Queen City Nerve - September 20, 2023

Music: Cyanca returns to the party

pg. 12

Food & Drink: The Pauline Tea Bar sets the vibes pg. 16

FOSTERING

FUTURE THE

Ricky

Singh

balances a life in art and education

By Pat Moran

aiden@triad-city-beat.com

TABLE OF CONTENTS

NEWS & OPINION

4 A Checkered Past by Fred Clasen-Kelly, Rachana Pradhan, Holly K. Hacker

The painful pandemic lessons Mandy Cohen carries to the CDC

7 Not Backing Down by Justin LaFrancois Freedom House Church threatens Queen City Nerve with defamation lawsuit

ARTS

8 Fostering the Future by Pat Moran Ricky Singh balances a life in art and education

10 Lifeline: Ten Cool Things To Do in Two Weeks

MUSIC

12 Can’t Count Her Out by Tyler Bunzey Cyanca returns with new EP, readies debut album

14 Soundwave

FOOD & DRINK

16 That’s the Tea by Ryan Pitkin

Sherry Waters prioritizes community care at The Pauline Tea-Bar Apothecary

LIFESTYLE

18 Puzzles

20 Aerin It Out by Aerin Spruill

21 Horoscope

22 Savage Love

Thanks to our contributors: Grant Baldwin, Aerin Spruill, Tyler Bunzey, Fred ClasenKelly, Rachana Pradhan, Holly K. Hacker, Malik Gist, Jim Dukes, Moyopoyo, Viki Farmer, and Dan Savage.

A CHECKERED PAST

The painful pandemic lessons Mandy Cohen carries to the CDC

BY FRED CLASEN-KELLY, RACHANA PRADHAN, HOLLY K. HACKER

As COVID-19 devastated communities across the nation in spring 2020, a group of Black ministers in Charlotte made an urgent plea for more testing in their neighborhoods.

Testing at the time “was outside of communities of color,” said the Rev. Jordan Boyd, pastor of Rockwell AME Zion Church. For Boyd, pandemic losses were personal: COVID-related complications killed a brother-in-law who worked as a truck driver. “We saw what was happening with our folks.”

Dr. Mandy Cohen, who led the state’s pandemic response as secretary of North Carolina’s health department, had said widespread testing was one of “our best tools to keep our community safe and to protect our frontline workers.” But the state was failing to get tests to its most vulnerable people, with grim consequences: Black people in North Carolina were getting sick and dying from COVIDrelated causes at far higher rates than white people, data shows.

KFF Health News analyzed and confirmed publicly available data, including the location of testing sites that Cohen’s office directed the public to in mid-May 2020 in Mecklenburg County. Just one in four fixed sites stood in more disadvantaged areas with significant Black populations, including what is known as the Crescent — neighborhoods reaching west, north, and east of downtown that for generations have had elevated rates of diabetes, high blood pressure, lung disease, and other conditions that can cause life-threatening complications from COVID.

Far more testing was available in south Charlotte — the whiter, wealthier neighborhoods that make up The Wedge — and surrounding suburban areas. Life in the Crescent is marked by higher rates of poverty, crowded housing, and less access to health care, transportation, and internet service — factors

KFF HEALTH NEWS

that fueled transmission of the virus and created barriers to testing.

“There were a lot of hurdles that you had to go through,” said Boyd, who helped spearhead the effort to bring testing to Black churches.

President Joe Biden and others in political and health policy circles have praised Cohen’s pandemic leadership in North Carolina. When he tapped Cohen to run the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the nation’s top public health agency, in June, Biden cited her “proven track-record protecting Americans’ health and safety.”

Those on the ground in North Carolina’s most vulnerable communities, including Cohen’s admirers, tell another story — about living with the downsides of the state’s emergency response. These include advocates for groups that were disproportionately harmed during the public health crisis, including minority and immigrant communities, people with disabilities, and families of nursing home residents.

Corine Mack, president of the CharlotteMecklenburg NAACP, recalled that in late 2020 she and others complained to Cohen about public money going to white-led organizations instead of Black-led ones working in minority neighborhoods.

“I said we had to send resources tomorrow, not next month,” Mack said. “She started crying. I was so passionate about our people dying. Once she understood the severity of the situation, she did what she had to do.”

The challenges Cohen faced in North Carolina were exacerbated by structural inequities in and outside the health care system, problems that are too large for any one person to fix. Still, Cohen now faces the same challenges on a national scale as she’s charged with fixing the CDC after its pandemic missteps.

Cohen, through her spokesperson at the CDC, declined multiple requests for an interview for this story.

A report in January called “Building the CDC the Country Needs,” which was signed by dozens of health policy experts, urged an agency overhaul. Among the priorities cited: more quickly collecting data on racial, ethnic, economic, and geographic factors that is “foundational to improving equity of access to services.”

For most of the pandemic, Black, Hispanic, and Native American residents fared worse than whites across the country.

In North Carolina, critics and allies alike say Cohen heeded concerns. She relied heavily on data and followed federal guidance closely, they said. And Cohen showed vigilance when she interpreted rules, like those on nursing home visitation and mask mandates, even in the face of criticism.

She also repeatedly urged personal responsibility to contain the spread of the virus, underscoring how public health messaging often focuses on choice rather than societal constraints, said Anne Sosin, a researcher at Dartmouth College who focuses on health equity.

“Many of the people and communities hardest hit by the pandemic had little choice in their exposure” because they got COVID where they lived or worked, Sosin said. “Limiting our focus on the choices that people make — rather than on the broader structural and social forces that shape risk — really

will set us up for the same failures in the future.”

With more than 1 million residents, Mecklenburg County has become a symbol both of North Carolina’s economic rise and of its struggles to overcome a long history of racial discrimination and disparities.

Researchers from North Carolina’s health agency and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found that access to tests during the first three months of the pandemic — between March and June 2020 — was not evenly distributed across racial and ethnic groups, with inadequate access for Black and Latino residents.

On May 14, 2020 — two months after the national emergency was declared — Cohen’s agency directed clinicians to prioritize testing for people from “racial and ethnic minority groups disproportionately affected by adverse COVID-19 outcomes,” and officials recommended using mobile testing for “vulnerable populations,” documents show.

The disparities persisted. In Charlotte, the difference in testing sites underscored the inequity people of color often face in health care, as they were left to depend on a few mobile units whose routes and hours varied by the day. Meanwhile, wealthier areas had an abundance of well-resourced, fixed sites with regular hours.

Critics say the state was slow to address glaring and predictable problems. Mecklenburg County Commissioner Pat Cotham said it took authorities precious time to shift testing to the hardest-hit

WITH

PHOTO COURTESY OF NC DPS

MANDY COHEN AT A PRESS CONFERENCE IN 2020.

NEWS & OPINION FEATURE

neighborhoods. Cotham said officials should have more quickly enlisted Black ministers and others who had established trust with residents. Instead, she said, even elected representatives of those areas were often locked out.

“I remember getting information from press releases or TV,” she said.

North Carolina initially failed to prioritize testing for people who were exposed to COVID because of where they live or work, said Jeanne Milliken Bonds, a professor of social impact investing at UNC Chapel Hill. She co-authored a white paper that criticized the national pandemic response, saying, “We are ignoring the critical impact of systemic racism in vulnerabilities to the deadly virus.”

Black people, immigrants, and ethnic minorities disproportionately hold jobs that governments deemed essential — in food processing plants, retail stores, and nursing homes — and they were unable to isolate and work from home, Milliken Bonds said.

Charlotte had one of the biggest disparities in access to testing in the nation, according to a study of 30 large cities by researchers at Drexel and Temple universities. Only two Texas cities, Austin and Houston, fared worse.

In 2020, Black people in North Carolina died from COVID at a higher rate than white people, although the disparity was slightly less pronounced than in the U.S. overall. A KFF Health News analysis of CDC data showed that 112 of every 100,000 nonHispanic Black residents in the state died, compared with 89 per 100,000 non-Hispanic white residents. North Carolina’s death rates for all racial and ethnic groups that year were lower than those nationally.

“The driving factor for testing and vaccination was, ‘Let’s get older people and let’s protect our health care workers,’” Milliken Bonds said. “You end up losing the health equity lens. There was a course correction later in 2020. They looked at the data and said, ‘Oh my God!’ They were missing people of color.”

Tensions rose

In April 2020, when COVID tests were scarce nationally and states had little federal support, Cohen’s Department of Health and Human Services convened a work group to increase testing. The initiative began as Gov. Roy Cooper indicated he would ease the restrictions he’d put in place in March to limit COVID’s spread.

The group included state employees, consultants, local officials, and representatives from major hospital systems, community health centers, and

commercial labs, North Carolina HHS news releases and state documents show.

Officials set priority groups for testing, including hospitalized patients, health care workers and first responders, and people in long-term care or correctional facilities, according to meeting minutes from April 24. The last item: “additional emphasis on equity and ensuring communities of color have access to testing.”

The state also received guidance from experts focused on equity.

“We know that there’s more COVID-19 out in our communities than gets captured by what’s in our lab data,” Cohen said on April 30, during one of Cooper’s pandemic briefings.

Of the COVID test results reported to North Carolina’s health department at that time, a smaller share were coming back positive relative to prior weeks, and COVID hospitalizations were level — developments Cohen hailed as progress. But tensions were brewing.

By May 5, Disability Rights North Carolina filed a civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services about a proposed state emergency plan. The advocacy group said the plan — which determined who would get lifesaving treatments in hospitals if supplies were scarce — would put people with disabilities in the “back of

the line” and lead to a disproportionate death toll among people of color or with low incomes.

As the state began reopening businesses in early May, officials knew testing levels were not adequate, according to a review of public documents, interviews, and Cohen’s public remarks. Hundreds of sites were up and running, “but there’s more to do,” Cohen said on May 20.

In a letter in the North Carolina Medical Journal, North Carolina HHS employees and a consultant with Accenture said “testing was difficult to access outside of a hospital” that month. “Of the tests being performed early in the pandemic, the majority were in White populations even though we could already see differences in poor outcomes in Black/African American, American Indian/Alaskan Native, and Latinx populations infected with the virus around the country,” they wrote.

Kody Kinsley, who worked for Cohen and succeeded her as health secretary, said the state’s response was stymied by factors beyond its control, including supply chain shortages.

“We were essentially riding the backbone of the existing health care network with inadequate supplies,” Kinsley said. The department tried to contract with outside firms to boost testing access in historically marginalized communities, but

“resources weren’t available.”

Boyd, the pastor, said it was “difficult times.” To reach hard-hit communities across the state, “you have to be able to do that through connections on the ground,” he said. “Otherwise it’s not going to happen. But that takes time.”

In Charlotte, he said, fixed testing sites at hospitals and elsewhere, which required appointments, weren’t as accessible for those in the city’s poorest neighborhoods. “You had to go online and sign up,” he said.

Black residents were desperate for testing: When a mobile van run by Atrium Health arrived at Boyd’s church in early May, “Cars were lined up around the block at 4 or 5 o’clock in the morning,” he said.

Atrium’s mobile testing started in April, circulating in minority communities where data showed emerging hot spots. While people could walk up to get a test, locations shifted daily, according to internet archives, social media posts, and other announcements. Between mid-April and early July, the units stopped at many Black churches only once.

“We were last on the list. We lost a lot of people,” said Vilma Leake, a rep on the Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioners. Leake said she never received a satisfactory answer when she asked why people of color were not prioritized for testing given the South’s long history of racial exclusion and wide disparities in health, education, and income.

“History is repeating itself. It is always a fight for some people,” she added.

Kinsley said the state’s response “was intentionally designed to be conscious of class and race and ethnicity,” which he said informed its guidance for essential workers and efforts to push businesses to provide paid leave and on-the-job COVID tests.

By late spring, the state’s testing data, which captured only a fraction of infections, painted a troubling picture. As of May 26, Black residents made up 31% of cases and 35% of deaths despite being 22% of the state’s population. Latinos made up 9.6% of the state’s population and 35% of COVID cases.

That same day, Cohen joined Cooper’s pandemic briefing. While she described the state’s efforts to improve safety for workers at meat processing plants, she again called for personal responsibility.

“Our ability to continue to ease restrictions and get back to work as safely as possible hinges on all of us working together to protect each other,” Cohen said, adding, “We want to save lives. And we can do

that with simple individual actions.”

By that time, North Carolina had allowed restaurants, pools, and personal care businesses such as barbers to open at 50% capacity.

The state’s response “was not adequate for protecting essential workers,” said the Rev. Rodney Sadler, the director of the Center for Social Justice and Reconciliation at Union Presbyterian Seminary.

“It was targeted toward those who had resources, who had a knowledge base, who had greater freedoms, who had the ability to work from home,” he said, adding that it’s important to “think about how this hits differently for poor Black and brown people in inner-city communities than it does for wealthier, white communities in the suburbs.”

Rev. Greg Jarrell helps lead QC Family Tree, a social justice organization in west Charlotte’s Enderly Park neighborhood. He said people often waited hours for testing at a site near his neighborhood, even with appointments.

“We saw the severe limitations of the whole system,” he said. “Who has got time to sit in line for three hours? Not an hourly employee.”

If you don’t set up “race-conscious and classconscious policy,” Jarrell said, “the system is always going to serve people who have more resources.”

Throughout June, as North Carolina’s COVID infections and hospitalizations climbed, the state focused more intensely on Black, Latino, and Native American residents.

It took until July 7 for officials to announce they

would deploy 300 free temporary testing sites in underserved communities across the state.

The state’s COVID death toll had reached 1,420 people, and 989 more were hospitalized. The trajectory, Cohen said, was “moving in the wrong direction.”

A bigger challenge at the CDC

Political leaders, public health experts, and advocacy groups say Cohen is well-suited to run the CDC.

She has navigated vast government agencies — experience her predecessor, Rochelle Walensky, lacked.

Cohen has political acumen, having worked effectively in a politically divided state “with a range of views about public health,” said Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and a former senior White House adviser on COVID response. “She is super bright and a very clear communicator about the issues on the table.”

During the Obama administration, Cohen, a physician, climbed the ranks to become chief operating officer and chief of staff at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which has more than 6,000 employees and oversees government programs like Medicare and Medicaid that insure millions of Americans.

In 2017 Cooper appointed her North Carolina health secretary. She stepped down at the end of 2021.

Cohen’s time “in North Carolina will inform the practical, on-the-ground work that will make a big difference at the CDC,” Kinsley said, citing efforts to minimize racial and ethnic disparities in COVID vaccination.

According to CDC data comparing COVID mortality rates by state, North Carolina had the 12th lowest age-adjusted death rate in 2020. But the state’s fortunes changed in 2021, when it dropped to 30th place. North Carolinians said Cohen listened to their perspectives, but their calls for help were punctuated by a drumbeat of deaths.

Mecklenburg County Commissioner Mark Jerrell said the pandemic exposed how North Carolina is still reeling from centuries of racial discrimination. Even as Cohen “became a trusted community voice,” he said, “there was a disconnect between the discussion of equity and the application of equity.”

He worries that painful lessons of those early pandemic months seem forgotten, saying, “We don’t even hear this conversation now.”

This story originally ran at KFF Health News, a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism. Data reporter Hannah Recht contributed to this story.

INFO@QCNERVE.COM

PHOTO COURTESY OF NC DPS COHEN STANDS BEHIND GOV. ROY COOPER AT A 2020 PRESS CONFERENCE.

NOT BACKING DOWN

Freedom House Church threatens Queen City Nerve with defamation lawsuit

BY JUSTIN LAFRANCOIS

Freedom House Church leaders Penny and Troy Maxwell have threatened Queen City Nerve with a lawsuit, claiming defamation and libel for statements published in an article titled Freedom House Church Leader Heads Harassment Campaigns, Spreads Misinformation, on Aug. 9.

In a cease and desist letter delivered by Lance Edmonds of Fidelity Law Group dated Aug. 15, the Maxwells claim the Nerve has “continually defamed their personal and professional reputation, as well as the reputation of Freedom House Church.[sic] causing damage.”

It goes on to say the Nerve has “continually harassed [Freedom House Church], to the point of violating civil and criminal statutes.”

The letter cites two sentences in the article that were based directly on conversations with sources, and a paragraph in the article outlining Title 26 of the Internal Revenue Code that states “a taxexempt entity may not ‘participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office.’”

The letter accuses Queen City Nerve of continued harassment and even stalking, claiming the Maxwells fear for their safety and that the Nerve has incited followers to harass and stalk them. Queen City Nerve denies any such action on social media or elsewhere, after or in the course of our reporting.

The letter also cites statements of opinion made in social media messaging on Instagram. An Instagram Story published by the Queen City Nerve account on June 27, 2023 — before carrying out any reporting on Freedom House Church — calls for followers to not ignore but rather expose the Maxwells for their campaign of intolerance against the LGBTQ+ community in Charlotte and beyond. It also noted that Queen City Nerve is “watching you … the same way you ‘watch’ everyone else.”

The private message referenced in Attorney Edmonds’ letter was sent privately in response to being tagged in Troy’s IG Story and was then screenshotted and published by Troy to his personal IG page.

Queen City Nerve has always stood for the inclusion and acceptance of every person, no matter their race, age, gender or sexual orientation. For that reason, our publication has never shied away from exposing intolerance in our community.

The letter demands that we publish a retraction in print and electronic format of “all defamatory remarks, including but not limited to, the remarks and insinuations of Mr. and Mrs. Maxwell and Freedom House Church violating IRS codes.”

The aforementioned article, and another article titled Freedom House Church Leader Makes Max Donation to Mark Robinson, do not contain any false statements of fact, and therefore Queen City Nerve will not agree to any request to retract the stories.

Queen City Nerve, and our legal counsel, have invited the Maxwells to provide evidence demonstrating that the statements they’ve cited were factually false. Nerve’s policy is to clarify, correct or retract any published inaccuracies as warranted by the available evidence. The Maxwells ignored the invitation on social media multiple times, then rejected the invitation when delivered through our attorneys.

The Nerve believes in fairness, transparency, and a robust marketplace of ideas.

The Nerve invites the Maxwells to submit evidence proving that the stories contain false statements of fact and, consistent with our policy, pledges to retract any statements shown to be provably false. We encourage Freedom House Church leaders to provide documentation supporting their contentions.

In addition, the Nerve is offering to publish a written response from the Maxwells to the articles, edited in accordance with our publication standards – e.g., removing content that is provably false, defamatory, harassing, obscene, etc.

Queen City Nerve stands firmly behind our reporting. We are fully prepared to defend ourselves and our journalism in court.

FOSTERING THE FUTURE

Ricky Singh balances a life in art and education

BY PAT MORAN

Ricky Singh remembers having no future.

“I could see tomorrow,” Singh says about growing up in Brooklyn’s embattled Bushwick neighborhood in the early 2000s. “But I couldn’t see 10 years, five years, one year down the road. To be honest, the people around me weren’t prioritizing that either.”

It’s a remarkable admission coming from the 37-year-old artist, educator and mentor who now spends his days building a better future for countless Charlotte kids.

An acclaimed muralist and education consultant, Singh has been an assistant principal for the innovative Charlotte Lab School, an organizer in the Beatties Ford Strong movement, a master teacher and coach for the New York City Department of Education, a professed hip-hop connoisseur who launched NYC’s first rapthemed after school program, a devoted husband and father of four, a teenage spoken-word artist who appeared on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, a guerrilla street artist who tagged supposedly unreachable Big Apple landmarks, and much more.

A seemingly tireless community builder and educational leader, Singh is currently marshaling two projects that perfectly encapsulate his high-wire balancing act of art and education. In April, he began curating the Mural Garden at Charlotte Art League in north Charlotte, and in September is partnering with the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African- American Arts + Culture to organize and shepherd Youth Residency: At the Table, the museum’s first-ever youth residency.

Through the residency, Singh will collaborate with the Mecca of Digital Arts studio (MODA) to create an experience that focuses on and fosters youth leading youth. Singh says he’s been pushing the power of “youth-to youth” mentoring and collaboration for the past 4 years.

“Youth can hear from adults all the time. That’s great, but they’re still adults,” Singh says. “There’s power in a 17-year-old speaking to a 15-year-old,

because they’re still in the same peer group.”

That peer group, however, is widely varied, because Singh is committed to bringing everyone to the table. Kids from across the scholastic spectrum — traditional public, charter, private and independent schools as well as home-schooled kids will come together at MODA, a cutting edge digital art studio and lab, to create, collaborate and learn.

“Our hope is that the residency gives [kids] a bigger taste of what the city is, what arts and culture plans exist, how they fit into that, and then provide them with opportunities to lead other youth,” Singh offers.

The residency is a bold conception that jibes with Singh’s hands-on approach to his twin guiding lights of education and art, but how did he get to the point of masterminding an innovative plan to foster and fulfill kids, when his own precocious yet directionless youth was admittedly considered atrisk?

Brooklyn to Charlotte

Simply growing up in post 9/11 New York was a risky proposition for a Black kid, Singh remembers. Decades before being indicted and disgraced for participated in a conspiracy to subvert the will of American voters, then NYC Mayor Rudolph Giuliani enjoyed a burnished reputation as “America’s Mayor” for his administration’s response to 9/11.

In truth, the New York Police Department under Giuliani’s watch repeatedly persecuted, assaulted and killed Black and Hispanic New Yorkers, using unlawful stop-and-frisk policies to jail the city’s citizens.

In public schools, cops arrested and beat kids for offenses like being in the hallway without a pass. Out of 34 First Amendment lawsuits brought against the Giuliani administration, the New York Civil Liberties Union prevailed in 26.

“I remember he was arresting all these people,” Singh says. “I needed to get out of that neighborhood, because people were dying left and right, and going to jail. There were too many things happening and I was always in the middle.”

One positive outlet that kept Singh occupied was his early interest in art.

“I went from a pencil to a permanent marker to a spray-paint can,” he says.

The city streets became Singh’s canvas. By his early teens, he’d joined a group of older kids who became famous for tagging inaccessible bridges and buildings. Smaller and more agile than his peers, Singh could climb and get to those places.

For a kid with a rebellious streak, school was a boring waste of time. That changed in 2000, Singh’s freshman high school year at The Renaissance School in Queens. There Singh’s Global Studies teacher, who also was his basketball coach, grabbed the 14-year-old’s attention in a meaningful way. Kenyatta Belcher, who continues to teach in the U.K. today, was Singh’s first Black male teacher.

“He pushed me and challenged me,” Singh says. Belcher was a rapper, and Singh started doing

album art for his teacher. A burgeoning interest in social and political issues emerged in Singh’s street art. He also developed a facility with language. He became such an adept wordsmith that he won a contest and landed an appearance on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam.

“That was through [my teacher] reaching me, [helping me] see the world outside that I didn’t know,” Singh says.

Singh also started to see past tomorrow.

“I realized [that] if I really wanted to have a future, I needed to get out of New York City,” Singh says.

A full student athletic scholarship brought him to Buffalo State University, where he majored in Political Science. He started his teaching career with a part-time position at St. Andrews Roman Catholic Church.

“I always ended up working with youth,” Singh says, “even when I was a kid.”

In 2005, the death of his older brother brought Singh back home to Brooklyn. Art took a backseat. Following his first year of college, Singh saw his work featured in a at an NYC lounge. Soon thereafter, he took a sabbatical from making art for 15 years.

PHOTO BY RICKY SINGH

RICKY SINGH

ARTS FEATURE

He also opted out of returning to school. Instead, he got a restaurant job, working 24 hour shifts at Tropical Smoothie Café, where he eventually rose to manager.

“Then I realized that I could get money for college because I was so poor that I could get a TAP [Tuition Assistance Program] refund,” he recalls.

The program sent Singh refund checks, so he started juggling classes at Brooklyn College with working 48-hour shifts at his 24-hour restaurant. He graduated from Brooklyn College with a degree in Political Science and Government, then earned a Masters degree in Special Education, followed by a second Masters in Education Leadership.

“I just kept on going to school, because … I knew that if I stopped school I wouldn’t go back,” Singh says.

Singh became a special education teacher for the NYC Department of Education in Brooklyn, where he launched New York City’s first rap-themed after school program, Get on Something Innovative and Positive (GOSIP).

“We started it in a closet at the school,” Singh says. “Bushwick was a very gang-centric neighborhood. Community centers were closing … so, [kids] didn’t really have any place to go. We wound up basically running [our own] record label.”

Singh created the program to fill a void, and wound up giving kids an avenue to express themselves. Hip-hop continues to be a thread running through his life.

By this time, Tropical Smoothie shut down, so Singh started working as a vegan chef and juicer at Perelandra Natural Foods in Brooklyn. There he served clientele including Mos Def, Erykah Badu and Talib Kweli. More importantly, Singh met his future wife Liz at the food store and café.

By the time he had earned his double masters, Singh was married with three kids and living in a 500-square-foot sub-level basement apartment in Bushwick.

“The ceiling was falling down,” Singh says. “You’d look outside the windows and just see feet.”

Though Singh and his wife were both die-hard New Yorkers, they knew it was time to get out of the expensive city. After briefly checking out Moncks Corner, South Carolina, the family moved to the west side of Charlotte in 2012. They fell in love with it.

“It reminded me of Queens,” Singh says.

After a year with the Mooresville Graded School District, Singh’s family realized they could actually afford private school in Charlotte. While attending

his son’s interview at Charlotte United Academy, Singh unexpectedly received a job offer from the school. After a year and eight months at that institution, Singh became an education consultant.

Meanwhile, Singh’s wife Liz came across an article about a New Yorker wanting to start a charter school in Charlotte.

Singh met with that fellow New Yorker, Charlotte Lab School co-founder Dr. Mary Moss, tossing around ideas for an innovative, tuition-free public charter school that focuses on reading, writing and real-world problem-solving skills.

When Moss offered Singh a ground-floor position with Charlotte Lab School in 2015, he jumped at the chance to “get his hands dirty and actually cause change.”

“I chose Lab because I was really steeped in the notion of ‘What if?’” Singh says. “That’s still what continues to drive me today.”

“I think that opportunity was a great one,” Singh says. “[The] organization focuses on helping … support organizations doing the frontline work with boys and young men of color.”

Singh is still involved with special projects at Charlotte Lab School, but his more flexible schedule dovetails neatly with his revived engagement with making art.

Art, education and farming

Singh’s 15-year hiatus from art ended in 2020 with the advent of the COVID-induced quarantine.

“I starting to get back into [art], messing around with my iPad,” Singh says.

A good friend of Singh’s, activist and photographer Alvin C. Jacobs Jr., was touring the country documenting Black Lives Matter marches and protests. After Jacobs sent Singh his photos, Singh returned them, artistically altered and augmented.

the idea of having moments to uplift the west side, because there is so much history and new fabric that continues to grow there.”

It turns out that shining a positive light on the Beatties Ford community put Singh’s art endeavors into overdrive.

“Once I said that I was doing that project and that mural, it was — and still is — 90 miles an hour,” he says.

Community art is successful, Singh says, because art is effective at shifting perceptions.

“Art is a great entry point, an opportunity for folks to share pieces of their unique and authentic self,” he explains. “You … share a very vulnerable version [of yourself]. Anyone who has ever picked up a spray can cannot manufacture how to present themselves with that spray can. It’s not like an email or a proposal. You can’t get feedback on it. You can’t run it by your team.”

With Singh’s art projects and educational endeavors proliferating, friends and colleagues have been asking him how he balances his two passions.

“Once I figured out that I could fit art into my schedule, I didn’t want to go back [to] day-to-day [work],” Singh says. “I’m schedule-based, and I compartmentalize a lot, which plays into the whole [art vs. education dichotomy].”

Singh says when people see him suited up as an educator, only to catch him an hour later in paintspattered coveralls, it plays into their perception of him as a tireless multitasker.

Instead of settling on a label like “artist,” “activist” or “educator,” Singh has come up with another job title.

At the time, Singh was fielding offers to become principal at several schools, but he doesn’t regret helping to build and shape Charlotte Lab School from conception to its new campus at Suttle Avenue near Bryant Park, which consolidates the three previously separate facilities. T

he new campus opened for the 2023-24 school year.

“We’re finally at K-12 this year,” Singh says. “I’ve done every kind of role you can imagine, and it’s been exciting.”

After more than eight years with the progressive institution in roles ranging from director of student services to head of upper school, Singh moved away from day-to-day operations in August. A month earlier, Singh had become executive director of nonprofit My Brother’s Keeper CharlotteMecklenburg.

Then Singh partnered with educator, muralist and sneaker artist DeNeer Davis in a project with Charlotte Art League. Singh and Davis helped turn the wooden boards placed on windows in Uptown Charlotte during protests that summer into art murals. Since then, making art has been a marathon, Singh says.

Following a mass shooting on Beatties Ford Road that left four people dead during a block party to mark Juneteenth 2020, community leaders including Singh banded together to uplift the community through public artwork. The Beatties Ford Strong movement was born with the creation of two murals, the first at the site of the shooting. Three years later, the movement is still happening, Singh says.

“I think we’re up to nine murals,” Singh says. “Anyone can be a part of Beatties Ford Strong. It’s

“I’m just a farmer,” he says, likening farming to pouring himself into others: students, collaborators, artists and communities. Like crops, a teacher’s harvest comes in seasons.

“Some things come immediately with students, some things take time,” Singh says. “Sometimes you see fruitful seasons over 15 years. Sometimes you wait 20 years [until you] meet the kid you poured into who is now an adult.”

“To me, that’s the thread between [artist and educator],” Singh says. “I want a better world for us. I want better communities. I want that for [people] from places like where I come from — west Charlotte is a Brooklyn to me.”

Singh says that’s why he is driven to help younger people.

“My purpose in this world is … to provide avenues for youth, provide them runways, because that is literally what investing in the future is.”

PHOTO BY JIM DUKES

RICKY SINGH AT WORK

STEWART/OWEN DANCE

9/22

SHOWALTER, ELONZO WESLEY, THE LAMPLIGHT GOSPEL, JACKSON HARDEN

9/24

JOHN FULLBRIGHT

Raised in Woody Guthrie’s hometown of Okemah, Oklahoma, Fullbright evokes the Dust Bowl laureate’s conversational delivery and humanist outlook, but his sound hews closer to rootsy mavericks like Townes Van Zandt and Steve Earle. With his breakthrough 2014 album Songs, Fulbright proved himself a masterful tunesmith. His thumbnail sketches of strained relationships and human hearts in conflict are delivered with economy and casual brilliance. He can slip a scalpel-sharp phrase like “I spent the coin I used to toss...” in surging rocker “Never Cry Again,” and it almost goes unnoticed … yet it lingers long in the imagination.

More: $20-24; Sept, 24, 7:30 p.m.; Evening Muse, 3227 N. Davidson St.; eveningmuse.com

More: $30-$50; Sept. 23, 8 p.m.; Cain Center for the Arts, 21348 Catawba Ave., Cornelius; cainarts.org

fri ELONZO WESLEY Promotional photo 9/22 NARROWCAST Promotional photo 9/30

9/23 9/25

The 33rd annual Latin American Festival, aka Festival Latino Americano, returns with musical acts, savory cuisine, an authentic marketplace and more as part of the Charlotte International Arts Festival, with more than 19 Latin American countries represented within. Performing will be Felipe Peláez, the Colombian singer-songwriter whose unique blend of Colombian beats and Latin rhythms has built him a loyal following across Latin America. One of the most successful Latin artists of his generation, Peláez has won numerous awards including two Latin Grammy Awards for Best Male Pop Vocal Album for El Corazón (2012) and El Mismo (2015). More: Free; Sept. 23, noon; The Amp Balantyne, 11115 Upper Ave.; latinamericancoalition.org

ARTIST STATEMENT 101 WITH JONELL LOGAN

In this iteration of McColl Center’s Artist Entrepreneurship series, the museum’s creative director Jonell Logan helps fellow artists learn the skills involved with clearly articulating their intent and goals when applying for residencies. Whether starting from scratch or updating a pre-existing statement, artists will learn to describe their artwork in vibrant, active prose. Logan was brought on as creative director after having worked for art organizations including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of Art, Gibbes Museum of Art, and the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American History and Culture in Charlotte. Register by Friday, Sept. 22.

More: $35; Sept. 25, 6-8 p.m.; McColl Center, 721 N. Tryon St.; mccollcenter.org

SIGHTS AND SOUNDS OF SELF-CARE

Part of Wednesday Night Live programming, Be More Foundation founder and creative educator De’Les Green-Morris will walk participants through mindful breathing exercises and music-making techniques to encourage creative energy flow. Attendees are encouraged to bring cameras, instruments, instrumentals, song lyrics, and other tools of sound to explore how the visuals and music you love express your identity and are part of selfcare. Participants can expect to learn mindful breathing exercises and grounding techniques, experiment with everyday sights and sounds to encourage creative energy flow, and share how their favorite sights and sounds express aspects of their identity and are part of their self-care strategies.

More: Free; Sept. 27, 6:30-9 p.m.; Gantt Center, 551 South Tryon Street; ganttcenter.org

Charlotte’s only midcentury modern home tour returns on Sept. 30 with seven stops, including five midcentury and modern homes, a school and a classic car show at the Charlotte Museum of History showcasing lovingly restored cars that would’ve roamed Charlotte’s roads during the height of the midcentury modern era, starting in the 1940s. Before that begins, join the museum for a kickoff party recognizing the contributions of women to the Queen City’s built environment. A panel discussion will feature Regan Stewart of True Homes; LaToya Faustin of She Built This City; Susan Mayer of SVM Historical Consulting; and Carolyn Kibler, a retired architectural project manager.

More: Free; Sept. 28, 6:30-8:30; Charlotte Museum of History, 3500 Shamrock Drive; madaboutmodern.com

10/3 9/28

ongoing

‘FOR THE LOVE OF HARLEM’

Written by Jermaine Nakia Lee, this musical sensation profiles a weekend in the lives of the artistic visionaries who shaped the 1920-30’s Harlem Renaissance, giving legendary figures like Alberta Hunter, Bessie Smith, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Richard Bruce Nugent, Wallace Thurman, and Zora Neale Hurston real human faces and presenting their struggles between public recognition and self-identify in a way rarely associated with such legends. For the Love of Harlem is a Brand New Sheriff production, and for a BNS primer, you can check out founder Rory Sheriff’s BIPOC Playwrights Festival winner Speakeasy, which will run from Sept. 22-24 at the Fullwood Theatre in Matthews.

More: $29-$45; Sept. 29-Oct. 1, times vary; The Parr Center, Central Piedmont Community College, 1201 Elizabeth Ave.; bnsproductions.org

NARROWCAST, SOLIS, MOA

On “Mind Eraser,” Charlotte shoegaze outfit Narrowcast enwraps anxious lyrics in dulcet keyboards, hazy vocals and pointillist guitar. It’s the first live show by the band, and the first onstage appearance by vocalist Ella since 2016. A trans woman, Ella last fronted energetic Bostonbased pop-punk combo Transit as frontman Joe Boyton. The DNA of Transit’s pop brilliance flits through Narrowcast’s compositions like an after image burned briefly on the retina. Moa’s sweeping cinematic soundscapes cast listeners adrift in a velvety void of luxurious oblivion. Solis’ sensual dreamlike pop fits this ethereal bill like a black leather glove.

More: $7; Sept. 30, 8 p.m.; Petra’s, 1919 Commonwealth Ave.; petrasbar.com

JACQUEES, NICK LAVELLE

Armed with sassy come-ons and massive melodies, rapper Jacquees took some shit when he named his 2019 album King of R&B, thereby self-anointing himself to the title. More a singer who raps than vice versa, Jacquees may actually deserve the honorific, displaying an intuitive mastery of R&B’s lady killer subgenre embodied by Barry White. Jacquees’ 2022 masterwork Sincerely For You, is the apotheosis of slow jams, delving into heartfelt intimacy as much as sex. Formerly a male entertainer, Nick Lavelle plays up his smooth operator vibe, perhaps unconsciously pitching himself as heir apparent to Jacquees’ king.

More: $38; Oct. 3, 8 p.m.; Neighborhood Theatre, 511 E. 36th St.; neighborhoodtheatre.com

by

CAN’T COUNT HER OUT

Cyanca returns with new EP, readies debut album

BY TYLER BUNZEY

Charlotte’s hip-hop and R&B communities are having a moment.

Mavi, a Queen City hip-hop stalwart, is reverberating nationwide, selling out shows around the country and landing profiles from major media outlets like NPR and Rolling Stone. Dexter Jordan, a staple of Charlotte R&B, sang alongside Ari Lennox in her Charlotte tour stop earlier this year. Reuben Vincent, the understudy of super-producer 9th Wonder, recently signed a deal with Jay-Z’s label Roc Nation, becoming only the third North Carolinian to join the storied hip-hop label.

Don’t call it a come up. Don’t call it a comeback. But something is in the water in Charlotte.

Cyanca, a beloved and revered figure in the scene — dubbed Charlotte’s Queen of Neo-Soul by Queen City Nerve in 2020 — is ready to ensure that her name is included in this dynamic roster.

On the cusp of releasing her fourth EP — her first project since 2021’s Fast Times — Cyanca has been grappling with her relationship to the local scene.

“I’m just really trying to find my way as a Black woman, just really trying to stand on that,” Cyanca told Queen City Nerve. “And really push … especially in a very male-dominated industry.”

Her new EP Late 2 the Party, which drops on Sept. 29 with a release show scheduled that night at the Evening Muse, wrestles with the anxiety of feeling simultaneously behind and forgotten in the industry. A mixture of old releases and new, she maintains the familiar laid-back, braggadocious persona, but importantly, she begins to unmoor from the aura of detached cool that has marked her career so far.

“Idk,” the opening track and only single from the seven-track EP thus far, pulls down Cyanca’s iconic shades to reveal the doubts swirling behind them.

“Have to figure out if I want to be an artist,” she murmurs as her voice echoes over melancholic layered synths. “I don’t know what’s really good with

me/ but I do know that I got big dreams...”

Produced by Durham duo Foreign Specimen, the undulating beat materializes the doldrums that have trapped Cyanca, complete with the warped vinyl warble so iconic of her output thus far.

“The EP is a very, super ‘I’m talking shit’ vibe,’” Cyanca reflected. “But I wanted to include [‘Idk’] anyway because I wanted to show the soft side of me … I wanted to tell you all that shit up front, raw like, ‘Yo, I’m really questioning this shit,’ then I’m like ‘Alright,’ and I enter into my alter ego.”

Indeed, just as “Idk” concludes its chilly refrain, Cyanca seems to swell back to her self-confident persona with “PB&J.” Originally released on Fast Times in 2021, “PB&J” jolts the listener back into Cyanca’s alter ego over the glowing warmth of brassy horns.

“Yeah, I saw your message, but I left that shit on read...” she sings dismissively, “My bad, this my jim jam. Stop calling my phone, I’m not answering...”

For fans that might be late to the party, Cyanca peppers in two other previously released tracks on the EP. The inclusion of the top two streaming songs in her oeuvre — “EAT” and the 2017 hit “New Phone, Who Dis?”— represent a shift in strategy for her and her team. As she gains new fans, she wants to make sure that her hits don’t get lost in the saturated streaming market.

“Even though I’ve had these bursts of hype moments, I’m still emerging,” she said.

It’s paying off. Drake’s OVO Sound radio station recently spun “New Phone,” which serves as the finale of Late 2 the Party. While she’s ready to move forward in both style and strategy, these shit-talking records reintroduce her persona as she shifts toward more vulnerable explorations like “Idk.”

The newly recorded tracks on the project likewise develop her undeniably cool performance persona. “Badazz” lives up to its name, carrying the only feature on the album with veteran Charlotte rapper

Deniro Farrar delivering a buttery diatribe to set up Cyanca later in the track. The two found themselves together in the studio three years ago and Cyanca jumped on her chance to get Farrar on one of her records.

“Just go on the track and talk shit,” she instructed him.

And talk shit he does. Described by Cyanca as conjuring the spirit of ODB (mixed with slick-talking West Coast emcee Suga Free, in this writer’s opinion) Deniro intones: “I’m gonna let y’all ni**as know what you need to know and everything that I’m going to let you know is on a need-to-know basis, you understand me?”

The track seeps confidence from its pores, with jangling bells keeping time for a bassline that sounds like it could be the soundtrack for an ’80s arcade game.

In line with her reflections in “Idk,” however, Cyanca sat on the record due to self-doubt.

“Everything that I do is healing … healing for me,” she explains. “Badazz” felt inauthentic to her struggles back when she recorded it. Now, however, she’s ready to step back into that confidence donning, as she croons in her first line on the record, “kitty cat glasses with some Reeboks, baby...”

The final novel track on the record, “Ugly,” extends the minute-and-a-half shit-talking on “Badazz” into a full statement. Over a chopped warbling sample that sounds like a record whose grooves have been lovingly worn down with age, Cyanca brings the detached confidence of a good old-fashioned hiphop diss record, albeit with sparse but poignant lyricism.

“I feel like I’m a slow burn. I feel like it takes a while for me to open up,” Cyanca told Queen City Nerve. “And I think that a lot of that has to do with the trauma that I’ve encountered from childhood. Even in my adulthood, I’m just very careful.”

We get a brief glimpse into these self-protective walls with cutting lines like, “Balling ain’t your nature but you want to layup … the fuck?”

Clearly, Cyanca is not one to be played or played with. However, her sparse lyricism, a quality found across her catalog, doesn’t need clever lines and double entendres to retain its force. With all of the plain-spoken power of the 12-bar blues, she deals the final blow to haters in her sing-song refrain: “You ain’t ugly/ You just broke...”

With Late 2 the Party, Cyanca reintroduces this shit-talking persona to set us up for what’s to come.

“This is a chapter I’m closing,” she said of the EP.

CYANCA’S ‘LATE 2 THE PARTY’ DROPS SEPT. 29.

PHOTO BY MALIK GIST

Her long-awaited forthcoming debut album, slated to be released next year, will drop some of this affect and show us a raw glimpse inside of her struggle with self-doubt, trauma, and her healing journey. Referencing the loss of her mother at 2 years old, she is ready to share the more intimate moments of her life with fans old and new alike.

“I really love this shit. And I have a story. I’ve been through so much trauma. I don’t say this lightly. I’m really doing this for me and my momma,” she said.

Cyanca’s been working on the album for more than four years, which is fairly normal for a selfdescribed perfectionist. With her team pushing her to take more risks in her release schedule, she has been forced to confront whether or not her perfectionism is a gift or an obstacle.

“I think it’s a combination of both,” she told the Nerve. “But I think it was hindering me. In a sense of, you know, we’re living in a very digital society where things move fast.”

Part of Cyanca’s process in letting go has included embracing fluidity in her artistry. The pressures of today’s industry often force artists to try to curate a distinctive, stable brand even before they release any music. Too fften creative, dynamic artists are suppressed under the rushing, relentless

“My father taught me a lot about hip-hop. He used to have hundreds of CDs in alphabetical order. That’s how it was. He was very particular,” she recalled.

Within the legacy of her father’s informal training, Cyanca is an astute observer, sometimes drifting off in public or obsessing over an album until she can fully break it down in private. Her studies, from more obvious forebears like Missy Elliot and Hype Williams to her contemporaries like Atlanta’s Ben Reilly and OMBRE, ground her work with a referential archive that never drowns out the power of her own voice.

In her attention to said archive along with her insistence on living her authenticity, fluid expression, and undeniable shit-talking power, Cyanca in many ways embodies the figure of the blueswoman. The power of the blues is far from our contemporary reductive image of a long-haired, foot-stomping white man playing a steel guitar and harmonica. The blues, largely innovated by Black women like Ma Rainey, made it possible to articulate the inarticulable mixture of trauma, desire, loss, and love that constituted Southern Black life in the early 20th century.

Additionally, the blues was one of the only expressive forms that created space for fluid expression in both gender and sexuality, with

queer women like Bessie Smith and genderfluid folks like Gladys Bentley sounding off on queer desire just under the surface of the words. Not to mention the blues is one of the trunks of the archive, branching out in different genres from folk to funk, from rhythm and blues to rock ’n’ roll, and from the spirituals to neo-soul.

The spirit of these forbears lives on in Cyanca’s work. Her larger-than-life persona, laid back in the cut, captures audiences from the first sound that comes from her lips. Her expression disallows her to be captured in any singularity, shapeshifting from tomboy to high femme from video to video, performance to performance.

In one line she can expose her stymieing selfdoubt and in the next make you forget that she is anything besides a superhero.

But ultimately, like the blueswomen before her, she uses her art to heal and uplift Black women. She puts it on for her community first, always. And for that, it’s time for Cyanca to get her due.

As she puts it: “Don’t count me out. I may be late to the party, but I’m here. The party is still going. I just got here late.”

waters of the streaming algorithm. If artists aren’t comprehensible quickly — sometimes within the first few bars of a track — they can be cast aside. Cyanca, however, is ready to face the fear of being, well, her.

“I may be like very tomboyish one day. Then I’ll be like, super feminine. And I’m just very fluid,” she said. “And I was scared before to like push that because I felt like I didn’t want people to be confused. But maybe it was a good thing that they’re confused. Like, ‘She’s mysterious,’ or, ‘We don’t know what we’re gonna get out of Cyanca next.’ And I’m trying to lean more into that, just trying things.”

As a true student of culture, Cyanca “just trying things” bodes well for anyone interested on shirking the shackles of the music industrial complex. Unlike many other musicians who prefer to sequester themselves in the act of creation, Cyanca often immerses herself in the sounds and sights of others.

“I love to explore. I love going to records stores. I love nostalgic things,” she explained, adding that one of her most recent music purchases was a cassette tape from 1990s girl group Xscape.

Her deep study — from sounds to sequencing to phrasing to even fonts on album covers — initially emerged from her relationship with her dad.

CYANCA PHOTO BY MALIK GIST

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

The Sound That Ends Creation w/ Cloutchaser, sayurblaires, Psychic Scream, Swae (The Milestone)

Nolan Potter’s Nightmare Band w/ Impending Joy, Top Achiever (Snug Harbor)

HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B

Ohgeesy (The Underground)

Ne-Yo (Skyla Amphitheatre)

POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ

Thirsty Horses (Goldie’s)

CLASSICAL/INSTRUMENTAL

Charlotte Symphony feat. Renée Fleming (Belk Theater)

OPEN MIC

Singer/Songwriter Open Mic (The Rooster)

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 21

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

Hatebreed (The Fillmore)

The L.A. Maybe w/ Simple Sole (Goldie’s)

Heartsick w/ Let It Rot, The Coursing, Redefind, Cosmic

Twynk (The Rooster)

King Cackle w/ Wyndrider, Stormwatchers (Snug Harbor)

By George w/ Deaf Andrews, Homemade Haircuts (Visulite Theatre)

POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ

Lauren Sanderson w/ Poutyface (Neighborhood Theatre)

SINGER-SONGWRITER/ACOUSTIC

Savannah Harmon (Comet Grill)

In the Round feat. Rodney Eldridge, Austin McNeill, Drew

Nathan, Sage Greer (Evening Muse)

Sam on Someday (Petra’s)

JAZZ/BLUES

Lil’ Ed & the Blues Imperials (Middle C Jazz)

FUNK/JAM BANDS

Shana Blake’s Musical Menagerie (Smokey Joe’s Cafe & Bar)

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 22

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

The Orange Constant w/ Joe May, Late Notice (Amos’ Southend)

The Minks (Camp North End)

The Lenny Federal Band (Comet Grill)

Paleface w/ Shake the Dust (The Rooster)

HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B

Leela James (Knight Theater)

Raphael Saadiq (Ovens Auditorium)

Drake (Spectrum Center)

JAZZ/BLUES

Rebecca Jade & JJ Sansaverino (Middle C Jazz)

SINGER-SONGWRITER/ACOUSTIC

Showalter w/ Elonzo Wesley, The Lamplight Gospel, Jackson Harden (The Milestone)

POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ

Joy Oladokun (The Underground)

Jam Garden w/ RC Roadshow (Goldie’s)

WALT w/ 3amsound, Jooselord, NunAfterHours, Matty, DJ

Toast (Petra’s)

Deep Friend Disco (Snug Harbor)

COUNTRY/FOLK/AMERICANA

Pierce Edens (Neighborhood Theatre)

FUNK/JAM BANDS

Blue Dog Junction (Smokey Joe’s Cafe & Bar)

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 23

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

B Sharp (Amos’ Southend)

Cannibal Corpse w/ Mayhem (The Fillmore)

Lenny Federal Band (Smokey Joe’s Cafe & Bar)

Wine Pride w/ Tai Popple, Navtec (Snug Harbor)

Council Ring w/ Swansgate (Starlight on 22nd)

The Deep Shallow w/ Matone (Visulite Theatre)

POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ

Emily Wolfe (Evening Muse)

Digital Noir feat. DJ Spider, DJ Allison Wwwonderland (The Milestone)

FUNK/JAM BANDS

Space Truck (Comet Grill)

COUNTRY/FOLK/AMERICANA

Josh Grider w/ Jordan Middleton (Evening Muse)

Mipso w/ Viv & Riley (Neighborhood Theatre)

Eric Church (PNC Music Pavilion)

HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B

That Mexican OT (The Underground)

Alan Charmer w/ La Brava, Dr MoFo (Petra’s)

Drake (Spectrum Center)

JAZZ BLUES

Lindsey Webster (Middle C Jazz)

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 24

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

Dead Senate w/ Court Order, Chained, If Only (The Milestone)

JAZZ/BLUES

Omari & the Hellhounds (Comet Grill)

Tom Braxton (Middle C Jazz)

SINGER-SONGWRITER/ACOUSTIC

Square Roots (Goldie’s)

David Gibson (The Rooster)

COUNTRY/FOLK/AMERICANA

John Fullbright (Evening Muse)

falllift w/ Baerd (Neighborhood Theatre)

Eric Church (PNC Music Pavilion)

POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ

Beatfreaq (Starlight on 22nd)

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 25

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

Nothing More (The Fillmore)

Circle Jerks (The Underground)

JAZZ/BLUES

The Bill Hanna Legacy Jazz Session (Petra’s)

COUNTRY/FOLK/AMERICANA

Charlotte Bluegrass Mondays (Smokey Joe’s Cafe & Bar)

OPEN MIC

Find Your Muse Open Mic feat. Pete Coombs & The Mount Nemo Band (Evening Muse)

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

Red Rocking Chair (Comet Grill)

Sam Brasko w/ Henry Luther, The Cocaine Faeries, Attacking Pataki, Strange Reports (The Milestone)

Speedy Ortiz w/ Foyer Red, Nicole Yun (Snug Harbor)

HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B

EST Gee (The Underground)

NoCap (The Fillmore)

SINGER-SONGWRITER/ACOUSTIC

Kevin Russell (Goldie’s)

POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ

Lost Cargo: Tiki Social Party (Petra’s)

OPEN MIC

Open Mic Night feat. The Smokin J’s (Smokey Joe’s Cafe & Bar)

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

Flogging Molly (The Fillmore)

The L.A. Maybe (Goldie’s)

POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ

Poolside (The Underground)

Lofidels w/ Waltzer, Tea Eater (Snug Harbor)

COUNTRY/FOLK/AMERICANA

The War & Treaty w/ William Prince (Visulite Theatre)

SINGER-SONGWRITER/ACOUSTIC

Jennifer Knapp w/ Sarah Peacock (Evening Muse)

FUNK/JAM BANDS

Oteil & Friends (Neighborhood Theatre)

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 28

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

Illiterate Light w/ Airpark (Evening Muse)

Neon Trees (The Underground)

Dan Hood w/ Mike Ramsey (Goldie’s)

Summoner’s Circle w/ Eshtadur, Night Attack, The Silencing Machine (The Milestone)

Banditos w/ The Pink Stones (Neighborhood Theatre)

20 Watt Tombstone w/ Hellfire 76, King Saul & The Heretics (Snug Harbor)

LATIN/WORLD/REGGAE

Kany Garcia (The Fillmore)

JAZZ/BLUES

The Voltage Brothers (Middle C Jazz)

FUNK/JAM BANDS

Shana Blake’s Musical Menagerie (Smokey Joe’s Cafe & Bar)

POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ

Jade Moore (Comet Grill)

The Abbey Elmore Band w/ Clay Johnson & The Hard Promises (Petra’s)

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 29

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

The Lenny Federal Band (Comet Grill)

Woody w/ Rigometrics (Evening Muse)

U-PHONIK w/ Matt Stratford (Goldie’s)

True Lilith w/ Sweet Spine, The Girls, Auroras Hope (The Milestone)

Filth w/ Fear Illusion, Seemless Vision, Pathologic (The Rooster)

JAZZ/BLUES

Marcus Johnson (Middle C Jazz)

HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B

Cyanca w/ Flower in Bloom (Evening Muse)

COUNTRY/FOLK/AMERICANA

Trey Lewis (Coyote Joe’s)

Victor Wooten & the Wooten Brothers w/ Rebirth Brass Band (Neighborhood Theatre)

Lillie Mae w/ Darby Wilcox, Ryan Lockhart (Petra’s)

Old Dominion (Spectrum Center)

Ward Davis (Visulite Theatre)

POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ

Lana Del Rey (PNC Music Pavilion)

Kate Bollinger w/ Sam Burton, Coughing Dove (Snug Harbor)

Electronica (Starlight on 22nd)

CLASSICAL/INSTRUMENTAL

Charlotte Symphony Orchestra (Camp North End)

LATIN/WORLD/REGGAE

Angélique Kidjo (Knight Theater)

Eric Nam (The Fillmore)

Fuerza Regida (PNC Music Pavilion)

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 30

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

The Phantom Friends (Birdsong Brewing)

Blue October (The Fillmore)

Saltwound w/ Inferious, Mouthbreather, Heft, Overturn, Severed By Dawn (The Milestone)

Narrowcast w/ Solis, MOA (Petra’s)

Rugg w/ Mold!, Subvertigo (Snug Harbor)

HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B

Anthony David w/ DJ Arie Spins (Neighborhood Theatre)

COUNTRY/FOLK/AMERICANA

Truckstop Preachers (Comet Grill)

JAZZ/BLUES

Lori Williams (Middle C Jazz)

FUNK/JAM BANDS

Ben Gatlin Band (The Rooster)

POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ

Jonas Brothers (Snug Harbor)

The Modern Collection Music Festival (Starlight on 22nd)

EXPERIMENTAL/MIXED-GENRE

When September Ends: Punk Meets Hip-Hop (Evening Muse)

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 1

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

Toad the Wet Sprocket (Knight Theater)

Paladin w/ Lutharo, Krvsade, Night Attack (The Milestone)

JAZZ/BLUES

Omari & the Hellhounds (Comet Grill)

Roberto Restuccia (Middle C Jazz)

CLT Blues Society: Blues Competition 2023 (Neighborhood Theatre)

The Giftt (The Rooster)

HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B

Tobi Lou (The Underground)

POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ

Teddy Swims (The Fillmore)

Hazy Sunday (Petra’s)

Ape Audio Patio Party (Starlight on 22nd)

MONDAY, OCTOBER 2

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

Oh! You Pretty Things w/Contact Comfort, blankstate. (The Rooster)

POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ

G Flip w/ Miki Ratsula (Neighborhood Theatre)

Janelle Monae (Skyla Amphitheatre)

JAZZ/BLUES

The Bill Hanna Legacy Jazz Session (Petra’s)

OPEN MIC

Find Your Muse Open Mic feat. Rachel Sumner & Traveling Light (Evening Muse)

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 3

ROCK/PUNK/METAL Resistor (The Milestone)

FUNK/JAM BANDS

Just Friends w/ Young Culture, Save Face (Amos’ Southend)

JAZZ/BLUES

Bryan Eng (Middle C Jazz)

POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ

Ashnikko (The Fillmore)

SINGER-SONGWRITER/ACOUSTIC

Jacquees w/ Nick Lavelle (Neighborhood Theatre)

OPEN MIC

Open Mic Night feat. The Smokin J’s (Smokey Joe’s Cafe & Bar)

FOOD & DRINK FEATURE

THAT’S THE TEA

Sherry Waters prioritizes community care at The Pauline Tea-Bar Apothecary

BY RYAN PITKIN

The zen vibes hit you in the face when you walk into The Pauline Tea-Bar Apothecary in west Charlotte — the nose, more specifically.

On a morning visit in September, the smell floating throughout the space is a confluence of peppermint, wild orange, Melissa, cypress, margarine, grapefruit and lavender. It’s not just a random mix of herbs. Like everything else in Pauline’s, it was a blend made with purpose by Pauline’s owner Sherry Waters.

“Aromatherapy helps with people’s emotions,” Waters tells me. “So all of those [scents] put together lighten your heaviness — whatever heaviness or whatever you’re feeling.”

Waters opened The Pauline Tea-Bar Apothecary in 2019, implementing her own blend of experiences — decades spent working in the nonprofit sector, a Master’s degree in Practical Theology, an expertise in spiritual care counseling — to create a space hyperfocused on restorative healing and community building.

Everything about the business, from the rotating art displays to the seating to the lack of Wi-Fi, is meant to cultivate a sense of serenity.

And of course, there’s tea.

Waters and her staff offer $5 pots of tea, selected from an incredibly in-depth menu that includes not only tea type and the benefits of each option but a complete overview, list of ingredients and suggested uses for each tea.

Each pot is served on a tray with honey, sugar and a mug chosen by the customer from a selection hanging on the wall.

I go with the lemon ginger — a yellow, noncaffeinated tea that “yields a warm and comforting infusion with an intense, sweet, fruity aroma, that comes from a spritz of 100 percent pure lemon oil which is expressed from the peel of the fresh fruit,” according to the menu.

It’s made from roasted chicory root, non-sulfited ginger root, lemongrass, orange peel, lemon essential oil, hibiscus, coriander seed and cinnamon.

Known as a wellness tea, the lemon ginger is rich

in vitamin C and has known benefits for digestion.

As for the mug selection, a more visceral decision that includes an equally diverse range of choices, I go with a white mug adorned with music notes.

As with every other aspect of The Pauline, the ability to choose your own cup is purposeful — one more way to get folks to stick around and reset.

“I can count on one hand how many people have said, ‘I’ll just use a to-go cup,’” Waters tells me. “People love that. They love being able to do that. They feel cared for.”

And if there’s one thing the former chaplain resident has a passion for, it’s care — for self, for others and for community.

Rooted in care

An Asheville native, Waters attended school at UNC Chapel Hill before moving to Charlotte in 1992. She kicked off her career as a TV news reporter but left after two years, deciding that she did not like the ethics involved in television news.

From there, she capitalized on her writing skills to join the nonprofit sector in marketing and public relations, which she stuck with for 25 years.

She went from organization to organization, helping launch or open projects that are now seen as Charlotte institutions: the Dowd and StratfordRichardson YMCA locations, for example, as well as McCreesh Place during her time with Supportive Housing Communities.

She also spent time with arts organizations like Community School of the Arts before it became Arts+ and the Afro-American Cultural Center before it became the Harvey B. Gantt Center for AfricanAmerican Arts + Culture.

“I was bringing in local artists to teach students from underserved communities and also using their art to be on display in one of the community art galleries at the Cultural Center at that time,” she says. “That’s where I learned about gallery exhibitions and the importance for local artists to have a place

to showcase their work. So that’s always on my mind; I’m a big art fan, all the time, every day.”

Eventually, Waters moved from marketing to fundraising, which is where her passion for spacemaking came into play.

“I love creating sacred space,” she says. “So I was always doing that in my office, whatever setting I was in, to make donors and individuals feel comfortable, to let them feel heard and seen.”

This led her down the path toward Practical Theology, which she studied at Pfeiffer University with a track in spiritual care counseling during a sabbatical from her nonprofit work. During her studies, she went through a chaplain residency with Atrium Health based in Concord.

It was during this time that her love for creating healing spaces became critical to her practice.

“I would find myself going into the patient rooms and changing up the very clinical setting that they were in to one that was more restorative,” she recalls. “I would change the Fox News station to naturescapes. I would bring in meditation, breath, prayer, guided imagery, aromatherapy. Those things, I found, were helping to bring down the level of anxiety and even pain that some of the patients and families were having and even help with their dying.”

PHOTO BY GRANT BALDWIN SHERRY WATERS INSIDE THE PAULINE TEA-BAR APOTHECARY.

FOOD & DRINK FEATURE

Eventually, the experience led to the idea for The Pauline Tea-Bar Apothecary.

“I said, ‘What would it be like if I created a space like that? A respite space for people to just come and just enjoy authentic communication and community?’”

Opening The Pauline

With the idea for creating a sacred community space already marinating in her mind, Waters began to ponder how she could turn it into a business. Her mind turned to visiting her grandmother, Pauline, at her home in Lake Lure as a child.

“I was talking to my husband about this and I’m like, ‘What’s going to make people slow down? What’s going to get people to come to a place like that?’” she says. “I started thinking about how my grandmother had tea with me and how, when she made me tea and sat with me and had tea, it made me feel so special. It made me feel like I was the most important person in the world.”

Waters did some research and couldn’t find any tea shops in Charlotte. Teavana had been bought

out by Starbucks in 2012 and closed all locations. La-Tea-Da’s is a respected catering company in the area but doesn’t have a brick-and-mortar lounge like what Waters wanted to open.

From there, she began researching tea, from the farming process to the health benefits and everything else in between.

She’s learned so much in the time since the idea came to her four years ago, she says.

“I’ve learned that tea is expansive,” Waters explains. “I mean, you’ve got Tisanes that are just really herbs and spices and ingredients that taste good infused in hot water. And then tea, from the same plant — the Camellia sinensis plant — can be brewed differently or processed differently, and that’s where you get your white tea and your green tea and your black tea, and different benefits with each of those buckets.”

Throughout the process, she was also soliciting community feedback as she tried to put together a menu.

“I reached out to a few people, about 20 or so, and said, ‘What’s your favorite teas?’ because I didn’t want to be the only one making the decision. And here we are,” she says.

She opened in July 2019 with the help of her

daughter, Ilona Waters, who served as the brand experience director until her recent departure to attend film school in Los Angeles.

Ilona is the subject of the “Tea-lona” mural in front of The Pauline, done by local artist Lo’Vonia Parks. Ilona helped with interior design and came up with ideas like allowing customers to choose their own mugs.

“She has such an eye for color, for feeling, and bringing in the right kind of atmosphere, creating the zen for spaces,” says Sherry. “I am so indebted to Ilona and her background and what she did.”

An evolution

When COVID-19 hit just eight months after The Pauline opened its doors, Waters knew she would need to pivot in some way.

The business did not even have a website at that point, as Waters had simply included a page mentioning the tea bar on the website for her spiritual care counseling business, which she runs out of a back office at The Pauline.

Ilona helped her mother design a website exclusive to The Pauline, from which they took pickup and delivery orders for their loose-leaf tea.

COVID also inspired Sherry to build relationships

with local farmers markets, as she began selling her products out of the Uptown Farmers Market on South Davidson Street and the Rosa Parks Farmer Market in west Charlotte.

But COVID wasn’t the only event of 2020 that changed the way The Pauline does business. Originally meant as a space for personal solace, the police killing of George Floyd and resulting protests woke Waters up to the need for a space that cultivated community, conversation and collaboration.

“When I first opened this, the initial idea was for people to come and use this like a quiet, solace place and just be still and read, journal — quiet and to themselves,” she explains.

“My idea for that quickly changed because I saw people were needing one another. When the whole George Floyd killing and racial trauma happened that same year, we became a gathering space for people to have really hard conversations as well. So we’ve had a lot of community building and interracial conversations here.”

Waters also prioritizes community in her partnerships, from the artists who display on her walls every three to four months to her culinary partners.

Mary Jayne Wilson of the nearby Thoughtful Baking Co. provides pastries for The Pauline. Waters also partners with local farmers like Bernard Singleton at Nebedaye Farms, who provides her with moringa tea.

“All of our teas are organic, fair-trade and ecosourced,” she says. “That was important to me, that people were paid fair wages for growing and picking the tea, and loose-leaf tea just tastes way better than what you’re going to get in a bag from the grocery store.”

It’s all part of an intentionality that pervades the space within The Pauline Tear-Bar Apothecary, one that leaves each customer feeling cared for — whether that means being seen, heard, or left alone to ruminate in their own thoughts.

“Every single thing that we’ve done — even the furnishings coming from second-hand stores, antiques — has been about bringing home that feeling of home, bringing a place of belonging and making people again feel like they belong here,” Waters says. “I never want people to walk away without a good experience.”

PHOTO BY GRANT BALDWIN

A SELECTION OF MUGS FOR CUSTOMERS TO CHOOSE FROM.

TRIVIA TEST

CROSSWORD SUDOKU

BY LINDA THISTLE

BY FIFI RODRIGUEZ

1. U.S. STATES: Which state is home to a giant sequoia tree named General Sherman?

2. ANIMAL KINGDOM: Is a rhinoceros an herbivore, omnivore or carnivore?

3. GEOGRAPHY: Which city in India is home to the Taj Mahal?

4. MOVIES: What is the title of the first James Bond movie?

5. TELEVISION: What was the product featured in the first TV advertisement?

6. GENERAL KNOWLEDGE: Which French fashion designer is credited with inventing the Little Black Dress?

7. FOOD & DRINK: What does it mean to julienne vegetables?

8. GOVERNMENT: What does the acronym GDP stand for in economic terms?

9. LITERATURE: What is the cat’s name in Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”?

10. SCIENCE: Who is considered the father of the atomic bomb?

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.

AERIN’ IT OUT CHARLOTTE’S NORTH STAR

Starlight on 22nd is a beacon in Charlotte’s art scene

BY AERIN SPRUILL

On a Saturday at 9 p.m., East 22nd Street tickled my “seedy” meter as we rounded the corner to a seemingly nondescript, dimly lit nook in Optimist Park.

I bit my tongue, though I was convinced swapping out GPS for a “sense of direction” wasn’t the best decision. But just as I reached for my phone, the guiding lights of Starlight on 22nd warmed the street ahead and I realized we’d found our North Star.

After months of watering hole fatigue, hearing the boo say, “Hey, wanna go to Starlight tonight for a drink?” felt like music to my ears. It’d been so long since we’d discussed visiting, but the image of a colorful starburst mural decorating the front of the building reminded me that my original excitement still lingered.

Nestled between new construction projects that loom above, making for an active site in the day but a feeling of emptiness up and down the street by night. Starlight defiantly fills in the nooks and crannies of the developing street, looking like a beacon of resistance alongside (or across from) the equally colorful Rock on 22nd.

The music spilling out of the front door of Starlight pierced the eerily quiet in this fledgling strip of Optimist Park in a way that made me feel as though we were in a vacuum being sucked toward the patio.

The string lights twinkled as they danced with the welcome breeze. It was then that the childhood nursery song popped into my head: “Twinkle, twinkle, little star. How I wonder what you are.”

*Record scratch.* My starry-eyed urge to record video and take pics of everything had caught the attention of a soon-to-be-impatient boyfriend.

Though dissatisfied with the grainy, MySpace aesthetic of my captures, making any sudden movements toward an eyeglass cleaner would prove a dangerous mission even for Starfleet.

My failed attempt to set the stage for memory, however, was quickly overshadowed by wonder as I entered the door. From the jump, it’s clear why owners Ruth Ava Lyons and Paul Sires hold the title of founding artists of the NoDa Arts District.

Mismatched furniture, sculpted centerpieces, thrifted decor, and extravagant art in a laid-back, approachable

dive-meets-lounge set the tone for the ultimate playground of oddities, curiosities and creatives alike. Speaking of playgrounds, my inner child rejoiced at the sight of chicken nuggets and pizza on the small bites menu … along with the jello (shots). My eyes must have betrayed me as my boyfriend announced, “We just ate.”

My presumably frozen delights would have to wait until next time … or the next round.

Spoiler alert: I opted for a cider (and I didn’t get a snack) while boo ventured out and ordered a Starlight Spritz with grapefruit and rose vodka, Aperol, hibiscus syrup and sparkling wine. For an amazingly simple cocktail, you’d be surprised how many Q.C. hotspots can’t quite get it right. Thankfully on this night, the stars perfectly aligned; it was love at first sip.

Outside on the large patio, the playground continued. I’m talking all the space for running amok, hula hoops, disc golf, Ping-Pong, and Jenga?!

I don’t even like playing games and yet I was “kind of” kidding when I challenged bae to a hula-hoop duel. And “kind of” wanted to prove to him these hips don’t lie when he laughed at my request.

A single red metal bench for three toward the exit in front of a string of lights kept catching my eye as we listened to the band play. It’s an antique, with duct tape on both arms where most likely the worn metal had become scratchy from wear and tear over the years.

She was much like an elderly lady with a classic red lip. She may tell you, “Come sit on Grandma’s lap,” dig in her purse to hand you a broken peppermint, or get snippy if you’re doing too much — but boy does she have stories to tell.

I don’t know where she came from, but at that moment, that bright red bench felt like the Red Lady of Optimist Park — a space Lyons and Sires would like to see become a new Charlotte arts district.

In that moment, the bench was a gatekeeper of the neighborhood’s secrets and history, frozen in time at Starlight on 22nd, just waiting for someone to sit down so she can grant their wishes and share her stories with anyone who’ll listen.

ARIES (March 21 to April 19) With your Aries charm quotient at an almost all-time high this week, plus all the facts you have to back you up, you just might win over the last doubters of your proposal.

TAURUS (April 20 to May 20) You might be in line for that job change you applied for. But be advised that you could be called on to defend your qualifications against supporters of other applicants.

GEMINI (May 21 to June 20) Creating a new approach to an old idea is one way to get beyond that workplace impasse. There’s no such problems in your personal life, though, as things continue to flow smoothly.

CANCER (June 21 to July 22) Be more forthcoming about your feelings concerning a proposed change either in your workplace or in your personal life. Your opinions are valuable. Don’t keep them hidden.

LEO (July 23 to August 22) A changing situation in your life needs more patience than you appear to be willing to offer. Allowing it to develop at its own pace is the wisest course you can take at this time.

VIRGO (August 23 to September 22) With more stability in your life — both on personal and professional levels — this could be a good time to strengthen relationships with both friends and colleagues.

LIBRA (September 23 to October 22) People have always relied on your integrity not only to get a job done, but to get it done right. So don’t be pressured by anyone into cutting corners to save time.

SCORPIO (October 23 to November 21) While others might get rattled over unexpected changes, your ability to adapt calmly and competently helps you make a positive impression during a crucial period.

SAGITTARIUS (November 22 to December 21) A changing environment might be daunting for some, but the adventurous Sagittarian takes it all in stride. A friend from the past could awaken some meaningful memories.

CAPRICORN (December 22 to January 19) With your selfassurance rising to full strength, the bold Goat should feel confident about opening up to new ventures as well as new relationships.

AQUARIUS (January 20 to February 18) Reaching out to someone who has been unkind to you might not be easy. But in the long run, it will prove to have been the right thing to do. A friend offers moral support.

PISCES (February 19 to March 20) Your keen insight once again helps you work through a seemingly insoluble problem in your workplace. The weekend offers a good chance to develop new relationships.

BORN THIS WEEK: You have a penchant for finding details that others would overlook. You would make a fine research scientist.

ARIES (March 21 to April 19) After much traveling this year, you’re due for some settled time with family and friends. Use this period to check out situations that will soon require a lot of serious decision-making.

TAURUS (April 20 to May 20) Keep that keen Bovine mind focused on your financial situation as it begins to undergo some changes. Consider your money moves carefully. Avoid impulsive investments.

GEMINI (May 21 to June 20) You’ll need to adjust some of your financial plans now that things are changing more quickly than you expected. All the facts you need haven’t yet emerged, so move cautiously.

CANCER (June 21 to July 22) Personal and professional relationships dominate this period. Try to keep things uncomplicated to avoid misunderstandings that can cause problems down the line.

LEO (July 23 to August 22) That elusive goal you’d been hoping to claim is still out of reach. But something else has come along that could prove to be just as desirable, if only you would take the time to check it out.

VIRGO (August 23 to September 22) This is a good time to get away for some much needed rest and relaxation. You’ll return refreshed and ready to take on the workplace challenge that awaits you.

LIBRA (September 23 to October 22) Confidence grows as you work your way through some knotty situations. Watch out for distractions from well-meaning supporters who could slow things down.

SCORPIO (October 23 to November 21) Consider spending more time contemplating the possibilities of an offer before opting to accept or reject it. But once you make a decision, act on it.

SAGITTARIUS (November 22 to December 21) You’re in a very strong position this week to tie up loose ends in as many areas as possible. Someone close to you has advice you might want to heed.

CAPRICORN (December 22 to January 19) Congratulations! This is the week you’ve been waiting for. After a period of sudden stops and fitful starts, your plans can now move ahead with no significant disruptions.

AQUARIUS (January 20 to February 18) You’re in an exceptionally strong position this week to make decisions on many unresolved matters, especially those involving close personal relationships.

PISCES (February 19 to March 20) This week starts off with some positive movement in several areas. A special person becomes a partner in at least one of the major plans you’ll be working on.

BORN THIS WEEK: You work hard and get things done. You also inspire others to do their best. You would do well heading up a major corporation.

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER

Get our community reporting delivered straight to your inbox every Mon., Wed. & Fri.

BIT.LY/NERVENEWSLETTER

UPCOMING SPECIAL ISSUES

OCTOBER 18 | HALLOWEEN GUIDE

NOVEMBER 29 | BEST IN THE NEST DECEMBER 27 | NEW YEAR’S EVE GUIDE

5. Bulova watch.

6. Coco Chanel.

7. Cut into short, thin strips.

8. Gross domestic product.

9. Grimalkin.

10. J. Robert Oppenheimer.

SAVAGE LOVE DIDN’T HAPPEN

The big lie

BY DAN SAVAGE

I used to loudly proclaim that all this crap about Black men being better in bed was pure bullshit. My ego said it was a bunch of propaganda. The thought of me being a cuckold was never going to happen. Then my wife’s workplace hired a Black man and he was among several of her coworkers that went for drinks after work one Friday evening. I never knew that my wife harbored a desire to see for herself if everything people said about Black men was true. She went with him and had sex. It was her most exciting and rewarding sex of her life. He really did her like no one had ever done her before. It was obvious to me that something had changed. Once we finally got it out in the open, I was angry, frustrated, humiliated and embarrassed. It took me weeks to get over it and to accept that my wife needed this Black man in her life and bed. No way was I going to divorce her because then I would have to explain the reason why our 15-year marriage was ending. So, now I have no option but to admit I am a cuckold. My question is: Is this normal and common?

CUCKOLDING HAS UPENDED MARITAL PARAMETERS

It’s not normal, it’s not common — and it didn’t happen.

Oh, you might be a cuckold, CHUMP, and you might have a wife and your wife might have a lover who might be a Black man that she met at work. But if you’re lucky enough to be living the version of the cuckold dream that appeals to you most — cuckolding with a racial overlay — it didn’t come together the way you described.

Lots of wannabe cucks fantasize about their wives turning them into cuckolds against their will, e.g., the husband gets presented with a fait accompli — the wife has taken a lover and won’t give him up, she has the upper hand and divorce isn’t an option, the husband has no choice but to accept his fate — but no man has ever become a cuckold like that. That may be because it happens most often in a cuckold’s fantasies, CHUMP, but in reality, men who are living out their cuckold dreams had to beg their wives to fuck other men, sometimes for years.

A wife turning her husband into a cuckold because it’s what she wants? Maybe that’s happened once or twice, but otherwise that only happens in porn and in letters that horny wannabe cucks send to advice columnists

while they’re beating off. So, when a married woman is fucking a neighbor or a coworker or her husband’s best friend or all the above with the consent of a husband who has embraced being a cuckold … yeah, his consent wasn’t reluctantly given, it wasn’t extracted under duress, it wasn’t an offer he couldn’t refuse, and it wasn’t her idea. It was his idea. A wannabe cuckold’s wife may have warmed to the idea over time — she might’ve come to love it and can’t imagine going back — but it was his fantasy, not hers.

So, nice letter CHUMP, total bullshit, hope you enjoyed the wank. Now, I’d like to zoom out for a second...

There are lots of straight white men out there with cuckold fantasies that include problematic racialized elements, like CHUMP’s here. (Interestingly, gay men with cuckold fantasies are lot less likely to care about the race of their husband’s other sex partners.) I’m sure a lot of my Black readers were offended by CHUMP’s letter and a lot of my white readers were offended on behalf of my Black readers. (Bracing myself for the outraged emails.) But I have to say … there are Black men out there who enjoy being fetishized by white male cucks because it turns them on, too. And if you don’t believe me when I say there are Black men who 1. enjoy fucking the wives of white cuckolds and 2. either don’t mind being objectified in this way or really and truly get off on it, well, maybe you’ll believe these podcasters [keysandanklets.com] and porn stars [twitter.com/ShadowDimitri1] and content creators [twitter.com/PaganBlackBull].

And with that said…

There’s something about CHUMP’s fantasy that strikes me as … well, a lot more fucked up than most cuck fantasies with racialized elements. He’s not just aroused by stereotypes about Black male sexuality — power, size, prowess — that some Black men also find arousing and enjoy exploring with white couples who see them not just as objects but as three-dimensional human beings with needs, feeling, fantasies and their own inner lives. No, CHUMP is turned on by the idea of being trapped (common cuck fantasy) in his marriage because the whole world would know his wife was fucking a Black man if he left her — because where he lives men who divorce their wives are required to post their real reasons on at least three billboards outside of town — and it would be so obviously humiliating (according to CHUMP) if people knew that he has no choice but to stay. CHUMP doesn’t present this piece as something fucked up about

his fantasy that he enjoys toying with but obviously isn’t how he really feels, but as the real reason he can never leave his wife. Blech.

If I were a Black man, I wouldn’t fuck CHUMP’s wife (assuming she exists) if that was how he truly felt about Black men fucking his wife. But I’m not a Black man — or a straight man — and Black men are allowed to make their own choices about whose wives they wanna fuck.

I’m a 34-year-old cis bi guy who recently moved to Colorado after getting out of a rocky, deadbedroom marriage of nine years. As part of this big life transition, I decided to work up the courage to hire a professional mommy domme to live out my ABDL fantasies for the first time. You can’t believe my surprise when I discovered that one of the local dommes is my former high school girlfriend. We were together for a little less than a year in the state where we grew up together before we parted ways to go to college. We haven’t kept up with each other since. Dan, she’s super hot and does ABDL sessions, and I can’t think of anybody who I would trust more for my first time visiting a sex worker. I also worry that she would find it super fucking weird to get a session request from an ex-boyfriend from high school. Should I contact her? Or should I look somewhere else and let her do her thing in peace?

ANXIOUSLY BABBLING DIVORCED LAD

I ran your question by Mistress Matisse, a sex worker with decades of experience, a tireless advocate for the rights of sex workers, and a friend of mine for more decades than I feel comfortable assigning a number to.

“It’s been over 10 years since they graduated, everyone is a grown up now,” said Mistress Matisse. “Obviously, he needs to be honest and say, ‘I feel like this could be a great and safe experience for us both. But if you feel like this is too weird, I understand and I won’t contact you again. I also won’t tell any possible mutual acquaintances about your career, which I have the utmost respect for.’ And he should abide by her decision and stick to those promises.”

Your ex most likely knows other sex workers in your area who provide the similar services — there’s a lot of solidarity among sex workers — so, even if she doesn’t feel comfortable booking a session with you herself, ABDL, she might be able to refer you to a colleague. The more consideration and tact you demonstrate when you contact your ex, the likelier she is to refer you to a trusted friend if she doesn’t feel comfortable diapering you herself. (Feel free to copy and paste Mistress Matisse’s suggested language!)

Follow Mistress Matisse on Twitter and BlueSky @ MistressMatisse.

I’m a 36-year-old woman and my boyfriend is a 46-year-old man. We’ve been dating exclusively for over a year, and we are planning on moving in together soon and, if all goes well, marriage. We don’t want to have children at the moment, but

we might change our minds. I love him so much, but I don’t love a choice he made 10 years ago to become a sperm donor. If we ever do want to have children, I don’t like the idea of my child having up to a hundred half siblings. He doesn’t actually know how many kids are out there from his sperm, but the bank said he was very popular. At first, we talked about him becoming discoverable so we could find out who is out there before we were married. Now he says he wants to stay private. But with genetic testing, he might be discoverable regardless. I am also concerned about my privacy. Sometimes these kids reach out because they’re lost or want to know their health history or want a relationship or even money. All of it is so complex and complicated, and it has been really hard for me to accept. I also feel like if we did end up having children, my child would be less special. I feel a lot of grief over a decision he made that so profoundly affects my life. This is the best relationship I’ve ever been in, but I don’t know if I should end it because of his past. He says he regrets doing this, and it’s not something he would do again now, but it’s something he can never take back. He can’t even get the bank to stop using his sperm. I don’t know anyone else in this situation. What should I do?

DEBATE OVER NIXING OTHERWISE RELIABLE SUITOR

Jesus Christ, marry someone else — seriously, if you when you look at this guy you don’t think, “This isn’t ideal, but I love him, and we can get through this together,” you shouldn’t marry him.

To be frank, DONORS, I think you’re being ridiculous. You don’t even know if you want kids — you don’t even know if you wanna marry this man — and you’re having a full-blown existential crisis about these children you aren’t sure you want feeling less special to you … if you should decide to have them … because the man you aren’t sure you wanna marry might have a few biological kids out there already. As a person with three siblings, let me just say … kids with siblings — full or half, donor or direct deposit — aren’t any less special than kids without siblings. And if you don’t agree with that statement and/ or don’t think you can get there with the help of a good therapist, DONORS, please don’t have the kids you aren’t sure you want with this man you aren’t sure you wanna marry.

People don’t go to sperm banks to down shots, DONORS, so if the bank says his sperm is popular, your boyfriend almost certainly has biological kids out there somewhere. The oldest would be less than 10 years old, which means you have a decade to brace yourself for the inevitable letter(s) or phone call(s) or email(s). If that’s not a price of admission you’re willing to pay to be with this guy — if you can’t see yourself being a loving and supportive partner when one of his biological kids tracks him down — you shouldn’t marry this guy. Because if he’s as lovely as you say he is, DONORS, he really deserves better.