TCB April 19, 2017 — A Ben Folds lovefest

Greensboro / Winston-Salem / High Point April 19 – 25, 2017 triad-city-beat.com

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Unwelcoming

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A fake town hall PAGE 10

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April 19 – 25, 2017

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Words on paper

I sat down yesterday with our music writer, Spencer Brown, and went through his piece with him, sentence by sentence.

by Brian Clarey It’s still the thing I love to do most in this business: working with writers on their craft. I was more than happy to stop wrangling with the phones and email and dig down deep into the copy.

I cured him a few weeks back of his penchant for dangling participles, and we long ago held the very serious talk about verbs that every writer who works for me must eventually endure. Yesterday, after Jordan Green had annihilated both his lede and his kicker, I clipped some of Brown’s sentences, moved a few grafs and then reminded him of something that one of my former editors — Jeri Rowe, who I believe did more for my words than anyone else who ever messed with them — used to say: The devil is in the details, sure, but god is in the structure.

We editors keep a bunch of those little mantras in our pockets: Write in scenes.

Find the narrative. Pick a verb tense and

stick with it.

It’s serious business, this custodianship of the language, our privilege as stewards of the written word. Someone needs to remind everyone that things are based “on” other things and never “off” them, that “brung” is not a word and that adjectives are the ineffective tools of weak-minded fools.

Brown, a real pro, leans into the editing process every week. Like every seasoned writer, he knows that relentless criticism and constant rule-checks make for clean, readable copy. And what all writers really want is for someone to read their work and maybe give some feedback.

Because what’s the point of all this if no one reads our words?

Over the years I’ve learned many devices designed to bring the reader’s eye along. A sentence with a rhythm wants to carry you along. Sprinkling in metaphors like chips in a cookie can engage the reader’s mind.

A one-sentence paragraph can work, too.

But those are just tricks. And they don’t offer a writer much cover without some thought behind the words.

That’s what I told Brown. That’s what I tell them all.

SPREADING JOY ONE PINT AT A TIME

April 23

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EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK

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Thursday Beer and Baseball Friday, Saturday, Sunday BEER Saturday ”Uncle Mike’s 50th Birthday

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case I think they spent over a million dollars defending that action, and in the mean-

FOR LEASE

time, what my concern is, is that the legislature could withhold I think it’s up to $13 million in state funds. We could fight it; we might win and we might not, but in the meantime we don’t get the money and it would cost a tremendous amount of dollars to defend it.

— Winston-Salem Mayor Allen Joines, in the News, page 6 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

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CONTRIBUTORS Carolyn de Berry Kat Bodrie Spencer KM Brown

Cover photography of Ben Folds (courtesy image)

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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April 19 – 25, 2017

EVENTS

Wednesday, April 19 @ 8pm

Rinaldi Flying Circus, Charming Disaster, & Shiloh Hill Thursday, April 20 @ 8pm

Open Mic Night

Friday, April 21 @ 5:30pm

GSO Fest!: SE Ward, Blueberry, & Anna Claire Saturday, April 22 @ 8pm

Tony Low

Monday, April 24@ 7pm

CITY LIFE Apr. 19 – 25

by Joel Sronce

THURSDAY

FRIDAY

Union Time @ Wake Forest University (W-S), 6 p.m.

WFU’s Pro Humanitate Institute hosts a screening of Union Time, a film that documents a workers’ struggle against dangerous working conditions, abuse and low pay at the Smithfield Foods plant in Tar Heel, NC. After the screening, Pro Humanitate Institute director Melissa Harris-Perry moderates a panel discussion with filmmaker Matt Barr, former National Labor Relations Board lawyer Jasper Brown, and two Smithfield employees who took part in the union struggle. More info at events.wfu.edu.

Red Smoove Classic @ Andrews High School (HP), 7 p.m.

The TW Andrews Red Raider marching band hosts the second annual Red Smoove Classic drumline competition, auxiliary showcase and collegiate exhibition. The drumline competition features high school marching percussion sections from throughout North Carolina, and the auxiliary showcase features high school and community-based dance groups from High Point, Greensboro and other North Carolina cities. Drumlines including NC A&T’s Cold Steel, NC Central University’s DOAx and SC State University’s Bongo Bros. Inc. make up the collegiate exhibition. More info on the Facebook event page.

Mystery Movie Monday

SATURDAY

602 S Elam Ave • Greensboro

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March for Science @ Governmental Plaza (GSO), 10 a.m.

The rally and march in Greensboro is a one of hundreds of satellite actions around the world in solidarity with the national March for Science in Washington DC. Supporters advocate for public access to empirical, evidence-based science and demand lawmakers consider this evidence when creating policies. The event in Greensboro includes speeches by scientists at NC A&T and UNCG. More info at march4sciencegso.wordpress.com.

Piedmont Earth Day Fair @ Winston-Salem Fairgrounds, 10 a.m.

Piedmont Environmental Alliance hosts the 12th annual Piedmont Earth Day Fair, a free, family-friendly event that includes educational activities and live entertainment. Kids can enjoy arts & crafts, face-painting and special activities hosted by Art for Art’s Sake, Imagination Installation and Kaleideum (formerly SciWorks Science Center). More than 100 exhibitors, a diverse music line-up and environmentally themed demonstrations are available for adults and kids. More info at peanc.org.

NC Korean Festival @ Center City Park (GSO), 10 a.m.

Come out to enjoy delicious Korean cuisine and traditional Korean games, as well as cultural performances that include choral, drum and K-pop music, solo and group dance, skits and taekwondo. More info on the Facebook event page.

ALL WEEK

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GSOFest @ various locations (GSO) Rock out at any of the eight shows taking place in the Gate City from Thursday to Saturday and help resurrect the dormant Greensboro Fest. Local bands such as Modern Robot and Harrison Ford Mustang take the stage at Geeksboro, Urban Ginders and several other venues. More info at gsofest.com.

triad-city-beat.com

by Joel Sronce

A sports university in Kernersville

Cover Story Culture

Berkeley-North Carolina nexus

Opinion

families. When February came around, the university was finished.

But the baseball team stuck together, Keating reports, finding dorms at Greensboro College and even booking a 17-game schedule against area schools.

Despite the fraud, injustice and nightmarish conditions that the students endured, the police and the State Bureau of Investigation determined that the issues between the business and its athletes were a civil matter, not a criminal one. In fact, ESPN points out, the for-profit education industry could be on the way up.

Last month, the Trump administration began to relax federal reporting regulations from for-profit schools.

Only a few days before being sworn in as president, Trump reached a $25 million settlement with plaintiffs over fraud allegations at Trump University. The Triad’s Forest Trail Sports University appears to be similarly bogus.

News

deal with FTSU. But the deal with Barber-Scotia fell through — as did the one with Waldorf University — and just before students arrived the program announced a new location: Kernersville.

The athletes were moved into a recently closed Kernersville hotel, the Phoenix, where they often lived four to a room. The hotel was filthy: Some students slept on box springs with holes in them, and one found mold in the air conditioner, according to ESPN. The food that FTSU provided, both in quantity and quality, the students claimed, was even worse.

For facilities the athletes were forced to use a dusty, impromptu soccer field — even those who had come for baseball and track.

Finally, on Oct. 21, 11 baseball players and their coach went to the Kernersville police and gave statements about FTSU. By early November, the program’s founders had negotiated deals with some students and their

Up Front

A feature story by Peter Keating appeared on espn. com on April 14 chronicling the rise and fall of Forest Trail Sports University, a for-profit endeavor that promised its recruits the chance to live on campus and focus on their sports year-round. There would be no teachers, libraries or curriculum unique to the school itself.

Students would only study online — classes provided by Waldorf University in Iowa.

Despite the startling concept, the idea appealed to athletes leaving high school without scholarships but who weren’t ready to let their dreams go. It even appealed to parents, who understood their children’s desire to see where another year or two of athletics could take them.

Keating’s article reveals that in the spring of 2016, as many as 250 students — each charged a tuition of almost $33,000 — were ready to populate the dorms and fields at Barber-Scotia — a historically black college in Concord that had fallen on hard times and entered a

by Jordan Green

Crossword Shot in the Triad Triaditude Adjustment

“We’re going [to Berkeley] because people are having their rights violated,” Rhodes said during the April 8 summit.

“So it could be argued that with the full support of the local politicians, thugs in the streets are beating people up and suppressing their rights to free speech and assembly. It could be argued that California is in a state of insurrection.”

By all available accounts, the Oath JORDAN GREEN Stewart Rhodes, the Oath Keepers’ national director, Keepers demonstrated restraint, and speaks at a statewide summit north of Winston-Salem last month.

Rhodes is quoted in a Los Angeles Times people), we would not let the white nationalists up on the story as commending the Berkeley police concrete ring where the actual rally and speakers were, for keeping the opposing sides apart (although that and if they tried, we would remove them physically.” clearly wasn’t completely the case). Rhodes has said on While Rhodes credited the police with maintaining a the group’s website that he was misquoted in the paper buffer zone, several press accounts indicate that opposing as saying he “would kind of enjoy hitting” counter-demsides took the battle to the streets surrounding a park next onstrators. “I was not talking about antifa when I said to City Hall. “By 1 p.m., all semblance of order or peaceful that,” Rhodes wrote. “I was talking about the actual white protest were gone,” Frank Dinkelspiel reported in the Dainationalists who showed up and tried to co-opt the event. ly Beast. “The two sides moved onto city streets and set I said we wanted nothing to do with them, and while the upon each other with fists, M-80 firecrackers and pepper police told them we could not kick them out of the park, spray. They hurled bagels, soda cans and even dumpsters because the event organizers did not have a permit to back and forth as police largely stood by.” use the park (which would have allowed them to exclude

Sportsball

Home to California’s flagship university, ultra-liberal Berkeley has become the epicenter of ideological conflict in the Trump era.

Beginning with a militant action by the left-wing black bloc leading to the cancelation of right-wing provocateur and now disgraced Milo Yiannopoulos’ speech at UC-Berkeley in January, a consortium of Trump supporters, nationalists and white supremacists has decided to take a stand for free speech in Berkeley, drawing predictable outrage from the Bay Area’s deep bench of left-wing activists. After Trump supporters were attacked by the black bloc and antifa — short for anti-fascist — at a March 4 rally, organizer Rich Black of the Liberty Revival Alliance vowed a return on April 15. The Oath Keepers, a militia comprised of retired law enforcement officers and military veterans, put out a call to its members to go to Berkeley and protect the free speech rights of the president’s supporters.

So what does deep blue Berkeley have to do with purple North Carolina?

The April 15 pro-Trump “Patriot’s Day” rally came up in a speech by Oath Keepers founder and national director Stewart Rhodes at the militia’s state summit in Stokes County a week before.

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April 19 – 25, 2017 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Sportsball Crossword Shot in the Triad Triaditude Adjustment

6

NEWS

‘Welcoming city’ resolution pulled under threat from NCGA

by Jordan Green

Winston-Salem council members back down to a threat from the General Assembly that could make a “welcoming city” resolution unlawful while opponents of unauthorized immigration relish growing political power.

Councilman Dan Besse withdrew a proposed resolution to declare Winston-Salem a “welcoming city” on Monday night as support among his colleagues collapsed under threat of financial penalty from the Republican-controlled General Assembly.

Besse, who represents the Southwest Ward, told supporters he wasn’t giving up and that he will be working on a resolution with modified language sufficient to earn the support of the majority of his colleagues.

“Despite Winston-Salem’s long history of compassion and integration, we have come to a place where welcoming our neighbors is radical,” Wake Forest University graduate student Jennifer St Sume observed, urging city council to reconsider.

Besse’s proposed resolution stopped short of language demanded by a group of activists to declare Winston-Salem a “sanctuary city,” which would have placed the city in direct violation of a law signed by then-Gov. Pat McCrory in 2015. The 2015 law prohibits North Carolina cities and counties from adopting “sanctuary ordinances” that limit or restrict enforcement of federal immigration law, or that bar local law enforcement from gathering information about immigration status and sharing it with federal authorities.

The proposed resolution was carefully written to avoid violating the state law, but references “a national environment of excessive fear and suspicion directed by some toward immigrants, refugees, and other newcomers” and states that the city “recognizes that our whole community is safer when victims and witnesses of domestic violence and other criminal activity feel safe in contacting our police for assistance without fear, regardless of their immigration status.”

Mayor Allen Joines said a majority of council members felt they could not support Besse’s resolution both because

Some Winston-Salem residents already felt like the city’s “welcoming city” resolution was watered down and toothless, but now even that is off the table, at least for now.

they did not agree with it and because they felt compelled to bend to pressure from the state General Assembly. When the city council met with members of the Forsyth County legislative delegation in late March, Republican and Democratic lawmakers — including Sen. Joyce Krawiec and Reps. Debra Conrad and Ed Hanes — urged city council to squash the “welcoming city” resolution.

“What the legislative delegation told us in a trying-to-be-helpful way was that the legislature is poised to take action that they couldn’t prevent happening,” Mayor Allen Joines said after the meeting. Joines said City Attorney Angela Carmon told him there’s pending legislation that would add the words “welcoming city” to the state law prohibiting sanctuary cities. Joines cited the Republican-controlled General Assembly’s history of stripping control of

the local water system and airport from the cities of Asheville and Charlotte, respectively.

“You could get into a fight as Asheville and Charlotte did, and in the Asheville case I think they spent over $1 million defending that action, and in the meantime, what my concern is, is that the legislature could withhold I think it’s up to $13 million in state funds,” Joines said. “We could fight it; we might win and we might not, but in the meantime we don’t get the money and it would cost a tremendous amount of dollars to defend it. So I think fiduciarily I think the council decided we’re supporting 241,000 citizens and we need to be doing the right thing for the whole city.

This resolution really doesn’t offer any additional protections that are not there today.”

Will Cox, a member of the Sanctu-

JORDAN GREEN

ary City Coalition of Winston-Salem, expressed a sense of betrayal.

“I am asking you to actually have a backbone; I know some of you all do,” he said. “However, at a time when things are not reasonable, there’s outrageous rhetoric coming from the Trump administration and Attorney General Jeff Sessions and our right-wing-controlled General Assembly, it’s a time for reasonable people to not do what’s pragmatic, to not do what’s reasonable because if you do there will be unreasonable, outrageous and harmful things that will happen. We need to go much further than a ‘welcoming city’ resolution. We should be a sanctuary city. If you can’t stand by this thing that’s just a statement that actually says not much more than ‘We’re a nice place to be’ then that’s just plain sad. We know who you are and we will remember, and I

satisfaction.

While protesters rallied on the steps of City Hall ahead of Monday’s meeting, Besse and Montgomery strategized their next move on the sidelines.

“It could be argued that a resolution that includes other community leaders would be stronger; city council resolutions are a dime a dozen,” Besse said.

“It’s not a sure thing. We’re working on it. This is not about whether one resolution passes tonight. This is about a movement to reaffirm and continue diversity, inclusivity and a welcoming community that will prevail in the end.”

Up Front News Cover Story

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they call them ‘exotic dancers.’

“What do they want — Dodge City?” he added. “They’re going to force people to start taking the law into their own hands.”

Among the opponents of the “welcoming city” resolution was Beverly Lung, a local Republican party volunteer who attended a recent meeting featuring talk about a frightening vision of Islamic subversion and open talk by one participant about killing Muslims. At that meeting, Lung related the presenter’s contention that the United States is at risk of a supposed Islamic takeover to the idea of Latinos under the leadership of the civil rights organization National Council of La Raza reclaiming the American Southwest for Mexico — better known as “reconquista.”

“What you’re basically telling us is it’s like La Raza,” Lung said at the meeting in February. “You are going to take neighborhood by neighborhood, community by community. You are going to get your people in elected positions, and you take over town by town.

And you are going to take back what was supposedly taken from you, like the southwestern states. But they’re taking over our whole country.”

Seated in the gallery at the city council meeting on Monday, Lung acknowledged that she had received a visit from the FBI after the Kernersville meeting.

She said she gave the agents a box of chocolates and thanked them for their service to the country.

“I’m not in jail,” she announced with

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think it’s time for you to step up, and it’s just a shame if you can’t.”

Besse and Councilman Derwin Montgomery, who has publicly announced support for the “welcoming city” resolution, joined a rally of about 125 people on the steps of city council before the meeting.

“Dr. [Martin Luther] King once said that in the end it’s not the words of our enemies that we will remember but the silence of our friends,” Besse said, addressing the crowd. “We are in a very difficult situation in North Carolina and many other places across the country where the forces that are candidly opposed to diverse communities, to inclusive communities, to welcoming communities are seeking to intimidate everyone who supports that. Sad to say, they’re doing it with a great deal of success.”

Besse said he was surprised to discover that his compromise resolution using the words “welcoming city” was received with the same level of hostility directed towards sanctuary city ordinances.

While people backing the “welcoming city” resolution and even stronger protections for undocumented immigrants monopolized the time set aside for public speakers and filled overflow rooms to observe the vote, at least a dozen opponents also attended the meeting.

“What’s the difference between a welcoming city and a sanctuary city?” asked Jack Fisher. “It’s like how they used to use the term ‘strippers,’ and now

Crossword Shot in the Triad Triaditude Adjustment

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April 19 – 25, 2017 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Sportsball Crossword Shot in the Triad Triaditude Adjustment

8

Hundreds show up for Rep. Ted Budd’s ‘meet and greet’

by Jordan Green

Concerns about healthcare and Russian interference in the 2016 election predominate a constituent event held by Rep. Ted Budd, set up to minimize the risk of viral encounters with angry Democrats.

Jaime Brown, a Greensboro housewife, saluted US Rep. Ted Budd for his refusal to get on board with legislation backed by House Speaker Paul Ryan and President Trump to repeal the Affordable Care Act during three-hour “meet and greet” on April 14 that drew about 200 constituents.

“I was very happy that you were a no vote, even though it was probably for different reasons than I would,” said Brown, who is the direct action team leader for the activist group Indivisible.

As he told several constituents, Budd said he opposed the American Health Care Act, which was pulled from consideration by Speaker Paul Ryan due to lack of Republican support, because it did not address rising monthly premiums.

Brown went on to tell her congressional representative that she disagreed with his vote to de-fund Planned Parenthood.

“My concern is that Speaker Paul Ryan is trying to make sure federal funds don’t pay for abortion, but the Hyde amendment already ensures that,” Brown said. “What you’re really doing is preventing funding for mammograms, Pap smears and STD testing for low or no-income men and women.”

After speaking with Budd, Brown said in an interview that when she was in college she relied on Planned Parenthood for STD testing and birth control,

Recycle this paper.

Newly minted Congressman Ted Budd listens to constituents in Greensboro last week, dodging a town hall format that could’ve resulted in more unified opposition or a viral video similar to ones his colleagues weathered.

and that she wants to make sure those services remain available to the next generation.

“I appreciate that he was honest,” Brown said. “He eventually said, ‘I don’t think we should fund Planned Parenthood because even if the Hyde amendment already prevents it, the funds are fungible and it still supports the infrastructure of the Planned Parenthood.’

I think he’s wrong. He also said that he supports women’s care and that for the uninsured there are other organizations that provide those services. I haven’t run across any, and I’ll be following up with his office to get that list.”

While the newly drawn 13th Congressional District leans Republican, the urbanized eastern end includes pockets of strong Democratic in High Point and Greensboro. The conservative rural counties to the west, including Davidson, Davie, Iredell and part of Rowan hold the balance of political power.

Healthcare and allegations about

Russian interference in the 2016 election were the most widely cited concerns during the event, with many though not all expressing disappointment that the congressman chose to receive people one-on-one rather than in a traditional town-hall format. Upwards of a dozen people attempted with limited success to make the event into a town hall by sitting on the floor and shushing the crowd so Budd’s responses could be heard. Some of those close to the huddle called out the topic for the benefit of the audience. Constituents waited for 15 to 20 minutes in the huddle waiting their turn to speak with the congressman, while those on the outside strained to catch snippets of the verbal exchanges.

“I’ll speak up so everyone can hear,” Susan Andreatta of High Point told Budd.

“I think it’s most important to have an independent investigation of Trump’s ties to Russia,” she said, prompting a

JORDAN GREEN

burst of applause from several people nearby.

“I think the best thing we can hope for is bipartisan,” Budd responded. “I don’t think you’ll see independent. The Republican and Democratic co-chairs of the intelligence committees are going to have different views, and together they’ll get to the bottom of it. Maybe you’ll see something different a month out.”

Wayne Morgan of Lexington, who lost his job and went for two years before receiving a diagnosis for Parkinson’s disease, said the Affordable Care Act saved his life. Thanks to the legislation signed into law by President Obama in 2010, Morgan said he was eventually able to get a diagnosis and to run an MRI. “All I’m asking you to do is when you go back to Congress, be the first Republican who goes to the Democrats, and says, ‘Let’s make Obamacare better,’” Morgan told Budd.

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Get a bill passed. May need some work; nothing’s perfect. Too many people are dependent on this, but we want them to pass a bill.”

Fred Phillips, a retired financial advisor from Greensboro, said he came to give Budd encouragement, adding that with less than 100 days in office he deserves a chance to learn the job. Phillips said he hopes the Republican Congress will eventually pass legislation to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. “We’re paying for a lot of medical costs with only a few people paying,” he said, “and it drives the cost up.”

Lex Alexander, a communications consultant in Greensboro, was among those urging Budd to back an independent investigation into President Trump’s possible ties to Russia.

“It was a clusterf***, and you can quote me on that,” Alexander said, leaving the event. “This was not a town hall. This was a long string of individual cocktail conversations without the benefit of booze. He was obviously working to ensure that there would be no viral video of this to hurt him. Sadly, he was mostly successful.”

TRUTH IS POWER

Steve Bird, an entrepreneur who runs a mail-order business out of the Forge in Greensboro, likewise urged Budd to support legislation to improve rather than dismantle the Affordable Care Act. Ultimately, Bird argued, the United States should move to a universal healthcare system to meet a moral obligation to care for the sick and bring the country in line with the rest of the industrialized world.

Bird described the format of the constituent event as “a train wreck.”

“I think it was set up on purpose to be that way,” he said. “Only those like me that have a booming Irish voice that was meant to be heard over my 20 siblings in a hovel in Ireland could be really heard over anybody. If you didn’t have a loud projecting voice, then he was having a series of one-on-one conversations where he wouldn’t have had to be held accountable for his answers to any one person because no more than maybe a half a dozen people would have actually heard the answer that he gives.”

Melanie Bassett of Greensboro, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, said the format was not accommodating.

“For disabled people, that was a wipeout,” she said. “When I came in here there were no chairs, so I was in effect denied access. That’s illegal. We had to ask the hotel to bring chairs in.”

Budd told reporters after the event that he prefers the intimacy of the “meet-and-greet” format, but wouldn’t rule out a town hall in the future.

“I serve in the people’s house and I represent the people so they get a chance every two years if they don’t like how I represent,” he said. “Also, I would say this gets me closer to people who have more private concerns, and they may not want to share them in a larger format. We like the face-to-face contact.

They can ask questions and they can ask follow-up questions. We think it’s actually more freeing to do it like this.”

He added that he’s happy to accommodate people with disabilities by coming to them, or they can visit at one of his two district offices.

Not everyone who showed up for the event was urging the congressman to preserve the Affordable Care Act. “We would like to see a healthcare [reform] bill passed,” Maria Novak of Greensboro said. “We want them to become unified. Back the president.

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April 19 – 25, 2017 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Sportsball Crossword Shot in the Triad Triaditude Adjustment

10

OPINION

EDITORIAL

Rep. Ted Budd shoots from the hip On the one hand, you’ve got to hand it to the Triad’s newest congressman. US Rep. Ted Budd came to Greensboro to face about 200 of his constituents last week, and by all reports he seemed to have taken his lumps for everything from the GOP’s healthcare debacle to unpopular budget cuts to the investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 election.

Budd stood his ground, staying true to a Republican worldview that is, by today’s standards, moderate — extreme though they may be.

We learned that federal funding of Planned Parenthood and other women’s health organizations is a nonstarter with the congressman, as is an independent investigation into the Trump administration’s ties with Russia.

“I think the best we can hope for is bipartisan,” he told a constituent about the Russia probe.

But on the other hand, the format of the event— a “meet and greet” as opposed to the town hall that was initially advertised — was a sad joke.

Budd got creamed in Guilford County in the 2016 election by Democratic contender Bruce Davis — the only thing most of us knew about him was through the obnoxious billboards for his gun shop that he frequently places along Business 40.

Davidson, Davie and Iredell counties gave Budd the election in a district rated as “safely Republican”

by Ballotpedia. And the only reason he got the nomination at all was because it landed in a special June primary in which 17 Republican candidates ran and just 7.7 percent of the electorate participated.

Budd got 20 percent of that vote — and a crucial endorsement by the conservative Club for Growth PAC — to beat Guilford County Rep. John Blust and Guilford County Commissioner Hank Henning by just 3,000 votes. Even Vernon Robinson managed to pull almost 1,000 votes in that race.

This is how we now elect our representatives to the US Congress in this part of North Carolina.

Budd hardly has a mandate here in the third-largest county in the state. And his interaction with voters here seemed designed to placate, to work his undeniable charm, to avoid the embarrassing town-hall gaffes that can go viral and be fatal to a re-election campaign.

So now the county with the largest share of constituents in Budd’s district knows that the congressman is good at cocktail parties. And that, like any good pitchman, he can take the abuse with a smile — or at least a good-natured grimace.

CITIZEN GREEN

High Point’s black epicenter, then and now Washington Street today might not be quite what it was back in the day. As the hub of black commerce and culture in High Point, it boasted two cab companies, multiple dentists and doctors, a law office, a YMCA and YWCA,

by Jordan Green a couple movie theaters and grills, a skating rink, a putt-putt golf course, two hotels and malt shop.

Still, it’s a pretty lively scene as Glenn Chavis, the pre-eminent historian of African-American life in High Point, gives a television interview to Spectrum News. Just as the cameraman sets up the shot, a barefoot woman fashionably dressed in black slacks and a pink top takes a seat on a metal bench, removes a flattened cardboard box and then reclines like a 1940s film siren with her arm flung back. Just then, a man riding past on bicycle while smoking calls out, “Hello people in TV land! Goddamn, I dropped my cigarette.” A man in a pickup blows his horn to greet Chavis, a familiar figure on the street.

Later, they move down the street to its eastern terminus and stage another shot near the Washington Quick Mart,

where a sidewalk vendor is selling sundresses and shades.

Chavis takes a break to alert me: “Did you see that transaction? Those two white ladies pulled into the parking lot, took care of business, and were in and out just like that.”

Three police officers on foot sweep down the street in the old-school manner, warily eying bystanders and waving curtly. They rouse the woman on the bench, who wasn’t sleeping so much as sunning.

Now in its sixth year, today the only takers for Chavis’ Washington Street tour are two reporters, but previously he’s guided the likes of Mayor Bill Bencini.

Washington Street flourished during the years of segregation. This Saturday morning, Chavis mentions a former slave named Hinton who initially opened a restaurant on Main Street, but was forced out in the 1910s as white supremacy consolidated in North Carolina, and Hinton wound up building an 11-room hotel on Washington Street. Conversely, integration in the 1960s offered black entrepreneurs access to larger markets and set in motion the district’s decline.

While segregation kept black dollars circulating in the black community, the injustice of Jim Crow inflicted plenty of tragedy. The two hospitals operating in High Point in

Glenn Chavis has been giving historic tours of Washington Street for six years.

JORDAN GREEN

Campus activism, now and then

triad-city-beat.com

by Brian Clarey

9. UNC School of the Arts Art and protest can be closely linked. But the most recent example of a protest we can find at UNCSA was in 2009, when film students sat in against the policies of Jordan Kenner, dean of filmmaking at the school. Their biggest beef was that they were forced to integrate notes from their mentors into their films before screening them to a panel of pros in LA. The protest lasted several hours in the Film Village, with no discernible policy changes.

Sportsball

10. Greensboro College In February 1960, four Greensboro College students who joined the downtown sit-ins claim that university President Harold Hutson told them they wouldn’t be allowed to graduate if they continued to support the black students. The school’s first African-American students didn’t enroll until 1969. In fairness, all of this information comes directly from the college website. The campus remains relatively quiet politically, unless you count former student Roy Carroll.

Shot in the Triad

Crossword Triaditude Adjustment

5. Winston-Salem State University The Rams’ protest bona fides start with professor Larry Little, a former Black Panther, former Winston-Salem alderman and current political advisor who helped create the first ambulance service in Forsyth County that served residents irrespective of race. It continues through 2014, when Student Body President Olivia Sedwick sang “Have Yourself a

8. High Point University Most recently, HPU students held a peaceful protest in September 2016 to challenge a speaking appearance by candidate Trump.

Culture

4. Guilford College Guilford students enthusiastically embrace the Quaker penchant for dissent. The school’s history of political protest dates back to founder Levi Coffin, who famously installed a station of the Underground Railroad near the campus. At Guilford, more students go to campus protests than football games.

7. Wake Forest University Wake Forest is better known for its tennis program than for its student-protest activity, but Wake students were at the downtown Christmas-tree lighting in 2014 during the Black Lives Matter protest. More recently, in 2014 students protested racism on campus with sidewalk-chalk drawings and slogans during Visitor’s Weekend, and the Winston-Salem Journal reported that “hundreds” of Wake students walked out of class in November 2016 to protest the election of Donald Trump.

Cover Story

3.Bennett College Bennett College is itself an act of protest: a college for black women founded in 1873. Bennett Belles have been fighting the power at least as far back as 1937, when they marched against movie theaters in downtown Greensboro for their segregationist policies, and for the way women of color were depicted in film. They were early on the scene in 1960 after the Greensboro Four took their seats, and have been involved in just about every protest action in Greensboro in the last 100 years. Politically active Belles include Greensboro Mayor Pro Tem Yvonne Johnson, who was the first black mayor of the city, and state Sen. Gladys Robinson.

6. UNCG UNCG students — all women at the time — filled out the ranks of protesters during the Greensboro Sit-Ins. Its legacy of dissent continues today with recent campus protests of police shootings, Trump-related issues, a disruption of Bill Clinton’s speech the day before Election Day in 2016 and the UNC System of which it is a part.

Opinion

2. NC A&T University A discussion of college activism in the Triad would not be complete without a hat tip to A&T university in Greensboro and the four students who changed the world at the Woolworth’s lunch counter, and the decades of protest emanating from the campus before and since. Other politically active Aggies besides the A&T Four include Jesse Jackson, retired NC Supreme Court Justice Henry Speaks Frye and US Rep. Alma Adams.

Merry Little Christmas” at the lighting of downtown Winston-Salem’s Christmas tree, then joined protesters from WSSU, Salem College and Wake Forest University in chanting “Black Lives Matter!”

News

1. Salem College Observers of Triad college activism rarely have cause to consider Salem College, the private women’s school in Old Salem, despite its radical roots — its first black student was enrolled in 1785. Yet a deeply entrenched sit-in that began last week over living conditions, racial issues and gender policy continued on Tuesday, making it the longest-running current campus protest in the Triad, giving them the first slot on the list.

Up Front

the 1930s demonstrated how the color line might occasionally blur but tended to sharpen when the stakes were raised. Guilford General Hospital, located at the end of Washington Street, served only whites, Chavis said, while the more remote Burrus Memorial Hospital was open to both races.

Chavis’ grandfather came to the High Point from the mountains, and he was fair-skinned with straight hair. When his grandfather’s appendix ruptured, Chavis says, he was taken to Guilford General Hospital. His wife, who had dark skin, came to visit her husband, only to be told, “We don’t treat colored patients, and we don’t even have a colored janitor.” When the hospital staff found out Chavis’ grandfather was black, they put him out.

More tragically, Chavis recounts a story from the early ’30s about a “fair” woman of African descent who was dating a white man. They got into an argument in a cab, and he slit her throat.

The cab driver dropped her off at Guilford General, but her vindictive lover called the hospital and informed the staff that the woman was black. Chavis says they bandaged up the woman’s neck and put her out on the curb, where she bled to death.

While white institutions dealt cruelly with black people in a segregated society, black establishments appear to have provided convenient opportunities to absorb blame when conflict arose within the white community.

Glenn Chavis offers a A short-lived, blackfree walking tour of owned silent movie theater that opened on Washington Street Washington Street in 1912 every third Saturday of was the setting for the death of Officer William the month through SepWitcher, the first High tember. The 90-minute Point police officer killed tour begins at Changin the line of duty. Contemporaneous newspaper ing Tides Cultural accounts uncovered Center, located at 613

by Chavis indicate that Witcher was on duty at Washington St. (HP) at 8 the movie theater and a.m. Call 336.885.1859 Chief Ben Ridge and anfor more information. other officer arrived between 9 and 10 p.m. on a night in September 1913.

The story also indicates that Witcher was killed while responding to a fight between two black men in September 1913.

“Officer Witcher told his wife: ‘If I die, sue the city because the police chief shot me,’” Chavis says.

While the coroner’s verdict indicated that the person who filed the pistol shot was unknown, one article states, “Chief [Ben] Ridge said two Negroes saw a white man whom they didn’t know fire the fatal shot from near the side of Chief Ridge. Another four Negroes saw the flash of the gun but could not identify the white man.”

The movie theater appears to have closed in the aftermath of the shooting.

Much later, when he was a teenager, Chavis recalls a more wholesome kind of excitement.

Speaking of the L&M Grill, located near the present-day Jackie’s Place nightclub, he says, “It was packed. After football games you couldn’t even move around in there.”

11

April 19 – 25, 2017

A Ben Folds love fest

Cover Story

by Brian Clarey

Ben Folds plays a command performance Thursday night at the Carolina Theatre in Greensboro. Tickets are still available at carolinatheatre.com.

C

iting artistic differences the band broke up in May, And in June reformed without me, and they got a different name.

— “Army,” by Ben Folds Five, 1999

It’s taken as gospel truth in these parts, spelled out plainly in the lyrics from Ben Folds’ “Army,” which he recorded in 1999.

The story — as it’s told in bars and rock clubs and anywhere else in the Triad where they strum guitars and hold vague recollections of what it was like Back in the Day — harkens back to Majosha, a super group of sorts whose members at times included local musicians Evan Olson, Eddie Walker and Millard Powers.

And if you believe the story — and the song — you assume that the guys from Majosha kicked Ben Folds out of his own band, only to regret it as Folds’ star began its brilliant ascendance.

But that’s not what happened.

To fully understand what went down in those years between 1988 and 1993 in the local music microverse, you’d need to look at the timeline, talk to the people involved and have some experience with the lifestyles and creative impulses of young guys who play in rock bands.

“We were like 19, 20 years old,” Folds said in a telephone interview. “I think we rebranded that [Majosha] record as Pots & Pans, but it didn’t really make sense because it was a different band, and that’s the kind of sh*t you do when you’re 20 years old.

“It was typical band stuff,” he continued. “We had so many incarnations of so many bands….”

A remarkable creative stew was brewing in the Triad in the days of Majosha and what came after, a story that’s still being written.

THE BAND

12

COURTESY IMAGE

In the spring of 1988, Folds was back in his hometown of Winston-Salem after a couple false starts in his educational track and studying at UNCG. He threw in with Millard Powers, from Greensboro, to form Majosha (pronounced ma-JOSH-a), purveying the sort of white-boy funk perpetrated by the likes of the Red Hot Chili Peppers fused with the power-pop of groups like XTC. They won a battle of the bands at Duke University that year, giving them entry into the frat-party circuit along the Mid-Atlantic.

triad-city-beat.com

Before Ben Folds became the musical force he is today, he was a kid from Winston-Salem who went to UNCG and played in a band called Majosha.

A drummer at the time, Folds played slap bass in Majosha, largely as a result of marketing savvy and his penchant for multi-instrumentation.

“I was trying to pick up paying gigs while I was in college, and there was a real need [with] these cheesy, Top 40 bands for a bass player who could slap,” Folds said. “So I just learned it really fast, and got a whole bunch of gigs.

“It was really terrible bass playing,” he continued. “I’m

not politically opposed to slap-bass playing — I think it’s kind of fun — and Flea with the Chili Peppers was doing it, Fishbone.

“So I just let that sh*t rip.”

Evan Olson, who joined the band later that year, says, “Bass was just something he picked up. He could just pick up any instrument and within an hour he’d know what to do.”

COURTESY IMAGE

“Every instrument he plays,” says Eddie Walker, who also joined Majosha that year, “you’d think it was his main instrument.”

Walker and Olson met Folds at UNCG, where they were also students. Walker remembers that Folds wrote a review for the Carolinian — the student paper — about their band, Notes from a Mailbag.

“I remember thinking that he was just funny as hell,”

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April 19 – 25, 2017 Cover Story

14

Walker remembers.

Folds approached Olson first.

“I think he’s the consummate front man,” Folds says now.

“He’s that guy that if you don’t have him in the band, you don’t Chuck Folds: Chuck lives in Charlotte, have a band.” tours with his band Big Bang Boom and plays “I guess Ben liked my voice,” Olson remembers. “He saw in various other projects. Find out more a something in my stage performance. I don’t know.” tbigbangboomband.com.

Folds elaborates.

“He’s less about a sort of indie-rock guy and more about Evan Olson: Evan performs locally several being an incredible soul singer and performer,” he says. “I’m times a week with various projects, including sure you’ve seen him live, but to see him when he was 19, just AM Rodeo and a duo with Dana Beardropping into a split at like 6-foot-2 and singing his ass off. It’s ror. He composes commercial jingles and pretty crazy.” soundtracks for film and television, as well as Olson shared a writing credit on Majosha’s seminal work, original music. His website is evanolson.com.

Shut Up and Listen to Majosha!, released on cassette and vinyl in 1989.

Eddie Walker: Eddie plays with more “We were probably most into the Red Hot Chili Peppers, local outfits than can be listed here, and is a Fishbone, XTC, the Replacements,” Folds says. “I would say sought-after sideman in the studio and on the that pretty much sums it up. And then Evan had sort of a more road. contemporary, international almost, appeal.”

The work, which survives on YouTube, was fun, with tight Millard Powers: After his Grammy nod in musicianship and a pop sensibility. The album never really went 1999, Millard played in the backing band for anywhere — it was never released on CD — but a couple of Ben Folds’ Rocking the Suburbs tour. He is cuts, “Video” and “Emmaline,” co-written with Olson, survived currently the bassist for Counting Crows. to be featured on later Ben Folds Five albums. After a rotating cast of drummers, Walker came on board for the touring band.

Britt “Snüzz” Uzzell: Snüzz remains one of “Eddie had incredible chops,” Folds says. “It hadn’t occurred the most seasoned guitarists and songwriters to me that you could be that good at something. He was more in the state; his band Snüzz has survived a proficient as a musician than I was, so I needed to step it up.” couple decades and a few different lineups.

Walker says Folds taught him something important, too.

He is currently recovering from a serious “He taught me to really service the song and not get caught immunity-deficiency disorder, but hopes to up on what you can do on the drums,” Walker says. “Play what be back on stage and in the studio soon. supports the song best.”

Eventually, Powers left the band to pursue his own muse — in Nashville in 1991, he helped form the Semantics with Will Owsley and Folds on drums, though Ringo Starr’s son Zak later replaced Folds in the band. Later, Powers would earn a Grammy nomination in 1999 for his engineering work on Owsley’s solo album, and became the bassist for the Counting Crows in 2005.

In the Triad around 1990, Majosha collapsed, to be replaced by Pots & Pans, featuring Olson on bass, Folds on drums and Britt Uzell, known in band circles as Snüzz, on guitar.

The idea for the name, Olson remembers, came from something Folds said a lot: “If a song is any good, you should be able to play it on pots and pans and people should be able to get something out of it.”

“He used to say that all the time,” Walker remembers.

“It’s true,” Folds says. “I mean, you can base a whole lot of what you do on Before Majosha there was the DTs, with Evan Olson (left), Ben Folds arrangement, orchestration and producon drums and Chuck Folds on bass. This was probably 1988. tion — there’s nothing evil about that

Where are they now?

at all. But at the end of the day, something about it has to be explainable, quickly, like the metaphor that they’re giving about pots and pans, yeah. Even Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, you could go dink dink dink DONK on pots and pans.”

Pots & Pans slapped a sticker with their name on it atop copies of Shut Up and Listen to Majosha!, and resumed touring with the songs. The band was short-lived, but had an effect on all the players.

“Snüzz was a big influence on my songwriting,” Folds says, “because he made sure he was actually singing about something. It was like, ‘Oh, sh*t, this guy’s got a point! Let’s do that!’

Snüzz put the soul of his songs always right up in your face.

“I saw him in a show at a laundromat — a laundromat!

— singing a song about how he and his girlfriend broke up because he wouldn’t stop smoking pot, and the message was like ‘Of course you know I’m not going to stop smoking pot,’” Folds continues. “It was a really sad breakup song, if you thought about it.”

Folds has continued to perform with Snüzz occasionally.

And in 2002 after Snüzz was diagnosed with cancer, Folds played a solo show at Brandeis University and donated all the proceeds, more than $12,000.

“It was a pretty big helping hand at the time,” says Snüzz — who is currently bedridden with health issues — via text message. “He helped inspire and push the rest of us to become what we are: songwriters dedicated to the craft. He was such a great example to have around Greensboro during the late ’80s.”

Olson says that Folds probably sensed the demise of Pots & Pans before any of them.

“He was always looking ahead,” he says. “He knew that Majosha was an ephemeral project. I got the feeling it was just something he wanted to do. It was a lot of fun, it was a great record, now it was time to move on.”

Walker adds, “I think he’s a songwriter at heart, and the theatrics and showiness that Majosha had… his songs weren’t coming across the way he would have liked them to come across.”

“All these guys,” Folds says. “It was a good class to have come up with. They kept you on your toes.”

After the band broke up, the guys still played gigs together.

Walker remembers a showcase in Raleigh that Folds had arranged, featuring a “Prince-style” performer — he doesn’t remember the name — for whom Folds had been hired to produce a set.

Folds set himself as the opener, with Olson on bass and Walker on drums.

“Ben basically stole the show,” Walker remembers. “Next thing you know, he’s got his own showcase.”

Folds moved to Nashville shortly afterwards to play with Owsley and Powers in the Semantics, only to be replaced by COURTESY IMAGE Ringo Starr’s son, and also found work as a session musician and songwriter.

triad-city-beat.com

This version of Majosha in 1989 featured, from left, Millard Power, now the bassist for Counting Crows, Evan Olson; Ben Folds and Eddie Walker. This was the group that toured in support of Shut Up and Listen to Majosha.

WHAT CAME NEXT

The band-member shuffle continued in the Triad through the 1990s. Snüzz and Olson recruited Walker and Folds’ brother Chuck to form Straight Ahead, which for legal reasons changed its name to Bus Stop. When the band placed second on a television reality show — “Dick Clark’s USA Music Challenge” — in 1992, another chapter in our local music history was born.

Ben Folds didn’t return to North Carolina until 1993, forsaking the Triad for Chapel Hill, where he eventually filled in the ranks of the trio that would become Ben Folds Five.

“It was so cool,” Olson remembers. “For so many years I saw him honing this sound. He would send us demos and we’d listen to them in the Bus Stop van. One of those demos became Ben Folds Five’s first album.”

The new band — with Folds on piano, Robert Sledge on bass and percussionist Darren Jessee — made their eponymous debut in 1995 after two years on the road together.

But their biggest success came on 1997’s Whatever and Ever, Amen, which included the lush piano ballad “Brick,” that would become Folds’ biggest hit to date.

They made three albums between 1995 and 1999, broke up in 2000 and then Folds went on to a storied solo career which included a few albums and collaborations with artists as varied as the novelist Nick Hornby, actor William Shatner, college a capella groups and “Weird Al” Yankovic.

He’s been a producer, a television personality, a voice-over actor and a sideman. And he has occasionally conscripted some of his old bandmates into service.

Snüzz and Powers joined Folds in 2001 for the Rockin’ the Suburbs tour. He used Eddie Walker for a spot on

COURTESY IMAGE

“Late Night with Conan O’Brien” in 2000. [You need to say here or somewhere that Evan Olson is still a full-time musician, and ideally update us on these other main characters, too. You’ve got the space for it.****] “He had that aggressive mode,” Walker says, “a go-getter spirit. Like a shark. He always had a good sense of where to be.

“I wouldn’t call him a genius,” Walker says, “but with him I throw that word around.”

Folds sees it a little differently.

“What I had was a good bit of luck,” he says, “and proximity to some of the best musicians in the business.”

Both Walker and Olson hope to be in the audience when Folds plays the Carolina on Thursday night.

“I feel very fortunate to have been in that band,” Olson says. “I’m still learning things from watching him play.”

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April 19 – 25, 2017 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Sportsball Crossword Shot in the Triad Triaditude Adjustment

16

CULTURE There’s a reason Asashi Japanese is a local institution

I

by Eric Ginsburg

t took us a minute to find the door, around the side of the white-bricked Japanese restaurant, and once inside, my dad and I were confused by the primarily empty hibachi tables. A friend — whose parents own a different Japanese restaurant in town — swore that Asahi would be top notch for sushi and other Japanese favorites in Greensboro, but at first blush this appeared more like a downgraded version of Kabuto.

Still puzzled, we were seated at an empty hibachi table and handed sparse menus. This must’ve been how Home Alone’s Kevin McCallister felt when he stepped off the plane in New York and realized this couldn’t be Florida — I thought we were doing everything right, but upon arrival, I struggled to understand what happened.

And so — like McCallister upon arrival at his hotel — I asked for directions, but instead of an irresponsible billionaire and future president pointing me towards the lobby, our server motioned through some short curtains straight ahead.

From there, it was smooth sailing.

My dad and I walked past the seats at the sushi counter, picking a booth along the Market Street side of the restaurant. Here, sunlight spilled in and bathed much fuller menus, featuring an array of items I couldn’t wait to try.

The calamari salad isn’t fried ringlets, instead coming out as seasoned and delicious squid that didn’t make either of us the least bit squeamish. The mushi shoo mai — or steamed pork dumplings — came wrapped in cabbage leaves inside a metal container. If my dad had let me, I would’ve happily downed the

Pick of the Week Hops & Shop: Spring Fling @ Foothills Tasting Room (W-S), April 23, noon Enjoy local craft beer and food trucks while perusing the stands of more than 100 vendors selling handmade products, repurposed goods and antiques. Colony Urban Farm Store provides a spring activity where your kids plant their own seeds to take home. Mascots from the Winston-Salem Dash and Carolina Thunderbirds join. Dogs welcome.

More info at foothillsbrewing.com.

Nigiri (top) may have been the tastiest, but the maki with salmon roe and a quail egg on top is much more distinctive.

ERIC GINSBURG

I convinced my dad we should share a small bottle of the whole order on my own. inexpensive Joto sake, a cloudy junmai nigori served cold. Our I wanted to order all of the noodle dishes, ranging from server even brought a small basket with ice, treating the sake soba to udon to ramen, but I held back because we’d come like tableside champagne, and I happily took my fill. with sushi on the brain. But the roast pork and vegetable I’m not prepared to say that Asahi is the best Japanese ramen will certainly require a return trip.

We ordered a variety of individual pieces of sushi, two restaurant in Greensboro — I’m a partisan for Don, though I admittedly order Korean food there with regularity. And while apiece like Noah’s arc of seafood, including mackerel, salmon I might be a food writer, I don’t think I’m qualified to argue and lean-cut tuna nigiri (think fish pressed atop the rice inwho makes the best sushi in town, either — I’m the kind of guy stead of a roll). We also selected baked blue crab and another who’s pretty thrilled by Mizumi’s all-you-can-eat sushi option, gunkan maki roll with salmon roe and a quail egg perched on top, as well as a dragon roll with eel and avocado. though I’ve only taken advantage of it once.

But what I can say is that we Easily the most distinct, the squishy thoroughly enjoyed our dinner, both orange salmon roe (eggs) dripped satisfied with everything we ordered off the rolls with a slick texture that Visit Asahi Japanese Steakhouse from the child-sized kaisou seasoned would probably freak out conserva& Sushi Bar at 4520 W. Market St. seaweed salad to the sushi. tive eaters. The similarly gelatinous You can bet I’ll be back for the quail egg perched in the middle of the (GSO) or find it on Facebook. roe nest on top is optional, but why ramen, and maybe the nabeyaki udon with seafood. But I also want to try not go in on it? the Korean-style yakiniku beef, the scallop tempura and so The baked blue crab maki looked almost like the contents of much more of the sushi. Either way, when I return I’ll turn left a deviled egg coifed on top of the roll. It too satisfied, though and walk straight through the curtains and ask for the full maybe not as much as the tuna or salmon nigiri. The dragon menu, which includes hibachi items a la carte. roll, while tasty, proved a little less memorable, but when The only downside is that, unlike Kevin McCallister, I won’t you’re up against such colorful competition — the likes of which I rarely indulge — that’s to be expected. have my dad’s credit card.

triad-city-beat.com

“

Befriending the Bud Light crowd at Second and Green

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

Kat loves red wine, Milan Kundera, and the Shins. She wears scarves at katbodrie.com.

Up Front

You look very Zen chill right now.”

I looked up, smiling, shielding my eyes from the late Saturday afternoon sun. A broad shouldered, middle-aged man in a T-shirt stood on the pavement, taking in my bare feet propped on the pallet wood coffee table. He was friendly, much like the motorcyclists who pulled up 10 minutes after my husband and I

by Kat Bodrie snagged the good seats outside.

I don’t know what I expected from a dive like this, except I didn’t know that Second and Green in Winston-Salem would be dive-like.

After meeting the owner, John Cain, at a Triad Beverage Alliance meeting at the classy Gia restaurant in Greensboro, I’d imagined it to be a place for middle-class white women to drink glasses of wine on a vine-draped patio.

But I’m glad my expectations weren’t met, and I’m equally glad I pre-gamed at Wise Man Brewing across town so I quickly warmed to the situation. When we walked in, the crowd consisted of a few people over 40 who seemed to be on their third Bud Lights or Heavy. Neon beer signs covered the walls. The food menu offered ham-and-cheese sandwiches and hotdogs, among a few other things.

The bartender was friendly and attentive, approaching us as soon as we walked up to the bar. Although she couldn’t procure the draft list, she pointed out Bell’s Oberon ale, standard to some other restaurants in town but surprising in a place like this. Even more exciting were the two Deep River IPAs on draft, and I noticed several craft beer options in the refrigerator; a sign on the wall advertised new cans of Wicked Weed, a signature North Carolina micro option.

Second and Green’s Facebook page indicates a rotating selection of craft beer, such as Granite Falls and New Belgium. There’s also plenty of liquor, drink specials galore and a selection of decent wines like 19 Crimes.

Having chosen the two Deep River IPAs and swapping sips to try each other’s, my husband and I stumbled back into the unseasonably warm weather. I was amazed that of all the patio seating, no one had chosen the loveseats made out of stained pallet wood, which had comfy green cushions like you’d find in a home improvement store.

Echoes from the nearby Dash stadium wafted over, and the sun shone hot and high. A Tibetan gong-sounding chime softly bonged behind me at intervals, and I realized how “Zen chill” I felt before our new friend pointed it out.

Then, we heard the growling. First one, then two motorcycles pulled into the parking lot next to the outdoor seating. Eight or more total eased into a couple spaces, but like the rest of us, these people were coming to relax and have a beer.

Turns out, bikers are a fixture here. Several of them knew Visit Second and Green patrons already there, hugging at 207 N. Green St. (W-S) them and patting them on the backs. Many mentioned their or 2ngtavern.com. intention to go see the Dash play at the baseball field after their drinks. They could’ve even walked to the field if they wanted to leave their bikes.

Ultimately, Second and Green felt homey, and that comes from someone not one to like sports bars or hop on a motorcycle.

Second and Green, a sports and biker bar in downtown Winston-Salem, satisfies the craft beer crew and the light beer drinkers alike.

KAT BODRIE

17

April 19 – 25, 2017 Up Front News Opinion

T

he conductor stood at the edge of the stage in front of a line of drum sets. So far in the night’s performance, the UNCSA percussion ensemble performed more classical and academic pieces, giving director John Beck the need to explain the next piece’s title “In the Pocket” to the audience; a common term used in jazz, hip hop and funk, referencing the way a drummer’s timing fits precisely into the beat of the song with a smooth and grooving feel.

Four soloist drummers from UNCSA’s high school percussion ensemble sat down at the kits and performed Beck’s 1999 arrangement for drum set. The call-and-response piece showed the soloist’s chops on drum set and culminated with a smooth rendition of the difficult and renowned snare pattern played by drummer Steve Gadd for Paul Simon’s “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.”

The performance on April 11 at Watson Hall on UNCSA’s campus provided many graduating students in the ensemble with the opportunity to perform

Sportsball

Culture

Cover Story

CULTURE Percussionists, Dan River Girls showcase rhythm at UNCSA

by Spencer KM Brown

Triaditude Adjustment

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All Showtimes @ 9:00pm

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4/19

Burlesque & Comedy Extravaganza! @ 10pm

4/21

Hectorina / North Elementary / Dark Prophet Tongueless Monk

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4/23

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4/25

Karaoke with Michael Ray Hansen

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UNCSA’s high school percussion ensemble performs “Head Talk.”

solo pieces for an audience in preparation for senior recitals, which take place in coming weeks.

In the warm honey glow of lights that illuminated the stained wood of marimbas and congas and the polished chrome of snare drums, the evening’s performance opened with composer Lou Harrison’s “Canticle No. 3,” a piece of music written in 1941 intended to be performed by five percussionists on a variety of instruments. The performers stood stolidly with mallets and sticks in hand awaiting the conductor’s signal and with a sway of arms, Beck called the instruments to life.

In the intended absence of stringed instruments, all melodies were held down and alternated among the percussionists, and bursts of rhythm and pulsing vibrations echoed out into the hall. The members of the ensemble moved constantly between bells, woodblocks, marimbas and drums as they performed famous piece in all of its jarring and dissonant charm.

Due to the technical precision and control required of the arrangement, it would be one of the only movements of the evening that required Beck’s role as traditional conductor.

Later in the evening, just before intermission, the night’s focus of percussive music was augmented by the popular Triad bluegrass trio Dan River Girls, who accompanied soloist Brandon Judkins during a performance of flapper-era composer George Hamilton Green’s “Chromatic Foxtrot.” As Judkins stood behind the xylophone, sisters Fiona, Eilidh and Jessie Burdette cradled mandolin, fiddle and stand-up bass respectively, plucking out rhythmic melodies while the soloist showcased his talents.

The trio performed a song of their own for the next part of the performance, bringing a brief respite to the night of percussion focused compositions. And while the Dan River Girls seemed somewhat out of place for the night’s recital, the music was welcomed with a solid applause from the audience.

SPENCER KM BROWN

Shortly after a brief intermission and changing out of instruments on the stage, Beck joined two soloists as they sat with congas before them, bringing a tribal element to the evening as they drummed out Josh Gottry’s “Hands Up” along with their conductor.

Perhaps the most impressive piece performed for the night’s program was “Head Talk” by contemporary composer Mark Ford — an arrangement for percussion written in 1995 for drum company Remo in order to promote its groundbreaking new self-tuning drumheads.

Equipped only with Remo drumheads that varied in size from 22-inch bass drum heads to small 10-inch tom heads, the five performers settled into an unconducted performance.

Using sticks in addition to hands and fingers they pounded out a circling beat that resounded in the massive hall like a tribal ceremony, emanating simply from the drumheads alone.

Ford’s piece of music makes use of the heads as well as the metal rims and floors, providing a varying pulse of sound.

The performers drummed in expert execution and precise timing, culminating in an impressive moment of juggling and tossing the drumheads back and forth between them in the air, all while maintaining the beat.

Pick of the Week John Doyle & John Williams @ Van Dyke Performance Space (GSO), Friday, 8 p.m.

Wrangler’s Great American Music Series presents an evening of Irish songs with guitarist and singer John Doyle and accordion and whistles player John Williams. Doyle and Williams both have decades of experience performing traditional Irish, British Isles folk and Americana music.

More info at thevandyke.org.

J

triad-city-beat.com

CULTURE Memory and poetry bring UNCG alum back to Greensboro

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

by Joel Sronce ulie Funderburk thinks fondly of her many years in Greensboro, and it’s the summers she remembers best.

The poet lived in a bungalow in College Hill, where writers lived to her left and to her right. She could walk through the warm evenings to poetry readings, and everybody she knew would be there.

“In the summers, you could be writing and then head out on the porch and there’d be somebody to talk to, then you could head back in and write some more,” Funderburk recalled to Triad City Beat. “Everybody had dogs and grills…. We’d watch the storms together.”

Funderburk enrolled in the MFA program at UNCG only a few months after getting her undergraduate degree at UNC-Chapel Hill in 1992.

When she received her MFA in poetry a couple of years later, she had no desire to leave the Gate City.

“It was really the literary community that had my heart and imagination,” Funderburk said. “I stayed there at least another eight years.”

During that time, she became the assistant director of the MFA program, as well as the managing editor of the literary journal the Greensboro Julie Funderburk, an MFA graduate from COURTESY IMAGE COURTESY IMAGE The Door that Always Opens is Julie Review.

Funderburk’s first full-length collection of poetry — UNCG, teaches a master class in poetry at published by LSU Press in 2016.

UNCG on Saturday.

Funderburk grew up in Charlotte, where she now teaches at Queens University. The impermamemory — here a small, tasteless kernel of a lush time that Pick of the Week nence she observes in her hometown unsettles her; she’s not a has passed. person of change. All of her childhood homes have been torn On Saturday, Funderburk returns to down, and those losses turn her head Milo Writes Coming Out Party @ Greensboro. She leads a master class to Greensboro once again.

Milton Rhodes Arts Center (W-S), in poetry, part of the North Carolina “That’s something I love about Thursday, 7 p.m.

The North Carolina Writers’ Writers’ Network 2017 spring conferGreensboro — all those old houses,” Milo Writes is a collection of poetence on UNCG’s campus.

Network 2017 spring conference Funderburk said. “The wraparound ry by the late Winston-Salem poet Despite her fondness for the city, happens Saturday in the MHRA porches, the way the molding is, the Milo Wright, who passed away in she knows Greensboro won’t be old glass — they have such a power.”

March 2016. The free event includes Building and Curry Auditorium on exactly as she once knew it.

Houses are not a passing thing in book sales, readings, a photo booth UNCG’s campus. More info can be “You get busy where you are; life is Funderburk’s mind. They dominate and hors d’oeuvres. All profits from full,” Funderburk said. “Many [of my found at ncwriters.org. the pages in The Door that Always book sales benefit the arts in downfriends] have moved away, so it’s not Opens — her first full-length collectown Winston-Salem. More info on the same place.” tion of poetry — published by LSU the Facebook event page.

But she looks forward to Press in 2016. seeing current and former facIn her poems, houses sometimes represent change and ulty such as Jim Clark and Fred displacement, often in evocations from her own life.

Chappell, conference attend“Despite my best attempts, the family story of a father ees whom she knew from her building the house is autobiographical,” she revealed. “The MFA days at UNCG. father dies, the family leaves the house and the house is Plus, the city still has its destroyed…. Things change. Even the things you love change. perks.

Some of our sadness comes from that. Even the body is some“I’m so jealous of Scupthing that you leave.” pernong Books I don’t know The final poem in her full-length debut considers a similar what to do,” Funderburk said, absence, yet not one that emerges from Charlotte and her laughing. “That’s such a great childhood homes. bookstore,” she said. “There’s “No one except for those who inhabited that world with me such great literary energy in would ever know [this poem] was about Greensboro,” FunderGreensboro. I’m not sure if it’s burk said. “For me, ‘Pompeii Redux’ is about the lost civilizabecause of all the universities tion of where the poem’s speaker spent her young-adult years, or where it’s located in the and the difficulty of returning to an important place.” state… [But] I’m in awe of Near the end of “Pompeii Redux,” a line reads: “Here is a what Greensboro has.” seed of what we used to eat,” a gorgeous image to illustrate

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April 19 – 25, 2017 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Sportsball Crossword

A

s they waited for the morning’s second session to begin, a group of four boys hoisted desperate, two-handed shots from too far out at a combined accuracy of around 10 percent. In their brief, miniature game of two-on-two, no double dribbles were called, or perhaps recognized. Airballs

by Joel Sronce

abounded.

At their young age, some discipline and guidance are usually in order.

Only eight K-8 graders — six boys and two girls — took part in the second skills & drills session at the CP3 Basketball Academy on April 15. Total attendance was down from a usual turnout of 30 to 60, and lower than the day’s first session, for which 26 kids had signed up.

But on the day between Good Friday and Easter, the low number didn’t come as a surprise or concern.

The CP3 Basketball Academy — a program that promotes life skills through basketball — has only been around since December. Its namesake, Chris Paul (who wears No. 3), grew up in Winston-Salem, graduated from West Forsyth High School in 2003 and played two years at Wake Forest University before joining the NBA. The skills & drills sessions were a test drive, a chance for kids — and, of course, parents — to see if the membership and development at the CP3 Basketball Academy was for them.

Based on a curriculum called Basketball Training Systems, the program develops kids through a process that mirrors martial arts. New members of the academy receive a white shirt. After their first five weeks of sessions, the players undergo an evaluation for the chance to receive a star. After five stars — 25 weeks — players graduate to the next shirt color. In total, there are 12 shirts, 60 stars and at least 300 weeks — nearly six years — of membership and lessons.

But the evaluations demand more than basketball skills. Each week, instructors discuss a specific word or idea — such as this week’s Attitude for Gratitude — which the players then define and expound on during their evaluation.

For La-Toya Robbins, who watched her son Darius

go through the drills for the first time, basketball is a great opportunity to teach discipline.

“In basketball, you have to contemplate what you do before you do it,” Robbins said. “[Discipline] helps you make better decisions. You have to learn to think before you react.”

Michael Gaskins, the general manager at the academy, watched the action on the court, too. Though the program has only been established for a few months, he’s optimistic about its future. The encouragement comes not only from his seldom but positive encounters with Chris Paul, but from Paul’s parents.

Charles and Robin Paul attend events at the academy much more often than CP3 himself, whose season with the Los Angeles Clippers has kept him away from Winston-Salem for much of the year. (The An instructor at the CP3 Basketball Academy helps COURTESY IMAGE a young player through his drills.

Clippers are currently battling the Utah Jazz in the first round of the playoffs.) who took me on when I was 11 and taught me that way.

“When I first met Mrs. Robin Paul, she gave me a I got to give that back and be honest to it.” hug,” Gaskins said smiling. “To have such supportive Pittman began the high school session by seating people behind you — it’s incredible.” players in chairs near the hoop — a drill to focus on the Despite his workload as an NBA All-Star and as shooting motion of their upper body and arms only. president of the National Basketball Players AssociIt might not be the kind of exercise that players look ation, Chris Paul still spends time with his family in forward to most when considering basketball, but to Winston-Salem in the summers, Gaskins said. On Aug. those at the academy, drills like that one epitomize the 11-12, Paul himself will hold two sessions at the acadefocus required to develop your game. my for players of all ages — one for non-members and Even for the older participants, some discipline and one for members, respectively. If kids join in April and guidance are still in order. remain members until August, the Chris Paul lesson is free and guaranteed.

Pick of the Week After the second K-8 session ended, an elite skill-development event for high schoolers began with special Greensboro Grasshoppers vs. Augusta Greenguest instructor Josh Pittman at the helm.

Jackets @ First National Bank Field (GSO), ThursPittman was born and raised in Winston-Salem and day, 7 p.m. played basketball at UNC-Asheville from 1994 to ’98.

This game is not only Natty Greene’s Thirsty He went on to play professionally overseas, including Thursday — a night of discounted beverages (water, seasons in top divisions in Argentina, Italy, Mexico and soda and, yes, beer) — but Toga Night as well. The Venezuela. first 500 who wear a toga to the ballpark receive a For Pittman, the emphasis on life skills while teachspecialty Gamma Sigma Omega (GSO) T-shirt. More ing basketball is paramount. info at gsohoppers.com.

“It’s everything,” Pittman said. “There were two guys

PIZZERIA

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CP3 Basketball Academy brings martial arts discipline

SPORTSBALL

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CROSSWORD ‘Hm...’ — I think it’s stuck in the middle.

by Matt Jones Across

8:30 p.m. Friday, April 21st. Tickets $10.

OTHER SHOWS Open Mic 8:30 p.m. Thurs., Apr. 20th $5 tickets!

Friday Night Open Mic Anyone Can Join In! 10 p.m. Fri., Apr. 21st. $5 tickets!

Family Improv 4 p.m. Sat., Apr. 22nd. $6 Tickets!

Saturday Night Improv 8:30 p.m. & 10 pm. Sat., Apr. 22nd. $10 tickets!

Discount tickets available @ Ibcomedy.yapsody.com

2134 Lawndale Drive, Greensboro idiotboxers.com • 336-274-2699

Culture

“Mad Men” star Jon 1966 N.L. batting champ Matty Trap on the floor, slangily “Tik Tok” singer Vacation spot Annually Needs no tailoring “I Love Lucy” neighbor Zodiac creature Times to use irrigation Sax player’s item “The Mod Squad” coif Battleship call It may be sent in a blast

Friday Night Standup Presents

EricTrundy Award Winning Comedian!

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 19

Playing April 20 – 22

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Down

21 One way to crack 25 ___ out a living (just gets by) 26 IOUs 27 Hawaii hello 29 II to the V power 31 Genre for Cannibal Corpse or Morbid Angel 32 Start 33 Great value 35 Ended gradually 37 “Oh, well!”

39 Actor Oka of “Heroes” 42 Deck for a fortuneteller 43 Prefix with space or plane 46 They clear the bases 49 Island with earth ovens called ‘umus 51 Eggplant, e.g.

52 Sound from an exam cheater 53 Frenchman’s female friend 54 Decomposes 56 “Bonanza” son 57 Kroll of “Kroll Show” 58 Admonishing sounds 60 Abbr. after Shaker or Cleveland

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50 ___ ipsum (faux-Latin phrase used as placeholder text) 52 Longtime “Saturday Night Live” announcer Don 55 Epiphany 59 “Way to botch that one” 61 Elevator innovator Elisha 62 In ___ (properly placed) 63 “___, With Love” (Lulu hit sung as an Obama sendoff on “SNL”) 64 Golden goose finder 65 Trial run 66 Enclosures to eds.

67 Sorts

Up Front

1 “Listen up,” long ago 5 Allude (to) 10 1/8 of a fluid ounce 14 Perennial succulent 15 “I’d Be Surprisingly Good For You” musical 16 Certain mortgage, informally 17 Extinct New Zealand birds 18 Current host of “Late Night” 20 Far from optimal 22 Basic PC environment 23 Like lycanthropes 24 JetÈ, for one 26 Grand Coulee or Aswan, e.g.

28 “Kilroy Was Here” rock group 30 Anthony of the Red Hot Chili Peppers 34 Go off to get hitched 36 Mr. Burns’s word 38 This and that 39 Ceilings, informally 40 Past time 41 Emo band behind 2003’s “The Saddest Song” 43 “Ad ___ per aspera” 44 They may use tomatoes or mangoes 45 “Am ___ Only One” (Dierks Bentley song) 47 Jan. 1, e.g.

48 Dwarf planet that dwarfs Pluto

$3 buy-in! Up to six player teams! Winner gets CASH PRIZE!!!

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Playing April 21 – 25 Totally Rad Trivia 8:30 p.m. Tuesdays!

Answers from previous publication.

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Board Game Night 7 p.m. Friday, April 21st More than 100 board 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., Apr. 22nd TV CLUB: Better Call Saul NEW EPISODE 10 p.m. Mon., Apr. 24. Free Admission With Drink Purchase

©2017 Jonesin’ Crosswords (editor@jonesincrosswords.com)

Beer! Wine! Amazing Coffee!

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TV Club presents “Samurai Jack” New Episode!

11 p.m. Sat., Apr. 22nd.

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--OTHER EVENTS & SCREENINGS--

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April 19 – 25, 2017

West Market Street, Greensboro

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When Good Friday gets real.

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The everyman quest for McPizza

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and I ordered two personal pizzas — a bargain at $3 each — a basket of fries, and a hot fudge sundae, because it was go big or go home and we weren’t ready to buckle ourselves back in the car.

The restaurant seemed crowded for a Saturday afternoon, and more than half of the customers were eating from red-and-white checkered pizza boxes. A teenager with fluorescent-yellow ear gauges carried a tower of cardboard to his friends sitting in a corner booth. Three boys, with identical blonde curls and identical mud-caked Air Jordans, walked out with pizza boxes. A man in a faded Metallica shirt with a facial tattoo and spiderwebs COURTESY PHOTO inked on both elbows ordered… McPizza excited Jelisa enough that it warranted the Lion King treatment. actually, I have no idea what he ordered, because he caught wear. It’s an everyman kind of quest, me staring at him and I immediately started examining my one that can have an easily realized cuticles. beginning, middle and end.

When our pizza was finally ready, we chewed silently, examWe ordered a family-sized pepperoni ining it from every possible sensory angle. (or peproni, according to the receipt) “I wish it had more cheese,” my sister finally said. pizza to go, waiting another 10 minutes I nodded, my mouth full of crust. before they called our number.

“I wish we’d ordered a third pizza,” I added, halfway through “We needed one for the road,” I told my first piece. a doe-eyed worker named Virginia, a More pizza-seekers came in, waiting impatiently beside a comment which doubled as a cry for sheet of pink posterboard that said “McDonald’s has pizza!!! help. “Mmmhmm,” she said, her eyes Where are you from?” A woman in a denim jacket picked up widening. She quickly turned back to the Sharpie and added her own details. She wore a giant pin the kitchen. that said, “I’d Rather Be Anywhere Than Here,” an odd sentiThere were pizzas to make. ment for someone who’d driven from Fort Spring, W.Va. — 150 miles away — to eat at this specific McDonald’s.

Jelisa Castrodale is a freelance writer The other cities listed weren’t any more exotic than the one who lives in Winston-Salem. She enjoys we were sitting in. Carrollton, Ky., Lenore, W.Va. Cleveland. pizza, obscure power-pop records and will “We have had people from out of the country,” a longtime probably die alone. Follow her on Twitter Spencer McDonald’s employee named Stanley later told me, @gordonshumway. although he wouldn’t elaborate. “I’m not allowed to discuss that,” he said, which is the same answer he gave when I asked what kind of increase in pizza sales the restaurant had seen.

I watched another couple write their own details on the sign, adding a different southeastern West Virginian location to the list. I don’t know why any of us were there, whether it was from Canada, Kentucky or that vague “out of the country” return address. Maybe it was just to have a slice of rare but attainable nostalgia. McDonald’s Pizza has become a strangely exclusive item, although it’s available to anyone who is willing to drive to central West Virginia or southeastern Ohio. (The World’s Largest McDonald’s in Orlando, Florida also serves pizza, but it’s through a separate restaurant within the facility, so it’s not canon.) It takes time and Google Maps, but doesn’t require the luck or bank balance for, say, getting a table at Le Bernardin, scoring Hamilton tickets or finding flattering swim-

Up Front

s you approach McDonald’s Restaurant #10266, it looks like any other, anywhere in America. It has a busy double drive-thru, a full-color banner advertising a Filet-OFish special and that signature scent of French fries and despair. But as you drive closer, you see it: a yellow sign

by Jelisa Castrodale protectively shaded by a red awning that matches the red letters of the word P-I-Z-Z-A. The McDonald’s in Spencer, W.Va. is one of only two in the United States that still serves pizza and, thanks to the efforts of three twentysomething Canadians, this otherwise unassuming restaurant has become an unlikely tourist destination. Last month, Mitchell Boughner and two friends drove from London, Ontario to central W.Va. after discovering that McPizza was still A Thing at this McDonald’s, a round-trip drive of more than 1,000 miles. “Before we even left I said this was a stupid idea — but that was the whole point, right?” Boughner told me, in an interview I did for Vice.

On a recent Saturday afternoon, my sister and I had the same stupid idea, spending $12 in tolls on Interstate 77 all so we could eat $6 worth of skating rink-quality pizza. We white-knuckled our way through the last 25 miles of the trip, enduring the curves on a logic-defying two-lane that seemed to have been sketched out by MC Escher.

“It’s going to have to be pretty s***ty for me to hate it,” my sister said, tightening her grip on the door handle. “It’s still pizza.”

The road straightened out when we reached Spencer (Pop. 2,248) and we ignored the Wendy’s, the Subway Pizza — which has nothing to do with Subway-Subway — and the signs staked in the grass promoting next month’s Truck Pull. By the time we turned into the gravel parking lot, my heart was racing like I was about to buy a package of pregnancy tests, not have an unremarkable lunch. (Coincidentally, seeing me eat seems to be an ultra-effective form of contraception.)

We were both starving by the time I’d put the car in park, and nothing could kill our pizza cravings, not even seeing someone who’d stripped naked in the bathroom, a pile of clothing visible under the stall door beside her bare ankles.

Confused but undeterred, we walked to the registers.

The McDonald’s has received a recent upgrade, with a sleek, digital menu that anachronistically stares down the dining area that looks like a log cabin — albeit one that you can wipe down with a damp rag. To the left was the pizza menu, which seemed like it was installed about the time Steve Urkel spent every Friday night tugging his suspenders on your TV screen.

That would make sense, since pizza was on the menu at about 40 percent of McDonald’s locations at the same time, in the mid-1990s. And, much like Urkel, the pizza had also disappeared into the McEther by the end of the decade. It was a rare misstep for McDonald’s and, although the company has never provided an official explanation for its failure, it had a number of factors working against it, from the cost (a comparatively steep $5.99), the average time it took to prepare each pie, and the fact that the pizza boxes wouldn’t fit through many restaurants’ existing drive-thru windows.

But pizza lives on in Spencer, and in Pomeroy, Ohio, which are both owned by the same franchisee, Greg Mills. My sister

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Write for Triad City Beat Now accepting intern applications for May – August 2017 Send a resume and cover letter to jordan@triad-city-beat.com

by April 21. College grads, women, trans folks and people of color strongly encouraged to apply.