TCB March 22, 2017 — OG: Original Gamer

Greensboro / Winston-Salem / High Point March 22 – 28, 2017 triad-city-beat.com

A memoir from the golden age of video games Police problems PAGE 6 Snowstorm superfans PAGE 3 Pizza parlor Revolution PAGE 16

by Brian Clarey

PAGE 12

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March 22 – 28, 2017

2017

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MARCH 30

APRIL 9

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Pretty Ricky has his moment Pretty Ricky slumps into one of the red chairs by the window at Common Grounds, clearly exhausted but still ready to begin his

by Brian Clarey shift behind the counter in a half hour or so.

He’s just gotten off the road, a last-minute trip up north with his buddy Grady Riddle, made in haste after Syracuse University Men’s Basketball Head Coach Jim Boeheim besmirched the good name of their city. That Syracuse drew UNCG in the first round of the NIT Tournament seemed like a harbinger of destiny. Plans were laid immediately.

“Screw that guy,” Pretty Ricky says now.

They stopped the first night in Washington, DC, Pretty Ricky says, and told their story to this dude they met in a bar — Greensboro, Boeheim, HB 2, the NIT, all of it — and he offered to put them up for the night at his place, a four-story suburban manse housing a crew of post-college professionals. The digs came with a putting green on the third floor, of which Pretty Ricky availed himself, he says, immediately.

“Their first question was,” Pretty Ricky says now, “‘Do you understand that this is a blizzard?’

“Hell yeah!” he says.

They drove through a record snowfall in central Pennsylvania to arrive at the Carrier Dome, a good 650 miles from

the corner of Walker and Elam, in time to catch the game between UNCG and Syracuse, which had been delayed for a day because of the weather.

Their reputation preceded them. Pretty Ricky learned that his social media posts were the talk of the Spartans buses on the long ride up Interstate 81. When they entered the arena —conspicuously bereft of UNCG fans in the Orange home court — the UNCG’s athletic director, Kim Record, was ready for them.

“You’re those two guys!” she said.

Record hooked them up with sweet seats, according to Pretty Ricky — “We were all over TV!” he says — and enough UNCG swag to fill a suitcase. He’s wearing the toboggan now, so new you can still see the knit of the fabric and crisp lines of the logo.

UNCG hung in there long enough to make it interesting for the guys, though the Spartans eventually fell to the higher-seeded team. After the final buzzer sounded, Pretty Ricky says, he had his moment.

“I got right up there at the tunnel,” he says, “and I was like, ‘BAY-haym!’”

The memory makes him chuckle with satisfaction.

“Oh,” he says, “I made my presence known. He had to have seen me.”

Just then a woman approaches him in his red chair, a fresh cup of coffee in her hand.

“We watched you at the game!” she says.

And Pretty Ricky accepts his due.

triad-city-beat.com

EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

I see others of similar vintage hunched over resurrected Asteroids machines and explaining to their sons the finer points of Punch Out. — Brian Clarey, in Cover, page 12 1451 S. Elm-Eugene St. Box 24, Greensboro, NC 27406 Office: 336-256-9320 BUSINESS PUBLISHER/EXECUTIVE EDITOR Brian Clarey

ART ART DIRECTOR Jorge Maturino

PUBLISHER EMERITUS Allen Broach

SALES DIRECTOR OF ADVERTISING Dick Gray

brian@triad-city-beat.com allen@triad-city-beat.com

EDITORIAL MANAGING EDITOR Eric Ginsburg

jorge@triad-city-beat.com

dick@triad-city-beat.com

SALES EXECUTIVE Cheryl Green cheryl@triad-city-beat.com

eric@triad-city-beat.com

SENIOR EDITOR Jordan Green

CONTRIBUTORS Carolyn de Berry Kat Bodrie Spencer KM Brown

Jelisa Castrodale Stallone Frazier Matt Jones

Cover illustration by Jorge Maturino, of a Mario-ized Brian Clarey

jordan@triad-city-beat.com

EDITORIAL INTERN Joel Sronce intern@triad-city-beat.com

TCB IN A FLASH DAILY @ triad-city-beat.com First copy is free, all additional copies are $1.00. ©2017 Beat Media Inc.

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March 22 – 28, 2017

CITY LIFE Mar. 22 – 28

by Joel Sronce

Playing March 23 – 25 Friday Night Standup Presents Dusty Slay The Smooth Talking King of Alternative Trailer Park Comedy!

Friday, March 24.

Tickets $10, $9 at the door

WEDNESDAY

THURSDAY

Hidden Figures @ Winston-Salem State University, 6 p.m.

Join WSSU Science Initiatives for a conversation and free screening in Dillard Auditorium. A community discussion about the issues facing women in science is followed by a viewing of the Oscar-nominated film Hidden Figures. The event is free and open to the public, but registration is recommended. More info on the Facebook event page.

Dance From Above @ the Carolina Theatre (GSO), 9 p.m.

Dance From Above’s first event of 2017 features the soulful dance music of Seven Davis Jr. Organizers of the donation-based event hope to spread joy and underground dance music to new and returning attendees. More info on the Facebook event page.

FRIDAY

OTHER SHOWS Open Mic 8:30 p.m. Thurs., Mar. 23. $5 tickets Friday Night Standup Showcase Featuring Jay Stadler 10 p.m. Fri., Mar. 24. Tickets $10, $9 at the Door Family Improv 4 p.m. Sat., Mar. 25. $6 Tickets!

Saturday Night Improv 8:30 p.m. & 10 pm. Sat., Mar. 25. $10 tickets!

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Playing March 24 – 29 “Ghost in the Shell” (1997) See the original before the remake! 1 p.m. Saturday, March 25. FREE ADMISSION WITH DRINK PURCHASE! Presented by Geeksboro Anime Club!

--OTHER EVENTS & SCREENINGS--

Board Game Night 7 p.m. Fri., Mar. 24.

More than 100 Board Games and Card Games -- FREE TO PLAY! Saturday Morning Cartoons

Great Cartoons! Free Admission! 10 a.m. & 12 p.m. Every Saturday!

Geeksboro Anime Club Free Admission. 1 p.m. Sat., Mar. 25 TV CLUB: The Walking Dead 9 p.m. Sun., Mar. 26. Free Admission With Drink Purchase

Totally Rad Trivia 8:30 p.m. Tues., Mar. 28. $2 Buy In! Cash Prize!

Drink N’ Draw 6 p.m. Wed., Mar. 29.

All Artists of All Ages & Skill Levels are Welcome!

4

Beer! Wine! Amazing Coffee!

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336-355-7180

Triad City Beat’s third anniversary party @ Kleur (W-S), 6 p.m.

Everyone’s favorite altweekly celebrates its third anniversary with friends, readers, well-wishers, donors and other culturati. The free and kid-friendly event includes music by a Reanimator Records DJ, free food and booze, a live painting and more. Additional info on the Facebook event page.

Community meeting @ Shekinah Glory Church (HP), 6:30 p.m.

Following decisions made at a monthly meeting of the High Point NAACP branch, Pastor Brad Lilley opens up his sanctuary to provide a space for constructive dialogue. The meeting’s organizers call on members of the police department, the police chief and the city manager to attend the meeting and address unanswered questions regarding violence, as well as policies and procedures.

SATURDAY John Ronald’s Dragons @ Scuppernong Books (GSO), 11 a.m.

Geek out over The Lord of the Rings author JRR Tolkien under the guise of taking your kids to a children’s storytime event. Guilford College professor Caroline McAlister reads from her picture book biography John Ronald’s Dragons, which tells the story of a boy who searched for a world of dragons until he grew up to create one of his own. More info at scuppernongbooks. com.

The Amplified Women’s Conference @ the International Civil Rights Center & Museum (GSO), 11 a.m.

Celebrate Women’s History Month at a conference for women of all ages that features a seminar with Chisa Pennix-Brown and a sisterhood panel discussion. Networking opportunities, as well as lunch, door prizes and a raffle, are included. The event is free and open to the public, though pre-registration is required. More info at sitinmovement.org.

ALL WEEKEND The Comedy Dance Collective @ Hanesbrands Theatre (W-S), Friday and Saturday, 8 p.m.

Chicago-based Comedy Dance Collective — a group of current, former and almost dancers — brings its creative and goofy movement-based comedy to the Camel City. The evenings include an opening act by Winston-Salem’s Bunker Dogs Improv. More info at comedydancecollective.com.

by Joel Sronce

But after the 15th anniversary festival earlier this year, the future of the Greensboro Fringe Festival is on hold. Director Todd Fisher talks about what led to the festival’s suspension.

What’s your outlook on the Fringe Festival?

The idea of a Fringe Festival in Greensboro is certainly plausible. It could be bigger; it could turn into a national or international festival. But if people only want to see what’s coming out of New York City, they won’t be able to see the roots of a creative community.

Opinion

It was our 15th year and we thought the additional space was going to be easier. We just didn’t know what those numbers were and thought we would just go for it.

News

Why is the Greensboro Fringe Festival is on hold?

We doubled the capacity of the festival this year, and in order to do that we had to rent outside space. Not knowing what the expense of that would be going into the festival, we found out after what the bill was for the space. We had to fundraise a certain amount of money for those costs and didn’t have enough to continue next year. All the magic didn’t come together.

venue, $1 million for a dance theater. Those are long-range benefits to think of. Overall our expenses are only $3,000 to $4,000 a year. Without putting anybody else in a bad light, it’s hard to see those two in balance.

Up Front

The Greensboro Fringe Festival has showcased work of new and innovative performing artists and playwrights for 15 years. It introduced audiences to shows that they would not have had the opportunity to see otherwise, as well as built an audience base for emerging artists.

triad-city-beat.com

Todd Fisher on why the Fringe Festival is on hold

Cover Story

Has there been a change in fundraising or in general sustainability?

I don’t think there’s a change in the scenery as far as available funds. But the focus seems to be on bigger projects in Greensboro. That’s not to say there isn’t funds for the small guys like us. This is just my opinion, but funding seems to go to building permits and structures — several million dollars for a performance

Culture

Gorsuch’s confirmation hearing

by Jordan Green

Crossword Shot in the Triad Triaditude Adjustment

down most journalists can appreciate judicial nominees’ reticence on both fronts.

In the course of reporting any number of stories, sources often query reporters about their personal opinion on a story or what “angle” they plan to take. It’s a minefield, and good reporters typically parry. Fairness and independence are really interrelated in the journalistic and judicial sense, with perception being more salient in the case of fairness, and actuality more at emphasized in the matter of independence. Sources must believe that reporters are going to be fair in order to trust them enough to speak on the record, but if a reporter’s sources are winnowed down to only those who are in agreement with their particular sympathies, then the product is likely to be more pro bono publicity for a particular cause than journalism.

Journalism, like jurisprudence, is in many ways a synthesis of different pieces of clashing information that ideally resolve into a particular conclusion. To gather all those pieces of information and reach a sound conclusion, it’s necessary to start with at least the illusion of fairness, no matter how difficult it is to believe.

Sportsball

Not to minimize the monumental impact of Neil Gorsuch’s nomination to the Supreme Court and a likely judicial swing to the right, but every time nominees are grilled by the Senate Judiciary Committee I suspect that seasoned journalists experience a twinge of empathy.

The lawmakers tasked with vetting future Supreme Court members have a legitimate interest in trying to divine how nominees will rule on impactful matters like abortion, torture, police power and money in politics. In that sense, journalists can empathize with lawmakers as well.

Gorsuch’s response to queries by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) about his opinion on well-known Supreme Court cases on Tuesday morning was classic.

“I would be tipping my hand and suggesting to litigants that I’ve already made up my mind” if he were to elaborate, Gorsuch told Grassley. “That’s not a fair judge.”

Similarly, Gorsuch argued, if he telegraphed his personal views on specific cases to lawmakers who have the power to deny appointment, the independence of the judiciary would be compromised. That would be a dangerous road to go down.

As maddening as these answers are, I suspect that deep

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March 22 – 28, 2017 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Sportsball Crossword Shot in the Triad Triaditude Adjustment

6

NEWS

Police accused of excessive force against 15-year-old at Fun Fourth

by Jordan Green

Jose Charles had removed his mouth. He said, ‘I’m choking, T-shirt to stanch the blood from I’m choking.’ When they let a cut above his right eye when him up the blood sprayed at the he was approached by Officer officer. They tried to say he spit.

SA Alvarez.

He did spit, but it wasn’t with He had just suffered an assault malice.” by a large group of boys at the In addition to assault on a Fun Fourth Festival at Center government official, Jose was City Park in downtown Greensalso charged with affray, resisting boro. His mother, Tamara arrest and disorderly conduct Figueroa, had told Jose to wait related to the July 4, 2016 incifor her while she took her three dent. younger children and a niece to Figueroa said after she filed the bathroom. Jose, who was 15 a complaint with the police deat the time and is now 16, told partment, and internal investigaTriad City Beat that he recognized tion determined that there was one of the attackers from kinno excessive force. She appealed dergarten and had experienced the decision to the police comfriction with some of them on plaint review committee, a subFacebook in the past. By the committee of the Greensboro time Alvarez reached him, the Human Relations Commission, boys had scattered. in December. The committee reJose said Alvarez asked him: viewed the video of the incident, “What are you doing?” and Figueroa received an official “N****, I just got jumped,” letter from the human relations JORDAN GREEN Jose Charles and his mother, Jose responded. department stating, “PCRB Tamara Figueroa In a matter of moments, the disagrees with the outcome of situation would devolve into a the GPD’s investigation and has Johnson wrote. “As a result of being melee with Jose incurring four criminal requested the chief of police to further placed on the ground, Charles’ pre-excharges, including assault on a govreview your complaint and respond to isting lacerations to his right eye began ernment official, and eventually being the board’s concerns.” bleeding rapidly.” treated for his injuries at Cone Hospital.

Susan Danielsen, a spokesperson With a large crowd gathering around “Instead of administering aid — it for the department, said the police are to witness the confrontation, the police says in the police report he’s an apparlegally constrained from commenting moved Jose to the alleyway across the ent victim — they don’t render aid,” because the subject was a juvenile at street from the park, next to the Davie said Figueroa, who has reviewed the the time of the incident and because Street Parking Deck. By that time, police body-worn camera footage of her the complaint filed by Figueroa remains Figueroa had come out of the bathson’s encounter with the police. “They under investigation. room with the younger children, having grab him and lift him in the air with all Jose has been in trouble with the missed the fight entirely. Figueroa the force they could and slam him on law on two occasions since the July 4 recalled that her son’s friend, Madison, his head.” incident. Challenged with mental health was yelling, “Hurry, they’re beating Figueroa characterizes Alvarez’s forcdifficulties, the young man’s brushes him.” ible restraint of her son as something with the law have played out against an Johnson wrote that Jose “became like a suplex wrestling move. The police ordeal involving interruptions in medextremely noncompliant and started to report, which Figueroa allowed TCB to ication and misdiagnosis, his mother move towards his family while cursing review, describes Alvarez as placing Jose said. officers with great passion.” on the ground, but the results suggest a At the time of the Fun Fourth FestiIn support of the assault against a more forceful approach. val, Figueroa said she was looking for government official charge against Jose, The police report, completed by a new doctor because Jose’s previous Johnson wrote, “It was also at this time Cpl. KR Johnson, contends that Jose’s doctor was closing his practice. while Officer [BS] Hilton was attemptlanguage could have instigated more “After the Fourth of July incident Jose ing to have Charles sit back on the violent conduct by juveniles who were completely lost his mind,” Figueroa ground that Charles stated to Officer bystanders, and that Jose “then resisted said. “He didn’t get to see this [new] Hilton ‘f*** you’ and spit blood and a lawful detention and began pulling doctor until the first week of August. saliva in Hilton’s facial area.” away” from Alvarez, who told him We found out that Jose shouldn’t have Figueroa contends there’s no basis for he was under arrest and attempted to been taking that medication in the first the charge because her son was only tryhandcuff him. place; it was making him hyper instead ing to clear the blood out of his mouth.

“As a result of the resistance, Offiof settling him down. He got a new “You can see the blood squirt out of cer Alvarez then placed Charles on diagnosis for schizoaffective disorder, his head,” she said. “The way he was the ground and affected the arrest,” mood disorders, and he was diagnosed pinned the blood was going into the

with post-traumatic stress from what happened at Fun Fourth.”

According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, symptoms of schizoaffective disorder can include hallucinations, delusions, depression and mania, and co-occurring substance abuse is a serious risk.

Figueroa said her son started hanging out with an older group of teenagers who were stealing to support themselves.

In one incident, Jose and the other teenagers broke into a house and two pounds of marijuana were taken. When the police came, Jose was the only one arrested because the other teenagers ran away. Figueroa said she told the police everything she knew about the other teenagers. Another time, they broke into a car, and the police caught Jose with Xanax and marijuana. When the police called Figueroa they told her that her son was “high out of his mind.” She said she found him unconscious and later he told her he didn’t remember anything about the episode.

In all, Jose wound up accumulating eight charges from the two incidents after the Fun Fourth debacle. Figueroa said she recommended a juvenile court judge that her son be put on electronic monitoring because, as she put it, “We have to stabilize this kid.”

Prior to her son’s lawyer viewing the police video, Figueroa said the Guilford County District Attorney’s office offered to drop all of the charges from the Fun Fourth Festival. She said she asked her lawyer to look at the police video because she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

“The day the lawyer viewed the footage,” Figueroa said, “they no longer wanted to drop the charges from the Fourth of July.”

Now, Figueroa said, the district attorney’s office is offering to drop all the eight charges accumulated after the July 4 incident if her son pleads guilty to the four charges, including assault on a government official, that arose from the Fun Fourth Festival. As part of the deal, he would receive four months probation.

Pleading guilty to assault on a government official would sabotage Jose’s goal to join the Navy, Figueroa said.

“If you’re going to hold him accountable, hold him accountable for something he did,” she added. “Take that

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Up Front

Hoffmann, along with Councilman Mike Barber, Councilman Justin Outling and Councilman Tony Wilkins voted against the measure.

City Attorney Carruthers said the process allows the chief to respond to the complain review committee, and then if the committee still disagrees with the chief, it can request a review by the city manager. The committee’s next meeting is scheduled for April 5.

Jose Charles made a court appearance on Thursday. His mother said his medication caused him to fall asleep during the hearing. She said he did not accept or reject the most recent plea offer, which remains on the table, and the case was continued until May 11.

The judge also ruled that the video could only be released under seal to Jose’s criminal attorney but could not be disclosed to a civil attorney.

Figueroa said she went into a depression after the Fun Fourth incident because she felt that Jose blamed her for failing to protect him. That makes her all the more resolved to see that justice is done.

“I really need to show him I’m sorry this happened to you,” she said. “And I’m not going to stop until there’s some accountability.”

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Triaditude Adjustment

assault charge off the table.”

Assistant District Attorney Bill Wood said because the case is pending and because it’s a juvenile matter, the district attorney’s office will not comment.

Jose’s supporters appealed to Greensboro City Council to review the video at the most recent meeting on March 7. Lewis Pitts, a civil rights activist and former lawyer, upbraided council, saying he was appearing before them in support of Figueroa and her son “about the issue of getting fairness and not being coerced or pressured into accepting a plea that the child assaulted an officer when the reverse is what happened — merely so as to legally protect the city from liability. Getting that kind of a plea on record is what that would do. It would make it impossible for that mother to take legal recourse because they would point to: ‘Oh, he pleaded guilty to it.’ That’s the tactic that’s being used here.”

Councilwoman Sharon Hightower and Mayor Pro Tem Yvonne Johnson said they are committed to reviewing the video.

“The community needs to know that we are going to look at that video,” Hightower said. “That gives them some confidence tonight that we are going to do what we say we are going to do.”

Johnson told Jose’s supporters: “I represent you, and I want to see what happened. Because we have the power to ask the manager to direct certain things.”

Councilwoman Nancy Hoffmann urged her fellow council members to wait until the process by the complaint review board was complete before voting to review the video.

“If we have confidence in the people that we have appointed to this particular board, we need to let them do their work,” Hoffmann said. “We may see at that point that we’re in perfect agreement with what they have done and what their recommendation is. So it seems like a charade to me to jump over that and just assume that we’re gonna do this four weeks from now or whatever. We can still do it if there is some displeasure at what has taken place as a result of their work and through the process. But I think we can wait on this.”

Ultimately, the council voted 5-4 to review the video when the process by the complaint review committee is complete, with Mayor Nancy Vaughan, Councilwoman Marikay Abuzuaiter and Councilman Jamal Fox joining Hightower and Johnson in support.

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March 22 – 28, 2017 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Sportsball Crossword Shot in the Triad Triaditude Adjustment

8

Needle exchange ordinance goes back to the drawing board

by Jordan Green

locating a needle exchange on the east side, which is predominantly African American.

“What we’re seeing with this current epidemic is that it disproCouncilman John Larson anportionately people — most of the nounced his support for a proposal people that we’re serving, they’re to regulate needle exchanges from kids from Buena Vista,” Miller the outset of Monday’s meeting said. “They’re out on Polo [Road]. of the public safety committee of They’re around the universities, so Winston-Salem City Council. No I don’t think strategically it would big surprise there: The only needle be good to place any kind of harm exchange in existence is located reduction facility, except for maybe in the West Salem neighborhood doing some sex worker outreach of the South Ward, which Larson work in certain areas of town.” represents.

After some discussion, council “This is a brand-new provision members asked the legal staff to that was enabled in state legislabring back a revised proposal tion, and really is unproven ground that would establish a process for on so many levels,” Larson said. a special-use permit instead of a “The licensing, the permitting, the zoning-based regulation to present reporting requirements are clearly at the next meeting in April. Macdefined by the state. However, Intosh also asked Miller to provide JUSTIN COOK Colin Miller, a cofounder of the Twin City Harm Reduction Collective and a what’s not defined is where these research at the next meeting to former addict himself, stands outside of Green Street United Methodist Church. units can be placed and how they back up his assertion that the negGreen Street United Methodist Church, Miller told Councilman Jeff MacInfit within the appropriate uses that ative impact of needle exchange the progressive church in West Salem tosh that being forced to move from a neighborhood, business area zonings programs on residential neighborhoods where the Twin City Harm Reducchurch in a residential neighborhood to have established. is minimal. tion Collective operates the city’s only an office park or shopping center would “And so what we have today is basiIf and when the public safety comneedle exchange, is zoned residential, throw up a significant barrier for an cally a definition of how to incorporate mittee recommends location restrictions automatically making the operation outfit that’s sustained by donations and this activity or this function into the on need exchange programs, the pro“nonconforming.” The proposal would volunteer labor. landscape of zoning within the city,” he posal would go before the City-County require any such “nonconforming” uses “There’s no pubic funding for procontinued. “It’s an important function.

Planning Board and then to city council to discontinue by June 1, 2019. grams like this; it’s all volunteer run,” It needs to be accessible, it needs to for final consideration.

Colin Miller, cofounder of the Twin Miller said. “There’s 22 active syringe be visible, it needs to be ongoing and Some nearby residents were upset City Harm Reduction Collective and exchanges in North Carolina right now sustained in locations that have become that Miller and his fellow volunteers a former addict himself, challenged since the law went through…. None of recognized over a long period of time.” launched the needle exchange program the sentiment expressed by council these exchanges are located in commerThe state legislation referenced by in December 2016 without notifying members that needle exchanges place a cial areas; they’re all in residential areas.

Larson became law in July 2016 and them in advance. About 40 people burden on their host neighborhoods.

None of us have the money to get a allows organizations that register with showed up for a meeting with Miller “A lot of the discussion is premised commercial spot. This would add an exthe state Department of Health and and fellow volunteer Erika Mishoe on the notion that a syringe exchange is tra barrier… and these are services that Human Services and provide annual that by all accounts became heated. going to be a bad element in a comare needed immediately. Lives are being security plans to local law enforcement But some of the residents came away munity, and there is decades of data on lost everyday. We’re in a crisis here. We to distribute clean hypodermic syringes supporting the program after Miller and syringe exchanges in Northern cities, need to get services to people as quickly for the purpose of reducing the spread Mishoe explained how it worked. where they have been for 10 years, 20 and as efficiently as possible.” of HIV, AIDS, viral hepatitis and other Salvador Patiño, the president of the years,” he said at the meeting. “There is Mayor Pro Tem Vivian Burke exblood-borne diseases. The programs West Salem Neighborhood Association, years and years of data that has shown pressed concern about social services also provide free Naloxone kits to resaid in a Facebook message to Triad City that needle exchanges have low to no becoming concentrated in certain verse heroin and opioid overdoses.

Beat that the association supports the [negative] impact, and often positive neighborhoods, citing as an example The proposal under consideration needle-exchange program, but at the impact on the communities that they are the intersection of Patterson Avenue would have added “needle and hyposame time agreed to monitor it closely involved with, and that they work withand Northwest Boulevard due north of dermic syringe exchange program” as a and hold the volunteers accountable. in, because it’s a way for people who are downtown. use in the city’s zoning ordinance, and “I know Colin has been told that drug users, especially in the immediate Miller assured Burke that he’s senthen restricted that use to areas zoned John Larson is working on behalf of the vicinity to get into treatment, to get sitive to the legacy of dumping social for four non-residential classifications, WSNA on this,” Patiño said. “However, into methadone programs, Suboxone services in poor sections of the city, including general business, highway as an organization we haven’t taken a programs.” suggesting that he wouldn’t support business, campus and general office. stance (since we haven’t had any issues).

A proposal to regulate the location of needle-exchange programs in Winston-Salem goes back to the drawing board.

triad-city-beat.com Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Sportsball Crossword Shot in the Triad Triaditude Adjustment

I know there are some neighbors who don’t like having it (it is a diverse neighborhood, so we have a lot of different opinions), but I think the majority of the neighborhood doesn’t even know it’s there.”

Heiko Wiggers, who lives next door to Green Street Church, said in a letter to TCB earlier this month that while he supports needle exchange programs, a residential neighborhood just isn’t the right place for the service.

“We have two 6-year-old children, and there are other kids in the neighborhood, not to mention a school bus stop exactly in front of the church,” he wrote.

Wiggers said in a subsequent email that supporters of the needle exchange don’t appreciate how the program undermines quality of life in the neighborhood. “Up until last summer it was possible to have cookouts at nearby Granville Park (about 300 meters from the church). Now, the restrooms there are permanently chained off because addicts used the facilities to shoot up.”

William Royston, the city’s recreation and parks director, said the closure of the restrooms is a seasonal function of winterizing the facilities and has nothing to do with illicit drug use.

“The restrooms are closed off towards the beginning of November,” he said.

“Every year we winterize the restrooms and turn the water off. Since the water isn’t on we don’t want people going in to use the restroom without water because it would leave a big mess. We de-winterize them and open them back up n the latter part of March or the first of April.

We try to have all the restrooms open at least by Easter weekend.”

Larson expressed irritation when asked after the meeting what proportion of residents in the neighborhood have told him they favor regulating the needle exchange or forcing it to relocate.

“I have no idea,” he said. “I haven’t gone door to door.”

He argued that the issue isn’t about one neighborhood or one program, while conceding that the proposed ordinance would require Twin City Harm Reduction Collective to relocate.

More to the point, Larson argued, the city needs to come up with a plan for regulating the location of a function that’s new under state law.

“Right now it’s a free for all,” he said.

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March 22 – 28, 2017 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Sportsball Crossword Shot in the Triad Triaditude Adjustment

10

OPINION

EDITORIAL

The Affordable Care Act, by any other name Torn between a piece of legislation they pledged to destroy and the hard truth that said legislation actually helps millions of their constituents, the plan for Republicans in Washington this week seems to be a simple rebranding.

We’ve already seen a cognitive disconnect in voters who consider themselves sworn enemies of “Obamacare” but like the Affordable Care Act just fine. It wouldn’t take much to convince them that Trump came up with the whole thing himself one night while watching old episodes of “Scrubs” in his bathrobe, in the lonely chambers of the East Wing.

The current Republican healthcare plan is untenable, hurting people in the very states that gave Trump the White House — not that this bothers anyone in the GOP, but there is an election coming up in 2018, and people have long memories when it comes to missed chemotherapy and insulin treatments, or unaffordable prescriptions.

So it seems they might let this new legislation die, allow the ACA to do its work and then take the credit for it when things tick upwards.

It wouldn’t take much to make the Affordable Care Act work better in North Carolina. Accepting the federal Medicaid expansion would be a good start. And that’s got nothing to do with Trump.

This Medicaid expansion allows states to ease restrictions on those eligible for Medicaid, and the federal government would have paid for most of it. It’s a key provision of the Affordable Care Act. Without it… well, here in North Carolina, we know how it plays out.

Back in 2011, when the NC General Assembly blocked Medicaid expansion, it was part of a strategy to minimize the success of the ACA. The plan faltered when so many North Carolinians who were formerly unable to obtain insurance found affordable plans on the exchange — more than 533,000 of them obtained plans on the NC exchange for 2017, according to a December 2016 report from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

Only the state General Assembly can greenlight Medicaid expansion. Gov. Roy Cooper tested that law back in January, but a federal judge blocked his action with a restraining order. Yep: a restraining order, preventing a governor to expand medical coverage to the people of his state. As a statement on the separation of governmental power, it makes legal sense, but try telling that to the thousands of North Carolinians who are paying the price.

That’s why this stance by Republicans in Raleigh may soften as the conundrum of affordable healthcare slowly dawns on these gatekeepers, who, after all, have elections of their own to win.

CITIZEN GREEN

Trump’s lies are beginning to catch up with him He couldn’t have been more clear.

“I have been authorized by the Department of Justice to confirm that the FBI, as part of our counter-intelligence mission, is investigating the Russian govby Jordan Green ernment’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election,” FBI Director James Comey told the House Intelligence Committee on Monday.

“And that includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government, and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts.”

We simply don’t know whether the Trump campaign actively coordinated with the Russian government to gain an advantage in the election, if the campaign was unwittingly manipulated by the Russians, or whether the two parties only crossed paths.

The investigation began in July, around the time of the Republican National Convention — notably when the GOP softened its support for Ukraine against Russian aggression. It’s unclear how long the investigation will continue, but it’s likely to leave a cloud hanging over the president for some time.

“Because it is an open, ongoing investigation, and is classified, I cannot say more about what we are doing and whose conduct we are examining,” Comey told the committee.

Meanwhile, one senses that the mesmerizing chimera of lies the president has constructed as a false reality around him is beginning to crumble, even to his GOP enablers in Congress that are desperately clinging to the illusion of stability.

The president has stubbornly stuck to his claim, made during an impulsive early-morning tweetstorm at Mara-Lago on March 4, that President Obama ordered a wiretap of Trump Tower during the campaign — in the face of wide-ranging refutations and without offering a scintilla of evidence. As a sample: “How low has President Obama gone to tapp [sic] my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate.

Bad (or sick) guy!”

Compounding the damage from the lie right up to the eve of the House Intelligence Committee hearings, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer made the outlandish suggestion, based on a commentary by Andrew Napolitano on Fox News, that Obama outsourced spying on then-candidate Trump to the British intelligence service GCHQ. The next day, March 17, a spokesperson for British Prime Minister Theresa May reportedly said British officials received assurances from National Security Advisor HR McMaster that the ridiculous claims wouldn’t

be repeated.

Even as McMaster was performing damage control with his British counterparts, Trump stuck to his original whopper in a statement that seemed to make German Chancellor Angela Merkel recoil in distaste.

“As far as wiretapping, I guess, by this past administration, at least we have something in common, perhaps,” Trump said, alluding to 2013 revelations about surveillance on Merkel by the NSA. If statements from the ranking Republican and Democratic lawmakers on the Senate and House intelligence committees were not sufficient, Comey put the final nail in Trump’s credibility on Monday.

“With respect to the president’s tweets about alleged wiretapping directed at him by the prior administration, I have no information that supports those tweets,” the FBI director testified. “And we have looked carefully inside the FBI. And the Department of Justice has asked me to share with you that the answer is the same for the Department of Justice and all its components. The Department of Justice has no information that supports those tweets.”

Hyperbole and trash-talking on the campaign trail is one thing, but when a commander in chief reflexively lies in the presence of visiting head of state and his press secretary besmirches the reputation of our closest ally, it’s hard to imagine anyone taking him seriously in the midst of a foreign crisis.

It would be naïve to imagine Trump being chastened under any circumstances, but in the middle of a congressional hearing in which the nation’s top law enforcement confirms that your closest aides are under investigation and practically calls you a liar, you would expect the president to maybe lay low for a couple hours.

Instead, he preposterously tweeted: “The Democrats made up and pushed the Russian story as an excuse for running a terrible campaign. Big advantage in Electoral College & lost!”

In the evening, like the magnate that buckles under pressure and impulsively flies to Vegas for an escape, Trump slipped out of the White House to relive his glory days on the campaign trail with an appearance at Freedom Hall in Louisville, Ky. “This place is packed,” the president exulted, according to a report in the New York Times. “We’re in the heartland of America, and there is no place I would rather be.”

For a moment, he could avoid the pointed questions that are becoming harder and harder to answer.

“We sacrificed our own middle class to finance the growth of foreign countries,” Trump said. “Ladies and gentlemen, those days are over.

“We won’t be played for fools, and we won’t be played for suckers anymore,” he added, without a hint of irony.

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March 22 – 28, 2017

A memoir from the golden age of video games

by Brian Clarey • Illustration by Jorge Maturino

t’s been years since I’ve stormed this particular building. Decad

Cover Story

Yet my grappling hook flies straight and true to the top of the elevato scan like a pro before catching the elevator on the roof and beginning my m My enemies are everywhere: Scurrying flocks of armed spies clad in black from the blue doors on each floor and start shooting. There’s no way I can ki bullets or jumping over them, sometimes delivering my signature move — a two or three of the bastards at a time — and score an additional 50 points fo bullets that won’t find their mark until I’m a couple floors away. Sometimes I’ effect on the enemy, but ups the scoring by another 50.

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It’s an absolute bloodbath; I may have taken 50 of them out before I land in the basement and speed away in my little hatchback, collecting a 1,000-point bonus as I do, thank you very much. By the time I clear the second building, I’ve already hit the evening’s high score. After the sixth or seventh building, I start to get a little sloppy and the enemy spies quickly overwhelm me, eating up my extra guys in just a minute or so.

But whatever. I feel I’ve made my point.

I haven’t played Elevator Action, Taito’s 1983 downward-scrolling shooter, in maybe 30 years, but back in the golden age of the video arcade, Elevator Action was one of my games, along with Centipede, Q*bert, Tron, Tempest, Jungle Hunt and a few others. I played them all — relentlessly, obsessively, passionately — but those few games on the shortlist were ones at which I became quite adept. And as I demonstrated on this Elevator Action

machine tucked against the back wall of Scott Leftwich’s basement arcade in Winston-Salem, I’ve still got the goods.

This basement is literally the stuff of dreams for an original gamer like me — the mall arcade where I cut my teeth back in the 1980s drifts up from my subconscious all the time. It’s Leftwich’s personal tribute to the virtual dawn of time, the late 1970s until about 1986, when all the classic home systems and arcade games were developed.

It’s safe to say he’s obsessed. He’s rescued and repaired each one of these arcade classics with his brother Blake, a game and app developer, over the last 20 years. Around the same time the brothers formed a band, which still exists today as Scott Leftwich & the Atarians.

He’s been in Winston-Salem for five years now, and his basement is already the stuff of legend.

He’s got everything from that early era — more than

90 cabinets, a larger inventory than the famous Time Out arcade during its heyday in the mid-1980s where I used to hang out, some of them quite rare.

He’s got Death Race, a 1976 driving game based on the movie in which the object is to run over little digital men on the track. It became the first banned video game — “60 Minutes” did a piece on it — and is also the spiritual predecessor to Grand Theft Auto and all its imitators.

There’s Phoenix, a Space Invaders clone from 1980 that featured the first appearance of a “boss,” or supervillain at the end of a level. There was one of these at my childhood movie theater for a while, and my old friend Joe DeSimone became proficient at it between repeated viewings of Flash Gordon.

He’s got that tabletop football game with the Xs and Os, which I believe is the first coin-operated video game I’ve ever laid eyes on. They had it at the bowling alley

triad-city-beat.com

des, really.

or shaft. I zip-line in, drop and spin a quick 360 murderous descent. suits, sunglasses and hats, they pop randomly ill them all but I do my best, ducking under their flying, two-footed jump-kick that can take out or the kill. As I ride the elevators down, I launch ’ll shoot the lights out, which has no discernible

where, in the late 1970s, my parents played in a league.

He’s got Paperboy. He’s got Marble Madness. He’s got Dragon’s Lair. He’s got Gorf!

I nearly drowned in sense memory from the moment I walked through the door for this private event — the arcade is not open to the public — and Leftwich saw it on my face.

He gestured towards the soft glow rising from the room, the beeps and blinks.

“Tonight,” he said, “you’re 12 years old.”

For a short time in my life that seemed like forever, video games were everywhere. Then, for many years, they were nowhere. But they’ve been on the comeback for a few years now, even here in the Triad where sometimes

trends have a little lag time.

Lost Ark Opened led the charge in Greensboro in 2011, with an initial dedication to pinball that has somewhat lapsed. Now the Spring Garden gameroom hosts a few tables and a slew of late-era American and Japanese fighting games.

Geeksboro has a Nintendo NES available along its TV wall — I will tell you right now that I can destroy you at Tecmo Bowl, no matter who you are.

And bar/arcades like Boxcar in Greensboro and Camel City BBQ in Winston-Salem are bringing back some of the old cabinets, along with pinball and Skee-ball and a few of the old home consoles. A new concept, Reboot Arcade, is slated to open in downtown Winston-Salem on North Liberty Street literally any day now.

For a guy like me, who came in on the story at its earliest chapters, it’s a heady time of nostalgia, sense memory

and those nearly forgotten hand-eye twitches that once again have meaning in dark rooms filled with blinking lights and the rattle of quarters in pockets.

I see others of similar vintage hunched over resurrected Asteroids machines and explaining to their sons the finer points of Punch Out. We are original gamers. And it’s as exciting to us now as it was in the years between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.

My own video-game story is the same as any other kid who was born at the right place at the right time.

My place and time was suburban Long Island in the 1970s and ’80s, a bastion of popular culture and an epicenter of the mall movement that dominated the zeit-

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March 22 – 28, 2017 Cover Story

14

geist. My mall, Roosevelt Field, was across the street from my house. You could play games at the Time Out arcade there and, in the evenings, at the movie theater, where they would rotate out a few games in the lobby.

The double helix of home and arcade video games began in this cradle, capturing the rapt attention of every boy I knew between 1978 and 1984, at which point it tapered off but only slightly.

I remember seeing the old Atari trackball football game at the bowling alley in 1977, over by the pinball machines, and then later, Space Invaders. I was already a solid pinball shooter and, like everyone else in my cohort, I was fascinated by these new amusements. I began hoarding quarters for my parents’ bowling nights.

I would spend hours at Time Out at the mall, and in the summertime at the beach we would sneak into the Sands Beach Club to play Space Invaders or walk into Long Beach to play Donkey Kong at Angelo’s soda fountain.

If we could convince a parent to take us, we could go to Nathan’s on Old Country Road, with Skee-ball, dozens of pinball tables and whole walls filled with cabinets holding all the popular video games of the day.

Nathan’s had Joust; they were the first to get Donkey Kong, the arrival of which was preceded by hyperbolic rumors on the school playground. But there were a lot of older kids there, a lot of bikers. It wasn’t uncommon to see a full-on grownup holding down a Pac Man machine, taking on all comers in 2-player mode like a pool shark dominating a table in the back of a bar.

My friends and I talked strategy about these games, made pilgrimages to play them, told lies on the playground about arcade successes we had witnessed or achieved. And the games themselves became more ubiquitous.

They had a Popeye machine at the Garden City Pool.

There was a Dig Dug at the neighborhood pizza place.

My friend Dug McGuirk had a Tempest cabinet in his basement.

My parents took us on a skiing vacation to Vernon Valley, Pa. in 1983 and by the time we had left, my trademark initials, “BRI,” graced the high score of every single Centipede machine in the place.

Like any regular kid I had mastered Space Invaders because it was the thing to do, and quickly became proficient at the games it inspired like Galaga and Centipede.

Vector-graphic games like Space Invaders gave way to 8-bit pixelated characters like Pac Man, and though I never loved Pac Man like others professed to, I became good enough not to embarrass myself after school at the pizza place downtown. Donkey Kong intimidated me when it first came out, and it took me a couple years to finally get through the first couple levels. To this day I still can’t finish the elevator level, though my 16-year-old son can.

On a good day at the mall, my friends and I would line about $5 worth of quarters atop the Track & Field machine, a four-player Olympics-style competition in which tapping buttons determines speed and a launch button tests timing and accuracy. We’d play the whole fiver until we were sweaty and red-faced, leaving Time Out only for quick bites of hot pretzels and Cokes, because they

wouldn’t let you bring food in there.

There’s a Track & Field machine in Leftwich’s basement, and also one at Boxcar in downtown Greensboro. I bring my teenage sons to play there all the time. I’m still pretty good — I can usually nab a high score on the 100-yard dash, the javelin and, if I get that far, the hurdles. When I was 13 I could nail the hammer throw, but for the life of me I just cannot do it anymore.

Through my teenage years I worked at the mall, and would redistribute my earnings to the bookstore, the poster shop and the arcade, picking up skills at PunchOut and Q*Bert and Joust and Spy Hunter that could sometimes draw a small crowd of younger kids around my machine. I became good enough at Dig-Dug that I could play until I simply lost interest. Elevator Action was the game for which I saved my last quarter. My performance in Leftwich’s basement convinces me that I can still do a solid 20 minutes on that machine if I had a mind to.

Leftwich approaches me after Level 7, when things start to get interesting with the mobs of black-clad gangsters scurrying like ants between me and my getaway car. He wants to show me something, so I let my last guy lapse.

In a room off the main arcade floor, he’s got a set of shelves jammed with every home video-game console I’ve ever played or even heard of: Vectrex, the vector-graphics game with its own screen and overlays for different games; the Magnavox Odyssey, that my friend William Goss was the first to get; ColecoVision, just like the one at at Dave Typermass’ house in 1983. Leftwich has the pistol grip for the ColecoVision, the track-ball for his Atari 2600, the Nintendo robot, every module for every home video-game system I’ve ever seen or heard of, and a few I haven’t. The RCA pushbutton Pong player, ca. 1977, is completely new to me and I haven’t even thought of the Bally Astrocade since 1980.

He’s also got a few Commodore 64s, Atari and 800 home computers and a Radio Shack TRS -80 tucked in there.

And in my head, there’s a church organ playing the theme from Super Mario Brothers.

Right around the time I spotted the Xs and Os tabletop football game at the bowling alley, around 1977, my father brought into the house one of the first home video games on the market. I cannot for the life of me remember the brand name, but it was a knock-off of Pong with a couple of variations and a rifle module that didn’t work. My father was concerned that the game would ruin his TV in the den, so we hooked it up to the small, black-and-white kitchen set, which we’d often move to the floor of the living room to play in the dark.

When the Atari 2600 came to town in 1977, it made my little Telstar knockoff look like a joke. And in the next couple of years it had infiltrated every single household in Nassau County with adolescent boys… except mine. My parents stubbornly refused to shell out $200, the cost of the console through 1980, and so I won my Atari from a box of Captain Crunch in 1982, which I viewed at the time

as an act of cosmic justice.

Most of us had the Atari, but there were a few outliers.

Typermass made the ColecoVision upgrade in 1982, right when it came out. McGuirk had a Vectrex, the only one I knew of. DeSimone, along with a few others, went with the Intellivision, a direct competitor to the Atari that was endorsed in TV ads by George Plimpton. The games were pretty good, but I didn’t like the disc controller.

When we weren’t at the mall or the bowling alley, we spent our time in each other’s basements and rec rooms mastering Atari games. At the time, arcade games were much more sophisticated, such as they were, than home games. Amid the peak of what we now call “Pac Man Fever” in 1982, Atari released its home version of the game, a honking insult to the cabinet original. Similar efforts to replicate Centipede, Q*Bert and Donkey Kong on the home screen produced laughable results.

A few games had legs. We could play Warlords, a four-person version of Breakout, all night at a sleepover.

We spent so much time in John Grupp’s basement playing Decathalon — an Activision knockoff of Track & Field released in 1983 that relied on a left-right wiggle of the controller instead of alternating buttons for speed —that we broke his joysticks.

But then, it seemed almost overnight, it all ground to a halt.

The Nintendo NES came out late in 1983, and didn’t saturate the market until a year or so later. By then were in high school, and other evening activities supplanted nights in front of the Atari in someone’s basement.

In the arcades, Mortal Kombat had inspired a slew of head-to-head combat games that fed an entire genre.

Old-school gamers like me appreciated the novelty of different characters and abilities, and skill level necessary to master them. But it was an entirely different sort of gameplay, more a sport than a puzzle, and a lot of arcade gamers never made the transition. And yet at the same time, those classic cabinets on which we had cut our teeth just seemed so… old.

The market split the moment that home consoles, which still sold for a couple hundred dollars, and their game titles which could still run as high as $60 — the same price point as the Atari Pac Man when it first came out in 1981 — began to out-earn their arcade counterparts, which still made money one or two quarters at a time.

Super Mario Bros. sealed whatever deal was left, a far superior version of the arcade game that rewarded repeat play and, if you knew how to exploit a few key “easter eggs,” an unlimited supply of lives. I could — and can — work a single play of Super Mario Bros. on the NES for an hour.

A line of demarcation had been crossed. It, whatever it was, was over.

In Leftwich’s basement, after I murder all my would-be assassins in Elevator Action, I take a few moments to nab the high score on the Centipede machine and put on a clinic at the Tempest cabinet. I also put my gamer initials,

Man machine, a genuine, wood-paneled classic that I remember playing at my grandparents’ bowling alley the year it came out: 1981.

It’s a circus theme wherein the player is a clown on a unicycle. The clown catches balloons that drop from above, which stack up on his head; if he misses one, he can wheel over and kick it back into play.

Among the balloons is the occasional Pac Man, who if caught will drop down and eat all the balloons stacked on the clown’s head.

It has taken him about nine tries, he says, but he is just about to lodge the high score here at the end of the night. With a small crowd peering into the cabinet, he passes the high score and let his next couple plays die out.

Before the Game Over screen, he’s offered the chance to enter his initials into the screen. He has his own three-letter gamer tag, “BEC,” that he registers with a slap of the button.

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“BRI” at the top of the high-score list for that vector-graphic Star Wars game, the one where you shoot the tops off the towers and blow up the Death Star. They had that one at the movie theater forever.

I revisit a few of the classics that I had forgotten I loved so much back in the day: Tron, Spy Hunter, Jungle Hunt, Krull.

I’ve still got game. Leftwich is right there with me.

He tells me he played his first video game in an arcade at the beach in the summer of 1980; he was 8 years old. The game was Space Zap, new that year, a four-direction shooter made by Midway that came in a cabinet, as a tabletop and a tall cocktail table. After that, he says, he was hooked.

“Maybe you just had to be there,” he writes in a follow-up email, “but I’ll say this without hesitation: The video-game scene of the early ’80s was magic. These games are a part of me. I still get a rush when I bring a game back to life after 30 years of silence.”

By 9 p.m. it’s time to go, so I look for my teenage sons, who had been off on their own for a couple hours. I find my 16-year-old at the Kick

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March 22 – 28, 2017 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Sportsball Crossword Shot in the Triad Triaditude Adjustment

16

CULTURE A revolution at the mill, pizza-style

by Eric Ginsburg

T

here hasn’t been this much hype about a restaurant opening in Greensboro since Crafted unveiled its street-food concept.

My social media feeds are a stream of Facebook check-ins and Instagram photos of Cugino Forno, the new pizza place inside the revamped Revolution Mill off Yanceyville Street. A stranger tweeted to me asking if I’d been yet, and someone tied to the restaurant DM-ed me on Instagram to ask when I’d be coming through.

Like Crafted: The Art of Street Food, there will be a local brewery operating next door. But few people would recognize the dudes tossing dough into the air before sticking it into one of the three wood-fired ovens at the back of the city’s newest pizza place — they’re not transfers from celebrated local kitchens or responsible for designing a killer menu at the city’s most popular joints or heavily tattooed and snappily dressed.

People here don’t care about any of that; they’re just going ape over the pizza. And after going to the brand new, sun-kissed pizzeria, I get it.

You could argue that the setting is perfect, if not a gamble. Revolution Mill will be the city’s first real live-work-play concept successfully executed, with condos priced above market average, a reworked shell of a former textile factory, and a new Natty Greene’s concept as an anchor. Part of the complex has been operational for a while, hosting entities like the Welfare Reform Liaison Project and providing office space on the city’s former industrial fringe. It’s not yet made the transformation into the envisioned new hub, which means you need to keep your eyes peeled for the restaurant’s sign along the main drag to figure out where you’re going.

Pick of the Week Community brunch and craft fair @ Deep Roots Market (GSO), March 26, 9 a.m.

Deep Roots hosts an all-day event that includes an extended brunch bar, an omelet-making station, mimosas, live music by Kelcey Ledbetter and a community craft sale.

More info on the Facebook event page.

Revolution Mill is rather self-contained — yes, there are plenty of underserved residential neighborhoods surrounding it, but by and large there’s a demographic split between the surrounding community and the mill and its attendant businesses, including Cugino Forno. On a recent Thursday night, the clientele looked more like the Latham Park, Kirkwood or New Irving Park set to the west than nearby White Oak. Customers at the pizzeria order when they walk in the door, picking one of 11 large pies before grabbing a seat at one of many picnic-style tables that gleam with newness.

There weren’t enough people to force strangers together the night I showed up, but these could easily be commuERIC GINSBURG The Napoletana pizza is Cugino Forno’s special, arriving quickly and in a nity tables should the need large format. arise. The pizzas are prompt, not needing much time in the its locally-sourced ingredients, while Cugino Forno wants blistering Italian-made ovens, and arrive large format — big you to know that it imports its buffalo mozzarella from Italy even for their size. regularly.

Waist-high windows run up almost to the ceiling and I’m going to use a beer analogy, because it’s the most applispan the length of almost every wall, allowing a remarkable cable — the majority of the pizza in the Triad falls under the amount of natural light into the space. High televisions proBudweiser/Miller category, and some of it is bad enough to be jected various March Madness games, but everyone’s attenlikened to Busch Light or Natty Ice. Sticks & Stones, which intion seemed to remain on each other, occasionally glancing cidentally boasts an excellent craft beer selection, is more like over at the pie pushers by the ovens. a local brewery. Mission Pizza belongs in the same category, Few restaurants feel this open, but it’s despite Peyton’s rebuke of overused terms lit well enough that even after night falls, like “artisan,” putting out small batch, there’s a brightness to the place.

Visit Cugino Forno at high-quality pies.

I brought my friend Peyton with me, in And Cugino Forno, though also a free1160 Revolution Mill part because we were overdue to grab a standing local restaurant, belongs someDrive (GSO) or find it on bite together but also because he owns where on the craft spectrum, but probably Mission Pizza Napoletana in Winston-SaFacebook, Instagram closer to something like Sierra Nevada, lem. He’s been to more places like this than and Twitter.

New Belgium or Anchor Brewing. Underhe can count, he said over a slice, launching stand, these are great breweries, and a far into a story about a formerly underground cry from the bland Big Beer you’re used to spot in Atlanta that set the mold for joints like this. drinking. Cugino Forno is, by and large, a huge upgrade from He flipped a slice of my Napoletana pie over, pointing favorwhat most pizzerias around here are doing. It’s not trying to ably to black spots that show it’s cooked well before doing the be particularly unique — no wild ales or experimental batches same to one of his Calabrese pieces — not as much, this time. here, folks — and it doesn’t rise to the level of Mission Pizza He pulled apart the crust, using terms I’ve never heard and (go ahead and call me a patsy). talking about the benefits of keeping cold-fermented dough But once you bite into the doughy, chewy underbelly of the out longer, and answering my inquiries about where he gets slices here, taste the crumbled Italian sausage on the Napohis oak wood for the lone oven at Mission Pizza. letana or the hot Calabrian peppers on the Calabrese and Peyton’s seen this before, but Greensboro hasn’t, not really. behold the sunlit room with its small armada of ovens, you There’s more than enough pizza to go around here, to be sure, won’t want to go back to your normal pizza joint. And that’s but Sticks & Stones is the only game in town for high-quality why people can’t shut up about this place, and why it has a ’za, and they’re doing something altogether different at the near-perfect rating on Facebook — it’s helping to raise the bar.

Lindley Park steady than out here. Sticks proudly announces

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SPREADING JOY ONE PINT AT A TIME

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Monday Geeks Who Drink Pub Quiz 7:30 Tuesday Live music with Piedmont Old Time Society Old Time music and Bluegrass 7:30 Wednesday Live music with J Timber and

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Joel Henry with special guests 7:30

Thursday Live music with Josh King, Mark Kano, and Jordan Powers with special guests 8:30 Friday, Saturday, Sunday BEER joymongers.com | 336-763-5255 576 N. Eugene St. | Greensboro

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ouse Divided Bottles & Taps on West Market Street chose an unusual location for a bar and bottleshop: Set in a shopping center in west Greensboro, it’s closer to Donut World and Triad

by Kat Bodrie Homebrew Supply than to any of the craft beer outposts on Spring Garden Street.

But it makes sense once you start talking to the owners, Jen and KB Matthew, who are Greensboro College graduates.

“We’re bringing craft beer to this part of town,” KB said.

In the craft beer world, the lack of diversity is painful. Look at any brewery or beer festival crowd, and you’re likely to see the effects of our nation’s racial segmentation. All the more reason to respect the Matthews’ initiative and entrepreneurship.

One difference between Jen and KB is apparent: He’s black, and she’s white. But the venue name stems from something else.

“We’re different in every way,” Jen said. “He likes Carolina, I like Duke. He likes the Giants, I like the Redskins. He likes beer, and I like wine.”

The playful theme spans the entire shop. A white zigzag line, painted on the concrete floor, stretches from the front door to the back. A banner near the restroom announces “House Divided,” with half Carolina blue and half Duke blue colors.

A colorful chalkboard behind the bar announces the booze options: several types of wine, including Shelton Vineyard riesling and Alamos malbec, and a handful of draft beers. The list on the Beer Menus app is up to date, and though the rotation House Divided Bottles & Taps off West Market Street serves its KAT BODRIE isn’t as frequent as say Beer Co. or Bestway, the libations to a diverse crowd, both in demographics and in team loyalty. menu changes often enough to warrant an occasional check on the app. ing games we didn’t have a stake in. It would have been the On March 18, the Stillwater Artisanal On Fleek imperial perfect place for fans to have watched insanity Sunday, with stout was a perfect match for the indecisively cold weather.

UNC narrowly winning while Duke fell in a close one to South The fudgy chocolate head reminded me of icing on cake, and Carolina in the second round of the NCAA tourney. the 13 percent body went down much easier than it should Before leaving, we scoured the fridges for cans and bottles have. to make our own carryout six-pack. In My husband Ryan, a classic IPA January, I picked up a bottle of what drinker, ordered the Ballast Point Big has become my new favorite, the Eye IPA, as well as their Smoke Screen Visit House Divided Bottles fairly ubiquitous Old Rasputin Russian smoked Helles lager. In our “divided” & Taps at 5545 W. Market St. imperial stout. This time, I chose a can household, I tend toward darker beers of Horny Goat Chocolate Peanut Butter (GSO) or find it on Facebook. and high-gravity tipples. Ryan likes the Porter and a few various bottles like the smoky peatiness of Scottish single malts Bourbon Peach “kombucha beer” from and tropical notes of IPAs. Even I had to Unity Vibration. admit to the spot-on punch of the Big Eye, though the Smoke I asked KB if their effort to bring craft beer to “this part of Screen was decidedly not my jam. town” has been successful.

We carried our plastic cups to the couch, where we could “We made it through the winter!” he said, laughing. view all three flatscreens behind the bar at once. We don’t Kat loves red wine, Milan Kundera, and the Shins. She wears follow March Madness, but the constant stream of old-school scarves at katbodrie.com.

R&B through the speakers lulled us into the comfort of watch-

EVENTS

Thursday, March 23 @ 8pm

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H

House Divided bridges diverse groups, fan loyalties

17

March 22 – 28, 2017 Up Front News Opinion

D

arkness washed over the audience like a breathless wave as the house lights shot out and, like a new dawn, rose over the seven performers standing across the stage. As if propelled by a warm breeze, Kayla Farrish began the first movement of the night.

Arms twisting and bending like reeds in a soft rain, the performers moved together in the dance with precise synchronicity. The opening movement of “Flight Distance 1” contained a simplicity, motion and choreography that felt as natural as rainfall, yet still something pulsed forth from the dancers that somehow forced us to feel.

That’s how the opening of the seventh season of Helen Simoneau Danse kicked off at the Hanesbrands Theatre on March 16 in downtown Winston-Salem. The critically acclaimed North Carolina-based dance company has built an international presence since its beginning, but this season has achieved something that pushes the idea of performance art a little further along.

Partway through the opening move-

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CULTURE With ‘Object Loop,’ three art forms meld together

by Spencer KM Brown

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3/22

American Evil

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Breadfoot, Magpie Thief, Arcus Hyatt

3/24

Bare The Traveler, Harrison Ford Mustang, Duke

3/25

Karaoke with Michael Ray Hansen

3/27

Space Cadet Orchestra

3/28

The Old Paints

701 N Trade Street Winston-Salem, NC 27101

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ment, the lonesome mood of the dance crescendoed to a peak; the performers stood huddled and tangled together, hurling one of the dancers around in a violent tussle. Bright white lights shone on the group, casting a monstrous pair of silhouettes on the theater wall behind them on either side. A chilling piano composition by Jerome Begin echoed from the speakers as they threw the dancer from side to side, back and forth, and gasps leaked from the audiences’ lips, tears spilling from widened eyes, whether intended or not, but it seemed it couldn’t be helped.

This was the magic of the concert. You could sit in silence and try to TODD TURNER Must Be the Holy Ghost’s latest collaboration with Helen Simoneau Danse pushes think of your own pretentious interpretations his live performance to new heights. of these movements, Burr Johnson and Catherine Kirk. Holding fast to the power of what it all meant, but this was a moment of pure artistic of simple yet ingeniously choreographed form of Simoneau expression, one that thrust you into the artist’s hands. is acclaimed for, “Décalage” pulsed in an enigmatic build-up March 16 also marked the premiere of “Object Loop,” a colof the entire concert. The two dancers matched each other laboration between Simoneau and Winston-Salem-based muin perfection, starting the movement with a stark distance sician Jared Draughon, more commonly known as Must Be the between them and slowly drawing closer together as the piece Holy Ghost, and visual artist Evan Hawkins who performs with progressed. The dancers moved with a grace like sea oats just Draughon under the moniker Weapons of Mass Projection. before a storm, beautifully and powerfully touching, drawing “Object Loop” was the third and final act of the night. And forth deep emotion from attendees. holding true to what inspired Simoneau’s first performance Art is built on two things: honest execution of a vision, with Draughon at Phuzz Phest in 2016, this performance was and technical mastery while showing grace under pressure. a real collaboration — three artists working together to build In this seventh season, Helen Simoneau and performers have the movement. Known for his melodic and layered looping of perfected both of these, giving a deeply moving concert to be vocals and guitars, the one-person band has been performing remembered long after leaving the theater. with Hawkins for several years, now taking their live shows The concert is a leap forward for Triad performance art, a another leap forward. reminder of how beautiful and necessary it is, and how truly The collaboration adds a moving and even haunting elerare. ment to Simoneau’s repertoire. As Draughon stood at the back of the stage, painted in the kaleidoscope of liquid light projection by Hawkins, the dancers allowed the music to ebb through their bodies, augmenting the beauty of this blending of art forms coming together. And while there were still two Pick of the Week nights of performance left, there was a feeling of power and beauty as eyes rested on the twisting and hypnotic images Big Thief @ the Garage (W-S), Friday, 9 p.m. projected and bodies moving on stage, knowing that this The Garage and Phuzz Records present folk rock group Big dance will never be performed in the same way again.

Thief, who come through the Camel City as part of a nationThis opening night performance also premiered the second al tour. Boston indie rock band Palehound and Winston-Samovement, entitled “Décalage,” which spotlighted performers lem’s Victoria Victoria join. More info at the-garage.ws.

A

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CULTURE Variety on display at Hand-to-Hand market

Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Sportsball Crossword Shot in the Triad Triaditude Adjustment

by Joel Sronce s expected on a mid-March afternoon in the Piedmont, a TV on the bar displayed the constant stream of NCAA tournament games — often a favorable, captivating sight for many. But on Sunday at Gibb’s Hundred Brewing Company, something strange was transpiring: No one was paying any attention.

The sixth annual Hand-to-Hand spring market had returned to Gibb’s, and its vendors and patrons had turned their backs to college basketball in favor of Greensboro’s largest indie craft fair.

As the bartenders were busy pouring pints for those perusing the market, vendors answered patrons’ questions, shook hands, laughed and discussed their art. Shoppers evaluated the different items on display, often in whispering pairs. On the brewery’s airy front porch, dogs sniffed around and greeted one another. The windy day danced the scent of hamburgers out of the Pearl Kitchen food truck, across those mingling outside and over to where a man printed T-shirts, most of which displayed, “Straight Outta Compost,” “Greensboro vs.

Everybody” or emblems of other Gate City inspiration.

Hand-to-Hand hosts craft fairs for artisans who create various handmade items. Its markets aim to spread the word on local and regional art and to encourage patrons to support JOEL SRONCE Patrons and vendors chew the fat at the Hand-to-Hand spring market on Sunday. those local efforts.

For Tristin Miller, Hand-to-Hand’s cofounder and creative Elsewhere in the market, Emily Poe-Crawford presented a at Hand-to-Hand’s most recent winter director, the desire to start a large, indoor craft fair began with collection from her modern hand-lettering and calligraphy market. Her organic soap company her experience as an artist. company Em Dash Paper Co. based out of her house in Winalludes to the name and traditions of “As a vendor,” Miller said, “I was going to all these markets ston-Salem. It was her third Hand-to-Hand appearance, and her childhood home in the Black Belt of around North Carolina and thought: Greensboro needs to she’s happy to keep returning.

Alabama. Carter calls her operation a have something better.”

“Tristin does a good job with the number and variety of social enterprise company, as it doAfter starting the Greensboro spring market in 2011, Miller people,” Poe-Crawford said. “And the chill brewery vibe’s nates to scholarships for low-income, and other organizers began an additional holiday market here: I think people like getting a beer and walking around the high-achieving students back in the that takes place on the first Sunday of December. While the market.”

Black Belt. smaller-scale spring markets usually attract only vendors from Since finishing grad school in 2011, Poe-Crawford has been As evening arrived and the market North Carolina, past winter markets have included artists lettering. Her “kind-hearted assholery” cards include humorapproached its conclusion, vendors put from South Carolina and Virginia. ous, fancily scripted encouragement such as: “Listen dumbass, away their unsold items. Though the At Gibb’s on Sunday, vendors sold scarves, stuffed animals, you are not a failure” and “You are a hot mess right now, but I crafts will remain packed up until the soaps, mugs, prints, incense holders, boxes and other handam here for you.” next stop on the local artisan’s grind, made crafts, many of which came in unique and peculiar Across the walkway from Poe-Crawford, Temeka Carter govpatrons and vendors alike had fulfilled forms. erned her Black Belt Soap Co. stand. Carrying on a soap-makthe Hand-to-Hand organizers’ vision: At his stand in one corner of the brewery, Greensboro artist ing tradition from her great-grandmother, and having fallen A connection with those around them Justin Sergent enjoyed a dark beer. In front of him, dozens in love with seaweed soap and taken a class on nutritional through the appreciation of local art. of clay mugs were on display, a collection he calls “Innocent ingredients, Carter has been in business in Greensboro for a Looking Pottery.” Sergent, vice president of Greensboro’s couple of years. creative workshop organization Art Alliance, has been making Though most of her business is online, Carter was a vendor Pick of the Week similar art for eight years.

“I’ve actually made 834 things,” he Plenty of Time @ NC A&T (GSO), added convincingly.

Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 7 Years ago, one of his instructors joked p.m., March 26 at 3 p.m. that pottery should be used as a weapon.

A&T Theater Arts presents a play While the instructor might have alluded written by John Shevin Foster and to hurling a mug at an intruder, Sergent directed by Vanita Vactor. Plenty of jumped on the idea.

Time tells the story of two unlikely Indeed, protruding slightly from a Take charge of your mind, body and spirit lovers, a wealthy debutante and a good percentage of his mugs are powTest pH balance, allergies, hormones Black Panther. The play — held at the erful or frightening figures — a devil, an Balance diet, lifestyle and emotions Paul Robeson Theatre — portrays the octopus, Spider-Man, a mouth holding a Create a personalized health and nutrition plan lives and experiences of its two charskull. Occasionally a mug displays a piece acters over a period of 33 years, as of text such as: “If I had a tail I would (336) 456-4743 • jillclarey3@gmail.com well as social and political changes rule the night.” Taking the place of more 3723 West Market St., Unit–B, Greensboro, NC 27403 for African-Americans during that traditional handles on some of the mugs time. More info at ncataggies.com. www.thenaturalpathwithjillclarey.com are large brass knuckles.

19

March 22 – 28, 2017 Up Front News Opinion

‘Blue-collar hockey’ returns to the Triad

B

arry Soskin has kept a close eye on Winston-Salem.

For several years he observed its history; he considered its crowds. A fervor in the city enticed him — its readiness was undeniable, its resilience a

by Joel Sronce telling tale.

Despite the instability of previous professional hockey teams — the monotonous inductions and speedy departures that supporters in the Camel City have endured — one conclusion never faltered: In Winston-Salem, hockey fans keep coming back.

For 25 years, Soskin has been an owner of professional hockey teams around the country — the Toledo Storm of the East Coast Hockey League, the Nashville Nighthawks of the Central Hockey League, the Waterloo Blackhawks of the United States Hockey League, and others.

When one of his teams played a neutral-site game in Winston-Salem a little over three years ago, nearly 2,500 fans showed up. The attendance suggested an opportunity for the seasoned franchise owner, an available market that appeared like the sudden unguarded corner of a net.

“I don’t believe that Winston-Salem has failed hockey,” Soskin said in an interview on March 17. “I believe hockey has failed Winston-Salem.”

Indeed, the relationship between the Camel City and

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SPORTSBALL

professional hockey hasn’t been one of consistency.

Since the Winston-Salem Polar Twins of the Southern Hockey League began their inaugural season in 1973, eight different teams have played here in seven different leagues. Most stuck around for one year, and no team representing a single league remained in Winston-Salem more than six seasons. It has been eight years since the Twin City Cyclones hung up their skates in 2009.

Yet despite the inconsistency, the city’s many teams have all averaged at least 1,100 fans per game.

This fall, the Carolina Thunderbirds — a name that has flittered around the city’s teams since the first Carolina Thunderbirds in the Atlantic Coast Hockey League in 1981 — will breath new life into professional hockey in Winston-Salem.

As a precursor to a team’s return, the Winston-Salem Fairgrounds Annex — the home for the new Thunderbirds as well as many past teams — hosted two neutral-site games between the Port Huron Prowlers and the Danville Dashers on March 17 and 18. Barry Soskin owns both teams, which left the Camel City with one win apiece. On March 18, more than 2,600 attended the game.

When Soskin considers the challenges of opening a new franchise, he looks to the dynamics of the game itself. He wants to sell not only the action, but the recognition of a kinship between the lives of the players and fans who come to see them.

“It’s affordable family entertainment,” Soskin said.

“You’ll see blue-collar hockey players who will bring it to you every single night. They’re working their butts off to get to the next level. It’s hard-hitting, fun, creative, fast.”

He ventured to separate

the Carolina Thunderbirds from teams such as the Hurricanes, their NHL counterparts.

“I love this style of hockey,” Soskin said. “Blue-collar mentality. Hard hits, tough action in the corner, a fight or two along the way.

“The NHL is getting away from a lot of the physicality,” he continued. “But whenever there’s a fight, everybody’s standing up watching. Here the players police themselves. If it’s not going right, you’ll know it because a fight will break out.”

Off the ice, Soskin has high hopes for community relations, too.

“I look forward to [the organization] getting involved in the community, as my teams like to do,” Soskin said, referring to engagement with young kids in schools and the elderly in senior centers.

“For us to be successful,” he added, “we have to become part of you. I want this area to be proud that this team represents them.”

Soskin is well aware of the irregular, unpredictable movement haunting Winston-Salem’s hockey teams of the past. He predicts a less expensive Federal Hockey League, in which the new Thunderbirds will take part, will allow the team to stick around.

“We’re running a single-A team here that will be able to survive and thrive and be one of the better teams in the league each and every year,” Soskin said.

But with the evidence of nearly 45 years of unstable hockey teams working against him, there’s a vacuity to Soskin’s prediction that doesn’t engender much confidence.

Substantially, there’s not much in Soskin’s pledge that confirms the new Thunderbirds will be here to stay. Whether or not the team’s destiny is in Soskin’s control, there will likely be little that fans in the Triad can do. However, the owner of the new Thunderbirds may be right about one thing: The past allegiance and the high attendance for the neutral-site games suggest that it won’t be Winston-Salem that fails its team.

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ary’s

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Gourmet Diner

20

(336) 723-7239 • 723 TRADE STREET, W-S

marysgourmetdiner.net • facebook.com/MarysGourmetDiner

Adaptive golf clinic @ Gillespie Golf Course (GSO), Saturday, 10 a.m.

The Greensboro Parks and Recreation Department and the Greensboro Elks Lodge offer a free adaptive golf clinic that teaches techniques to help make golf accessible for teenagers and adults with physical disabilities. No previous golf experience is needed to participate. More info at greensboro-nc.gov/mainstream.

by Matt Jones

Cover Story Culture Sportsball Crossword Shot in the Triad Triaditude Adjustment

Hagman’s “I Dream of Jeannie” costar Beyond reinflation Full of life Most likely to squee over a Pi Day pie Bone-to-muscle connection Cool with Green Day Sound of a belly laugh Planetarium model Clumsily tall Long-billed marsh bird Cartridge stuff His first line was “Don’t bang on my can!”

Milo’s canine pal Socialize in cyberspace Prefix with parasite Either “Barton Fink” director Grimm guy Sweet potato lookalike Long-jawed freshwater fish

Opinion

35 36 37 40 43 44 46 48 49 50 51 52 56 57 58 59 60 62 64

News

Down 1 Cultural interests 2 They’re often exchanged for rituals 3 “Absolutely!”

4 ___ Bo (workout system that turns 25 in 2017) 5 Spain’s has no official lyrics 6 Big game on January 1 7 “The Kite Runner” protagonist 8 The 100% truth (accept no imitations!)

9 Clandestine meetings 10 If it’s blue, it doesn’t mean you’re pregnant 11 Priest of Stonehenge days 12 Disco diva Summer 13 How some people like their cereal 19 O3 22 Loud sound effect for rappers and morning radio shows 24 “It’s in my ___” 26 “Where do I even begin ...”

Up Front

Across 1 2009 film set in 2154 7 Backs of boats 11 A.D.A. member’s degree 14 “Everybody Loves Raymond” star 15 Grade 16 Down Under hopper 17 “Mean ___” (recurring Jimmy Kimmel segment) 18 Frozen kids?

20 ID for a taxpayer 21 Aptly named card game 23 Witty criticism 24 “Entourage” actress Mazar 25 Like some weekend “sales events” 27 Leader of a Russian Doors tribute band?

32 “Look!” to Dora the Explorer 33 It’s a question of time ©2017 Jonesin’ Crosswords (editor@jonesincrosswords.com) 34 Plucks unwanted plants 38 Took those plums from the icebox (that you were probably saving for breakfast) 39 Lindsay of “Mean Girls” 41 Bank acct. transaction 42 Go down without power 45 Actor Spall of “Life of Pi” 46 One’s in a lifetime?

47 Mineral-fortified red wine?

50 Head shop patron, presumably 53 Fargo’s st.

54 Cyrano’s protrusion 55 Like Dick Clark’s New Year’s Eve specials 58 “Foucault’s Pendulum” author 61 CEO painter?

63 Often-spiked drink 65 Frozen food bag bit Answers from previous publication.

66 Met highlight 67 Christian who plays the titular “Mr. Robot” 27 Computer since 1998 68 Blow it 28 Corleone patriarch in “The Godfather” 69 Atmospheric 1990s CD-ROM puzzle game 29 8, for a two-by-four?

70 “Chappelle’s Show” character who’s always 30 It’s supposed to be a sobering experience scratching 31 Low

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CROSSWORD ‘Ego Trips’ state your name.

21

March 22 – 28, 2017

Country Park, Greensboro

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After a long afternoon of fighting for liberty at the 236th Anniversary Observance of the Battle of Guilford Courthouse.

PHOTO BY CAROLYN DE BERRY

The Nussbaum Center for Entrepreneurship... connect your business to success.

336-379-5001

www.nussbaumcfe.com

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Spring cleaning for fun and profit

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99 Good through 3/28/17

Monday – Thursday

Order online at pizzerialitaliano.net

219 S Elm Street, Greensboro • 336

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Large 1-topping pizza

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Cover Story

Jelisa Castrodale is a freelance writer who lives in Winston-Salem. She enjoys pizza, obscure power-pop records and will probably die alone. Follow her on Twitter @gordonshumway.

Opinion

The reason I do this, why I kick off my sheets and fumble in the dark for a tape measure is partially because I want to get this stuff out of my house and partially because of Poshmark’s all-important seller rating. Buyers give sellers between one and five stars and, as far as I can tell, most buyers are impossible to please. Last week, I was shorted two stars because, as near as I can tell, the purchaser decided that a pair of shoes didn’t fit, and I spent the afternoon furiously stomping around my apartment. I understand legitimate complaints (“There was bleach splattered on this sweatshirt”; “The jacket pockets were filled with severed fingers”; “This handbag was haunted by a malevolent spirit”) but it’s not my problem if your feet would make Cinderella’s stepsisters look like catalog models.

I don’t know how long I’ll keep doing this. On the one hand, I’ve sold enough stuff to cover my out-ofpocket health insurance premium this month. On the other, it’s 3 in the morning and I’m shoving my hands inside a purse I haven’t carried since I put my flip phone into that 5.87 inch-long inside pocket.

This app has given me a newfound respect for small business owners and for anyone who works in customer service, and not just because I was just asked why I hadn’t shipped an item out on a Sunday. (Because I believe the app’s terms and conditions prevent me from breaking into a post office or committing any federal crimes.)

And despite my complaints, there have been some positives: There was that little increase in my bank account balance and I do have some extra space in my closet where that stuff used to be. But ask me about all of that later; I’ve just been asked to take a detailed picture of a pair of tote bag straps.

News

on the afternoon a store clerk convinced you that you could pull off high-waisted denim. Founder Manish Chandra has said that he was inspired to launch the app after seeing all of the unworn items in his own wife’s closet, because tech millionaires are just like us!

(Although maybe with fewer hot sauce-stained Mr. Barbeque T-shirts).

My sister has had some success with the app, making some extra money by unloading the clothes that my 2-year-old niece seems to outgrow every afternoon.

“It’s easy,” she said. “You’ll have fun with it.”

Sure, it’s easy for her. My sister is ridiculously pulled together, the kind of high-functioning multitasker who can endure long hours at her day job, teach a toddler how to read and still look like she fell out of a magazine dedicated to shiny hair. She is someone who can casually learn how to apply a faux finish to her bedroom furniture. I am someone who has to be reminded not to wear wind pants to a funeral.

But I decided to join Poshmark. I uploaded a photo of myself, one where I flashed the kind of trustworthy smile that said, “Buy my old pants!” and “I have never had scabies!” I took pictures of a few purses I never carried and a couple of pairs of shoes I never wear and just sat back and waited for the cash to roll in. Instead, I got a lot of questions from people who clearly have no intention of ever buying a pair of leopard print flats (which are size 7.5, reasonably priced and still available on the app). What is the actual color? What is the height of the heel, in millimeters, please? Why would you wear those in public? Every time my phone bleats another alert, I picture someone in a darkened apartment, instructing women across the country to provide two additional pictures, a shot of each handbag holding up today’s paper or those crucial inner-zipper dimensions.

Up Front

t’s just after 3 a.m., and I’m doing what any rational human would be doing at this hour: I’m crouched on the floor, trying to accurately measure the zipper inside a small satin handbag. After pulling the tape measure across 5.87 inches of

by Jelisa Castrodale tiny interlocked teeth, I type the information into an iPhone app, adding a cheerfully jaundiced emoticon to say “It’s no problem, I’d been waiting for the opportunity to get out of bed and wear this purse like a hand puppet.”

Two weeks ago, I decided to start selling some things on Poshmark, a mobile app that lets you empty your real-life closet into a virtual one, several oddly cropped photos at a time. I’ve long since realized that I have too much stuff, but I don’t have the patience to follow the advice of Japanese organization guru Marie Kondo. She expects you to empty all of your kitchen cabinets onto the floor so you can consider each item individually, holding a “Punch Today in the Dick” koozie with both hands while you ask yourself whether it — in her words — “sparks joy.” (Yes, yes it does.)

Poshmark is euphemistically described as a “fashion resale marketplace,” and the items listed range from new items that some top users sell at a wholesale discount to infrequently worn pieces that were purchased

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a bar Where laW enforcement, firefighters, medical Personnel, military and their suPPorters can hang out. not your normal bar scene. it’s better!

kellydays.com 701 liberty st. Winston-salem AMARANTH DIABETES FOUNDATION

ROCKIN’ FOR RESEARCH Music festival & benefit for diabetes research 100% of all proceeds go directly to diabetes research

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Noon Old Man Noize 1:15pm Nathan Pope Band 2:30pm Darkwater Redemption 3:45pm Torn Corners 5:00pm be the moon 6:15pm Drew Foust 7:30pm Travelin’ Jones 8:45pm Juju Guru Great Music! Free Admission!

Great Food! Donations Accepted Saturday, April 1 Camel City BBQ Factory 701 N. Liberty Street • Winston-Salem, NC 27101