE YOU DIFFERENT FROM OTHER PEOPLE, AND THE COMMUNITY YOU LIVE IN.

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NEWS & OPINION FEATURE

LOST IN THE MAIL

Is new Postmaster General Louis DeJoy hitting the self-destruct button on democracy?

Pg. 6 AUG 26 - SEP 8, 2020 - QCNERVE.COM

BY JORDAN GREEN

The Wisconsin primary election on April 7 was the first in the United States after the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the nation, leading to business and school shutdowns as people adjusted to limit inperson encounters to slow the spread of the virus.

Requests for absentee ballots, also known as mail-in ballots, shot up to 1.3 million, a 440% increase over the last presidential primary in April 2016, the Wisconsin Election Commission reported.

Inevitably, there were hiccups.

Three tubs of absentee ballots from 749 voters in Appleton and Oshkosh were found at the US Postal Service’s (USPS) Milwaukee Processing & Distribution Center after the election. Thousands of ballots requested two weeks before the election were never delivered to voters.

Almost 400 ballots mailed in by voters did not receive postmarks, forcing election officials to confer with the Postal Service to determine whether they should be counted.

The troubled Wisconsin primary prompted the Office of the Inspector General at the USPS to issue a recommendation on June 7 that the agency “develop and implement an action plan with timelines to address the potential national issues (ballot deadlines, postmarks, tracking technology, political and election mail coordinator outreach) identified in this report.”

A week later, Louis DeJoy, a Greensboro businessman and political fundraiser who has reportedly contributed more than $1.2 million to the Trump Victory Fund, took the helm of the agency through appointment by its Board of Governors with a very different preoccupation.

Reflecting on his first eight weeks on the job during remarks to the USPS Board of Governors on Aug. 7, DeJoy said the agency is in a “dire” financial position due in part to “a broken business model,” and vowed to rein in costs and bring efficiency to the organization.

Since mid-July, congressional Democrats have been raising concerns about the Postal Services’ commitment to returning mail-in ballots with mounting alarm, while observing operational changes at the agency that are resulting in clearly discernible slowdowns in service.

In a July 16 letter to DeJoy, five US senators, led

by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, noted that mail-in ballots cast in the Pennsylvania primary — a

“If mail ballots arrive late and are uncounted, some voters may be disenfranchised,” they warned.

While DeJoy has been implementing operational changes at the Postal Service that Democratic lawmakers fear will compromise the integrity of the balloting, President Trump has been actively undermining public confidence in mail-in voting.

In late May, Trump falsely tweeted that California would send absentee ballots to “anyone in the state,” including “people that aren’t citizens.”

“There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent,” he wrote. “Mail boxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged & even illegally printed out & fraudulently signed.”

And in late July, the president escalated his false and alarmist rhetoric with a tweet predicting that “2020 will be the most inaccurate and fraudulent election in history” because of mail-in voting, while making the unprecedented suggestion that the LOUIS DEJOY WAS NAMED POSTMASTER GENERAL IN JUNE. election should be PHOTO BY DAVID SIQUEIROS delayed.

Absenteecritical swing state in the November election — leapt ballot fraud has marred some elections in the past, from 80,000 in 2018 to more than 500,000 in 2020. including the 2018 contest in North Carolina’s 9th “The success of mail voting is dependent [on] a Congressional District, in which the NC Board of number of federal, state and local entities working Elections threw out the results after a political in coordination,” they wrote. “Election officials face operative harvested fraudulent ballots to benefit the difficult challenge of planning the administration the Republican candidate. But Richard L. Hasen, an of this upcoming election — including arranging elections expert at the University of California Irvine, election mailings, sending ballots to voters on told the Associated Press that fraud is “extremely time, setting deadlines to mail back ballots, and rare” in five states that already relied primarily coordinating with the Postal Service to meet its on mail-in voting before the pandemic, including requirements — with increasingly strained budgets. heavily Republican Utah.

A Greensboro Power Couple Louis DeJoy and his wife, Dr. Aldona Wos, are longtime Republican Party patrons in North Carolina, with a history of largesse and a trail of politicians keen to receive their favor.

A native New Yorker, DeJoy moved his company New Breed Logistics to High Point in the 1990s, building it into an organization with 70 distribution centers and 7,000 employees before selling it for $615 million to XPO Logistics in 2014. Befitting DeJoy’s status as a new commercial baron and the couple’s budding stature as political movers, they paid $5.9 million in 2005 for a mansion in Greensboro’s Irving Park neighborhood that was originally built in 1934 for textile executive Herman Cone.

In May 2019, DeJoy was named the national finance chairman for CLT Host 2020, making him the lead fundraiser for the local organizing committee behind the Republican National Convention. Wos, however, was the first of the two to build a political reputation, landing a position as North Carolina finance co-chair for George W. Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign, propelling her into an ambassadorship to Estonia after he won.

The daughter of a father who served in the Polish Home Army during World War II and survived a German concentration camp, Wos maintains a strong interest in national security and serves as a trustee of the Washington-based Institute of World Politics, a graduate school for young people interested in national security and diplomacy. Her relationship with the institute provided her with the opportunity to arrange an appearance by founder John Lenczowski and former CIA Director James Woolsey at the Grandover Resort in Greensboro in 2016.

Throughout the past 15 years Wos and DeJoy have hosted one high-profile visitor after another: a mid-term election fundraiser featuring President Bush at their Irving Park home in 2006; an early campaign stop by then-presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani at NC A&T in 2007; a 2017 fundraiser at their home for President Trump. Following the same trajectory as she did in the Bush years, Wos went from a fundraiser to an appointment to the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships in the Trump administration. In March, Trump appointed Wos ambassador to Canada, a post that is awaiting Senate confirmation.

In between Bush and Trump terms, Wos also got involved in North Carolina politics, co-chairing Republican Pat McCrory’s campaign for governor. In 2013, he tapped her to lead the state Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS).

Wos’ tenure at NC DHHS from 2013 through

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NEWS & OPINION FEATURE

Strains on an Already Struggling System Less than three weeks into DeJoy’s tenure, postal handlers and carriers began receiving orders to curtail costs, even if it meant sacrificing prompt delivery. An internal document originally published by the Washington Post entitled “Mandatory StandUp Talk: All Employees — Pivoting for Our Future” instructed employees that starting July 10, extra trips and late trips would no longer be authorized.

“One aspect of these changes that may be difficult for employees is that — temporarily — we may see mail left behind on the workroom floor or docks…,” the document says. “We will address root

the country, especially in those jurisdictions where face covering and other social distancing policies are not strictly enforced, are worsening at a disturbing rate,” Hogrogian wrote. “This means the crisis is far from over. The numbers are getting worse; they are not getting better. There is no real end in sight.”

Hogrogian bluntly appraised the consequences of the changes.

“Most processing plants are already extremely understaffed,” he wrote. “Eliminating or even reducing overtime can only result in increased delays in the processing and delivery of mail and packages, including critical items such as prescriptions and election materials.”

While the Postal Service’s financial challenges are widely acknowledged — the agency ran a loss of $9 billion in fiscal year 2019, according to DeJoy — many Democrats and progressives argue that its instability was structurally mandated when the Republican-controlled Congress passed a 2006 law requiring the service to pre-fund employees’ post-retirement healthcare costs 75 years into the future. The timing of DeJoy’s arrival at the agency and his insistence on slashing costs to realign the organization just four months before the election hasn’t been lost on Democratic lawmakers.

“While these changes in a normal year would be drastic,” wrote Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), who chairs the House Oversight and Reform Committee, along with three other House Democrats, “in a presidential election year when many states are relying heavily on absentee mail-in ballots, increases in mail delivery timing would impair the ability of ballots to be received and counted in a timely manner — an unacceptable outcome in a free and fair election.”

2015 bears an uncanny resemblance to the emerging contours of DeJoy’s leadership at the USPS. While DeJoy told the US Postal Service Board of Governors on Aug. 7 that the organization suffers from a “broken business model,” Wos inaugurated her tenure at DHHS in January 2013 by declaring that the state’s Medicaid program was “broken.”

When she resigned from the post 32 months later, she took pride in noting that the Medicaid program was $130.7 million in the black.

Wos’ leadership at DHHS and her husband’s stewardship of the USPS both emphasize fiscal solvency over service to the public. In Wos’ case, the collateral damage was substantial. In her first year at the agency, thousands of food-assistance recipients were left waiting sometimes up to 30 days for benefits because of a glitch in the NC FAST system, prompting federal officials to threaten to withdraw funding. That same year, DHHS rolled out its new NCTracks Medicaid management and Unconstitutional sabotage billing system, and hundreds Louis DeJoy’s history of healthcare providers found of building a profitable themselves unable to get paid transportation and logistics for their services. company and President Trump’s In her quest to reposition well-documented disdain for DHHS, Wos turned to the the USPS has led to speculation private sector, hiring Joe that DeJoy’s function as Hauck, vice president for sales postmaster general is to and marketing for New Breed privatize the organization.

Logistics — her husband’s POST OFFICE BOXES IN UPTOWN WERE LOCKED AND BLOCKED WITH TRASH BAGS DURING THE RNC. At least some of Trump’s PHOTO: OFFICE OF ALMA ADAMS company — as a consultant. derision for the Postal Service The $310,000 contract for 11 causes of these delays and adjust the very next day.”

The slowdown was already apparent in New appears to be a byproduct of his grudge against Jeff months of work was one among a series of contracts Another memo first reported by the Post Jersey by July 21, when Rep. Andy Kim, a Democrat, Bezos, the owner of Amazon. In May, Trump insisted that prompted a federal grand jury investigation. indicated that overtime would be prohibited. wrote to DeJoy in a letter obtained by Queen City that the USPS raise its charges for shipping four to Wos defended her hire of Hauck in a memo to state The operational changes came at a time when Nerve: “Many of my constituents have rightly five times the current rate in exchange for a $10 lawmakers that credited him with a plan to realize the workforce at the Postal Service was buffeted by contacted my office to express frustration and billion loan from the US government. Raising rates, savings in payments to nonprofits, expanding challenges from COVID-19. In a July 23 letter to his concern about ongoing mail delivery delays, some critics of the administration point out, might have the Office of the Internal Audit, and created a membership, National Postal Mail Handlers Union of whom have not received their medications and the opposite effect of punishing Amazon because it plan to recruit and retain state-level employees President Paul Hogrogian said 3,267 postal workers first-class mail for more than three days.” would make the Postal Service less competitive. at psychiatric hospitals to reduce the agency’s had tested positive for COVID-19, more than double By early August, members of the Illinois delegation “The Postal Service is a joke because they’re dependency on temporary workers. the number from a month earlier. Out of 630,000 informed DeJoy that they had received reports “of handing out packages for Amazon and other internet When Wos resigned her post, far from being people employed by the Postal Service, 75 had individuals going up to two weeks without mail delivery companies and every time they bring a package, displeased, Gov. McCrory famously wept, and perished from COVID. in some Chicago neighborhoods,” and the Philadelphia they lose money on it,” Trump told reporters in the praised her by saying she “took all the hits, took all “While the numbers in the Northeast and East Inquirer reported that some residents in the region Oval Office. the bullets.” continue to improve, the numbers in other parts of hadn’t received packages and letters in three weeks.

Meanwhile, Wos and DeJoy’s holdings raise

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NEWS & OPINION FEATURE

do everything we can to deliver election mail in a timely manner consistent with our operational standards.” He added that “despite any assertions to the contrary, we are not slowing down election mail or any other mail.”

DeJoy’s comments did little to assuage the concerns of Democratic lawmakers; if anything, his rollout of an organizational restructuring only antagonized him. As part of the restructuring, the Postal Service implemented an immediate management hiring freeze and voluntary early retirement, while consolidating management into three operating units: logistics and processing operations, retail and delivery operations, and commerce and business solutions.

Two days before the announced restructuring,

Sen. Gary C. Peters of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, announced an investigation into Postal Service delays on Aug. 6.

Evidence was not hard to find: On the same day, Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), informed Peters by letter: “Some postal employees in Maine express concern about USPS’s ability to handle the anticipated crush of mail we expect from the general election. They report that they feel personally responsible but institutionally unsupported for their role in the health of our democracy. (We can share more details confidentially with staff to protect the individuals who have come forward, or we can put investigators in direct contact with constituents.)”

On Aug. 8, the morning after the announced

institution’s promise of ‘safe and speedy transit of the mail’ and ‘prompt delivery of its contents.’”

She was not any more comforted by DeJoy’s questions about whether the new postmaster answers when she questioned him about reports general has a conflict of interest: Wos’ financial that Postal Service drop-off boxes were being taken disclosure filings with the Office of Government Ethics off the streets or locked during a meeting of the as part of her nomination for the ambassadorship House Committee on Oversight and Reform on Aug. to Canada revealed that the couple holds between 24. $30.1 million and $75.3 million in assets with Postal “The recurring theme I kept hearing from Service competitors or contractors, including XPO Postmaster General DeJoy was ‘I don’t know’,” said Logistics — the company that acquired New Breed Congresswoman Adams in a release following the — and trucking company JB Hunt, according to the meeting. “He doesn’t know how many blue boxes Washington Post. were taken. He doesn’t know why our Veterans are On Aug. 7, the same day that Sen. Elizabeth getting their medications late, or why goods that Warren (D-Mass.) and eight other lawmakers our small businesses rely on are arriving spoiled. asked the Postal Service Inspector General to open He doesn’t know the cost of Priority Mail or the an investigation into DeJoy’s kind of stamp he needs to mail personal finances, the new a postcard. He doesn’t know postmaster general directly if his own mail is coming. denied in remarks to his Board The fact is: He just don’t of Governors that he was either know. Unfortunately for us, beholden to Trump or planning Mr. Postmaster General, not to privatize the organization. knowing is not good enough.”

“I was not appointed by Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) the Governors to position the was even more eviscerating.

Postal Service to be privatized “DeJoy’s secret removal or to manage its decline,” DeJoy of the senior officials who run said in remarks published by the the day-to-day operations at Postal Service. “To the contrary, USPS lays bare his mission to I accepted the job of postmaster centralize power, dismantle the general fully committed to the agency and degrade service in role of the Postal Service as order to thwart vote-by-mail an integral part of the United across the nation to aid Trump’s States government, providing reelection efforts,” DeFazio said. all Americans with universal “This November, an historic and open access to our unrivaled number of citizens will vote by processing and delivery mail in order to protect their network.” health and safety during the As to Trump, DeJoy said, COVID-19 pandemic. DeJoy’s “While I certainly have a good nefarious collection efforts will relationship with the president suppress millions of mail-in PHOTO: OFFICE OF ALMA ADAMS of the United States, the notion CONGRESSWOMAN ALMA ADAMS OF CHARLOTTE HAS STOOD FIRM AGAINST DEJOY’S USPS SABOTAGE. ballots and threaten the voting that I would ever make decisions rights of millions of Americans, concerning the Postal Service at the direction of the DeJoy had met with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and organizational restructuring at the Postal Service — setting the stage for a breach of our Constitution.” president, or anyone else in the administration, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. Referencing characterized by some as a “Friday night massacre” is wholly off-base. I serve at the pleasure of the the elimination of overtime and restrictions on extra — some Democratic lawmakers reacted with fury, ‘Vote by mail is tanked’ governors of the Postal Service, a group that is mail transportation trips, Schumer and Pelosi called calling for DeJoy’s resignation or removal.

Like DeJoy, Mark Dimondstein comes from bipartisan by statute and that will evaluate my on DeJoy to reverse the changes.

“The United States Postal Service was Greensboro, where he worked as a clerk prior to his performance in a nonpartisan fashion.”

“We believe these changes, made during the established by our Constitution, and this year it will 2013 election as president of the 200,000 member DeJoy also denied that he was trying to sabotage middle of a once-in-a-century pandemic, now play an unprecedented role in guaranteeing our American Postal Workers Union. Dimondstein told the election by slowing down delivery of the mail. threaten the timely delivery of mail — including right to vote,” Rep. Alma Adams (D-NC) of Charlotte Triad City Beat he’s not particularly concerned about “The Postal Service and I are fully committed medicines for seniors, paychecks for workers, and said in a press release. “However, Postmaster the managerial reorganization at the top, and his to fulfilling our role in the electoral process,” DeJoy absentee ballots for voters — that is essential to DeJoy continues his unconstitutional sabotage of preoccupations are elsewhere. told his board. “If policymakers choose to utilize millions of Americans,” they wrote. our Postal Service with complete disregard for the “What I’m focused on from last Friday is that the mail as part of their election system, we will

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NEWS & OPINION FEATURE neither the Postal Service Board of Governors nor the postmaster general advocated or asked that Congress provide the Post Office with appropriate COVID relief,” Dimondstein told Queen City Nerve.

He added that since the Postal Service is ordinarily funded through revenue generated from users, it would be appropriate for taxpayers to foot the bill for a one-time injection of COVID relief funding for the benefit of the American people.

The Democratic-controlled House approved $25 billion in funding for the Postal Service in June as part of the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions, or HEROES Act, but the White House and the House Democrats were unable to come to an agreement on a second round of COVID relief spending.

Instead, on Aug. 8, President Trump signed a series of executive orders to address the COVID crisis that did not include aid to the Postal Service.

While the integrity of the election is a particular concern for Democrats, lawmakers from both parties have raised alarm that slowing down the mail undermines constituents’ ability to obtain life-saving medications during the pandemic.

In an Aug. 8 letter, Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) urged DeJoy “to reverse recent policies impacting delivery times and to call your attention to concerns raised by my constituents.

“Montanans from across the state have contacted me to express their alarm by these orders, including your July 10, 2020 directive to hold late mail until the next day, and the resulting delays in mail delivery,” Daines wrote. “This action, if not rescinded, will negatively impact mail delivery for Montanans and unacceptably increase the risk of late prescriptions, commercial products, or bill delivery.”

Rural, sparsely populated states like Montana, which tend to elect Republican representatives, have a special stake in maintaining the Postal Service.

“For many,” Daines reflected, “the unforgiving climate and terrain paired with the shortage of pharmacies [in Montana] makes the continuity of USPS an existential necessity.”

On July 29, DeJoy and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin reached an agreement with DeJoy for the

US government to extend $10 billion in credit to the Postal Service, allowing the organization to avoid running out of cash at the end of September and to continue operating through May 2021.

DeJoy could not be reached for this story, but Philip Bogenberger, a Postal Service spokesperson, said in an email to Queen City Nerve on Monday that the organization’s “financial condition is not going to impact our ability to process and deliver election and political mail. The Postal Service has ample capacity to adjust our nationwide processing and delivery

said the Postal Service plans to send a letter to election officials “in states that have deadlines for requesting and casting mail-in ballots that under our reading of their election laws appears to be incongruous with the Postal Service delivery standards.”

In a July 7 report on the misplaced ballots in the Wisconsin primary, the US Postal Service Office of the Inspector General warned: “States’deadlines for voters to request absentee ballots are insufficient to ensure delivery before an election.” The report singled out 11 states with no deadline or deadlines within three days

ARTWORK BY ROBERT PAQUETTE

network to meet projected election and political mail volume, including an additional volume that may result as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Bogenberger’s assurance came with caveat. He said the Postal Service “strongly recommends that election officials advise voters to request absentee ballots as soon as possible, but no later than 15 days prior to the election date — or Oct. 19 — and to mail them in at least a week before the election — or Oct. 27. He

of the election, including Minnesota and Ohio — considered critical swing states — along with New Hampshire, North Dakota, Washington, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Montana, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming. Ten other states, including Michigan and Wisconsin — also swing states — along with Georgia, Louisiana, New Mexico, South Carolina, Alabama, Delaware, Illinois, Maine and Oregon have deadlines four to five days before the election. North

Carolina requires that absentee ballots be received by the county board of elections seven days before the election, in keeping with the Postal Service’s stated delivery standards.

In response to the lost absentee ballots that plagued the Wisconsin primary, the Inspector General determined that some of the problems were caused by actors outside of the Postal Service. The report found that the tubs of absentee ballots from Appleton and Oshkosh were late because a third-party mailer held on to them for one day and didn’t present them to the Postal Service until 6 p.m. on primary election day. And the Inspector General said the Milwaukee Election Office determined there was a computer glitch on March 22, resulting in almost 2,700 requested ballots that were never sent to voters.

But the Inspector General report contains no explanation for why 390 completed ballots were returned without postmarks, except to note that the Postal Service worked with the election office and determined the validity of all but 40 of them. The report went on to say that the Postal Service’s official guidance states that all ballots should be postmarked by machine or hand, and the district manager for the Lakeland area plans to communicate with all employees to clarify their roles and responsibilities.

Whether errors are made by the Postal Service, election officials or third-party contractors, it’s not hard to imagine that delays could result in outright disenfranchisement — or fabricated claims by Trump and his supporters that the election is being stolen as local election offices wait weeks to retrieve lost ballots.

With COVID-19 cases on the rise again, advocates for a full and fair vote might echo the Postal Service’s official recommendation: Put in your request for an absentee ballot and get it in the mail as early as possible. But the view from those working within the organization at the ground level is not so straight-forward.

“This election is going to suck,” a personnel processing specialist at the Postal Service’s human resources center in Greensboro told Queen City Nerve, speaking on condition of anonymity because of fear of losing their job. “Vote by mail is tanked … [you should] vote in person.

If you are lucky to live in the city, it will be COVIDprotocol controlled. Lines out the door if you can afford to take off work. I, along with many of my friends, are so worried. Ugh.” INFO@QCNERVE.COM

NEWS & OPINION FEATURE

A BLACK HISTORY OF CHARLOTTE: PART 3

Civil rights in the New South

BY PAMELA GRUNDY

Pg. 10 AUG 26 - SEP 8, 2020 - QCNERVE.COM

The following is the third in a five-part history of Black culture in Charlotte. Visit qcnerve.com for Parts 1 and 2, and stay tuned for the continuation of the series in upcoming issues.

In the spring of 1939, 32-year-old John T. Richmond sat down to take a federal civil service exam. The son of a laundress and a railroad brakeman, Richmond aspired to be a mail carrier, a job typically denied to African Americans in Charlotte. The civil service exam was his first step.

By all accounts, Richmond passed with flying colors, but Charlotte postmaster Paul Younts refused to promote him above the traditionally “Black” job of janitor. White mail carriers, Younts claimed, simply would not work with African Americans. Richmond, he suggested, should be happy to have a job at all.

Black Charlotteans sprang into action. “Charlotte Fighting for Mailman,” proclaimed the state’s most prominent Black newspaper, the Carolina Times.

“Hundreds Sign Petition.” That September, residents packed the Second Ward High gymnasium to hear representatives of the NAACP and the National Association of Postal Employees denounce Younts’ decision and call for change.

The assertive tone signaled a new era in Charlotte activism, as a new generation came on the scene. Along with longtime community leaders, the campaign organizers included two younger men: journalist Trezzvant Anderson and Kelly Alexander, the son of influential funeral home director Zechariah Alexander.

These new activists were operating amid a new political reality. For decades, the rest of the country had ignored or actively supported the South’s racial apartheid. But growing Black voting strength was beginning to shift attitudes and actions, especially at the federal level. If the post office petitioners did not “get satisfaction in Charlotte,” the Carolina

Times noted, “they intend to take the matter to Washington.”

Although Paul Younts was one of Charlotte’s most prominent political powerbrokers, he soon found himself the target of a federal investigation into his election-related activities. Part of the evidence used against him had been provided

by Black Charlotteans. In July of 1941, the Postal Service fired him.

1940 and 1960, growing from 31,000 to 56,000 residents. This influx fueled an expansion of Blackowned businesses that included restaurants, banks, insurance companies, beauty parlors, gas stations, dry cleaners, photography studios and more.

Much of this growth took place around Beatties Ford Road. In the 1910s, as segregation hardened, Charlotte developers had used restrictive covenants and unwritten agreements to designate the west side as the Black side of town. By the 1930s, as The Double V Campaign and the Postwar downtown Black neighborhoods grew crowded, Boom growing numbers of families headed to west-side Five months later, the U.S. entered World War communities such as Biddleville, Greenville and II. African Americans, among them Richmond and Washington Heights.

Anderson, signed up in droves and performed In the 1950s, in another example of federal with distinction. Black leaders described their influence, growth on the west side got a boost from participation as part of a “Double V” Campaign, the Federal Housing Administration, the engine behind linking victory over the nation’s postwar fascism abroad suburban boom. with victory over The FHA channeled racism at home. most of its resources They won a major into all-white home-front victory developments. in 1948, when Its refusal to President Harry back investments Truman issued an in historically executive order to Black or integrated desegregate the neighborhoods, a armed forces. policy that became C h a r l o t t e ’s known as redlining, Black activists kept would have farpushing — through reaching, destructive the war and beyond. effects in older parts Trezzvant Anderson of town. and Johnson C. But it provided Smith Student some support for Council President building new Black Reginald Hawkins neighborhoods. organized student E v e r protests at the post entrepreneurial — WRITER AND ACTIVIST TREZZVANT ANDERSON, 1938 office to demand especially when PHOTO: NATIONAL CIVIL SERVICE PERSONNEL RECORDS better jobs for college money could graduates. Charlotte’s be made without Black teachers joined colleagues across the state to challenging the racial status quo — Charlotte successfully lobby for equal pay with whites. developers, both Black and white, seized on these Kelly Alexander revitalized Charlotte’s NAACP and opportunities. The west side began to fill with neat launched projects that included a “Votes for Freedom” brick homes in developments such as University Park, campaign that registered more than 5,000 new Black Oaklawn Park, Dalebrook and Northwood Estates. voters.

In the fall of 1954, west-side residents marveled This energy was fed by a booming economy at the modern, million-dollar campus of the new that helped African Americans build up their West Charlotte Senior High School, built at the heart communities. Charlotte’s Black residents, who of University Park. The original West Charlotte, which represented just under a third of the city’s total had opened on Beatties Ford Road in 1938, became population, nearly doubled their numbers between Northwest Junior High.

The Effects of “Moderation” The new West Charlotte High opened at a moment of anticipation and anxiety. A few months earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court had issued one of the most far-reaching decisions in its history, ruling in Brown v. Board of Education that school segregation violated the Constitution.

The decision brought howls of protest and promises of defiance from around the South. North Carolina’s white leaders, in contrast, took their usual “moderate” path.

Four days after the ruling, the keynote speaker at a gathering of the state’s ruling Democrats announced that “as good citizens we have no other course except to obey the law laid down by the United States Supreme Court.” After this display of progressivism, however, legislators turned around and created the Pearsall Plan, which gave local school boards full control of the desegregation process.

This approach, which allowed districts to move at a snail’s pace, forestalled both school integration and federal sanctions.

“You North Carolinians have devised one of the cleverest techniques of perpetuating segregation that we have seen,” an Arkansas admirer would later write.

Not until September 1957 would North Carolina’s first handful of Black students enter historically white public schools. Four of them were in Charlotte: Gus Roberts at Central High School, his sister Girvaud at Piedmont Junior High; Delois Huntley at Alexander Graham Junior High; and Dorothy Counts at Harding High.

Delois Huntley and the Roberts siblings arrived at their schools with little fanfare. Dorothy Counts’ debut was another matter.

Encouraged in part by members of a newly organized “White Citizens’ Council,” a mob was waiting when 15-year-old Counts, wearing a new dress made by her grandmother, arrived at Harding.

Dramatic photos of the composed young woman wading through a sea of angry whites circled the globe. Johnson C. Smith graduates Vera and Darius Swann, who knew the Counts family well, saw them in a newspaper in India.

They made a profound impression on writer James Baldwin, just back from Paris and planning a reporting trip South. He would make Charlotte his first stop.

Counts and her family were shaken – “I expected something,” Counts told a reporter. “But, really, I didn’t expect it to be like that.”

Charlotte police warned Citizens’ Council

NEWS & OPINION FEATURE

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members to stay off school grounds, and made sure there were no more mobs to photograph.

But a few days later, after students continued to harass Counts in class, and after a rock crashed through the back window of her brother’s car as he arrived at school to take her home, she withdrew.

She enrolled in an integrated private school in Pennsylvania, and national attention turned to the protracted standoff between Arkansas governor Oral Faubus and president Dwight Eisenhower over the integration of Central High School in Little Rock.

Charlotte’s white leaders breathed a sigh of relief.

When James Baldwin came to town, shortly after Counts left Harding, the city appeared calm. He described it as “a bourgeois town, Presbyterian, pretty – if you like towns.”

He summed up the racial atmosphere in measured tones: “I was told several times, by white people, that ‘race relations there were excellent,’” he wrote in Partisan Review. “I failed to find a single Negro who agreed with this.”

Still, what the Counts family called “the situation with Dot,” referencing Dorothy’s nickname, served as a warning.

The photographs of Counts amid the angry crowd undercut the vision of orderly progress that Charlotte’s image-conscious business leaders saw as essential to growth and prosperity.

Anxiety about the city’s image heightened as civil rights activity around the South, along with the often-violent retaliation it provoked, claimed a growing share of national attention.

Turning Civility on its Head Early in 1960 yet another generation of activists emerged on the Charlotte scene. The strategy they deployed turned North Carolina’s obsession with civility and image-building to their advantage.

On Feb. 1 of that year, four students from North Carolina A&T walked into Greensboro’s Woolworth’s, took seats at the whites-only lunch counter, and refused to leave until they were served. The bold gesture spoke directly to restless young African Americans across the South.

Two days later, Johnson C. Smith students Charles Jones and B.B. DeLaine called a meeting about starting sit-ins in Charlotte. More than 200 students showed up. They headed downtown the next day.

Sit-ins turned the concept of civility — so often used to retard progress — on its head. The calm, well-dressed students who sat at lunch counters and politely asked to be served embodied civility’s rules.

When whites reacted with anger or violence, it was they who violated the code.

The well-organized Smith students made regular treks downtown for five months. Combined with a Black boycott of downtown businesses, the action turned the center city into a ghost town. By July, store owners gave in.

As police held back shouting hecklers, Black students were ushered to the lunch counters, where they sat and finally ate.

In the years that followed, black activists pressed forward, and white leaders strategically retreated.

leaders, organized a march to protest segregation at Charlotte hotels and restaurants. In Birmingham, such marches were met with fire hoses and police dogs. In Charlotte, Chamber of Commerce members called a meeting and then announced that the city’s hotel and restaurant owners had agreed to serve all patrons equally.

The mid-1960s saw a spate of federal action, most notably the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, that gave local activists new tools to work with. In 1964 the NAACP Legal Defense Fund sent rising star Julius Chambers to open a Charlotte office dedicated to civil rights law.

In the fall of 1965 Kelly Alexander’s brother, Fred, became Charlotte’s first Black city council member since the 1890s.

A BLACK LUNCH COUNTER IN CHARLOTTE DURING SEGREGATION. PHOTO BY JAMES PEELER. COURTESY OF THE PEELER FAMILY AND INEZ MOORE PARKER ARCHIVES AT JCSU.

The Freedom Riders, including future congressman John Lewis, came to town in 1961, testing a Supreme Court ruling that outlawed segregation in interstate travel. Further South, the Riders would endure some of the most extreme violence that civil rights activists had yet experienced. Their stop in Charlotte, however, passed almost without incident.

Joseph Perkins staged a “shoe-in” at a shoeshine chair in an all-white barbershop. He was arrested and spent two nights in jail. But as soon as he appeared in court, to everyone’s great surprise, the judge ruled in his favor and sent him on his way.

Two years later, Reginald Hawkins, who had become one of the city’s most outspoken civil rights

Still, tensions simmered. In September of 1965, residents of the west side went before the city council to report two disturbing incidents: a cross burned on the Johnson C. Smith campus, and shots fired into Reginald Hawkins’ home.

Then, early in the morning of Nov. 22, bombs exploded at four west-side houses: those of Hawkins, Fred Alexander, Kelly Alexander and Julius Chambers.

The blasts did extensive damage. Teenager Kelly Alexander, Jr., asleep in his front-facing bedroom, felt one of the bombs explode against his wall, and glass from the shattered windows shot across the room. Fortunately, no one was seriously injured. City leaders, Black and white, immediately denounced

the act, and a community fund drive quickly raised the money needed to repair the homes. The bombers were never identified.

Bombs were far from the only forces of destruction in mid-1960s Charlotte. Bulldozers funded by federal highway and “urban renewal” funds were systematically demolishing the historic Brooklyn neighborhood, and destabilizing communities across the city. As pressure for school desegregation grew, the newly consolidated Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education began to shutter historically Black schools that had sat at the heart of communities for decades. It would take longer for that story to be fully told.

Resources Willie James Griffin, “News and Views of the Postal Service: Trezzvant W. Anderson and Black Labor Journalism in the New Deal Era,” Labor: Studies in Working Class History, 2018.

Emily Ethridge, “How a Local Historian Uncovered Trezzvant Anderson, the Charlotte Civil Rights Hero You’ve Never Heard Of,” Charlotte Magazine, 11 August 2020 Thomas Hanchett, Sorting out the New South City: Race, Class, and Urban Development in Charlotte, 1875-1975 (University of North Carolina Press, 1998, new edition 2020).

Sarah Thuesen, Greater than Equal: African American Struggles for Schools and Citizenship in North Carolina, 1919-1965 (University of North Carolina Press, 2013).

Ron Stodghill, ed., Let There Be Light: Exploring How Charlotte’s Historic West End is Shaping a New South (Johnson C. Smith University, 2014).

Pamela Grundy, Color and Character: West Charlotte High and the American Struggle over Educational Equality (University of North Carolina Press, 2017).

Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (Liverright Publishing Corporation, 2017) Michael Graff, “Dorothy Counts Scoggins,” Charlotte Magazine, 20 November 2017.

Emiene Wright, “The Militant Dentist: Dr Reginald Hawkins,” Creative Loafing, 6 February 2013.

Richard Rosen and Joseph Mosnier, Julius Chambers: A Life in the Legal Struggle for Civil Rights (University of North Carolina Press, 2016).

INFO@QCNERVE.COM

NEWS & OPINION FEATURE

WOMEN OF THE CHARLOTTE SIT-INS Young ladies were at the heart of Charlotte civil rights demonstrations

injustice of segregation and the violent outbursts that demonstrations could provoke. It was not an easy task.

Edith DeLaine believed the presence of women helped to tamp down emotion on both sides. “I think a lot more men would have been killed if women had not been present,” she stated. “Women sort of keep a calm. Even in a segregated society — a very mean segregated society — the women can cause calm.”

Women could also defuse potential confrontations. “In our Black families there’s a thing they call ‘the eye,’” DeLaine explained. “Parents can look at you — especially women. And when they give you the eye, you know that you need to change something in your behavior. Our eyes tell a story.

And during the movement, I think we used it a lot.”

Lessons from the Past While the sit-ins sought a sharp break with an unjust past, the strategy drew heavily on the On a crisp February morning in 1960, Hattie Ann students’ own upbringing, and on the lessons Black Walker put on her new suit with the sailor collar, colleges had taught for generations. Most students fixed her hair, and joined a group of fellow Johnson C. Smith University students for the fourmile walk to downtown Charlotte.

As the students approached the city center, they began to catch sight of the establishments that refused to treat them as equals — Kress’s five and dime, where they could buy hot dogs but not sit down to eat them; Belk’s department store, where the only restrooms they could use were in the basement; the palatial Carolina Theater, where they were not allowed at all.

Walker struggled to look cheerful, but inside she was trembling. “I knew that it was something I wanted to do, and I should do,” she explained. “But in spite of that, I was afraid. I was really afraid.”

Her group headed to Woolworth’s and sat down at the counter. As they waited, a photographer snapped the picture that would become the icon of the Charlotte sitins, capturing the students at the height of CHARLOTTE SIT-IN PARTICIPANTS, 1960. HAZEL WALKER, WEARING GLASSES, IS LOOKING AT THE CAMERA. the civility that was their greatest weapon.

COURTESY OF THE ROBINSON-SPANGLER CAROLINA ROOM, CHARLOTTE MECKLENBURG PUBLIC LIBRARY. Well-dressed, well-behaved and exuding quiet dignity, the students exposed the absurdities of had been raised to be disciplined, religious and segregation for everyone to see. At the center of the respectful.

Lessons for the Future image, Hattie Walker looked calmly at the camera.

They also shared a strong sense of self-worth For some young women, defying segregation While men usually assumed the public roles of and moral determination. All those qualities would also meant a step toward independence. Betty speaking and negotiating, women were at the heart serve them well as they faced the hostility their Houchins Lundy learned this lesson after she took of the sit-in demonstrations. Women marched and action would at times provoke. part in one of the students’ most daring actions. strategized, suffered blows and insults, defied the The roles that women played reflected similar One day, the sit-in organizers learned that the law and went to jail. continuities. An effective sit-in required a balance owner of Ivey’s department store had declared that “You don’t hear our voices very much,” noted between action and response. In the face of no African American would ever eat a meal in his Edith Strickland DeLaine, who helped plan the physical threats, men could serve as protectors. But lunchroom. They asked Lundy and fellow student Charlotte sit-ins. “But you cannot look at a picture violence from whites was not the main concern. Thomas Wright, both of whom had extremely light and not see a female in it.”

A successful sit-in depended on students’ ability skin, to prove him wrong. With some trepidation, With their courageous actions, these young to remain calm, to offer a sharp contrast to the Lundy agreed. She and Wright headed for the Ivey’s women transformed Charlotte. They also

BY PAMELA GRUNDY

Pg. 12 AUG 26 - SEP 8, 2020 - QCNERVE.COM

transformed themselves. Sitting in her gracious living room in 2003, dressed in a trim suit and with every hair in place, Hattie Walker looked every bit the lady that she was when caught on film decades before. But she was not the same inside.

“I was afraid every time I marched. I really was,” she explained. “I was a person that was afraid of doing things. But that sit-in demonstration taught me a lesson. I figured if I could get through that, then I could weather the storm with other things.

I’m not afraid anymore.”

lunchroom, were seated, and ate an uneventful meal.

When the two students joined their protesting companions outside the store, the indignant reaction their ruse provoked sparked enough furor to make the evening news, which Lundy’s parents watched in horror.

“My parents were against this because they were so used to their way of life,” Lundy explained. “They were used to one way of life, Blacks in one place and whites in one place. They saw this on television, and my father became very afraid. He told my mother to tell me to stay out of that white man’s store.”

Faced with their parents’ disapproval, some students downplayed their involvement. Others, however, argued back. Mary Anna Neal Bradley’s parents were among those who objected. But she felt she could stand firm because “they also brought us up to do the right thing.

Although we were sheltered, we were brought up: ‘If you’re going to do something, do it right.’”

Victory The sit-in campaign required months of patience and determination. Store owners and city officials stalled, dissembled, and offered excuse after excuse. But the young people’s resolve, backed by a broader Black boycott of the stores in question, finally forced owners to relent.

Those first meals were memorable.

“When we could finally sit down to eat, we were given money by various organizations so we could go down to eat,” Hattie Walker remembered. “And that was so rewarding. I got a big Coca-Cola. In the cup — a fountain drink. And the only thing I’d had was Coke from a bottle. So I wanted the fountain drink. That was a special moment to get that Coke from that fountain.”

“I knew in my heart that this was something that I wanted to do,” she concluded. “And I knew that if we were able to accomplish the goal, that this was something that not only I would benefit from but my children and my grandchildren would also benefit. I just knew it was the right thing to do.”

Parts of this article appeared in the Raleigh News & Observer in 2003.

INFO@QCNERVE.COM

NEWS & OPINION FEATURE

MISTAKEN IDENTITY

Mother recounts search for son during wrongful incarceration

Pg. 13 AUG 26 - SEP 8, 2020 - QCNERVE.COM

BY PAT MORAN

For a moment it seemed as if Chanel SappYoung’s 24-year-old son Brenden Eans had simply disappeared. After being arrested at work on a recent Friday afternoon, Eans spent five days in a South Carolina jail, now his mom is recounting her harrowing search for answers while her son was the victim of a wrongful incarceration.

Arrested for crimes he did not commit, Eans had been transported to the Chester Detention Center in South Carolina by deputies from the Chester County Sheriff’s Office. The sheriff’s office, who had detained Eans at the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department’s request, maintained they would not release Eans or transport him to Charlotte until CMPD extradited him.

Now a CMPD officer was telling Sapp-Young that the request might never come, because the department had no record of her son’s arrest. “I have no warrants in my system for him,” Sapp-Young remembers the officer telling her. “I don’t know why they have your son.”

Meanwhile, Brenden Eans was sleeping on the floor of an overcrowded cell in the midst of a highly infectious pandemic. His wrongful incarceration, based on a case of mistaken identity, would last five days.

Sapp-Young says her family’s ordeal began Friday, Aug. 7, at 8 p.m. Eans’ girlfriend Lanita Glenn called, nearly in hysterics. Eans, described by his mother as a mature young man who doesn’t drink, smoke or party, hadn’t come home. Glenn had tracked his iPhone to the Chester Detention Center.

When she called there, they told her he was in custody but would give her no further information.

With Eans’ stepfather Richard Young at the wheel, Sapp-Young jumped into the car. They made the trip from their home in Winston-Salem to Eans’ Charlotte apartment to pick up Glenn, then crossed the state line to arrive at the detention center. SappYoung remembers it was after hours.

Speaking through an intercom beside the locked door, the family learned that because CMPD had

asked the Chester County sheriff’ to pick up Eans, only CMPD could tell them why he was being held.

The detention center was going to hold Sapp-Young’s son until CMPD came to get him, and they would not allow Eans a phone call because the Chester County Sheriff’s Department had not arrested him in the first place.

There was one piece of good news, if you could call that: Eans was scheduled to go before a Chester magistrate Saturday. The family went to a motel and came back the next morning, but there was no court date scheduled for Brenden.

“The story we were given was not true,” ChanelSapp says.

So, Chanel Sapp-Young, Richard Young and Glenn drove to CMPD headquarters in Uptown looking for answers. Chanel-Sapp approached a female officer in her squad car and asked her to look Eans’ name up. That’s when Sapp-Young learned the department had no record of a warrant issued for her son. He was trapped between a sheriff’s department in Chester that claimed they could hold Eans indefinitely until they heard from CMPD, and a police department that could find no record of his arrest.

The officer directed the family to go around the corner to the Mecklenburg County Detention Center on East 4th Street, Chanel-Sapp says. There they hit another wall, a deputy saying the department didn’t know anything about Eans.

Throughout this process, Sapp-Young had been keeping people abreast on social media, posting updates about her wrongfully arrested son. A complete stranger, a friend of Eans’ best friend’s mother, had obtained copies of the warrants issued for Eans through a bail bondsman they knew. They sent those copies to Sapp-Young, who produced them and showed them to the deputy. Finally, the story came out.

On Thursday, Aug. 6 at 11:50 a.m., an assailant damaged property at a University City storage facility, then assaulted a police officer before leading officers on a chase from which he eventually escaped.

Meanwhile Brenden Eans, who had graduated from UNC Charlotte in December, was working at Carolina Poly in Chester, where he is a mechanical engineer manager. Between 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. on Friday, Chester County Sheriff’s deputies armed with warrants from Charlotte marched into the plant, handcuffed Eans and walked him out in front of his boss and co-workers. If they had stopped to ask anyone where Eans was at 11:50 a.m. on the previous day, Sapp-Young insists, the staff would

have told the deputies that the suspect they currently had in custody had an ironclad alibi — he was at work. But the deputies didn’t ask.

“We knew that was not a good situation,” SappYoung says, “because [the police] thought that he actually beat up a police officer.”

By the time Sapp-Young and her family had finished talking with the deputy at the Mecklenburg County Detention Center, the Chester Detention Center had relented and allowed Eans to call his family. He had finally been told the charges against him, but he had no other information.

On Monday, the family talked to an attorney, who told them not to antagonize the police, to take down their social media posts and let the legal process play out.

“There was nothing we could do to get him out,” Sapp-Young says, recounting the lawyer’s advice.

“No one was going to listen to us. [He] told us to be quiet.”

Sapp-Young did no such thing. Warrants in hand, she, Young and Glenn went back to Chester, where authorities had told them Eans would have another day in court before a magistrate. Once there they learned that, once again, Eans had no date scheduled. In Chester, Sapp-Young spoke to the arresting officer Corporal Beasley.

“Beasley told me, ‘I did my research. I know we have the right person. His height matches. His eye color matches,’” Sapp-Young says. The description was an African American with hazel to green eyes and a blondish sandy-colored beard and mustache, she recalls.

“Every Black man walking around today matches that description,” Sapp-Young maintains.

Then a friend contacted Sapp-Young and advised her to speak with Charlotte City Council member Braxton Winston. A call on Tuesday to Winston’s office provided Eans and his family a light at the end of a long, dark tunnel.

After telling her story to an assistant, SappYoung received a call from Demi Smith-Wright with the Mecklenburg sheriff’s office. Smith-Wright in turn referred Sapp-Young to CMPD detective Josh Gibson. Sapp-Young had gotten the direct number for the HR director at Carolina Poly, her son’s place of employment. She gave Gibson that number.

“A little while later [Gibson] calls me back and says, ‘You’re right. He was at work. We’re sorry. We’ll start the wheels in motion to get him released,’” Sapp-Young says, the relief in her voice audible.

After five days in jail, Eans was released. He came home Wednesday, Aug. 12, at 1 a.m. He confided to his mother that he had felt certain he was going to

remain imprisoned in the Chester Detention Center indefinitely.

Later that morning, Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden called Eans, who did not tell Sapp-Young all the details of the conversation, but described McFadden’s demeanor as deeply apologetic.

“Now the CMPD is another story,” Sapp-Young says. “The police department asked me to call them.

But … we did not call them back because they kept saying, ‘The person who did this is still out there, and we still need to talk to Brenden about it.’There is nothing he has to say about this crime.”

As of this writing, Sapp-Young’s son has had no subsequent contact with CMPD. When Queen City Nerve contacted CMPD and asked about Eans’ wrongful incarceration and the family’s allegation that Eans was not able to make a phone call on Friday, the department issued this reply: “The CMPD Internal Affairs Bureau has launched an investigation to ensure the officers involved in the case followed department policy.

Any questions concerning his stay in the detention center should be directed to Chester County authorities.”

Queen City Nerve also contacted the Chester County Sheriff’s Office. They replied with the following statement: “The Chester County Sheriff’s Office was contacted by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department on August 7, 2020 and was requested to arrest Brenden Eans at a location in Chester County, pursuant to an arrest warrant from Mecklenburg County, North Carolina.

“Chester Sheriff’s Deputies confirmed the warrant was active in [the National Crime Information Center database]. As a result of the active warrant confirmation, Deputies took Eans into custody, and he was housed at the Chester County Detention Center until picked up by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department on August 11, 2020.”

Sapp-Young says her son is not the demonstrative type, but a mother knows when her child has been traumatized. She feels that if this case of mistaken identity and wrongful incarceration could happen to her straight-arrow son, it could happen to countless other young Black men.

“Some people say it was only five days, but it was five days of his freedom,” she says.

PMORAN@QCNERVE.COM

NEWS & OPINION FEATURE

UNION DIVIDED

Indian Trail man arrested for hate crime against Black farmer

Pg. 14 AUG 26 - SEP 8, 2020 - QCNERVE.COM

BY RYAN PITKIN

When Marjorie Jamison drove to Indian Trail in Union County on June 13 to visit family friend Bernard Singleton’s new farm, she expected a relaxing day away from the stresses of city life and quarantine, not to be the target of a hate crime.

Jamison was picking blueberries at Singleton’s Nebedaye Farms with her family — her husband, also named Bernard, and their 5-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter — when a man drove up on a motorcycle, yelled the N-word at the group, revved his engine loudly, then drove off.

Jamison had been too engrossed in her task to notice, but once she regrouped with her husband, he confirmed what had happened, as did another Black woman who was there with her own son.

“I thought that’s what I heard but I didn’t want to think that’s what it was,” the woman told Jamison.

The incident was a wake-up call for the mother of two.

“I was really kind of surprised that that happened, because I had never experienced anything like that so blatantly in my face,” Jamison said.

According to Singleton and multiple other people that Queen City Nerve spoke with who have experienced harassment while visiting the farm, similar incidents have become all-too-common there, only increasing as discussions around racial injustice have picked up across the country.

Singleton stated that young men on four-wheelers and in pickup trucks waving Confederate flags have driven by many times and yelled similar things as the man on the motorcycle, while others have been caught roaming the property late at night only to claim they ran out of gas before getting back in their cars and driving off.

While there’s not much Singleton can do except arm himself and equip cameras in an attempt to identify passersby who accost him and his visitors, he is now taking legal action against a neighbor who he said has harassed him for months.

According to Singleton, 62-year-old Frank

Rohrback, who lives diagonally across the intersection of Mill Grove Road and N.C. Highway 218 where Nebedaye Farms is located, has fired shots over the farm, repeatedly yelled the N-word at Singleton and his visitors, and threatened to kill three people there, including Singleton.

On July 1, Union County Sheriff’s deputies arrested Rohrback and charged him with ethnic intimidation. He is scheduled to appear in court on Sept. 25. Attempts to reach Rohrback were unsuccessful.

Ethnic intimidation is a misdemeanor in North Carolina and carries a maximum 120-day sentence.

While the charge was part of a hate-crime bill that passed in 1991, the state still lacks a hate-crime law

in late May, Rohrback became more belligerent. The neighbor began flying a Confederate flag, writing down license plate numbers of the farm’s visitors, and shooting his gun in the air while staring across the intersection at the farm.

Singleton responded by firing off his own guns, though that resulted in calls to the police.

“This is Union County. Everybody shoots around here. When the week ends it’s like Fourth of July,” he said. “But a black man with a gun causes a problem.

I’m the only person who ever had the police called on him for gunshots.”

No charges were filed against Singleton for those incidents. A look at Rohrback’s record shows he was arrested on March 1 for misuse of 911 and

BERNARD SINGLETON ON NEBEDAYE FAMRS IN INDIAN TRAIL

that applies to race- or religion-based felonies, such as when a white man murdered three of his Muslim neighbors execution style inside their Chapel Hill condominium in 2015.

Singleton said he refuses to be bullied off of the property, which he subleases from Carolina Farm Trust alongside Serendipity Flowers and Crown Town Compost, all part of the Mill Grove Farm Co-Op. “These are things that happened way back when, and while we’re focusing on other things, that’s still happening here in Union County,” Singleton said of the recent hate crimes when we visited after Rohrback’s arrest. “People wonder the reason why there’s not many Black farmers, because this type of shit. It ain’t going down like that this time.”

Singleton recalled that after Black Lives Matter protests began in Charlotte and across the country

PHOTO BY RYAN PITKIN

resisting arrest, then arrested again on April 10 for failure to appear in court.

After moving to Charlotte in 2011, Singleton and his daughter turned a NoDa Storage unit into a studio apartment and lived there until they were able to find more appropriate housing. Singleton launched Bennu Gardens in 2014 with nothing but some seeds he had bought from food stamps.

He has since expanded the operation into three locations. He began farming the land at Mill Grove in spring 2019 with a focus on harvesting moringa, a superfood grown in Africa and Asia that Singleton has been learning to grow successfully in the Charlotte area over the last three years.

He has plans in the coming months to build a “sustainability schoolhouse” on the property to help teach agricultural entrepreneurship, known as agripreneurship — how to grow, process and preserve food, along with how to market a business.

“It’s a self-sustaining school. What we have on our own is not dependent on people who do not give a fuck about us,” he said. “There was a debt but they aren’t going to pay us; we know that.”

He sees farming as a path to self-sustainability for African-Americans, and hopes to work with underserved youth and unemployed adults in Charlotte. He pointed out that the traumatic history of slavery has kept many away from the industry, and quoted Leah Penniman, founder of Soul Fire Farm and author of Farming While Black, who said, “The land was the scene of the crime, not the criminal.”

“We left the land because of the intimidation,” Singleton said. “And if we allow this to continue unchecked with what [Rohrback] is doing, we’ll be going through the same cycle 100 years later. We really have to address that.”

Though Jamison’s young children weren’t aware of what had happened on June 13, the incident stuck with her well after she left the farm.

Her family stopped at Colonel Francis Beatty Park in Matthews on the way home and she found herself wondering how many white people around her felt the same way as the man on the motorcycle.

“At the time I was thinking, how is it that someone has the hatred in them to feel the need to express something like that — to take the time out of your day, your moment, your drive and yell that out at a few Black people who were minding their business?” she said. “I just felt really sad, for myself and the kids, but even for that person and our country. We don’t have to be that way, we could be so much better, there’s just systemic things in place that prevent us from getting to that point.”

Singleton said he plans to continue hosting regular events at Nebedaye Farms despite the harassment. He recently hosted the staff of Leah & Louise for a field trip of sorts, and on another day threw an all-day rice-harvesting party that ended with a Gullah-style meal, cooked mostly with ingredients grown right there on the farm.

As for Rohrback, who he said has quieted down since his July 1 arrest, Singleton won’t back down from what he believes.

“We actually are getting a sign out here that says Black Farms Matter and I know that’s going to stir some shit up,” he said, laughing loudly. “I have to be ready for that. I have to be the one to stand my ground. I ain’t going nowhere.”

RPITKIN@QCNERVE.COM

NEWS & OPINION FEATURE

light bill with zero income for that long?”

On the latest episode of Queen City Nerve’s Nooze Hounds podcast, DeLoach told us that to-go beer sales and donations have kept her business afloat when there are not many other options for her to consider.

Jamie Starks, owner of Tommy’s Pub, posted on Facebook the same day stating that CMPD ABC officers told him he had to shut down completely and cease the sale of to-go beers that had helped him survive along with merchandise sales and other fundraisers. Like Briggs, Starks reached out to the special agent overseeing the Harrisburg district for ALE, who reassured him that to-go beer and wine sales were completely fine.

“This is not the normal thing to tell a business and it is very confusing,” the agent wrote to Starks in an email.

In a Facebook post from Aug. 23, Starks echoed Briggs’ sentiments by pointing out the hypocrisy in how the governor’s orders were being enforced.

bars are restricted from onsite alcohol sales and onsite consumption under the Governor’s Order.”

Erin Bean, special agent and spokesperson for the North Carolina Department of Public Safety’s Alcohol Law Enforcement (ALE) division, told us that, despite what CMPD’s ABC officers have been telling business owners, off-premise sales such as beer and wine to go CMPD, ALE on different is still allowed under the governor’s orders. pages regarding alcohol “While on-premise consumption has been enforcement during restricted, off-premise sales of beer and/or wine have been permitted throughout the Governor’s COVID-19 Executive Orders,” Bean wrote in an email. “A business holding an on-premise (beer or wine)

BY RYAN PITKIN permit allows the retail sale of beer/wine for consumption on the premises and the retail sale Officers with CMPD’s Alcohol Beverage Control of beer/wine to-go in the manufacturers original Unit visited more than 50 private bars on Thursday, sealed container for off-premise consumption (as Aug. 20, to clarify the guidelines concerning onsite long as the purchaser has a valid ID, is over 21 years alcohol sales, consumption and enforcement during old, and is not intoxicated).” the COVID-19 pandemic, but many owners were At a press conference on Aug. 21, CMPD Deputy only left more confused about guidelines after Chief Jeff Estes said the department is working “to officers told them things that conflicted with what ensure we have a good message for all of our state officials have said. business owners and that we’re saying the same According to Lezlie Briggs, co-owner of thing.”

1501 South Mint in the Wilmore neighborhood, The rules as they stand now will remain a CMPD ABC officer told her on Aug. 20 that she in place until at least Sept. 11, when Cooper’s is not allowed to have people consuming alcohol latest Phase 2 extension is set to expire. He’s on the property, which has been a consistent expected to make an announcement earlier rule for private bars and clubs that do not offer that week declaring any new changes to the food service since Phase 2 of Gov. Cooper’s plan orders. to reopen the state began on May 22.

As for private bar owners like Briggs and Briggs does have a permanent food truck Starks, they plan to move forward under the set up outside of her establishment that she guidance of state officials who have assured believed counted as a kitchen, but was told them that the to-go sales they’ve been making it did not. Briggs said the CMPD officer also to scrounge up even a bit of income are legal. told her the business couldn’t operate in any Briggs closed her business on Aug. 21 to capacity, not even to sell beer or wine to go, and make a plan for how to move forward “for the would have to close down completely. That’s rest of however many weeks or months we’ll be where those who are enforcing the rules locally operating under this order,” but would have to split ways with state officials who are handing once again let go many of the employees she them down. brought back under the impression that the On the morning after the visit from CMPD, PHOTO BY RORI PRODUCTION sales from her permanent food truck meant she Briggs called the ALE special agent in charge of 1501 SOUTH MINT IN WILMORE WAS TOLD THEY WOULD HAVE TO SHUT DOWN. could operate like many other restaurants and the Harrisburg district that covers Mecklenburg The guidance does not address the issue around “This is arguably a demographic issue, based on bars serving food under Phase 2.

County and was told that the business wouldn’t class/wealth. Hell, some have argued ageism and “It’s just unfortunate because it puts us in have to shut down or surrender its license, as she the sale of beer and wine to go.

Owners at Hattie’s Tap & Tavern and Tommy’s racism, too. I don’t disagree,” he wrote. “Just look a really interesting situation when you look at was told just a matter of hours before.

“It’s one of those things where they’re enforcing Pub made social media posts stating that they were at which drinking establishments and businesses our staff,” she said. “When you look at the lack of are allowed to be open (and their location) vs. unemployment, it’s just unfortunate for all these it differently,” Briggs said. “We have counterparts told things similar to what Briggs heard.

“ALE is now stopping by and telling Private Clubs what is closed to working class and lower income private bars who have been operating, who hired who had to shut down last week, ‘private bars and new staff, to now go back and have to tell their clubs’ also applies to golf courses, also applies to they aren’t allowed to sell to go beer and that we are individuals and families?”

Queen City Nerve reached out to CMPD about staff, ‘Oh by the way, I’m going to have let you go some breweries, however, it’s just depending on supposed to be 100% closed, wrote Jackie DeLoach, who your officer is, it’s going to determine how it owner of Hattie’s, in a Facebook post on Aug. 20. the alcohol enforcement issue, and the department temporarily, because we cant even operate in our gets enforced … Then you have restaurants like Ink “September will be 6 months closed. How the hell sent a statement reading, “Attorneys with the State full capacity. It’s unfortunate.”

N Ivy who are violating every restaurant rule and do they expect us to make money and pay the damn ABC Commission have advised the CMPD that private

THE BOOZE SERVICE BLUES

Pg. 15 AUG 26 - SEP 8, 2020 - QCNERVE.COM

guidance ever, but they’re still operating. I don’t get it. I don’t understand.”

According to North Carolina ABC Commission guidance on Executive Order 141 (Phase 2), an establishment can remain open if it is not deemed to be “principally engaged in the business of selling alcoholic beverages for onsite consumption.”

Examples of these establishments include many breweries, distilleries, bottle shops and wine shops.

Bars and taprooms are allowed to be open at those establishments, as long as they follow Mecklenburg County guidelines for gathering.

Establishments can also remain open if their pre-COVID operations typically included service of food and drink, and they were in full compliance with Phase 2 guidelines, including operating at 50% capacity.

“Any restaurant that is open and serving alcohol should have an open kitchen,” writes the ABC guidance. “Food from the restaurant must be available at all times that alcoholic beverages are being served.”

RPITKIN@QCNERVE.COM

ARTS FEATURE

A BOLD NEW CAMPAIGN

Black philanthropists launch storytelling initiative to give voice to the voiceless

their own microstories on social media with the hashtag #BPM2020CLT, reflecting on a person in their own life who has been a source of strength and inspiration, and who represents what it means to be BOLD in times of adversity.

The group will continue releasing stories in the countdown to #CLTGivesBlack on Aug. 28, a community-wide day of giving focused on Blackled, Black-benefiting nonprofit organizations. The group plans to announce a large grant award on that day, as well.

Black-led, Black-benefiting organizations, and advance racial justice.”

Talley says he was inspired to work with the BeBOLD campaign because he has always been a fan of Fullwood work and the giving circle project.

He goes on to explain that the best way for him to contribute to this cause would be through his poetry.

“I may not have the funds, but I do have the talent,” he says.

Talley believes poetry and the arts in general have a strong influence on Black philosophy and

Pg. 16 AUG 26 - SEP 8, 2020 - QCNERVE.COM

BY BRIANNA MONROE

According to Valaida Fullwood, co-founder of the New Generation of African American Philanthropists, sharing narratives is vital to black philosophy, and the most traditional way of doing so is through spoken word.

“When we were brought here through slavery we lost everything, we kept our history through storytelling,” Fullwood says.

Throughout history, Black people have utilized the arts as a way to share their narratives and inspire change. For example, “Strange Fruit” by Billie Holiday brought awareness to the lynchings that were taking place against the Black community during that time.

It’s a little known fact that August is Black Philanthropy Month, created in 2011 by the African Women’s Development Fund as a global celebration and concerted campaign to elevate African-descent giving.

While the New Generation of African American Philanthropists (NGAAP), a local “giving circle” that helps pool charitable funds giving back to the community, commemorates Black Philanthropy Month each year with an observance, this year they are taking things further.

The NGAAP is using Black Philanthropy Month 2020 as a launch pad for its new BeBOLD campaign, a long-term project devoted to building Black leadership and the voices of disregarded groups by utilizing a series of storytelling projects, including microstories such as a new poem from renowned Charlotte spoken-word poet Quentin Talley, founder of OnQ Productions, that we’re premiering in this paper and on our website.

The poem can be viewed on page 17, or listen to Talley perform it at qcnerve.com.

Focusing on the narrative initiative, the BeBOLD project has released a series of microstories throughout August, ranging from Hope Vibes executive director Adrienne Threatt’s tribute to her father, to Fullwood’s celebration of her Aunt Dora.

The NGAAP is encouraging people to share

ADRIENNE THREATT HOLDS A PICTURE OF HER FATHER, WHOM SHE HONORED IN A BEBOLD POST. COURTESY OF NEW GENERATION OF AFRICAN AMERICAN PHILANTHROPISTS

Fullwood and Talley have partnered on several projects, including a book that Fullwood wrote that includes one of Talley’s past pieces, and she worked with Talley on the construction of his new original piece made just for this campaign. The piece is titled “Bold Black Love Lives Here.”

Fullwood explains that after working with the multi-talented Talley on previous works she thought it might be time for another poem, and describes his original new work for BeBOLD as “a powerful nod to the past while looking forward to ask how current generations will affirm Black lives, strengthen

the inspiration for change. He cites several historic poets, such as Langston Hughes and Paul Laurence Dunbar, whose work has been iconic in raising awareness for inspiring action against the injustices that African Americans face in America.

“Poetry has always moved the needle when it comes to social justice and making change,” he says.

He adds that, in his new poem, he wants to convey that “there is nothing wrong with having bold Black love.” He goes further to explain that “Black love comes in all forms,” including philanthropic, that are “shared in our stories that we

pass down through history.”

Originally created by Dr. Jackie Bouvier Copeland and the Pan-African Women’s Philanthropy Network (PAWPNet), Black Philanthropy Month is an international movement devoted to the observance of Black philanthropy and giving in all forms. The celebratory month was first launched in 2011 to acknowledge the United Nations Year and Decade of People of African Descent.

The goal of Black Philanthropy Month is to inform, involve, inspire and invest in Black philanthropic leadership and to strengthen African-American and African-descent giving in all its forms, for the benefit of Black communities, organizations, and lives, according to its official website. Each year features a new concept, with this year’s theme being “Foresight 20/20.”

Yétundé Olagbaju, an artist from Oakland, California, explains how she views the theme and used it as inspiration for the official artwork she created for this year’s celebration.

“When I think of ‘foresight’ I think of preparedness, exchange, knowledge of self, and the community that supports us all in thriving,” Olagbaju says.

To commemorate #BPM2020CLT, NGAAP is spearheading a series of events and funding opportunities, in partnership with community collaborators including SHARE Charlotte, My Brother’s Keeper Charlotte-Mecklenburg, National PanHellenic Council-Charlotte Chapter, and YMCA of Greater Charlotte.

They’ve even gotten the support of Mayor Vi Lyles, who released a statement of recognition in which she pointed out that Charlotte is just the second city to officially proclaim August as Black Philanthropy Month. “I want to encourage everyone to meet and support black philanthropists,” Lyles wrote.

The NGAAP describes Black philanthropy as “the backbone of communities,” as Blackled organizations house the deep knowledge, relationships, and trust necessary to promote and maintain well-being and survival. These organizations face constant barriers to retrieving philanthropic resources that are essential to sustainability, growth and power. Nationally, less than 2% of funding by the largest country’s largest foundations is set aside specifically for Black communities.

According to the NGAAP, “Patterns of philanthropic under-investment and racial bias, both conscious and unconscious, serve to undermine the operations and capacity of Black-led organizations.”

ARTS FEATURE Due to severe underfunding and inconsistencies in resources, Black-led organizations as a whole are dealing with major barriers in managing operations and sustaining their missions. Furthermore, these organizations endure serious hurdles as it pertains to collaboration, innovation, and advocacy, which signifies the need for Black philanthropy and circular giving.

The second half of BeBOLD stands for Black Organizations Leading Differently, and the campaign is devoted to building and encouraging

institutions and structures that perpetuate distrust, oppression, inequity, and injustice.”

According to leaders with the NGAAP, the group will accomplish the goals of the BeBOLD project by employing four major initiatives: “to increase funding for general operations and for multiple years; narratives to amplify fresh voices, authentic framing and powerful storytelling; networks to foster new relationships, bridging and matchmaking community resources; and leadership to cultivate visible, effective leadership on racial equality.”

To wrap up the final events of Black Philanthropy Month and segue into the BeBOLD campaign, the

VALAIDA FULLWOOD (LEFT) HONORED HER AUNT DORA PHOTO COURTESY OF NGAAP

BOLD BLACK LOVE LIVED HERE

BY QUENTIN “Q” TALLEY

KNIGHT FOUNDATION’S CHARLES THOMAS HONORED HIS MOTHER (ABOVE).

Pg. 17 AUG 26 - SEP 8, 2020 - QCNERVE.COM

PHOTO COURTESY OF NGAAP

Black-led organizations to lead differently and to create different and fair outcomes for Charlotte’s Black residents as well as the growing spectrum of oppressed communities and communities of color to result in a benefit to all of Charlotte.

The campaign’s focus is not just to benefit Blackled organizations and Black communities but also to aid marginalized groups and create major changes in Charlotte’s nonprofit and philanthropic landscape.

The NGAAP believes that “by elevating and strengthening Black leadership and voices of groups that historically have been marginalized, we can make strides in de-centering Whiteness and ultimately dismantling White supremacist ideology that has dominated Southern culture and sustained

NGAAP will host a virtual workshop devoted to underrepresented voices to help develop leaders and leadership skills. The workshop, titled “The Power of the Collective,” will feature Howard Hill and Orsella Hughes of the Prosperity Foundation, Mark Lewis of the Poise Foundation, and Lyord Watson Jr. of the Penny Foundation.

Learn more at tinyurl.com/PowerOfCollective.

According to the Association of Black Foundation Executives, “Black social change leaders and Blackled institutions have played vital roles in almost every major movement in this country, from the abolition of slavery through today.”

It just takes the willingness to Be BOLD. INFO@QCNERVE.COM

As a new future is upon us This present moment Calls for courage

of bold. For soon the young will become, the old And the elders will

Like John Lewis To Sit in defiance Like Rosa Parks Lift our Voice

one day become you.

Time a wasting And our ancestors

Like Robeson Lean into Truth Like Mary Lou Become a beacon

Ain’t raise no fools. time is nigh To raise new Leaders of community

of Freedom Like Harriet Carry power In your posture

Intact with the tools To build unity Continuing legacy By leaving Trust

Like the ancestors Who knew They’d Guide Our path

funding a new generation of African American philanthropists Disrupting fear

With the torch They passed to You. Lighting a fire

Do it for the culture we hold dear.

Now the future will know

Under our foots to move This moment is ours

Only the stories of Bold Black Love lived here.

if you so choose The mission is to show and prove Be like the stories

INFO@QCNERVE.COM

ARTS FEATURE

Without any income from tickets and than 300 events had already been canceled.

Even the tiny Warehouse Performing Arts Center subscriptions to nourish them, hibernation is a more up in Cornelius has seen its storefront operation viable strategy at WPAC. “The ironic ‘good news’ is that no artists made come to a halt.

“A good portion of our mission and aesthetic their living at WPAC, so the company is not seriously was bound up in the intimacy of the venue, the damaged economically,” Brown reports. “We have ability for small audiences to engage very closely always been poor, relying on MacGyver theatre with the dramatic world immediately before them,” tactics and the wonderful talent pool of Metrolina Charlotte’s performing arts says WPAC president Marla Brown. “We can’t do to make solid shows on a dime. We will be back.”

One size does not fit all when it comes to that. Social distancing at WPAC would mean one scene faces up to adversity financial impact. The image of poor ragtag artists audience member watching a monologue.” and diversity in a dual crisis Unlike Brown, who suspended efforts to stage doesn’t fit Blumenthal Performing Arts operations, live performances, Decker has raged against the nor do Charlotte Symphony, Opera Carolina, Theatre

BY PERRY TANNENBAUM dying of the spotlights. Actor’s Theatre lost three Charlotte, Children’s Theatre, Charlotte Ballet, productions from its 31st season and now expects or Actor’s Theatre fit the same WPAC storefront Performing arts in Charlotte have been hit to lose all of Season 32. They’ve had to postpone template. hard, perhaps as hard as any industry during the their nuVoices Play Festival and the follow-up to last All of these companies have salaried employees.

COVID-19 pandemic — halted in place and put on summer’s Midsummer Nights @ Queens production, All applied — and received — funding from hold with little options for adaptations. Chip Decker, longtime artistic director at Actor’s Theatre of Charlotte, has taken this sort of punch before. Twice in the past five years he has seen new venues for his company swept out from under his feet.

And now this.

“Seeing the thing you have sacrificed so much for be on the brink of disappearing, despite all of your best efforts, really quite sucks,” Decker observes. “Our business is dependent on THEATRE CHARLOTTE’S ‘CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF’ SET HAS SAT EMPTY SINCE MARCH lots of people gathering in PHOTO BY TIM PARATI/THEATRE CHARLOTTE small spaces — not the best operating model during a pandemic.” the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Payroll presumably a Shakespearean comedy.

Nor is gathering lots of people in big spaces.

An outdoor revival of Hedwig and the Angry Inch Protection Program (PPP), totaling upwards of $3 Charlotte Ballet’s Sleeping Beauty at Knight Theater fell through, compounding Decker’s woes, along million. and a three-day Women in Jazz fest at Stage Door with outdoor events planned at Freedom Park and “We received a PPP loan from SBA which covered Theater were among the first events to be canceled a nearby Dilworth vacant lot at the intersection staff salaries through June,” says Ron Law, who was in March. Charlotte Symphony’s concert at Belk of Scott Avenue and East Boulevard. Charlotte slated to retire on June 30 but has signed on for Theater and the Jewish Playwriting Contest at Symphony was no less elaborate in its planning, another season as Theatre Charlotte’s executive Shalom Park quickly followed. seeing a three-week festival of concerts scheduled director at the request of the board. “We have used Audiences have never seen the sets for Theatre this month at Queens University, Knight Theater, up our cash reserves, but we have been able to Charlotte’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof or Children’s Belk Theater, and Triple C Brewing Company dribble generate revenue from an online web-a-thon and Theatre’s Dragons Love Tacos. Pieces of scenery down the drain. other asks. Many of those holding tickets for the two pieces were deserted onstage at their Queens Road “It takes months of planning to get a show up, canceled main stage productions made their ticket and ImaginOn locations, respectively. CPCC Summer and one 30-second COVID announcement to derail purchases a donation to TC.” Theatre never got off its feet this year, and when we it,” says Decker, “and to the layperson, that can come Under COVID conditions, Theatre Charlotte checked in with Blumenthal Performing Arts last off as nothing has been done.” has been able to achieve the improbable. Weather month, president Tom Gabbard told us that more

Pg. 18 AUG 26 - SEP 8, 2020 - QCNERVE.COM

OFFSTAGE AND BEHIND THE SCENES

permitting, they’ve presented Grand Nights for Singing: The Parking Lot Performances on Friday Nights. Their audiences, capped at 25, are socially distanced, as are their singers.

Audience members bring their own snacks, beverages, and chairs — no reservations — and the suggested donation is $10. Each of the two vocalists gets their own mic, and there are no duets.

So far, thanks to lucrative TV contracts, professional sports leagues have returned with their superstar athletes to empty stadiums and coliseums.

Unfortunately, that business model hasn’t worked for Blumenthal Performing Arts’ big three venues — Belk, Ovens, and the Knight. We can expect them to remain shut down until at least December.

In the meantime, performing arts around the globe have migrated online. Charlotte Ballet was among the first to adapt. Within two weeks of canceling the March 13 premiere of their “fairytailored” Sleeping Beauty at the last minute, Ballet dipped into their digital vaults and streamed Dispersal, their first free digital event.

The flick depicted more than merely a rehash of the choreographies presented at Innovative Works 2019, when Charlotte Ballet collaborated with the Mint Museum, the Studio Drift duo, and choreographer Christopher Stuart. Intercut with the Innovative performance videos was behind-the-scenes footage that transformed the evening into a documentary, reaching an audience of more than 13,000.

Enter Zoom for a brand-new collaboration.

Charlotte Ballet artistic director Hope Muir couldn’t help noticing that the web was becoming oversaturated with dance.

“We took a step back to regroup and to explore other means of engagement,” Muir reveals, “and I worked with choreographer Helen Pickett to discuss our options and resulted in an opportunity for five of our dancers. Charlotte Ballet joins artists from Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre and Dance Theater of Harlem for Part III of a trilogy Helen developed titled Home Studies, which is entirely choreographed and rehearsed via Zoom.” (Airing on August 27 on

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ARTS FEATURE Charlotte Ballet’s Facebook page.)

No less audacious, Muir has sidelined Nutcracker, Ballet’s traditional Yuletide cash cow, for the 2020-21 season. Fingers crossed, she’s replacing the beloved Russian ballet at Belk Theater this December with another Tchaikovsky masterwork, the previously abandoned Sleeping Beauty: A FairyTailored Classic.

The reawakened Sleeping Beauty is the first live event to be planted on the 2020-21 calendar, but Theatre Charlotte has hatched — or is it hedged? — some hybrids. After purchasing video equipment, the Queens Road barn can now pivot to streaming.

Twelve Angry Men, originally scheduled for October, has been ditched because Theatre Charlotte couldn’t obtain streaming rights. Instead, the company will showcase A.R. Gurney’s What I Did Last Summer for three nights in September and Tennessee Williams’ Suddenly, Last Summer for three dates in October. Both productions will feature socially distanced casts performing on the same Cat on a Hot Tin Roof set that has been waiting for action on Theatre Charlotte’s stage since March.

These shows will be ticketed, streamed behind a paywall. Law hopes that audiences will be able to attend the traditional holiday production of A Christmas Carol on Queens Road. But he isn’t taking chances. He had Chris Timmons shorten his own adaptation to 90 minutes so that it can be performed without intermission, utilizing a small cast and a narrator.

“If we can perform it live in [Theatre Charlotte] by that time, we will,” Law declares. “We will also put it on video and stream it for those who don’t feel safe coming to the theatre or can’t be accommodated due to limited seating capacity.”

Three Bone Theatre has a four-person leadership team, the same number as Theatre Charlotte’s fulltime staff — except Three Bone executive director Becky Schultz serves on a volunteer basis. Because of their non-traditional staffing, the company wasn’t eligible to apply for PPP funding. Because they don’t control their own space, they can’t rehearse or perform as freely as Theatre Charlotte, Children’s Theatre, and Charlotte Ballet.

“When we do go back into production, we are facing smaller house sizes and artists and patrons who are concerned about safety. We will need to prioritize shows with smaller casts and production costs, limiting the stories we can tell,” Schultz confides. “It’s impossible to say when audiences will

as individuals and as an organization. We are listening to BIPOC [Black and Indigenous People of Color] artists, engaging in difficult conversations and reflecting on how we can do more to be an anti-racist company.”

Black theatre has been part of Actor’s Theatre programming for every season since 2008-09, most recently with Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill — with Crowns on tap for their upcoming season — yet Decker is among the arts leaders of Charlotte unanimously proclaiming that they are rededicating themselves to BLM. OPERA CAROLINA HAD TO CANCEL THIS YEAR’S RUN OF ‘I DREAM’ WHEN THE PANDEMIC HIT. “ATC is working hard on PHOTO BY MITCHELL KEARNEY recognizing and dismantling our own systemic racist culture,” return to pre-COVID levels but we expect it will take responsibility to ensure that we are deliberately Decker responds, “and we are in full support of the a long time. We have lost the forward momentum supporting that with our programming, both Black Lives Matter movement and having room at that we’ve spent the last eight years developing, on stage and behind the scenes. We are taking the table for BIPOC.” and dipping into our reserves delays our ability to this opportunity to further educate ourselves finally add staff.”

It’s been over six months since Three Bone’s last production shut down. Revenue from their last two shows, Dada Woof Papa Hot scheduled for May and This Is Modern Art for July, was largely lost, representing 40% of their 2019-20 season. During the shutdown, Three Bone staffers have dealt with loss of jobs, taking on the rigors of homeschooling, experiencing the stresses of quarantine, and watching family members battle the virus.

A New Reckoning Arises Like other performing arts companies across Charlotte — we sent out questionnaires to 17 of them — Schultz and her Three Bone team are heeding the crosswinds of social unrest sweeping across the country. The Black Lives Matter reckoning is spilling onto our streets amid the pandemic, troubling consciences and challenging longstanding norms.

In their planning of how to come back from COVID, arts leaders agree that it’s not just about making the smart business decisions necessary to cope with new realities; it’s about being better.

Schultz admits that Three Bone is re-evaluating 2020-21 programming.

“We believe that Black lives matter and Black theatre matters,” Schultz states, “and we have a

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ARTS FEATURE

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Nor is Actor’s Theatre an exception. Inclusive programming is admirably pervasive across the spectrum of Charlotte’s performing arts scene.

Opera Carolina was close to presenting I Dream for a second time — in a newly revised version — when the pandemic hit. Charlotte Ballet has a long history of showcasing African-American dancers onstage and forging sturdy relationships with Black choreographers behind the scenes.

Up in Cornelius, WPAC was in mid-rehearsal of Lynn Nottage’s award-winning Sweat when COVID shut things down. Ron McClelland was directing a diverse cast that included Shar Marlin, Brian Daye, and Dominic Weaver. That show might pivot to a streaming format when the production team meets to decide.

Theatre Charlotte, with Ain’t Misbehavin’ in February 2019 and Dreamgirls missing-in-action back in May, certainly hasn’t been caught off-guard by pleas for Black programming. CPCC Theatre has presented multiple dramas by August Wilson, their Summer Theatre offered Beehive in 2019, and the college recently announced the onboarding of a new chief diversity officer.

Aside from the Johnson C. Smith theatre department and the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture, there are two Black theatre companies based in Charlotte: On Q Performing Arts and Brand New Sheriff. Charlotte has hosted — and won — the National Poetry Slam, we have an annual jazz festival closely aligned with Jazz @ Lincoln Center, and we were the first American city to host the Breakin’ Convention.

Up in Winston-Salem, the National Black Theatre Festival has convened for a week in oddnumbered years since 1989, most recently in 2019 when they hosted more than 40 African-American celebs, 30-odd Black theatre productions from across the nation, and the American Theatre Critics Association.

So Charlotte and North Carolina have nothing to hang their heads about if you’re making comparisons about Black culture and programming.

Dig beneath Charlotte’s shiny surfaces, however, and you do notice the structural, systemic problems that are drawing fire. Sixteen of the 17 questionnaires we sent out — to companies who had already found a spot on our 2020 calendars before COVID — were earmarked for Caucasians.

No arts organization in the Metrolina region presents a more diverse array of educational and

onstage programming — or serves a more diverse audience — than Children’s Theatre of Charlotte.

When they halted the hip-hop run of Grimmz Fairy Tales and shelved Dragons Love Tacos, staff at ImaginOn did not leave the students enrolled in their 20-week School of Theatre training program in the lurch.

Adroitly, they pivoted, so that two onstage plays and two musicals were moved to virtual format. Summer camps began online, not skipping a beat, morphing to a hybrid program — your choice of online or in-person — when guidelines from Centers for Disease Control, state, and federal officials could be met.

Collaborating with 37 children’s theaters across the country, Children’s posted a new adaptation of A Kids Book About Racism as a virtual performance early this month, and they’re continuing work on their commission of Tropical Secrets: Holocaust Refugees in Cuba as part of The Kindness Project.

Yet executive director Adam Burke is among the good guys who are still doing some soul-searching.

“This is an incredibly important moment in the world, but also here in Charlotte, both socially and culturally,” Burke asserts. “Black Lives Matter is at the center of this moment. It is our responsibility to be checking to ensure that we are doing this

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in a way that is equitable and inclusive. What I, and Children’s Theatre of Charlotte, can do is work to acknowledge and eliminate unconscious bias through active education as well as examination of current practices and policies, and that is what we are doing.”

Systemically, the most obvious places to be on the lookout for change is on the roster of performing arts vacancies around town.

Burke reports that his director of advancement position has been vacant since November and that managing director Linda Reynolds is retiring at the end of this month.

Law isn’t the only leader who needs to be replaced once he’s allowed to retire — CPCC’s Tom Hollis ended his long tenure as department chair on Aug. 1.

Our performing arts companies can address adversity and diversity at the same time, but we can help with our interest, encouragement, and support. We can also check the behavior of ourselves and those around us.

Decker probably says it best: “Tell your crazy uncle to put on his damn mask!”

INFO@QCNERVE.COM

We’re kind of opening, kind of not, so not all of these are virtual events as we were highlighting at the beginning of the lockdown, but plenty are. COVID is still going strong, so party at your own risk.

METALLICA

What: Our favorite song by durable and melodic heavy metal shredders Metallica is a tune they didn’t even write. “Die Die My Darling” is a Misfits song off Metallica’s 1998 covers compilation Garage Inc. With chugging guitars, lighting-crack drums and growling bass, Metallica’s version of Glenn Danzig’s skin-crawling punk rock classic is cleaner, more dynamic, and rocks considerably harder than its forebear. It might lose the dank Ted Bundy’s basement vibe rocked by the smeary, blurry original, but do you want to rock out or get creeped out? At $115 per carload, you can pack your vehicle with six to eight occupants, and wind up paying a per-ticket price equal to what you would have shelled out to see Metallica at a concert hall in 1983.

More: $115; Aug. 29, 8:25 p.m.; Hounds Drive-In, 114 Raven Circle, Kings Mountain; houndsdrivein.com

A WOMAN’S WORK

What: The full title of this virtual exhibition at the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Arts + Culture is “A Woman’s Work: Selections from the John and Vivian Hewitt Collection of African American Art.” It encompasses a multitude of women and their many roles, identities and experiences. It places the focus of attention on the Black woman — as the center of family, as a sister, worker and the epitome of womanhood. Interlaced with unwavering love, kinship and perseverance, the works on display combine vivid imagery, light sketches, intricate patterns and a sense of reality and wonder. “A Woman’s Work” is paired with the virtual exhibit “20 African American Artists You Should Know.”

More: Free; ganttcenter.org

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CREATIVE SHIFTS: SOCIETAL CONFRONTATIONS

What: In challenging times, contemporary art can be a vehicle for exploring difficult ideas, presenting alternate perspectives, or prompting social change. McColl Center alumni artists Maya Gurantz and Marcus Kiser join Detroit native John Sims to confront societal and historical practices around gender, race, and identity using video, performance, and digital media. Across mediums, these encounters can initiate healthy dialogue

and productive debate. Local curator Jonell Logan CHARLOTTE FILM SOCIETY’S VIRTUAL moderates the discussion on art that questions the SCREENING ROOM social, political, and cultural practices that isolate, What: Once again the Charlotte Film Society culls suppress, and divide us. and rejuvenates their collection of foreign and More: Free, Aug. 26, 7 p.m.; mccollcenter.org/ indie art films that you can’t see anywhere else.

“While the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most I ONCE WAS LOST BUT NOW AM certainly Christ-haunted,” said the subject of the new documentary Flannery. The lyrical and haunting FOUND What: Catch the last two nights of a four-day run of examination of Flannery O’Connor, the southern spoken-word performances and virtual choir internet writer who influenced countless scribes, features concerts curated by Brooklyn-based art-and-activist never before seen archival footage, and interviews duo LigoranoReese (Check out Queen City Nerve’s with people who knew O’Connor, including actor story on LigoranoReese and their ongoing School of Tommy Lee Jones. In Amulet, a former soldier moves Good Citizenship arts festival and forum, which runs into a decaying house with two women, a mousy through early October, at qcnerve.com) On the last young caretaker and an elderly invalid in an upstairs two nights of the Republican National Convention, room who he never sees. The atmospheric horror a different chorus each night will perform songs of tale manages to be atmospheric, unsettling and uplift and hope, culminating on the last night in a grotesque. final upwelling of song. The concert program takes More: $10-12 for 72 hours; charlottefilmsociety.com its title from the stirring hymn “Amazing Grace,” and the arts duo picked a musical happening because A NIGHT AT THE DRIVE IN they wanted something ephemeral that would still What: Actor and producer Michael B. Jordan has somehow stick with an audience. teamed with Amazon Studios to present “A Night at More: Free; Aug. 26, 8:30 p.m.; Aug. 27, 8:30 p.m.; the Drive-In,” a free summer screening series curated schoolofgoodcitizenship.org by the Black Panther and Creed star. Presented every other week, the double bills celebrate Black cinema.

The program at the Badin Road Drive-In in Albemarle KAMA What: Kama, meaning desire or longing, usually is titled “Movies to Make You Laugh” and features refers to a sexual desire but can also apply to any type the 1988 Eddie Murphy vehicle Coming to America. of sensory or aesthetic pleasure. It is also the title to The iconic flick benefits mostly from the great an art show presented by Southern Tiger Collective. comic chemistry between Murphy and Arsenio Hall.

Given the erotic nature of most of the work being Otherwise, it’s a by-the-numbers fish-out-of-water shown, this is an 18-and-up event featuring new saga with Murphy channeling Yul Brynner from The works from a variety of artists. One hour time slots King and I to portray an African prince looking for will be provided and enforced to comply with social true love. The 2017 co-feature, the sisters-on-thedistancing and responsibility. Also, the number of loose comedy Girls Trip is even better, boasting a people allowed in the building at one time will be slick ensemble cast and effective rude and raunchy limited. Expect the event to meet the high standards humor. The movie gets extra points for popularizing set by previous Southern Tiger shows, this time with the sexual technique “grapefruiting.”

More: Free; August 26, 6 p.m.; Badin Road Drive-I, a sensuous twist.

More: $22.50; Sept. 4, 12 p.m.–Sept. 6, 9 p.m.; 2411 Badin Road, Albemarle; facebook.com/ events/694145708092787 3529 DeWitt Lane: tinyurl.com/STCKama

CO-EXISTING WITH WILDLIFE

What: Installed bird feeders and the raccoon found them? Put up a bird box and the flying squirrel moved in? National Wildlife Federation spokesperson, David Mizejewski, will talk to Habitat and Wild Keepers (HAWK) about unintended consequences when creating a wildlife habitat.

This online event is presented by National Wildlife Federation and HAWK. More: Free; Sept. 1, 6:30 p.m.; tinyurl.com/NCWFCoexist

NO CONTACT CONCERT SERIES

What: Midwood Entertainment’s collaboration with Codex Sound continues, offering livestreamed full-band performances. Shot at Codex Sounds 14,000-square-foot warehouse in Hickory, the No Contact Concert Series trades iPhones and living rooms for a professional stage and lighting rig, concert hall quality audio inputs and 12 video cameras. On Aug. 30, Asheville’s funk rock juggernaut The Fritz take the stage. Sept. 5 headliner Cicada Rhythm craft an open-hearted, inventive blend of American music styles in deceptively simple songs that are both haunting and playfully jaunty.

More: $10 and up; Aug. 30, 8 p.m. September 5, 8 p.m.; crowd-less.com

FALL VEGETABLE GARDENING WORKSHOP

What: Vegetables planted in August mature in the cool of late September, October, and beyond. This workshop, hosted by the UNC Charlotte Botanical Gardens, will teach you the tricks of the food gardener’s trade. For instance, you may think spring collards will just grow more bitter from here on out, but they actually get sweeter. With knowledge, perseverance and a little luck, you can have a bounty of fresh homegrown vegetables for your table. Participants will learn the best varieties of fall vegetables to plant for Carolina Piedmont conditions and how inexpensive season extenders can stretch a harvest. Class is limited to 16 participants.

More: $25-30; Sept. 5, 1 p.m.; tinyurl.com/VeggieWorkshop

MUSIC FEATURE

from just playing by myself in my room on an acoustic guitar to understanding how I could be in a band, how that would all work together, and the confidence that comes with that,” she says.

Over the last year, the band itself has built on the confidence that comes with a truly collaborative songwriting process.

In May 2019, Queen City Nerve premiered “Mushrooms,” the first single from heckdang’s second EP Never Left Home.

The song, which originated with some chords that Brooks recorded himself playing in a closet during a sketchy mushroom trip, was the first project the trio had all worked on together since bringing Brooks into the band.

“I think it was a really important time in our

loved ones — Fine, Just Thinking builds on those ideas.

“At least from a lyrical perspective, it’s a real continuation of those themes, but I was trying to look at it less from the perspective of just cut-anddry loss and kind of work in some of the nuances of all of those experiences,” Criswell says. “For this EP I think the themes have a lot more to do with wanting Emo rockers heckdang show to care for people and wanting to be cared for. If the progress in newest EP last EP was a stage of grief, it would be more just depression, and I feel like this one has a lot more

BY RYAN PITKIN anger and bargaining.”

The first two tracks of Fine, Just Thinking run If it weren’t for School of Rock Charlotte, it’s hard together as Part 1 and Part 2 of a song titled “Fear to see any other way timeline in which the group of Moving On.” The episodic nature of the EP was of friends who would later become Charlotte emo inspired by bands like Arcade Fire, which features a indie rock trio heckdang would have come together. four-part masterpiece called “Neighborhood” on its With bassist Magda Criswell 2004 album Funeral. and guitarist Phillip Calhoun Calhoun also cites the two being home-schooled on opening tracks from The Dream separate sides of the Carolina Is Over, the second album from border, and drummer Cole Canadian rockers PUP. He says Brooks attending a high school he’s listened to the songs more in Fort Mill, South Carolina, it just than 100 times and still can’t wouldn’t have been in the cards identify a real transition. for the three to get together and “I always really love when jam. albums just kind of flow through “There would have been the songs, almost like a song no other way for us to meet,” ends and the next song picks Criswell says, laughing as she up and you’re like wait, where recalls the band’s trajectory. was that change?” Calhoun The three did meet, explains, pointing back to the however, as students at School PUP tracks. “It’s so well produced of Rock during different stages and the songs are so well put in their high-school years. They together, and I’ve always been a eventually played together big nerd for stuff like that. I love in their first band Pink Pots, when albums have a sense of a project fronted by School of continuity.”

Rock classmate Todd Jordan.

Fans might notice a similar After graduating high school, well-produced quality to Fine, Criswell launched heckdang Just Thinking, thanks in part to then brought on Calhoun, now PHOTO BY CALLIE STUCKEY producer Daniel Hodges at Old her partner, shortly thereafter. HECKDANG (FROM LEFT): MAGDA CRISWELL, PHILLIP CALHOUN AND COLE BROOKS. House Studio, where the band When Brooks graduated two recorded the new project. years later, the two brought him on a “pizza date” instilled a sense of professionalism and taught you creative process together, because I think that was Calhoun can be proud of the transition between and asked if he’d like to play with heckdang as full- all the little stuff that’s super fuckin’ annoying when also the first time that we all got comfortable really “Fear of Moving On” parts 1 and 2, but the whole time drummer. somebody else does it but no one would tell you not sharing material with another person knowing that band should be proud of the finished EP, which “It was very romantic,” Brooks says with a to do.” it was going to change — giving that part to our The Alternative magazine recently called “aurally sarcastic grin. “How could I not say yes?”

It’s no wonder that Criswell and Brooks have not bandmates knowing that it’s not going to be the staggering.”

It’s now been eight years since Calhoun and cut their ties to School of Rock Charlotte; they both same whenever they’re done with it and trusting While each band member has recorded music Brooks first met in June 2012, three since heckdang currently work there as instructors. For Criswell, that it’s going to be better,” Criswell says “I think it in a professional studio, it was a first for heckdang got off the ground and two since Brooks came it’s a chance to pass on the lessons she learned — was the really first collaborative thing that we’ve as a group, and a big step up from Never Left Home, onboard. On Aug. 14, the band released its third EP, especially those that go beyond bridges, choruses done, and since then it’s what we’ve kept doing.” which they recorded in Brooks’ childhood bedroom.

Fine, Just Thinking, their most polished work yet, and and solos.

While Never Left Home was a project about loss Criswell says the Old House recording process was the trio is now in the writing process for its first full“It was definitely life-changing for me, going — loss of self-identity, loss of relationships and loss of “an absolutely amazing experience,” and a perfect length album.

SAD MUSIC, GOOD TIMES

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Despite now being seasoned performers who have toured and played countless shows around Charlotte, the bandmates still credit the after-school music program for teaching them all those things nobody else is willing to teach you at a young age.

“Tuning after every song; tuning before you get to the show, when you get to the show and when you’re about to play; don’t be a jerk to your sound guy; be there half an hour early,” Brooks says, recalling lessons he learned at School of Rock that stick with him today. “All these things that a lot of times when we are playing out live I see a lot of people not doing.”

Calhoun finishes Brooks’ thought.

“If there’s something that School of Rock did for the three of us that really helped,” he says, “it kind of

MUSIC FEATURE

stages of grief, and if so, which way? Perhaps to shock? Hopefully to acceptance?

She says it’s more a matter of zooming in on the stepping stone before getting to work on their themes she’s already touched on. debut full-length album.

“I don’t know if it’s exactly building upon those “We were really conscious about wanting to do a few EPs before putting an album out, not just to help get our name out there a little bit more before committing to an entire album, but also to help solidify that writing process and figure out exactly where we want to go stylistically, which is still very hard for us to pin down,” Criswell says. “I know the album’s going to have a lot of different genre influences involved.”

The trio credits much of its growth, which is clearly perceptible from project to project, to their willingness to build on the process that began with “Mushrooms” and has continued to evolve over countless hours in Calhoun’s minivan together during tours.

HECKDANG AGAIN, DOGGONE IT. The team wrapped its work on Fine, Just Thinking only a couple weeks before COVID-19 clamped down but rather expanding on them,” she says. “I think the on everyone’s ability to be together, but heckdang album allows for me to go into some more detail made the decision early that they would quarantine of those themes ... I think I’ve become a better together. songwriter over the years, so I think I have better I ask if, while writing songs for the new album, tools to really pinpoint some things that I was trying Criswell will continue to move down the seven

the content of Criswell’s lyrics, a therapeutic process that, as with most emo bands, provides a release and allows the group to be as fun-loving and apt to crack a joke as anyone else in their everyday lives.

Now in the days of COVID-19, however, that outlet has become more narrow, and the trio needs to fill the void once satisfied by the cathartic feeling that comes with not only performing but attending shows.

“That’s the worst part for me about [the COVID-19 shutdown] is that kind of catharsis is one of the most important things to me about music, and not having that has definitely been really hard,” Criswell says. “Not just performing, not just hoping that whatever we’re making connects with someone else and that they can feel some kind of catharsis, but also, not having that personally from being in an audience … I don’t know how we would get through PHOTO BY CALLIE STUCKY [COVID-19] without live streams, just mentally.”

Considering heckdang is a band that thrives in creative with live-stream events — as they did with expressing the emotions around loss, there’s a good the variety show they hosted for an EP release party chance we’ll come out of this shitshow of a year with on Aug. 14 — the lack of live shows allows them one hell of a debut album from the trio.

In the emo world, that’s a win for everybody. nothing but time to hone their craft for the album.

Add it to the list of grievances that run through to exactly get to in the album.”

Criswell has at least one song in the can, she says, and the bandmates agree that they’ve got more than half the songs for the new album laid out and ready for lyrics. Though the band does enjoy getting

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FOOD & DRINK FEATURE

A PINT AT THE TABLE

New Sugar Creek Brewing internship aims to diversify craft beer scene

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BY PAT MORAN

closure, Charlotte’s craft beer scene has increasingly looked like a sea of white faces.

The exception, say Vogelbacher and Nash, is Sugar Creek Brewing Company. They maintain that Nash is the only Black general manager in Charlotte’s burgeoning brewery scene.

“I’m really surprised there are not more people of color in the business,” Vogelbacher says. “I didn’t even realize how much diversity we have in our own staff until I took a closer look at it.”

The brewery’s team includes a Latin-American employee and a Pacific Islander as assistant manager. Nash is aware that his rare position in the industry comes with responsibility. He says he hopes to be the bridge that opens up the craft beer world to more diversity.

He remembers the meeting last June when

When the national Black is Beautiful initiative swept through Charlotte’s craft beer industry, Marques Nash was gratified. The campaign, ultimately taken up by more than a dozen Charlotte breweries, charges each participant to release a racial justice-themed beer and donate all proceeds to local foundations that support equality, inclusion and policing reforms. As general manager of Sugar Creek Brewing Company, and as a Black man, Nash approved of the idea of utilizing the popularity of craft beer to raise awareness and funding for a worthy cause. But he also wondered: Why stop with a beer release?

Nash went to his employers, Sugar Creek Brewing Company founders and co-owners Joe Vogelbacher and Eric Flanigan, and proposed that the brewery offer a paid internship to an African-American man or woman interested in entering the craft beer field. The internship would cover all aspects of the industry, and upon completion the intern would receive assistance in finding a job in the field or becoming an owner of their own business.

BEHIND THE SCENES AT SUGAR CREEK BREWING COMPANY. “I was thinking of the saying, ‘Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and he’s set for life,’” Nash tells Queen City Nerve. he pitched the internship to Sugar Creek Brewing But in this case the idea can be restated as: “Why Company’s President Vogelbacher. release a Black is Beautiful beer, when you can give a The two men were sitting in Vogelbacher’s office Black person a livelihood and career.” at the brewery, bouncing ideas off each other, when The Sugar Creek Brewing Company internship Nash proposal the internship. His boss embraced it comes at a time when the local craft beer industry, with enthusiasm. historically seen as a white man’s game, needs to expand its diversity. According to the North The Brewmaster’s Apprentice Carolina Craft Brewers Guild (NCCBG), just 1% of Though the company plans to join their North Carolina breweries are minority-owned. In compatriots in the local craft beer scene in releasing Charlotte, that percentage dropped to zero in April their own version of a Black is Beautiful beer, that 2019 when owner Tabu Terrell shuttered Three project is on the back burner, Vogelbacher offers, Spirits Brewery, the city’s only Black-owned craft while the brewery focuses on the internship’s beer-maker and establishment. details.

The NCCBG has not published figures on minority “We’ve offered internships here before,’ management in the industry, but since Three Spirit’s

Vogelbacher says, “but nothing quite as robust as what Marques came up with.”

The paid internship, which commences in midOctober, runs for eight to 12 weeks, at 40 hours a week. It will start with a single intern, says Nash, but he doesn’t rule out additional interns in future iterations of the program.

“We want to make sure that this is done correctly,” Nash says. “We want to see the evolution of this as it moves forward.”

The intern will spend time with the brewery’s founders and division managers, receiving handson training in all areas of business including brewing, cellaring and recipe formulation, taproom operations, sales, marketing, distribution, and financial management, Nash offers. His plan has built-in flexibility, with specialized or focused

brewing rules. Unlike the Germans just across the border, who operate by the Reinheitsgebot, strict purity laws that limit beer’s ingredients to just malt, water, yeast and hops, the Belgians have no restrictions, he says.

Belgian beers, crafted by Trappist monks in monasteries, embrace experimentation, Vogelbacher offers. The Belgians put their beer in champagne bottles, treating in the way the French treat fine wine. They put spices in their beer, or age it for a long period of time and they often make sour beers.

“They do anything they can to make the beer delicious,” Vogelbacher says.

He knows his beer. Last December Vogelbacher was certified as a Master Cicerone, the fourth and highest level of the worldwide cicerone system.

He passed a grueling two-day 20-hour exam, held just once a year in Chicago. A cicerone is the brewing equivalent of a sommelier, a certified and knowledgeable expert in wine making. Vogelbacher is the first brewmaster from North Carolina to earn the highest level of knowledgeable expert in beer, joining a worldwide fraternity of only 19 people.

Nash is also certified in the cicerone system, attaining the first level as a Certified Beer Server, the only level that allows testing online. He’s currently studying for level two, and hoping to earn the official Cicerone designation this year.

The brewery staff’s dedication has earned the company international awards for the classic Belgian beers on the establishment’s extensive menu.

Last year, they won a Great American Beer Festival Gold Medal for their Belgian Dubbel, a PHOTO COURTESY OF SCBC strong brown beer first brewed at Westmalle Abbey in 1856, Vogelbacher says. The Belgian Dubbel also won a Gold Medal in The U.S. Open training made available to the intern based on their the year before. areas of interest.

But the brewery’s beers are far from being “If [we get] somebody who’s trying to get a limited to the classics, Vogelbacher maintains. Sugar job like Marques, they’re going to spend time with Creek Brewing Company makes trendier beers as Marques,” Vogelbacher offers. “If it’s somebody who well. Their west coast IPA, “The Big O,” is popular in is trying to open a brewery from scratch, they might the grocery stores. An IPA fermented with fruit, it’s spend more time with me.” currently the company’s best seller.

Needless to say, applicants for the position must Grocery stores are particularly important to the love beer, Nash says, and be willing to immerse company now, because the brewing industry has themselves in Sugar Creek Brewing Company’s way been ravaged by economic fall-out from COVID-19, of making the malted beverage.

Vogelbacher offers. The brewery has furloughed Sugar Creek Brewing Company’s website says most of its team with a 75% reduction in staff, the business is dedicated to crafting Belgian-inspired which includes a 50% cut-back in the tap room. A ales for the Carolinas and beyond. For Vogelbacher, complete drop off in private events has contributed the appeal of the Belgians is that they break many to a 50% reduction in draft beer sales in North and

FOOD & DRINK FEATURE

Pg. 25 AUG 26 - SEP 8, 2020 - QCNERVE.COM

South Carolina, he says.

“All our business is coming from our cans,” he maintains.

Despite the dour business outlook, Vogelbacher and Nash feel the timing two months from now will be perfect to bring an intern on board and teach them the ropes.

To some extent, the company’s no rules credo also applies to what the intern does with the knowledge and experience they gain from their apprenticeship at Sugar Creek Brewing Company.

Upon completion of the program, the brewery will offer the intern a job reference and/or assistance with business planning.

When asked if he’s concerned that he might be training a potential competitor, Nash says he doesn’t see the situation that way.

“It would be another ally and partner in this world of craft beer,” Nash maintains. “We can’t stop breweries from opening, but we can encourage a more diverse scene.”

“It would be like a sister or brother brewery” Vogelbacher adds.

Whether the intern wants to open a business, hone a centuries-old craft or learn the ropes in a still-robust field despite the ravages of COVID-19, applicants are advised to email their resumes, along with a 350- to 500-word essay on why they are right for the position to: Marques@sugarcreekbrewing. com.

A Brewing Opportunity Whoever lands the position is in for the experience of a lifetime, Nash promises. He sees parallels between whomever becomes the intern and his own journey in the craft beer industry “I would have absolutely killed for this opportunity,” he stresses.

In 2017, the then 30-year-old husband and father of two had been working in the hospitality and food service industry for a number of years.

He was serving as general manager at Mellow Mushroom when a coworker who was also putting in hours at Sugar Creek Brewing Company started touting employment at the brewery to Nash.

“He kept talking about how I would be a perfect fit here,” Nash remembers. “He eventually dragged me over and thank God he did.”

Three years ago, Nash started as an assistant manager. He compares the excitement and satisfaction of working at the brewery and embracing the challenge of a steep learning curve

to his other career as a musician.

Ten years ago, Nash’s Charlotte-based band Lucky Five released their debut album, La Resistance, to local and regional acclaim. A staple of the Queen City’s music scene, the band fused funk, jazz and rock into irresistible grooves centered around Nash’s impassioned vocals and soulful lyrics. But after playing Speed Street and a South by Southwest showcase in 2012, life happened. Band members moved on, leaving for college, marriage and job opportunities. Though the band’s members have remained friends, La Resistance remains Lucky Five’s only release.

The band reformed for a one-off reunion show in December 2018, selling out the Evening Muse.

Nash remains proud of Lucky Five and La Resistance.

“That album is my heartbeat,” he told Queen City Nerve shortly before the reunion show. Today, Nash says he’s found a calling that is equal to music.

“That strain of passion that I have toward music I [also] have towards beer and spirits,” he says, adding that his current job has brought him new skills to learn and new challenges to conquer.

Nash’s strength is that he spends time with guests one-on-one, Vogelbach offers, making people of all walks of life feel comfortable. Nash particularly loves serving craft beer novices, people who can’t tell the different between a pilsner and a porter. He sees a big part of his job as helping people who don’t know beer find a new favorite.

Two years ago, Nash became general manager.

Vogelbacher says the promotion is a testament to Nash’s skill in several aspects of the brewery business; he handles the taproom, runs the patio, tracks inventory and manages the kitchen.

“He’s doing a bazillion things,” Vogelbacher maintains, adding that Nash’s superpower is relating to customers, even when he’s multitasking a full management agenda.

“Marques juggles all kinds of things,” Vogelbacher says. “He could be running an event in the warehouse, [plus] an outside event. There might be somebody having a wedding and you [need someone] to keep a bridezilla happy. Marques does all of that.”

Nash is in charge of every aspect the front of house, which is normally 50% of the brewery’s business, Vogelbacher says. Any intern candidate who spends time with Nash had better be ready for a crash course in operations.

Nash says that whoever is ultimately chosen the be the brewery’s intern will be getting the opportunity of a lifetime. He believes this because he feels like he is already living that opportunity.

“I get to come here every single day, watch how against that reciprocal diversity, and not just in the we’re running the brewery, see how the business is brewing business.

Although the Republican National Convention being built and learn how we’re brewing beer,” he has been scaled down from its original configuration, says.

Charlotte is still weathering the aftershocks of hosting a political party and a president that have Bridging Differences with Beer When Charlotte native Vogelbacher moved back openly embraced racism and white nationalism.

“I need to save my colorful thoughts about from New Jersey to his hometown on 2013, he was Trump for later,” Nash says. “But it breaks my heart surprised by the segregation he saw.

“Where I lived it was more of a melting pot. [In that someone can find so much joy [from] watching Charlotte] we have so many pockets,” Vogelbacher the division in our country.”

Instead, Nash finds joy in promoting an says. “It seems that the craft beer pocket has been internship that could reflect his life, and become a very white-dominated.”

Vogelbacher’s dream to open up the marketplace dream come true for another person of color. champions diversity, but is also good business.

“I know that beer isn’t going anywhere,” he says.

“I want to sell our beer to every single person “Beer is that one constant, that one thing that will — young, old, fat, skinny, gay, straight, Black, always bring us together no matter what.”

It will be there when you celebrate a wedding, white — because the best thing ever is when you or when you mourn a loved one’s passing, he offers. can make your art available to everybody.”

“What has to change now is the faces serving He says there’s no better way to do that than Nash’s idea to engage a Black aspiring brewer to beer and making beer,” Nash says. “If we can be learn the company’s craft so they can help the a part of that initial change in Charlotte, it will be company get their product out to the public at the one of the proudest things I’ve done in quite a long grassroots. Diversity in staff can also help spur a time.” more diverse clientele.

INFO@QCNERVE.COM Nash has no illusions that there are barriers

Enjoy a moment of peace on us. www.xcoobee.com

Pg. 26 AUG 26 - SEP 8, 2020 - QCNERVE.COM

LIFESTYLE PUZZLES

LIFESTYLE PUZZLES SUDOKU

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.

TRIVIA TEST

BY FIFI RODRIGUEZ

1. GENERAL KNOWLEDGE: Which activity uses terms such as baste, bias and selvage?

2. MYTHOLOGY: What are the Norns?

3. AD SLOGANS: Which product uses the advertising slogan “Vermont’s Finest”?

4. GEOGRAPHY: What is the capital of New Zealand?

5. MUSIC: Which Madonna song features a recitation of 16 cultural icons?

6. U.S. STATES: How many states begin with the letter “A”?

7. HISTORY: Who was queen consort to French and English kings in the 12th century?

8. LITERATURE: Which 20thcentury novel begins with the line, “All children, except one, grow up”?

9. U.S. PRESIDENTS: Which president detested broccoli and banned it from his meals?

10. ANIMAL KINGDOM: What is a group of crabs called?

CROSSWORD

ACROSS 1 Like Pisa’s famed tower 8 On the mark 16 Dangle 20 Adequate for the job 21 1974 Billy Joel hit 22 Pastiche 23 Phone alert sound whose waves travel best through element #7?

25 Refuse to 26 Expert 27 Submission encl.

28 Disney sci-fi film of 1982 29 Ukulele’s kin 30 Exams 33 Skyscraping 36 Instrument whose pipes are filled with element #18?

39 Opening bits 41 Classic Fords, briefly 43 Peddle 44 Mistake while trying to mine element #55?

46 Bargain on the export of element #82?

50 What some cuts do 51 Make cherished 53 City on the Alabama 54 With 32-Down, nobody 57 Home of the philosopher Zeno 59 Oven knob 61 Swiss peaks 62 -- Gay 64 Sideshow barkers peddling element #33?

69 Munich loc.

70 I-75, e.g.

73 Heavy winds

74 Binary base 75 Expert 76 Cigar holder made from element #45?

80 It may follow “Long time” 82 Chaplin of “Game of Thrones” 83 Sort of sword 84 Zero 87 Not as much 88 -- -Grain cereal bars 90 Harangue 94 Peyotes, e.g.

96 Dark film about people who forge element #26?

98 Internal body parts that have absorbed too much of element #47?

103 Floor cover 104 Tilting type 105 Crooked 106 Clog-clearing stuff found to have element #86?

110 Reach over 112 Poets’ Muse 113 Old Apple laptop 114 Impact noise 116 Floor cover 118 Mean dog 119 A.J. of Indy 120 Half-moon-shaped deposit of element #34?

126 Deanna on the USS Enterprise 127 Collectors of lots of stuff 128 Dutch painter Jan 129 Flabbergast 130 Rates 131 Unity

DOWN 1 Really absurd 2 Not gendered, as a noun 3 Vouches for 4 “... -- a lender be” 5 Bit of NYSE news 6 Pesters a lot 7 Wonderful 8 IRS filing mo.

9 Nero’s 102 10 Is unable 11 Not marked, as an exam 12 Turbine parts 13 In a crowd of 14 Earthy shade 15 Austin-to-Atlanta dir.

16 1991-2003 Vermont governor 17 See 42-Down 18 Masked warrior in black 19 Boarded 24 “How clever” 29 Links 31 Like clans 32 See 54-Across 34 16-oz. units 35 Pet pests 37 Be hammy 38 Pro-learning org.

40 “Hook” pirate 42 With 17-Down, scram 45 Actor Gibson 46 Secular 47 Orbital curve 48 Current units 49 Rodeo ropes 52 Vitascope inventor 54 Cocktail of gin, vermouth and Campari 55 Sixty minutes 56 Ontario’s capital

Pg. 27 AUG 26 - SEP 8, 2020 - QCNERVE.COM

PG.26 PUZZLE ANSWERS

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

58 Person quarreling 60 Enactment 63 Meyers of “Think Big” 65 Raimi of film 66 Yale alum 67 Actor Sparks 68 Politico Paul 71 Voting day, often: Abbr.

72 More devoid 77 “Heck yeah!”

78 Prince, e.g.

79 500 vehicles 81 Literary Twist 85 Women’s patriotic gp.

86 Org. for free speech 89 Using a pen 91 Flabbergasts 92 Jorge’s “day” 93 Some annexes 95 Part of a fork 97 Obsolete 99 Bigwig 100 One fleeing a flood, maybe 101 Adjusts the pitch of again 102 Noisy sleepers 104 Cry after “Psst!,” perhaps 106 Fissures 107 Call off, as a mission 108 “What -- mean?”

109 Rand McNally reference 111 Jorge’s “new” 115 Goes kaput 117 Fed. agents 120 “Na Na” preceder 121 Canon camera line 122 Suffix with strict 123 Orig. copies 124 State of fury 125 K-O center

LIFESTYLE COLUMN

AERIN IT OUT LET’S STIR THINGS UP

Visiting a chain for a change

Pg. 28 AUG 26 - SEP 8, 2020 - QCNERVE.COM

BY AERIN SPRUILL

If you were to ask me to describe the way I feel about this pandemic, it would be a cross between the Spongebob meme that says “ONE ETERNITY LATER” and the Titanic meme with an aged Rose saying, “It’s been 84 years.”

Aerin is weary. Between bar closings and the multiple extensions of Phase 2, friends, family, and nightlife have all become as “entangled” with COVID-19 as Jada Pinkett Smith and August Alsina (Google it).

As such, I’ve been left with very little inspiration to guide my nightlife adventures in the Queen City.

So recently, I turned my gaze from bars, dives, and clubs to the restaurant landscape.

While we’ve spent the past six months watching in disbelief as some of our city’s most coveted bars and restaurants have been forced to close, we’ve also managed to witness a few silver linings as other establishments have found a market to not only stay afloat but to thrive. And for a select few, this pandemic has even created an opportunity for entry, which led me to South End for a brand new dining experience.

Now if you know me, you know that I usually steer far clear of South End. From the overwhelming amount of Chads to the chaos of traffic and parking, everything about this beloved neighborhood has the opposite effect on me. Nevertheless, I set aside our differences to “STIR” up my COVID-19 routine.

“Craft cocktails made with artisanal ice, fresh oysters and seafood, and made-from-scratch food.” That’s what I gleaned from the website and Instagram bios for The RailYard in South End’s newest addition: STIR Charlotte. While the artisanal ice (pressed and carved right in front of you before being placed into your drink of choice) may come across as a gimmick for some, I must admit, it certainly caught my attention. *palms face in embarrassment* It took me two weeks to secure a reservation

at this restaurant’s third location (sister location is based in Raleigh and the flagship in Chattanooga, Tennessee) on a Tuesday night, but once I got the green light, I grabbed my gal pal for the ride. We managed to snag a parking space alongside the building (which is damn near impossible) and walked up to the front door.

The open-air concept and spacious patio had me at “Hello.” Granted, it’s very difficult to look unattractive in such a beautiful development that has that brand-spanking-new curb appeal nestled inside an industrial feel. Sigh. If you’re anything like me, you’re probably at constant odds with the line between growth/development/expansion in the city and the desire to maintain character, lift up local favorites and keep Charlotte ... Charlotte. But I digress.

We sat down at a table in the courtyard after scanning the barcode in the center of the table to reveal the menu on my phone, and the first thing on my mind from there was the artisanal ice. I wanted to know immediately which drink I needed to order to witness the formation of that perfectly clear and round iceball. I’m not much of a straight-whiskeyon-the-rocks kind of lady so I went for a whiskey sour and requested my crystal ball to which the waiter accommodated.

I know it’s chintzy for someone like me who only knows that she prefers cubed over crushed and Cook Out’s nugget ice over both. Naturally, the benefits of this artisanal ice as it relates to the consumption of a cocktail are lost upon me, but nevertheless, I’m a sucker for interactive presentation. Blame it on my ADD. I held my breath as the waiter placed the compression device on the table and began to form the ball. Yes, I am very embarrassed.

Beyond the ice. Why would I NOT give the seafood a try? I settled on the char-broiled oysters and crab bisque. Normally, I would’ve gone straight for the raw stuff (oysters and ceviche) but when you’re attempting to outgrow your only-child desires and share your food with your friend, you compromise. However, if I’d known she wasn’t going to try them anyway, I would’ve put my trust in my selfish shellfish nature.

That being said, I personally was impressed with my choices. A fiend when it comes to creamy soup no matter how hot it is outside, my charbroiled choice

satisfied my recent craving for oysters, though its small size left something to be desired.

The ambiance — the decor, the views, the spaciousness — were spot on with my expectations after perusing the ‘Gram and seeing my friends post pics. It’s the perfect setting for date night with your girls or a Tinder rendezvous. And if you get there in time for sunset, your pics will definitely garner the likes your heart so desperately desires.

Overall takeaway: I would return for lunch or early dinner, for sure. It was a tad pricey for my taste. I’d rather splurge on tastes, sights and smells you can’t get anywhere else at local spots (like VANA, The Stanley and Bardot) than a chain, but if you’re in search of something different to liven up your currently bleak nightlife scene, STIR definitely convinced me to break out of my comfort zone, get back out there and (safely) explore what’s new. I didn’t regret it for a second!

While nightlife may look different right now, I stand encouraged by the restaurants that are giving us the opportunity to still enjoy a few of the tasty pleasures the Queen City has to offer at home and/ or 6 feet away from the closest table.

INFO@QCNERVE.COM

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SUPPORT US BY DONATING TO PAYPAL.ME/QUEENCITYNERVE

By Lucie Winborne • In 2015, Godzilla was made an official resident of the Shinjuku ward of Tokyo. The “King of Monsters” was not only given Japanese citizenship, but also appointed as the ward’s tourism ambassador.

• When Henri IV of France wed Maria de Medici in 1600, he could not actually be present for the ceremony. Instead, he sent a life-sized sculpture of himself ... made entirely out of sugar.

• Knowing they might never return safely from the moon, Neil Armstrong and the Apollo 11 crew worried about the prospect of leaving their families without financial support, but couldn’t take out life insurance policies due to the extreme risks of their mission.

Instead, they signed hundreds of autographs to be sold if they didn’t make it home. Thankfully, those weren’t needed, but still show up in space memorabilia auctions today, going for as much as $30,000.

• Only two sports have been played on the moon — golf and the javelin throw.

• At a NOAA conference in 1972, civil and women’s rights activist Roxcy Bolton proposed naming hurricanes after senators instead of women. She also preferred the term “him-i-canes.”

• Hot air balloons can’t be used in the rain because the water would boil from the heat, destroying the fabric.

• A donkey will sink in quicksand, but a mule won’t.

• Like to lie back and watch puffy clouds drift lazily by in the summer sky? Bet you’d never guess that a single one weighs about 1.1 million pounds!

Researchers calculated that staggering amount by multiplying a cloud’s water density by its volume. So how do they manage to float? Simple: The air below them is even heavier. *** Thought for the Day: “Instead of letting anxieties and uncertainties fence off your life, they can become signposts showing you where to turn to do what really matters to you.” — Mark Freeman © 2020 King Features Synd., Inc.

LIFESTYLE

HOROSCOPE AUGUST 26 - SEPTEMBER 1

SEPTEMBER 2 - SEPTEMBER 8

ARIES (March 21 to April 19) A relaxed mood early LIBRA (September 23 to October 22) Yesterday’s ARIES (March 21 to April 19) This could be the LIBRA (September 23 to October 22) Your ability in the week could give way to high-temperature disputes. The Aries Lamb should resist being pulled into heated quarrels that could really singe your wool.

critiques about your methods might have already evolved into today’s praise for your achievements.

Good for you. Now go on and continue to build on your credibility.

TAURUS (April 20 to May 20) Satisfy that practical SCORPIO obligation first, then you can feel free to indulge in your creative endeavors. Also, check for hidden or overlooked areas where repairs might be long overdue.

(October 23 to November 21) An occasional temperamental flare-up might occur as you continue to help get things back to normal. Stay with it. You should soon get some idea of where to take things next.

time to try soothing whatever bad feelings might be lingering ‘twixt and among colleagues, friends or family members. But be sure you do so without favoring any side.

to maintain a balance between sense and sentiment once again helps you sort through apparently conflicting choices and ultimately arrive at the right decision.

TAURUS (April 20 to May 20) An idea is only an idea until you put that clever Bovine mind to work to develop it from concept to substance. This could lead to something rewarding, both emotionally and monetarily.

SCORPIO (October 23 to November 21) Before you seek the advice of colleagues about a potential career move, you might be better off getting counsel from someone who won’t be affected by the choices you make.

GEMINI (May 21 to June 20) Home is still the SAGITTARIUS(November 22 to December 21) GEMINI (May 21 to June 20) The early part of the SAGITTARIUS (November 22 to December 21) Twins’ major focus this week. But outside matters begin to take on added importance, especially those involving possible career moves. Stay alert for signs of change.

A negative reaction to what you believe was a well-deserved request might mean that you need to reconsider your position and make changes accordingly.

CANCER (June 21 to July 22) A travel plan might CAPRICORN

(December 22 to January 19) need to undergo some considerable adjustment There’s always room for someone new at the Sea because of unexpected changes. Keep an open mind Goat’s table. And the someone new this week could and let the facts guide you on how you want to bring a message you’ve been waiting a long time to handle this. hear.

week could have some disconcerting moments, but approaching them with a calm, unruffled attitude goes a long way toward helping to get things nicely settled down.

It can be a challenging week for some relationships if the normal give-and-take flow changes with one side doing most of the giving and the other the taking.

CANCER

(June 21 to July 22) Getting used to CAPRICORN (December 22 to January 19) A new change continues to mark much of the week. But opportunity could bring with it much anticipation accepting what you have to do makes adapting that along with some anxiety. Take time to sort out your much easier. A welcome visitor could turn up sooner options as well as your emotional considerations. than expected.

AQUARIUS (January 20 to February 18) Are you sure you have all the facts you need to let that with a matter you don’t really want to tackle wastes on of personal matters this week might seem too with a decision is a challenge, but one you Leos and matter move to another level? Don’t be rushed into a time, energy and, most important, an opportunity. overwhelming to deal with. But handling them on Leonas could really enjoy. You’ll also be pleased to decision unless and until you feel it’s the right thing Ask someone with experience to help you get a one-by-one basis could have you out from under see your social life take that upsurge you’ve been to do. started. it by the weekend. hoping for.

LEO (July 23 to August 22) Playing cat and mouse AQUARIUS (January 20 to February 18) A pile- LEO (July 23 to August 22) Learning how to live

Pg. 29 AUG 26 - SEP 8, 2020 - QCNERVE.COM

VIRGO

(August 23 to September 22) A shift PISCES (February 19 to March 20) A friend in policy might not please you, but before you might need your good advice regarding a matter. put up a “no go” wall of resistance, examine the Be supportive. But unless you can be absolutely circumstances. You might be quite pleasantly sure you have all the facts, be careful about any suggestions you might be asked to offer. surprised by what you find.

VIRGO (August 23 to September 22) Use your

PISCES (February 19 to March 20) Pace yourself

as you prepare to take on that more demanding perceptive Virgo instinct to help you see the project. Be careful not to let your energy reserves positive aspects of what, at first, appears to be a drain away. Take time to relax with people close to disappointment. You could find that it proves to be you. quite the contrary.

BORN THIS WEEK: Few things make you happier than bringing people together and helping to forge new friendships.

BORN THIS WEEK: You have the ability to see both sides of a situation. You would do well as a counselor or a judge.

2020 KING FEATURES SYND., INC.

LIFESTYLE COLUMN

PG.27 PUZZLE ANSWERS

SAVAGE LOVE TALL ORDER

Making a list and checking it twice

Pg. 30 AUG 26 - SEP 8, 2020 - QCNERVE.COM

BY DAN SAVAGE

I’m a cis male in my late twenties. I’ve recently become consumed by a specific fantasy I fear is unattainable, a fear that has been made worse by several failed attempts to research it.

A little background: Except for a couple dates and make-out sessions with other men, my sex life has always been exclusively with women. I’ve had male crushes and often thought I might be bi or pan, despite never masturbating to thoughts of men or gay porn. (Don’t worry, Dan: I’m not going to ask if I’m gay. I promise.)

In general, I’ve led a privileged sex life. I’ve never been broken up with and it’s rare for me to experience any form of rejection. But in early 2020, my libido vanished. I stopped masturbating and only orgasmed once or twice a month when my now ex-girlfriend would insist that we have sex.

But then a couple of weeks ago I began imagining being one half of a loving gay couple that replaced all MM penetrative sex with MMF sex. My sex life with my male partner would revolve around the two of us going out and finding submissive women for kinky threesomes. Since then, I’ve been masturbating to this fantasy daily and I’m excited at the possibility of finding a new lifestyle that brings me a lot of joy.

However, I’ve grown concerned that nothing else seems to turn me on at all. Equally as concerning, even minor adjustments to this fantasy ruins the whole thing. And to fulfill it I’d need a man who’s at least all of the following: 1. Sensitive, giving, easy-going, and an allaround good guy.

2. Very physically attractive.

3. Into cuddling and general affection, some make-out sessions, and occasional hand jobs and blow jobs — but absolutely no penetrative sex or anal play.

4. Into picking up submissive women for MMF threesomes.

5. Into penetrative sex with said women.

6. Into using roleplay and D/s to take out our kinks on said women.

7. Into giving me the more dominant role.

Now for my questions: Does anyone like this actually exist? Is there a name for the fetish I’m describing? Does it have a community? Is it similar to any more accessible fetishes out there? Does my loss of libido and this specific fantasy say something about me that I’m too close to see?

CAN ANYONE TELL ME ANYTHING NOW

First and most importantly, CATMAN, kinks aren’t things you “take out” on other people. They’re things you share and enjoy with other people. Perhaps that “take out on” was a slip of the tongue or a little premature dirty talk; lots of people into D/s get off on talking about their kinks — BB or TT or CBT — as if they’re things a sadistic Dom gets off on doing to a helpless sub. That’s the fantasy, CATMAN, but in reality, the Dom and sub discuss their desires in advance, identify areas of overlap, and set limits. (Not just bottoms; tops have limits too.) However brutal things may look to someone who wasn’t a part of those negotiations, however degrading things might sound, kink play is consensual and mutually pleasurable — and if it’s not consensual and mutually pleasurable, CATMAN, then it’s not kink play. It’s sexual assault.

Again, maybe it was a slip of the tongue and I’m being a dick; you did mention a desire to find submissive women, CATMAN, which most likely means you were planning to seek out women who wanna be “used and abused” by two hot bi guys in love.

And you’re in luck: there are definitely women out there who would be into this scenario — some readers probably went all WAP reading your question — but you’re unlikely to meet those women on a night out.

Meaning, you shouldn’t be thinking about casually picking women up, CATMAN, but rather cultivating connections online or at kink events with submissive women who would get into subbing for you and your imaginary boyfriend.

Finding a guy who meets your long list of particulars is a taller order. It frankly doesn’t sound like you’re looking for a partner, i.e. someone whose needs you want to meet, but rather a guy you can plug into your masturbatory fantasies.

He’s gotta be bi but not into butt stuff, a good guy, a hot guy, a sub where you’re concerned and a Dom where women are concerned … and any deviation from that long list not only disqualifies him from consideration for your life partner-in-crime, making each and every item on that long list a deal breaker.

Relationships require compromise, CATMAN, no one gets everything they want, and a long list of deal breakers makes for even longer odds. If you can’t budge on any of the items on your list … well, then you might wanna think about getting yourself a sex doll or two. You also

TRIVIA ANSWERS: 1. Sewing 2. Norse goddesses of fate 3. Ben & Jerry’s ice cream

4. Wellington 5. “Vogue” 6. Alabama, Alaska, Arizona and Arkansas

might wanna give some thought not just to your long and rigid list of deal breakers, but to why that list is so long and rigid that you’re unlikely — as you suspect — to ever find someone.

Zooming out…

You say your libido tanked in early 2020, CATMAN, and studies show you’re not alone. The twin pandemics — the COVID-19 pandemic and the stupidity pandemic — have tanked a lot of people’s libidos.

So, if this fantasy is working for you right now, I think you should lean into it. It may be a tall order, it may be so unrealistic as to be unachievable, but indulging in this very specific fantasy has cracked your libido open and continuing to beat off about this fantasy might blow your libido wide open.

I don’t like to pathologize people’s kinks or attach meaning to what are usually arbitrary, random, and inexplicable sexual interests. But the taller the order, the less likely it can be filled, CATMAN, and it’s possible you may not want it filled at all — at least subconsciously, at least right now. Sometimes when sex is scary we obsess about fantasies that are impossible to realize or partners who’re impossible to find because it allows us to avoid partnered sex. I know at the height of the HIV/ AIDS epidemic I was obsessed with a guy I couldn’t have because it got me off the hook. My list of deal breakers at that time was ironically pretty short: He had to be Tommy. If he wasn’t Tommy, I wasn’t interested. Tommy was amazing — totally obsession-worthy — and I did love him. But I know now that I threw myself into my obsession with Tommy to protect myself from a terrifying epidemic.

Maybe you’re doing something similar, CATMAN. But if I’m wrong — if this is what you want — there are cities out there with kink communities large enough for two partnered bi guys to find a steady stream of submissive women who wanna sub for them.

7. Eleanor of Aquitaine 8. “Peter Pan” 9. George H.W. Bush 10. A cast

But your list of deal breaker is going to have to shrink if you ever hope to find a guy who’s close to what you want. And that’s all any of us ever gets, CATMAN. Something close.

I’m a 39-year-old gay man living in Chicago.

Recently a good friend of mine got engaged to a wonderful man from Gambia in West Africa. She’s planning a ceremony there next summer and has invited me to attend. After doing a little research I found out that being LGBT is a crime in that country and the punishment is execution. Should I go to the wedding and stay in the closet the whole time? In general, what do you think about gays traveling to countries that murder our LGBT brothers and sisters?

INTENSELY NERVOUS VENTURING INTO THIS EVENT

I wouldn’t go, INVITE, and if I were a straight girl, I wouldn’t expect my gay friends to risk their lives in order to attend my wedding. While a quick search didn’t bring up news about any gay westerners being executed in Gambia in recent history, gay tourists have been arrested, imprisoned, and fined. So instead of attending your friend’s wedding next summer — which may not even happen, due to the pandemic — make a donation in her name to Initiative Sankofa D’Afrique de l’Ouest (www.

ISDAO.org), an organization working to improve the lives and legal position of LGBT people in Gambia and other West African nations.

On this week’s Savage Lovecast, learn all about cuckolding. www.savagelovecast.com; mail@savagelove.net; @FakeDanSavage

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