TCB July 20, 2017— Free Parking

Greensboro / Winston-Salem / High Point July 20 – 26, 2017 triad-city-beat.com

FREE

In-Correct Care PAGE 6 & 10

Sweet taboo PAGE 19

Who darted?

PAGE 20

FREE PARKING Downtown Greensboro’s best parking spaces revealed!

(Hint: They’re in parking decks)

PAGE 12

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July 20 – 26, 2017

rattle + hum

Missing Su Dragon Yu I remember a warm summer evening in 2015, when a journalist friend and I toured the wide streets of Salt Lake City snug

by Brian Clarey in the back seat of a pedicab, marveling at the raw number of bridal parties we saw gaggling outside the bars. When the kid pedaling the bike, an impossibly wholesome hipster with great hair and a fine swipe of beard, told me he worked for tips, I dropped 10 bucks in his cup and had him cruise around a bit while we finished our cigarettes.

And when I remember that night, it’s obligatory that I also think of Su Dragon Yu, downtown Greensboro’s first pedicab.

It must have been 2006 when I first encountered Su Dragon Yu, back before downtown had filled in to the extent it has today. She was a one-woman operation, pledging her services on weekend nights to ferry people from the Rhinoceros Club on Green Street around to the new ballpark or the Next Door Tavern and, occasionally, a jaunt to the Flatiron.

Her actual name escapes me — the story I wrote about her has been scrubbed

from the internet — but I remember the elaborate red dragon she had painted on the back of the yellow cab, and I remember thinking that, as a city, we had arrived.

Of course, we had not. The pedicab disappeared within a year.

I thought about Su again as I worked on this week’s cover story, which is basically a lament to the underutilized parking decks in our city. The pedicab is actually a fantastic solution to the relative sprawl that plagues downtown Greensboro, making a trip from any of the city’s parking decks to every quarter of the center city much more palatable, particularly on beautiful, warm evenings but also under blankets in the cold.

Had she stuck it out, Su might have a whole fleet of pedicabs by now, and perhaps a staff of earnest pedal-pushers like the one I encountered in Salt Lake. Su Dragon Yu could have been a fixture in downtown Greensboro by now, a threewheeled dynasty.

Maybe there weren’t enough riders.

Maybe she was under-capitalized. Maybe she lost interest. Maybe she’s driving an Uber now. I don’t know — I never got the rest of the story.

But I know we sure could use her now.

We’ll change your oil, not your radio station.

triad-city-beat.com

EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK

Automotive

894 N. Liberty Street, Winston-Salem, NC 27101

336.293.7312 • #wsnc rattleandhumautomotive.com

DWSP_Music17_TriadCityBeat_7-21-17_7-22-17.pdf

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6/21/17

11:00 AM

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QUOTE OF THE WEEK

A downtown district is not a strip mall. Understand that it is unlikely that you will find a parking space in front of the business you want to go to, or even one where you can see the storefront you plan on visiting.

DOWNTOWN JAZZ

SUMMER ON LIBERTY

F RIDAYS F ROM 6 -9 PM AT CORPENING PLAZA

SATURDAYS FROM 7-10 PM AT 6 TH & LIBERTY

JULY 21 Oli Silk (Featuring - JJ Sansaverino)

JULY 22 VAGABOND SAINTS’ SOCIETY 50TH Anniversary Summer of Love songs from ‘67 (Classic Rock)

— Advice on Brian Clarey, in the Cover, page 12

BUSINESS PUBLISHER/EXECUTIVE EDITOR Brian Clarey brian@triad-city-beat.com

PUBLISHER EMERITUS Allen Broach allen@triad-city-beat.com

EDITORIAL MANAGING EDITOR Eric Ginsburg eric@triad-city-beat.com

SENIOR EDITOR Jordan Green

1451 S. Elm-Eugene St. Box 24, Greensboro, NC 27406 Office: 336-256-9320 ART ART DIRECTOR Jorge Maturino jorge@triad-city-beat.com

SALES SALES/DIGITAL MARKETING SPECIALIST Regina Curry regina@triad-city-beat.com

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

jordan@triad-city-beat.com

EDITORIAL INTERNS Lauren Barber & Eric Hairston intern@triad-city-beat.com

Carolyn de Berry Kat Bodrie Spencer KM Brown

L’ITALIANO

Jelisa Castrodale Matt Jones Joel Sronce

Cover photography by Brian Clarey The Renaissance Plaza towers over empty parking spaces at the Bellemeade Parking Deck on a Friday evening at 6:30.

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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July 20 – 26, 2017

EVENTS Thursday, July 20 @ 8pm

Open Mic Night

Friday, July 21 @ 8pm

CITY LIFE July 20 – 26

by Eric Hairston

THURSDAY

SATURDAY

Simone Finally

Saturday, July 22 @ 8pm

Willow St.

Sunday, July 23 @ 7pm

Michael Ferr

Monday, July 24 @ 7pm

Movie Monday

602 S Elam Ave • Greensboro

(336) 698-3888

Cool Hand Luke @ Carolina Theatre (GSO), 7 p.m.

Paul Newman plays a criminal who is sentenced to two years in prison and who doesn’t play by the rules of a sadistic warden in this 1967 classic. The film also stars George Kennedy and Strother Martin. For more information, visit carolinatheatre.com.

FRIDAY

Singin’ in the Rain Jr. @ Hanesbrands Theatre (W-S), 7 p.m.

Spring Theatre presents Singin’ in the Rain Jr. The play is based on the 1952 film that takes place in Hollywood during the last days of silent film. For more information, visit rhodesartscenter.org.

88.5 WFDD @ Foothills Brewing Tasting Room (W-S), 5:30 p.m.

Guests are invited to meet the staff and radio personalities of WFDD public radio at Foothills Brewing, 3800 Kimwell Drive.

Guests who donate will receive a pint glass filled with their choice of brew. For more information, visit wfdd.org.

Beauty and the Beast @ LeBauer Park (GSO), 7 p.m.

UNCG presents a live-action screening of the Disney classic Beauty and the Beast.

Guests are invited to bring blankets and lawn chairs to enjoy pre-show entertainment.

Food will be available form Ghassan’s and Norma Food & Co. For more information, visit the Facebook event page.

4

Global Mama Trunk Show @ Ten Thousand Villages (GSO), 10 a.m.

A three-day trunk show features batik clothing and accessories from Ghana. For more information, visit tenthousandvillages.com.

Xpogo Stunt Team @ LeBauer Park (GSO), 2 p.m.

This free event features the extreme pogo stunt crew Xpogo, with high-action pogo sticks that launch them 10 feet into the air. The team has performed in more than 23 countries and holds 13 current Guinness World Records. For more information, visit the Facebook event page.

Beat the Heat 5K @ downtown Winston-Salem, 6:30 p.m.

The 5K race benefits local charities that support community health and fitness. For more information, visit runsignup.com.

Wooden Robot Tap Takeover @ JuggHeads (W-S), 5 p.m.

Wooden Robot Brewing takes over Juggheads with a selection of new brews and classic favorites. Bahtmobile Thai/Vietnamese food truck posts up from 6 to 9 p.m.

For more information, visit the Facebook event page.

Shark Week @ Greensboro Science Center (GSO), 10 a.m.

Shark Week kicks off with informational sessions about ocean conservation and how it benefits sharks and other wildlife. Guests will have the opportunity to learn how plastic water bottles can be transformed into products we use every day. For more information, visit greensboroscience.org.

Grand opening @ Traveled Farmer (GSO), 7 a.m.

The British-themed Marshall Free House re-opened as the Traveled Farmer, a farmto-fork concept, last November. The name has been on the building for eight months, but that’s not stopping the staff from holding a “grand opening.” The new menu features flavors from around the world made with local ingredients, and the event includes a variety of activities all day long featuring coffee tasting, farmer demonstrations and children’s activities. For more information, visit the Facebook event page.

triad-city-beat.com

Netflix’s ‘GLOW’

by Lauren Barber

Cover Story Culture Sportsball Crossword Shot in the Triad

stuffy, and, particularly in the women’s game, it’s having problems attracting the next generation of athletes and fans.

Giving up its old-fashioned misogyny might help.

Triaditude Adjustment

accepted golf fashion.” Also, no shorts and T-shirts. And no jeans.

But these new rules on the LPGA Tour seem directed at just a few players, and it looks an awful lot like body-shaming. There’s nothing in the men’s rules about tight slacks or form-fitting shirts, just the suggestion to be fashionable. The women seem to be targeted with the opposite directive.

It’s odd because the LPGA is the most successful and longest-running women’s professional sports league, at the forefront of the women’s game since it was founded in 1950 — back when they used to wear dresses, long skirts and Bermuda shorts on the course. Only tennis players — along with MMA fighter Ronda Rousey and NASCAR driver Danica Patrick — make more money and have more fans.

But the new dress code curtails sponsorship opportunities, a key source of any pro golfer’s income, and the type of personal branding that every professional sport, up until now, has encouraged.

Golf already has a problem with being perceived as

Opinion

by Brian Clarey

Golfer Paige Spiranac does not even play on the women’s pro tour, yet she’s become the poster child for a new set of rules governing the dress of athletes in the LPGA. That’s because Spirinac, a 24-year-old native Coloradan who helped San Diego State win the Mountain Women’s Golf Championship in 2015, is among a cadre of younger female golfers who eschew the traditional fashion of the game in favor of yoga pants, tank tops and short skirts.

And she has 1.1 million Instagram followers, more than any woman or man in pro golf, who appreciate the persona she’s crafted for herself.

The LPGA fashion police have banned leggings, unless they’re under a skirt, no skirts or shorts that don’t cover the “bottom area,” as well as racerback shirts unless they have a collar, and “plunging necklines.” And no jeans.

It’s not exactly unprecedented — golf is a game with a dress code, at least at private country clubs. And the men on the PGA Tour have a dress code to follow too, though it’s not quite as restricting: “Players shall present a neat appearance in both clothing and personal grooming.

Clothing worn by players shall be consistent with currently

News

The LPGA inches towards sharia law

Up Front

supremacist patriarchy.

The neon spandex and medley of permed tresses may Throughout, “GLOW” signal an air of disingenuousness but the body slams and is smart and self-aware thigh-high bruises on Netflix’s new series “GLOW” — an without pretention. The acronym for Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling — are real. writers’ handling of an In the mid-’80s, a man with an inheritance and a vision abortion scene should be solicited models and actresses to train as professional applauded as an example wrestlers for what became a hugely popular, syndicated of how to humanize a show called “Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling.” Last year, character and normalcreators and showrunners Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch ize an ubiquitous, safe partnered with executive producer Jenji Kohan of Weeds medical procedure rather and Orange is the New Black notoriety to fictionalize the than exploit the choice to campy, oddball series that premiered earlier this month. advance plot or mark a Allison Brie, known for roles on “Mad Men” and “tragic” woman.

“Community,” portrays Ruth Wilder, an endearing but But “GLOW” is not petulant actress and anti-hero whose friendship with necessarily a triumphant former soap star Betty Gilpin (Debbie Eagan of “Nurse oped, if not absent. feminist production; though woman-centered, incluJackie”) unravels within the series’ first 20 minutes.

That said, the writers offer viewers the substance and sive of different body types and featuring women from As 13 “unconventional” women train in an industrial ambiguity necessary for critical reflection; GLOW is a diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds, writers could gym, the somehow endearing, acrimonious former exconversation starter, and an important one. ploitation-film director Sam Sylvia (Marc Maron) Most importantly, it’s not about the male barks orders from under his cocaine-powdered gaze; it’s about exploring the ironic compassion Learn more about the original syndicate in mustache and they learn that professional wresand trust-building necessary to safely execute tling’s dependence on grandiose, pathos-driven the 2012 documentary “GLOW: The Story of the piledrivers and chokeslams, especially with one’s plots will force them to assume reductive, often enemies. This is why “GLOW” is so daring: It Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling” on Netflix.com. offensive personas in the ring. highlights the constructive power of vulnerability Despite this, the budding athletes orchestrate and women’s creativity in a traditionally masculine their own storylines and in doing so tell a grander story have lent more complexity and care to issues of race and space. about how women construct meaning and strategize veered further away from romanticizing misogyny in the This, and it’s set to an effervescent ’80s soundtrack for self-empowerment within the confines of the white workplace. Queer characters are notably underdevelwell-suited to a mid-summer binge.

5

July 20 – 26, 2017 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Sportsball Crossword Shot in the Triad Triaditude Adjustment

6

NEWS

Forsyth approves contract with Correct Care despite inmate deaths

by Jordan Green

Forsyth County commissioners approve a $13.2 million contract with a company that provides medical services for the jail despite widespread reports of inadequate healthcare and a string of inmate deaths.

Before the Forsyth County Commission approved a $13.2 million contract extension to Correct Care Solutions to provide medical care for inmates in the Forsyth County Law Enforcement Detention Center for the next three years, Commissioner Don Martin mused that the contract decision was a separate matter from two deaths that occurred in the jail in May. “The contract issue just kind of happened to come along at this point,” Martin said. “I think the issue of care of inmates, concern about the deaths that have occurred — I think all of those issues are ongoing and important.”

His colleague, Commissioner Gloria Whisenhunt, added before making the motion to renew the contract: “You know, hospitals have a death every day.

They have lawsuits every day. Any time you’re in the medical field, there’ll be deaths.”

Seated in the audience just behind Sheriff Bill Schatzman to witness the 5-2 vote was Deborah Patterson Miles, whose 40-year-old son, Stephen Antwon Patterson, died in the jail on May 26.

Another inmate, 39-year-old Deshawn Lamont Coley, died in the jail on May 2.

Miles said after the vote that she has many unanswered questions about her son’s death.

“All we heard is that he had high blood pressure when he came in [to the jail],” she said. “They said they gave him his medication. There’s no way for us to know because we have no record of it.” Miles said she has been told that her son asked to talk to a mental health counselor about depression right before he was found dead.

When the commissioners voted to renew Correct Care Solutions’ contract, Miles said her immediate reaction was that no one from the county or the healthcare company reached out to her to express condolence.

An unidentified man extends a raised fist outside the Forsyth County Law Enforcement Detention Center during a protest in June to highlight concerns about inmate healthcare.

“I feel like they could be more compassionate,” she said. “They could have called his mother. They could have called his father. That company hasn’t sent out a condolence. The sheriff hasn’t sent nothing.”

Correct Care Solutions said through a spokesperson that “it would be presumptuous and inappropriate of our company to send condolence letters to family members,” adding that federal medical privacy rules “prohibit disclosure of protected patient information, even to a family member, unless the patient has consented.”

Deaths and reports of inadequate treatment by staff employed by Correct Care Solutions in Forsyth County jail and other facilities under contract by the company have continued to pile up.

Uniece “Niecey” Fennell was the fourth person to die in Durham County Jail since 2015, according to a statement by the Inside-Outside Alliance, which

monitors conditions in the jail through outreach to inmates and their families.

Forsyth County Commissioner Fleming El-Amin, one of two members to vote against the contract, said a sticking point for him was Correct Care Solutions’ lack of cooperation in providing answers about the deaths in the Durham jail.

“I want someone to think about my son being over there or your son being over there and the kind of quality of care they should receive as a citizen of Forsyth County,” El-Amin said.

“With that in mind I can’t consciously agree to give an outfit that has 11,000 employees — they’re so large they serve Australia. They have a corporate policy that concerns me because when I asked, ‘What happened in Durham County [in response] to those two deaths?’ he at the very best gave me an inconclusive answer. If you transform a corporate entity you get more business. If you

JORDAN GREEN

become shady and don’t really tell the whole story and be transparent, then it becomes suspect to me. They’re asking for a $13-plus million contract from your tax dollars and they won’t tell us the information.”

Correct Care Solutions said through a spokesperson: “We disagree that we lack transparency when it comes to a patient’s death. We consider any death within a facility that we service to be a very significant and tragic event, and our medical personnel work closely and cooperatively with our correctional partners to understand the circumstances and address any issues that may implicate the quality of care received.”

Forsyth County Sheriff Chief Deputy Brad Stanley told Triad City Beat last month that as part of the accountability process, Correct Care Solutions is conducting investigations into the medical aspects of Patterson and Coley’s deaths.

And on July 13, Commissioner Mar-

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

maligned in the contract discussion, said Tracy Kinder, the health services administrator at the jail.

“We are committed to our patients,” Kinder said in a recent email to county commissioners. “We believe in our company and the standards that they require from us. We are passionate about providing the best possible care.

Not because it’s simply our job, but because we want our patients to get better and become responsible members of the community again. Sometimes we succeed and sometimes there are challenges. But we get up every morning and go back to work, believing that we are making a difference. Starting your day reading a story that we are failures is not helpful, and still, we show up and give everything we have.”

Commissioner Martin said the county was left with no choice but to extend the contract to Correct Care Solutions because there were no other bidders. As an alternative, Commissioner El-Amin said he would have liked to see the county extend the bidding period, or even transfer responsibility for medical services to the public health department. The public health director, Marlon Hunter, is required by state law to sign off on the medical plan for the jail.

County Manager Dudley Watts told commissioners it’s not really feasible to shift responsibility to the public health department, at least not immediately.

“At the point where we are right now, we would really be doing that in crisis planning mode, I would say, because we know we’ve got to have healthcare professionals in that facility by the expiration of this in August,” Watts said.

“My fear there is you would actually create more exposure to the prisoners just because we would be doing that in an emergency-type of arrangement.”

Commissioner Witherspoon said the contract with Correct Care Solutions reflects poorly on Forsyth County.

“What this contract does is it stains the name of the sheriff’s department,” Witherspoon said. “It makes the sheriff’s department look bad. It makes Forsyth County look bad. It makes the department of public health look bad. And it makes us as commissioners look bad. So we’re willing to sacrifice our good name just to save a couple dollars.”

Up Front

voted in favor.

Seramba said of the inmates at the jail, “I received a call from a white male citing an example of another inmate actually the other day,” Witherspoon who asked for his medication, and on said. “Said his son came into the jail in his second night started “going bonkers” perfect health — and he didn’t know in his cell, leading detention officers to who Correct Care was…. He was forcibly restrain him. dropped off, and he just died at Forsyth Seramba said the reason inmates [Medical Center]. They couldn’t even don’t receive medication is simple: He tell him why his son died. He just died observed only one nurse on staff at the in there. Never had any type of probtime of his detention, and she was too lem. So the stories we hear about what’s preoccupied with intake to make sure going on in this facility — it’s a shame.” medications were distributed.

Speaking in support of his vote to “They’re not equipped to do it beextend the contract, Commissioner cause they’re not staffed properly,” he Martin cited a recent letter from Sarah said. “Why aren’t they staffed properly?

Thomas, the company’s senior counsel, Because of money.” stating that Correct Care Solutions “has Correct Care Solutions said through never had a judgement entered against a spokesperson that it is prohibited by it in any court.” But as Triad City Beat federal law from discussing “patient-spehas reported, the company settled one cific information.” lawsuit in 2008 for $1 million without Commissioner Martin said Correct admitting fault.

Care Solution’s recent proposal indiJames Seramba, a former Army cates the company is hiring an additionmajor who served in the al pharmacy technician Panama invasion and the for the jail.

‘They’re not first Gulf War, contacted “I think that is a TCB about his experience equipped to do it positive step on Correct in the Forsyth County Care’s part to make that because they’re jail in November 2015. adjustment in their pronot staffed propSeramba was facing a posal,” he said. misdemeanor charge of The contract approved erly.’ communicating threats by the county commis– James Seramba related to a statement he sion mandates the new made about his thenhire by Sept. 1, said Ranwife during a divorce proceeding on dy Hunsucker, the business manager for Oct. 31, 2015. Anticipating that he the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office. would land in jail, he said he brought an Correct Care Solutions has made inhaler and several prescribed medicasimilar staffing changes in Guilford tions to court with him in a Ziploc bag, County, where it also holds contracts along with a printed sheet listing all his for medical services in the Greensboro medications from the Department of and High Point jails. The sheriff’s office Veterans Affairs. announced in June that Correct Care “The nurse said, ‘I have to verify Solutions was hiring an additional this,’” Seramba recalled. “I said, ‘It’s employee at each of the jails “to ensure right there.’ The doctor’s phone number that timely contact is made with the is on the prescription bottle. I asked inmate’s regular pharmacy or doctor to for my medication every morning and verify the inmate’s stated prescription every evening at meal time.” needs.”

Seramba said he was held for four Jim Secor, the police attorney for the days, and never received his medication.

Guilford County Sheriff’s office, said On the fourth day, he said he experithe change was implemented after an enced an asthma attack and wound up inmate named Ellin Schott suffered a blacking out on the holding cell floor. catastrophic health event at the jail and He was rushed to Baptist Hospital in an later died at Cone Hospital in 2015. ambulance. Seramba said his doctors Unlike in Forsyth County, Correct Care at Baptist quickly realized he needed Solutions is not contractually bound to an inhaler and confirmed his condition the staffing enhancements in the Guilwith the VA, so he could get his proper ford County facilities. medication and get stabilized.

Medical staff at the Forsyth Coun“Nobody gets their medication,” ty jail feel they have been unfairly

triad-city-beat.com

tin expressed confidence that, while information about some of the deaths is under wraps because of litigation, at some point it will become public.

“Once these issues have gone through their course — through the courts — basically all of that becomes public record,” he said. “At this point, it’s one of those things that you don’t discuss until you go through the process of litigation. That’s kind of separate from this contract issue…. I don’t think there’s any question the transparency part will occur; the question is it’s not gonna occur right now.”

Notwithstanding Martin’s assurances, Correct Care Solutions has fought efforts by the widow of Dino Vann Nixon, an inmate who died in the Forsyth County jail in 2013 as a result of withdrawal from an anti-anxiety medication, to obtain a copy of the company’s postmortem investigation.

Superior Court Judge Susan Bray issued a ruling on May 15, ordering Correct Care Solutions to turn over any materials related to internal investigations into Nixon’s death that took place prior to when his widow filed suit. The company is appealing the decision to the NC Appeals Court, arguing that the materials are “protected peer review materials” under a North Carolina statute that governs medical review committees. Correct Care Solutions said through a spokesperson that the law was “designed to promote improved patient safety and care by encouraging self-critical review by medical providers without the risk of the review materials being used against the provider in civil litigation.”

Correct Care Solutions also faces a wrongful death lawsuit from the estate of Jennifer McCormack Schuler, a pregnant woman who experienced a heart attack in the Forsyth County jail in September 2014, and died a couple days later at Baptist Hospital.

Among other accounts that have surfaced about Correct Care Solutions employees not receiving adequate care, El-Amin said he recently met with an inmate who complained that he had not received an X-ray for his back injury.

El-Amin and Everette Witherspoon, the two African-American members of the commission, were the only no votes on the contract, while the five white members, including Democrat Ted Kaplan,

7

July 20 – 26, 2017 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Sportsball Crossword Shot in the Triad Triaditude Adjustment

8

Goldie Wells appointed to fill Jamal Fox’s unexpired term in District 2

by Jordan Green

The appointment of Goldie Wells to fill Councilman Jamal Fox’s unexpired term as representative of District 2 provided a finale for a marathon session on Tuesday.

Wells is a longtime community leader in northeast Greensboro who served on council from 2005 through 2009.

Fox, who has held the seat since 2013, announced earlier in the day that he will take a new job as property and business development manager working with the parks and recreation department in Portland, Ore. on Aug. 1.

“I’m seeking the position because I care about District 2 and the citizens that live there,” Wells said. “I served on city council from 2005 to 2009, but my service to the community has never ended.”

Wells cited her leadership in getting the White Street Landfill closed prior to her service on council, and then preventing it from reopening after she left council in 2009. Later, she played an instrumental role in founding the Renaissance Community Co-op, which opened last year.

Council members unanimously supported Wells’ appointment, and no other nominations were made, although three others put their names forward as candidates.

Four candidates have filed in District 2, which comes up for election along with the other eight seats on city council. Candidates who prevail in the November election will fill a four-year term. The District 2 race has attracted four candidates so far, including Jim Kee, who served two terms between Wells and Fox; community organizer CJ Brinson; mental health counselor Tim Vincent; and real estate agent Felicia Angus. Brinson and Vincent put their names forward to fill Fox’s unexpired term, as did Mebane Ham, who said she does not plan to run in the election.

Wells did not say during her remarks on Tuesday whether she plans to run for the seat. Filing for the election closes on Friday.

During a portion of the meeting set aside for speakers from the floor, Kee expressed support for Wells’ bid to represent the district through December, when the new council is sworn

Goldie Wells, who served on Greensboro City Council from 2005 to 2009, took the oath of office at Melvin Municipal Office Building at 11 p.m. on Tuesday.

in. Mayor Nancy Vaughan said later that she placed Kee’s name on a list of people to speak later in the meeting before the agenda item to appoint Fox’s replacement. At the end of the stack for speakers from the floor, which is limited to 10 speakers for a period of 30 minutes, Vaughan said the courier informed her that she had missed Kee. “We did have one more speaker,” Vaughan said from the dais. “Mr. Kee, I assumed you were here on Item No. 68 [appointment of Fox’s replacement], but you would like to be a speaker from the floor? Welcome back.” Kee proceeded to express support for Wells’ appointment.

Brinson interpreted Kee’s inclusion in speakers from the floor as an exercise of preference by the mayor considering that five of his supporters who signed up to speak did not have the same opportunity. Outside in the lobby afterwards he said, “It’s censorship in Greensboro.

Fascism at work.”

Vaughan said later that she regretted that Brinson felt slighted, and had intended that all speakers addressing the appointment speak at the end of the meeting. Brinson and his supporters did not stick around for the appointment.

Fox holds the distinction of being the youngest person elected to Greensboro

City Council after serving as president of the Guilford County Young Democrats. He said during a break that he’s only temporarily putting his political career on hold, and envisions returning to North Carolina with his wife in a couple years to pursue political service after gaining government experience in Portland.

“The power’s with the people; that’s what makes true democracy,” Fox said during a tearful address from the dais before embracing his colleagues and taking a seat in the gallery. “That’s something I’m going to take with me on my 3,000-mile journey to Portland.”

The warm collegiality surrounding Wells’ appointment and Fox’s resignation followed a testy debate over a contract to administer medical and pharmacy benefits to city employees.

Staff recommended that the city switch providers from United Healthcare, a company with 3,500 employees in Greensboro, to Cigna. Richard Jones, a consultant with Marsh and McLennan, told council that the differential in cost savings Cigna could provide to the city and its employees comes to about $650,000 per year, compared to United Healthcare. City Attorney Tom Carruthers advised council that state

JORDAN GREEN

law does not allow the city to give preference to a local vendor in a competitive bid for services.

Executives from both companies made final pitches to council, with United Healthcare mobilizing about 20 employees wearing matching blue T-shirts to fill seats in the gallery during the vote.

In 2016, the council approved a oneyear extension of United Healthcare’s contract, and asked staff to prepare a new request for proposals after bids that year similarly indicated that Cigna could deliver the service at a lower cost to the city and employees.

Councilman Justin Outling, who represents District 3, moved to reject the new request for proposals and deny the award to Cigna.

Councilman Mike Barber, an at-large representative, said he didn’t like what he saw in the request for proposals and didn’t like what he heard from Cigna’s representative.

“The very first speaker for Cigna — it was almost adversarial,” Barber said.

“That’s not a very good start.

“I saw one set of numbers based on reality, and one set of numbers based on estimates,” he added.

Fox and District 1 Councilwoman

“The last case was the first to have a complainant speak to us,” said Tom Phillips, a member of the police community review board. “We didn’t know

what to do. They spoke to us, but we couldn’t ask questions. We would like to see that changed.”

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Up Front Culture

heard a presentation from David Sevier, a member of the human relations commission who chairs the Greensboro Ad Hoc PCRB Assessment Committee. Council members embraced the committee’s recommendation to create a Criminal Justice Advisory Committee to analyze policing trends and issue quarterly reports, but they questioned why they should retain the police community review committee, which reviews complaints against police officers.

Sevier reported there is wide dissatisfaction with the review committee, from complainants to police officers and even council members.

“I would hesitate to append a rotten process to a process with great potential,” Outling said.

Sevier responded that it’s still important to have a committee in place to review individual complaints, although he acknowledged that the process is significantly constrained by restrictions on access to police personnel records.

He said complainants view the review board as a “meaningless black hole.”

The council asked Sevier’s committee to come back with recommendations to revamp the police community review board. Among other changes sought by the human relations commission, members would like the ability to interview complainants in closed session.

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Sharon Hightower argued for awarding the contract to Cigna.

“We voted to increase pay for our employees,” Fox said. “The one issue these employees have is how much they’re paying on the plans. Why can’t we talk about saving them money?”

Hightower questioned her colleagues’ motives for blocking the contract.

“Is this about the campaign?” she asked. “If you want a campaign check — contribution — just say it…. This is kind of disturbing to me.”

Outling’s motion to reject the request for proposals passed on a 6-3 vote, with Fox and Hightower, along with at-large Councilwoman Yvonne Johnson, on the losing end.

The vote means that United Healthcare will retain the contract for now, and City Manager Jim Westmoreland will launch a new bidding process.

The council also approved a controversial annexation and rezoning request allowing developer Ken Miller to build a mixed-use development at the intersection of Lake Brandt Road and Trosper Road, across from Jesse Wharton Elementary. Dozens of neighboring residents wearing matching fluorescent yellow shirts turned out to express opposition to the project. Council previously turned down a request from the developer for a project that would be entirely commercial. Under the new proposal, attorney Marc Isaacson said a residential development would wrap around a commercial section that might potentially include a coffee shop and medical offices. The plan wouldn’t rule out a restaurant serving alcohol — a prospect that many residents find distasteful.

Hightower and at-large Councilwoman Marikay Abuzuaiter cast the only two votes in opposition to the project.

“There will be more cars,” said Barber, one of the supporters. “There will be more people because Greensboro will continue to grow. The Urban Loop is coming right through this area. That’s going to bring more development. This allows us to grow the tax base so that we can maintain the same tax rate.”

During a work session before the meeting, council voted 8 to 1, with Fox dissenting, to indefinitely suspend the police community review board, while moving forward with two cases that have already been filed.

The decision was made after council

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July 20 – 26, 2017 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Sportsball Crossword Shot in the Triad Triaditude Adjustment

10

OPINION

EDITORIAL

Bad medicine at the Forsyth jail The Forsyth County Commission’s decision to renew the county jail’s healthcare contract with Correct Care Solutions shows a remarkable lack of awareness of the facts. Even worse, it reveals a stunning lack of compassion among the five members who voted for the extension for their fellow human beings.

The vote comes on the heels of two inmate deaths in May. Their names were Stephen Antwon Patterson and Deshawn Lamont Coley.

Coley’s crime was driving while impaired. But what killed him, his family says, was his asthma. Both his wife and his mother called the jail after he had complained to them of breathing problems on a Sunday night; both were told Correct Care controlled his access to his asthma inhaler, and that he could see a doctor on Monday. Before the sun rose on Tuesday morning, he was dead.

Before Patterson and Coley, there was Ellin Schott, the subject of a Triad City Beat investigation in June 2016. She was denied access to her seizure medication over a weekend while serving in the Guilford County Jail, also a Correct Care client. She died Monday morning at 3 a.m., according to the medical examiner, from “complications of prolonged seizure activity.”

Jennifer McCormack Schuler, subject of another TCB investigation, was pregnant and addicted to pain pills when she landed herself in the Forsyth County jail. She was not allowed to bring in her Xanax, her mother said, and Correct Care was responsible for administering her Suboxone prescription, an opioid medication that contains the drug buprenorphine and is used to treat narcotic addiction. And she was denied a prescribed anti-nausea medication, which prevented her from holding down food and water, leading to dehydration. She was dead in three weeks from acute renal failure and cardiac arrest.

Dino Vann Nixon died in the Forsyth County jail in August 2013. Vann Nixon In jail, the bar is was denied access to his prescriptions for Xanax, Ambien and Vicodin, which he had prety low: All we been taking for years and had become have to do is keep dependent. He died from complications associated with benzodiazepine withdrawal. them alive.

And then there was Matthew McCain, who died under Correct Care supervision at the Durham County jail. McCain suffered from epilepsy and diabetes. He told his family he was being denied access to his meds.

Everybody is suing, which is just plain bad for business.

But more than that: When we as a society lock someone up, effectively removing their ability to take care of themselves, we are wholly responsible for the well-being of that person. And in jail, the bar is pretty low — all we have to do is keep them alive.

Since 2004, according to the federal-courts website Justia, Correct Care has been named in 1,055 lawsuits in 38 states. That didn’t come up at the Forsyth County Commission meeting, but callous indifference did.

“You know, hospitals have a death every day,” Commissioner Gloria Whisenhunt said. “They have lawsuits every day.”

But nobody withholds medicine in a hospital.

CITIZEN GREEN

Expect innocent people to be locked up In September 1991, Greg Taylor, a Greensboro native, got his Nissan Pathfinder stuck in mud on an evening when he was smoking crack with a

by Jordan Green friend. When a prostitute was found dead nearby, Taylor was an immediate suspect. He was convicted in 1993 largely on the strength of testimony from two jailhouse informants. In 2010, DNA evidence overturned Taylor’s conviction and he walked out of prison a free man. The state of North Carolina eventually paid Taylor a $4.6 million settlement.

Considering the inherent unreliability of testimony from informants who are incentivized to give false witness by to get their own sentences reduced, lawmakers should be eager to implement reforms on the use of so-called “snitch testimony” to prevent innocent people from going to prison, to ensure that the actual perpetrators of heinous crimes don’t remain on the loose and to avoid expensive settlements.

Taylor’s case is unfortunately not an anomaly.

In 15 percent of wrongful convictions overturned through DNA testing, the Innocence Project has found that “statements from people with incentives to testify — particularly incentives that are not disclosed to the jury — were critical evidence used to convict an innocent person.”

The significance of snitch testimony dramatically increases in capital cases.

A 2004 study by the Center of Wrongful Convictions that examined the cases of 111 people exonerated for crimes in which they were sentenced to death found that 51 — or 45.9 percent — were based “on the testimony of witnesses with incentives to lie.” Unreliable snitch testimony was the leading cause of wrongful convictions, followed by erroneous eyewitness testimony, false confessions and false and misleading scientific evidence.

The Innocence Project recommends a number of commonsense reforms: Requiring informant statements to be electronically recorded so that law enforcement can’t feed facts about the crime to an informant, holding a pre-trial hearing to assess the reliability and corroborate the content of informant testimony, and requiring judges to instruct juries on the longstanding fallibility of informant testimony.

The state of Texas, which established a commission in 2015 to examine exonerations and reduce the likelihood of wrongful convictions, has recently implemented some of these reforms, including requiring that police interrogations be recorded and requiring prosecutors to maintain thorough records of the jailhouse informants they use. The information includes “the nature of their testimony, the benefits they receive and their criminal history,” according to a Sunday New York Times editorial. The prosecution is then required to disclose that information to defense lawyers.

“Texas has become a national leader in criminal-justice reforms, after having long accommodated some of the worst practices and abuses in the nation,” the Times wrote.

“The state, particularly in light of past abuses, deserves credit for seeking innovative solutions to problems that have long proved resistant to change.”

What’s remarkable about Texas’ story is that in a period of acute political polarization, these reforms are being carried out by a deep red state with a Republican governor and GOP-controlled legislature.

Criminal-justice reform has not fared so well in North Carolina, with its extreme right-wing legislature and politically neutralized Democratic governor.

A bipartisan bill to rein in the use of jailhouse informants passed the House in March. It received a favorable hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee on June 20, but since then has languished in the Rules Committee.

The primary sponsors include two mountain Republicans, Reps. David Rogers and Destin Hall, along with Rep. Duane Hall, an urban Democrat from Wake County. Rep. Pricey Harrison (D-Guilford) is a co-sponsor.

The proposal to reform the use of in-custody informant statements includes five critical components: • A defendant could not be convicted of an offense or receive an aggravated sentence if the only supporting evidence was the uncorroborated testimony of an in-custody informant; • Judges would be required to instruct juries that the informant’s testimony must be scrutinized with regard to reliability, including whether they’ve received any assurance from the prosecutor of favorable treatment in exchange for their testimony;

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• All informant interviews must be recorded in a way that shows a continuous, unaltered and uninterrupted record of the interrogation; • District attorneys would be required to maintain a central file preserving records of contacts with informants; and • The state would be prohibited from destroying recordings of informant interviews until one year after the completion of all state and federal appeals of the conviction.

Why won’t Sen. President Pro Tem Phil Berger and the Republican leadership in the Senate allow this common-sense legislation to receive a hearing before the full Senate? Why won’t our elected representatives even consider the reforms that conservative lawmakers in Texas have seen fit to enact? Every day this legislation gathers dust in the Senate Rules Committee is another day that innocent North Carolinian face the risk of being locked up based on false testimony from dishonest informants trying to save their own skin.

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11

July 20 – 26, 2017

FREE PARKING

Parking in downtown Greensboro is good and getting better, so why is everybody complaining?

Cover Story

by Brian Clarey

12

Downtown Greensboro is asprawl with parking spaces, including this empty lot at the News & Record, part of a chain of surface lots on Davie Street.

BRIAN CLAREY

The Bellemeade Street Parking Deck at the corner of Bellemeade and Elm streets on the north side of downtown wears a marbled façade on the Elm Street side with art-deco lettering and slots for retail facing the sidewalk. A stylized spiral staircase of bleached concrete and aquamarine guardrails, circa 1989, climbs up the full eight stories at the northeast corner of the structure, while a daredevil exit ramp corkscrews down to ground level at the northwest, the most tempting skateboard ride in town.

It’s great because it doesn’t look like a parking garage in the strict architectural sense, but also because it is a parking deck, that most necessary and much maligned staple in any downtown district. The urban parking deck is necessary because there will never be enough on-street parking in a thriving downtown, and it is a constant issue for growing cities.

But people don’t like parking decks. They have their reasons.

A lot of people assume that there is a cost, sometimes exorbitant, for off-street parking.

Several years ago, while driving in downtown Greensboro with a friend visiting from New York City, he shrieked when I pulled into the Greene Street Deck, my go-to when I can’t find a spot.

“How much is this going to cost?” he asked.

“It’s free on nights and weekends,” I told him. “City-owned deck.”

He was visibly shocked.

Even at its highest rate, the Bellemeade deck charges just 75 cents an hour, with a free first hour and a 6 p.m. cutoff, after which parking becomes free and clear.

Others resent the dead space they make — parking decks are basically just open-air lockers for our cars — in a downtown landscape where space becomes ever more dear.. There’s a Joni Mitchell song about it, though most people would cite the Counting Crows version. For its part, the Bellemeade stands in part on what was once the site of the original O. Henry Hotel.

Still others think parking decks are dangerous, in a vague sort of sense: hostage-takings, perhaps, or gang standoffs.

And while a quick perusal of Greensboro Police Department press releases indicates that a lot of crimes do happen in parking lots — a shooting at the mall, a murder on Florida Street, a thwarted bank job on Bat-

tleground Avenue — in large part our parking decks remain crime-free, unless you count DWI. Even a recent spate of car-break-ins targeted by police happened by the tracks on the South End, away from city-owned decks, of which there are four, clustered around North Elm Street and the Friendly/Market axis, encompassing a total of 2,814 of downtown’s 7,677parking spaces.

Of those, 1,276 are in the Bellemeade, the largest deck by more than 500 spaces, almost 17 percent of the total.

The worst thing that’s happened here is the suicide in 2015 of a 62-year-old Summerfield woman. And the best thing about it is that it’s a city resource, able to ease pressure from surface parking at little or no cost to consumers, creating a boon to downtown businesses and events while at the same time allaying an often-heard complaint about the center city: There’s nowhere to park.

But really, there are plenty of places to park in downtown Greensboro, and soon there will be even more.

Most of them will be in parking decks like this one.

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D

owntown Greensboro’s greatest building may be a parking garage.

DECKS

I can see the entire northeast corner of downtown Greensboro from the eighth-floor staircase of the Bellemeade Parking Deck: wisps of hanging sculpture in Lebauer Park, the Wrangler Building and its stately lawn. Like a structure in a suburban office park, the Wrangler Building wears its parking like a skirt on the surface around it. From up here, those empty parking lots dominate the view.

Directly below and behind a fence, a lone bulldozer scrapes away the remnants of a former parking lot, the first signs of work on the Tanger Performing Arts Center since the demolition. It comes online June 2019, creating even more vehicle stress on a district that already has a baseball stadium and two downtown public parks, with a massive retail/residential complex emerging from Lindsay Street all the way to LoFi, developer Roy Carroll’s project.

Though current plans for the complex include a parking lot along the lines of the Greensboro Coliseum, which charges between $5 and $20 for

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July 20 – 26, 2017

How to park in downtown Greensboro I started working at a magazine with offices in downtown Greensboro in the spring of 2001, in the building where Center City Park now stands.

Parking was not a problem during the day: We had employee spaces behind the building. Downtown was a wasteland after 6 p.m., with just a few bars and clubs centered on the 200 and 300 blocks of South Elm. By 2004, when Natty Greene’s opened on the corner of Elm and McGee streets and plans for the ballpark were set, downtown had become a destination. I think the street meters were 25 cents an hour, free in the evenings, and the scene was nothing compared to the present day. Still, complaints about parking began in earnest.

And while the action has moved into different parts of the downtown district, the complaints have never stopped.

But it’s not hard to find a space, even at downtown’s busiest moments — if you know where to look.

Cover Story

1. A downtown district is not a strip mall. Understand that it is unlikely that

you will find a parking space in front of the business you want to go to, or even one where you can see the storefront you plan on visiting. But be optimistic: Start with your ideal space and then spiral slowly outward in all directions.

2. A two-block radius is a reasonable expectation, which is probably closer than you’d get at the Four Seasons Mall — or even the Olive Garden.

3. At peak times — weekend evenings, mostly, and anytime there is an

outdoor event like First Friday or the National Folk Festival — it is difficult to get a spot anywhere on Elm Street until you get north of Center City Park. That’s not to say it isn’t worth trying your luck. Remember rules 1 and 2.

3. Use the city-owned decks. Parking is one area where government has it all over private enterprise. The city didn’t build these decks to turn a profit; they did it so downtown can turn a profit. It’s usually free, but the most a city deck can charge per day is $7. And if you leave the deck when there is no attendant on duty, you do not have to pay.

4. If you won’t use a deck, have some lesser-known street spots in your parking repertoire. Even on the busiest evenings, I can always find a spot at the small, 20-space city lot at the Depot off Davie Street. When I have to go to city hall, I utilize a short strip of spaces on Federal Place, across the street from Blandwood Mansion. On Election Night I use the metered spots on Commerce Terrace, across the street from the old courthouse.

Lewis Street and the South End are tricky, but I can usually find something on the street in the Southside neighborhood.

5. The Downtown Greenway will change everything. My colleague Eric

Ginsburg noted a couple weeks ago that, when he was in Manhattan, walking 20 minutes was no big deal, because there was so much to look at on the street, while a 20-minute walk in downtown Greensboro seems interminable. The greenway’s pedestrian loop encircling downtown will change that by injecting walkability into downtown, creating park-and-walk opportunities from LoFi to Morehead.

14

A lone bulldozer tears up yesterday’s parking spaces to make room for the Tanger Center for the Performing Arts, due to arrive in 2019.

event parking, the Bellemeade and another city deck, the one on Church Street, factor heavily into the parking equation.

The Church Street deck, next to the Central Library and convenient to the Greensboro Cultural Center, has 417 spaces. Catty-corner from the center, another city-owned deck on Davie adds 415 parking spots.

The rest of the muscle comes from the Greene Street Parking Deck, 706 spaces on five floors, integrated into the city grid with walkways to both the Kress Terrace and Triad Stage. This one is my go-to parking deck when I’m in downtown Greensboro at night.

It went up in 1972, its outside a pebbled Romanesque structure that got an artistic makeover in 2009: tile accents on the façade and a series of cement cars, trains and other conveyances along the ground-floor retaining wall. Inside, a clever double-helix design allows for a high density of spaces, and is also the secret to finding a great spot in this deck: Go up two floors and then down one; there will always be a spot.

Like the Bellemeade deck, pricing is 75 cents an hour, and free from 6 to 9 p.m. And here’s a little inside tip from a veteran: Even though all city decks say they charge a flat $2 fee from 9 p.m. onwards, there is never anyone there to collect it — at least not in my experience. Not once.

From the top of the Greene Street Deck looking east, a sprawl of surface lots dominates the view, most of them on the News & Record property, which is also designed for an exurban office park and not downtown in one of the state’s largest cities. Davie Street itself, which runs north through this no-man’s land

BRIAN CLAREY

to LeBauer Park, consists mostly of private surface lots that push up against the backs of buildings: the ass end of downtown.

Here is where the city’s newest parking deck will be. It was announced last week after the sale of the Dixie Building on the corner of South Elm and February One — the property owners chopped off the lot behind the building and sold it to the city for $1.1 million.

An 850-space parking deck will rise over the next couple years, designed to interface with the Westin Hotel planned for the Elm Street Center across February One Place from the Dixie. The state General Assembly passed a specific law allowing for the deck to straddle February One with elevated lanes that will turn the street into a sort of tunnel.

The city’s got another deck in the works, too: a massive, 1,200-space garage at the corner of Bellemeade and Eugene streets by the ballpark. Even with the proposed new hotels — three of them — and the TPAC, the addition of more than 2,000 parking spaces to the city’s inventory is significant.

It’s significant, anyway, for those of us who use parking decks. Everybody else is welcome to try their luck on the street.

ON-STREET PARKING

There are 1,401 on-street parking spaces in downtown Greensboro, and Audrey Stephens, who has been working in the center city since 2001, may have used every one of them.

“It was never a problem [in the early 2000s],” she says now from behind the counter at the Green Bean on South Elm Street,

tant to admit where they are.

“I don’t want to give myself away,” she says.

How much parking is enough in a downtown district? Hard numbers are difficult to come by, and have to do with population density, public transportation, residents and hotel rooms, and the amount of engagement the residents and visitors have with the district and its various day parts.

Charlottesville, Va., with a smaller population and larger downtown, has about 4,000 public spaces. A parking study commissioned in 2015 suggested converting some metered spaces to a two-hour limit during the day, at a price of $2 per hour. The spaces become free after 8 p.m.

Downtown Berea, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland with a population of about 18,000, studied the parking in its 13-block downtown district in 2012, assaying its 379 on-street and 588 parking-deck spaces after 41 percent respondents in a survey said that they chose not to patronize a downtown business because they could not find parking.

Among its findings: “The downtown is not suffering from a parking deficit but from a lack of perceived ‘convenient’ parking.”

That perception is one of the biggest problems with parking in downtown Greensboro, according to my own anecdotal evidence.

I am in downtown Greensboro at least twice a week, and I always park on the street during the day, usually within a couple blocks of where I’m going but sometimes in a few lesser-known spots I’ve collected over the years (see sidebar).

Sometimes I get tickets — one so far this year. I rarely, if ever, pay for parking.

This year’s Fun Fourth Festival on the Fourth of July brought almost 80,000 people to downtown Greensboro. I got there right in the thick of it all, and because parking on the street was tight I drove directly to the Greene Street Deck which was not nearly half full, though it was free for the holiday.

Because I suspect the decks are underutilized, on Friday evening I visited all four city-owned parking decks around the peak dinner hour of 6:30. I saw more than 1,000 free, empty spaces, though the street spots all along Elm were taken.

triad-city-beat.com

where she has been working as a barista since 2011. There was no ballpark, no Center City or LeBauer Park, no slate of restaurants, breweries and bars. Downtown festivals were few and far between, and residents could be measured in the hundreds.

The downtown parking infrastructure has always taken into account the people who work in the office buildings and for larger companies with private decks and lots, but restaurant and retail workers are on their own, unless sympathetic business owners allocate some of their spots to employees. Alex Amoroso says seven of his nine spaces in the small lot off Cheesecakes by Alex generally get taken by his shift workers during the day. At night, the lot is notorious for towing cars.

Stephens says the parking situation downtown got worse before it got better: For months, she and fellow downtown retail and restaurant workers complained about the aggressive ticketing policy.

“I got a lot of tickets,” she says. “Maybe 15. But I figured it was less expensive to pay my tickets and the late fees, it was still less expensive than leasing a parking space.”

In May 2016, 58 downtown business owners along with former mayor Keith Holliday and Downtown Greensboro Inc. President Zack Matheny petitioned city council for two free hours of downtown parking in all city decks and on-street spots. They went for it.

Now, the first two hours are free in every on-street spot, with a charge from 75 cents to $1 per hour afterward. This month, the city added a phone app that allows users to pay for parking online, an effort to alleviate its outstanding parking-ticket debt, which is more than $2.7 million and goes back more than 10 years.

As in city-owned decks, the first three hours are free in surface lots like the one across from the Green Bean. That’s where Stephens parks if she can, keeping her eye on parking enforcement through the coffee shop’s picture window, often jockeying her car around the block to avoid getting ticketed.

“If you park on the street and the meter person comes by,” she says, “you have to move at least two blocks away.

“It’s better than it used to be,” she continues, though she admits she still has a few lesser-known spots where she can usually park her car, though she is reluc-

Downtown Greensboro Inc.’s parking map lays it all out succinctly.

Ever wonder what was inside the spiral at the Bellmeade deck?

COURTESY IMAGE

BRIAN CLAREY

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July 20 – 26, 2017 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Sportsball Crossword Shot in the Triad Triaditude Adjustment

16

CULTURE Forget poutine — you need carne asada fries

by Eric Ginsburg

I

’m sure it’s looked down on, in the larger food-writing world, to review a restaurant in the mall.

Shopping malls are an anachronism, culturally replaced by the trendier — and generally less corporate — versions that cropped up inside rehabbed warehouses, textile mills and the like.

Sure, I spent plenty of time in one as a kid growing up in the suburbs with no other outlet, but as soon as I had other options, I dipped.

I generally regard mall food courts as the same sort of bland nothingness you’d find in an airport. The mall has about as much cultural cache as Paula Deen; somehow they’re still around, and everybody remembers them, but we cringe a little when we think of them. Foodies and food writers, who often trade on hipsterdom despite allegedly abhorring the asthetic, would just as soon be caught wearing JNCO Jeans as eating — let alone celebrating — anything at a mall food court.

But that’s totally stupid.

In the back right corner of the third-floor food court at the almost dystopian Four Seasons Mall in Greensboro — past the Dairy Queen, Moe’s, Chick-fil-A, Subway and other (mostly horrible) chains — there’s a Latin street food restaurant.

That was not a typo.

Sofrito doesn’t advertise itself in person as an amalgam of cuisines from Latin America, but its Facebook page and official mall tab do. When I showed up the other day working off a tip from my friend Maurine, the two people behind the counter at Sofrito were Colombian and Salvadoran.

But the menu has roots across the region: ropa vieja and a Cuban pork sandwich hailing from the quasi-communist island nation, arepas and bacon-wrapped “Sonoran” hot dogs (a Mexican state along the US border).

There’s pollo guisado, a chicken stew that apparently has roots or versions around the Caribbean including Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Dominican Republic.

Patrons can order Baja fish tacos, pick between five kinds of salsa including a pink one or the house that pairs with the Colombian empanadas, build their own burrito for under $5 or even walk away with two hot dogs, fries and a drink for a five spot.

Latin street food at the mall: fried plantains and the vaunted carne asada fries from Sofrito.

ERIC GINSBURG

When I tried the pozole rojo — a red soup with chickpeas as well as Cuban Miami restaurant in Winston-Salem, and the and meat — at Mi Casita farther west on Gate City Boulevard Puerto Rican Empanadas Boriquen food truck in Greensboro. recently, it was the first time I could remember seeing it on But what made this special was the sofrito — the restaurant’s a menu at a Mexican or Latin restaurant in the Triad. But it’s namesake and a common green sauce generally made with available at Sofrito too, handwritten at the bottom of the tomatoes, onion, garlic, peppers and cilantro. Sam spread venue’s alternating menu. some of the sofrito on one of his tostones, added a scoop of What’s more, my friend who told me about this place is beef and chopped tomato, and passed it my way. actually vegan. She ordered the $5 veggie plate with fried Despite Maurine’s recommendation, Sam and I both set our plantains (delicious), broccoli, zucchini, onions, rice and black expectations low. Again, we were at the mall, where we could beans, and has insisted twice since that I check the restaurant see candy machines that looked like they hadn’t been touched out. since we hit puberty and where Eagle-Eye Cherry’s 1997 hit When I did, I couldn’t ignore the incredibly cheap smaller “Save Tonight” actually played across the complex’s speakers items, swinging for the plantains and a chicken empanada. I while we walked out. What could honestly come from such an almost ordered the veggie plate, but figured I could predict its experience? contents easily enough and decided to follow my heart.

But we agreed: Sofrito is filling an important and generally When the Styrofoam takeout box of carne asada fries aroverlooked niche in the market, a hole that exists in the city rived, with a creamy greenish sauce drizzled atop the beef and generally and not just at the food court, and doing a bang-up a sprinkle of onion and tomato, I realized that I could probably job, too. I wouldn’t put it above Greensboro’s Taste of Cuba, never go back to the Canadian cheese but Sofrito can hold its own with plenty curd-covered fries known as poutine. of restaurants in the region, surpassing And I’m totally cool with that. the Salvadoran and Mexican food at El Visit Sofrito Latin Street The carne asada fries were heavy, and Migueleno in Greensboro and remaining Food on the third floor of the about as far from the limited vegan opon par with Winston-Salem’s Mambo tions as I could go. But they were deeply Café, where diners can enjoy Honduran Four Seasons Mall at 154-4 satisfying, the kind of thing that I’d feel food, among other options.

Seasons Town Center Ent. at home eating at a baseball stadium.

I am not about to start hanging out at (GSO) or find it on Facebook.

A fork is required — this is the mall, yes, the mall. But if I’m feeling gluttonous or but I still have some decency — and as nostalgic, the carne asada fries and the I stabbed at the $6 entrée, I wondered Penny Hardaway T-shirt at a sports store how much better these fries would taste from a street cart we passed may be enough to pull me back in. Sofrito is not outside a bar at 2 a.m. only good enough to require a stop for anyone who plans to be My friend Sam, who tagged along, picked the tostones, and at the mall — it warrants a trip all its own.

I’m glad he did. The mashed and fried green plantain cakes If you’re a true foodie or just genuinely miss the ’90s, the tasted much as they did at the Dominican Mangu Bar & Grill experience is a must.

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orrest Gump can add beer to the list of things you can do with shrimp.

And cucumber.

On July 14, six Triad breweries competed to win the Ultimate Triad

by Kat Bodrie Brewing Championship, a collaboration between Triad Brewers’ Alliance and Downtown Greensboro Inc., and one of the pre-game events for the Summertime Brews Festival on July 15.

The catch: Brewers had to add cucumber to whatever style of beer they made.

It’s actually not as weird as it sounds. The cuke-y taste complemented the sweltering heat as competition ticket holders hung out in a special VIP area behind the light-bedecked Bearded Goat patio in downtown Greensboro. Armed with a tiny plastic mug and a wooden token for voting, each participant blind-tasted the beers, numbered 1 through 6, in whichever order they chose, and cast their vote in the corresponding glass jar.

Paul Cooley, who bartends at Horigan’s House of Taps and Boxcar Bar + Arcade, said of the first beer, “It was a daring move to make a gose.”

I knew it was a sour beer of some kind, but it smelled like bread and tasted like sour pickles.

I was surprised to find I didn’t always know the style of beer I was trying, and I never would’ve guessed that beer No. 1 had shrimp in it.

The portion of Lewis Street next to Bearded Goat and the 107.5 WKZL headquarters had been cordoned off for the Summertime Brews Festival pre-game party. Local food trucks Ghassan’s and Sweet Basil’s served hungry customers, easy-lisCold cuke beer complements sweltering heat last KAT BODRIE tening rock bands played onstage, and several Friday during the Summertime Brews Festival pre-game event.

Triad breweries sold beer under tents.

A little after 9 p.m., a representative of the Triersville Brewing — among other members of the Triad ad Brewers’ Alliance announced the First Place result Brewers’ Alliance. This was the first annual championfor the Ultimate Triad Brewing Championship: Preyer ship, though, so next year, I hope to see more competiBrewing’s You Can Do a Lot of Things with Shrimp: A tors, more beer styles and even more VIP ticket holders Bubba Gose, made with cucumber, dried shrimp and I can swap guesses with. grapefruit.

Natty Greene’s also made a gose, but only with Kat loves red wine, Milan Kundera, and the Shins. She cucumber. wears scarves at katbodrie.com.

Saison turned out to be the more popular style.

Wise Man used their Thousand Chords grisette as a base, and Four Saints their farmhouse saison. Brewer Todd Isbell of Liberty Brewing made a cucumber-mint Pick of the Week saison, which may still be on tap at the brewpub unless the keg has already kicked.

Food truck beer dinner @ Foothills Brewing TastGibb’s Hundred added cukes to its Monkey Sphere ing Room (W-S), July 24, 6:30 p.m.

IPA, which had a distinctive and refreshing cucumber This event includes a four-course food-truck meal flavor. paired with craft beers. Chef Jeremy Clayman and Missing from the event were big leaguers Foothills his food truck StrEat Provison provide the grub. For and Red Oak, as well as Small Batch, Hoots and Kernmore information, visit the Facebook event page.

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Preyer Brewing wins cucumber beer contest

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July 20 – 26, 2017 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Sportsball Crossword

CULTURE The Harmaleighs bring night of folk to the Triad

by Spencer KM Brown

I

t’s the dream of numerous bands and musicians: Load up the van, sell off all of unneeded possessions and travel the country playing music.

It’s that initial lunge into the unknown, grueling world of music that can prove a band’s resilience and carve out its place in the world.

Many bands have done it, some succeeded, some disbanded because of it, but the bonds made with bandmates while touring is something greater perhaps. You could sense this close bond almost immediately as the Tennessee-based duo the Harmaleighs took the stage.

Comprised of lead vocalist and guitarist Haley Grant and Kaylee Jasperson on bass and backing vocals, the band took the stage at Muddy Creek Music Hall on July 15, with lead guitarist Myles Baker joining them. And while the usual setup was present — musicians on the stage, the bright lights, amps and instruments in hand — there was a certain connection between Grant and Jasperson that reaches beyond usual bandmates.

Touring to support their latest album Hiraeath, the duo were all smiles as they stood side by side, and as they plucked into their set a veil was lifted; a deep yearning, almost spiritual, took control, guiding the inspired melodies.

Grant’s voice contains and a striking dichotomy, one of gentle airiness, yet powerfully driven all at once. With a style similar to Gillian Welch and Mountain Man, the Harmaleighs’ neatly crafted songs lifted the room into a sphere of nearly hypnotic melodies, both soothing and inspiring. The rhythms were held down and led by Jasperson on bass, with Baker’s ambient

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Eastern Festival Orchestra @ Guilford College (GSO), Saturday, 8 p.m.

Violinist Anne Akiko Meyers performs the world premiere of Samuel Jones’ violin concerto with the Eastern Festival Orchestra at Dana Auditorium as part of the Eastern Music Festival. The orchestra is comprised of dedicated young musicians ages 14-23. For more information, visit easternmusicfestival.org.

The Harmaleighs serenade Triad, before finishing last leg of US tour

guitar adding yet another layer to the simple songs that calls to mind the guitar work of Mark Knopfler.

But while the songs off Hiraeath are well crafted and remain on a familiar plane of folk and indie music, it was the group’s harmonies that were truly remarkable. Well rehearsed and flowing forth naturally, Grant and Jasperson’s voices blended together in melodies that commanded the crowd’s attention.

Between songs, Grant and Jasperson took turns telling stories from their traveling days, family life and charming stage banter. And what appeared to be two women playing simple songs for an excited crowd shifted into something a little deeper.

“In 2015, we decided to sell all of our possessions,” Jasperson told the crowd. “We were just in a rut, so to speak, and decided we would live out of the van and travel all around the country.”

The duo hit the road, playing dozens of shows across the United States. The experiences shared while living together in close quarters became the foundation on which the band was created.

“We were living the dream,” Grant said. “We were playing music, and traveling and it was wonderful for about six months. That’s when we sort of got burnt out and that lost feeling came back.”

It was about this time that they came across the Welsh word hiraeath, which translates to a longing for a home that doesn’t exist.

SPENCER KM BROWN

“It was a restlessness we both felt and we had to go and search for an answer,” Jasperson said.

Through the search, the duo entered into the difficult and trying moments of being a touring band. And after a few years, they have created an album that encapsulated the longing, though came to realize the grueling times of life on the road. With a music video to promote the album’s single “Birds of a Feather,” the duo has been on tour nearly non-stop, playing shows that span the country, from small house parties, to large festivals.

While the group’s dynamic is solid and familial, the music itself tends to fall short. Retracing the familiar territory of songwriting and the sound they have mastered, the only disappointing part of the show was the immediate recall of several other bands whose sound they derive from. While there is originality in both performance and song structure, there was something very affected in their setlist, something that made you feel like you’ve heard these songs many times before.

But while the Harmaleighs’ songs might touch on areas of music which have been well trekked before, it is the poetry of their lyrics that set them apart. With words like, “I scream your name, is this a game, loving me when you want to feel sane / Let me go, get off your throne, you only call me when you are alone,” the duo take popular themes such as love and relationships, yet turn them on their head, delivering them with a sweetness of voice that is enough to bring change and inspiration to any listener.

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t’s not often that a work of art can strike up a chat with Normalizing the its viewer, but onlookers experienced just that at Greenstaboo was an obvious boro’s Corner Bar on a recent Friday evening as five theme throughout the renowned body painters showcased their skills. night.

“These paintings can engage you soul to soul,” Scott Fray, In the bar’s gravel with his wife Madelyn Greco the reigning world champions of parking lot, Mitch Cook, body-painting. “They can converse with you… in a way that no a Corner Bar patron flat piece of canvas could do. There’s a built-in level of exciteinvolved with the Center ment of excitement and energy.” for Visual Artists, setWhen Corner Bar’s owner Kenny Giard saw an event that tled into his ritual: He model Taylor Ridge organized, he reached out with the idea of plugged in his headtying in local arts with the “art” of brewing for Brewfest, part phones, cranked Keys of Triad Craft Brew Week.

N Krates’ “I Just Can’t Trish Sawyer, sales manager for the Greensboro-based FreeDeny” and danced as he dom Beverage Company, partnered with Ridge and Giard. let his intuition guide “I love to save the animals but everybody does politically his spray can. correct and carbon-copied events,” Sawyer said. “I want to Over the course of always think outside the box.” three hours, as people Brewing companies sponsored the body-painters and munched chicken sandmodels and cover fees benefitted Center for Visual Artists, a wiches from the Cluck nonprofit in the Greensboro Cultural Center that supports Truck, Cook embellished emerging artists through education, exhibits and outreach. a purple backdrop with Fray said the July 14 event was aimed at inspiring regional playful arcs and polka interest in “this most living of art forms.” dots of orange and sky “People are very surprised that something so different, blue with bold, supervibrant and interesting and cutting-edge can happen here in imposed red and black LAUREN BARBER Event organizer Taylor Ridge models Tiffany Beckler’s body essentially a middle-size town in the South,” Fray said. “The letters: “CB,” a nod to painting work at the Corner Bar Friday night. bleeding edge of body-painting is not happening in New York, locals’ nickname for San Francisco or Los Angeles; it is happening in Greensboro, Corner Bar. North Carolina.”

To Cook’s right, Brian Lewis, aka JEKS, brought Heretic BrewBefore the event Greco fashioned headpieces representing ing Company’s sneering devil logo to life.

SPREADING JOY the five brewing companies, but on Friday night she spent her To Cook’s left, Jeff Beck, a graphic designer-turned-street ONE PINT AT A TIME evening painting an eerie, two-headed creature from Weyerartist and co-owner of Urban Grinders coffee shop, drew inspibacher’s Double IPA, the company’s Brunacorn and their sly ration from Freedom Beverage’s simple logo: 13 stars reprejoker logo on model Brandy Valentine. senting the United States’ 13 original colonies. Implementing Tiffany Beckler, previously a “Skin Wars” competitor, drew both spray paint and brushes, Beck fashioned graffiti-style inspiration from Moonlight Meadery as she painted an owl on letters spelling “beer.” The letters resembled beer glasses Ridge’s right thigh. Whereas a less seasoned artist might fill — complete with overflowing foam — against a blue, starry considerable surface area with solid black paint, Beckler pulled background. off a dreamy landscape featuring a wolf’s Each piece was subsequently displayed at stoic visage on Ridge’s chest and leafless Brewfest, then auctioned. tree branches reaching toward her collar“Best thing about this [event] is I always Learn more about the bones. like to try to paint with another person…

Center for Visual Artists “When I started body-painting in 2006, [and] I love painting with JEKS,” Cook said. at greensboroart.org. we were underground and… I was grasping “He has an old-school background and I’m Monday Geeks Who Drink Pub Quiz 7:30 at straws to find other people,” Beckler said. a new-school kind of guy so I learn a lot of “Now we have television shows like ‘Skin techniques and styles and he learns from Tuesday Live music with Piedmont Old Wars’ and ‘Face Off.’ It’s growing.” me. The synergy is always there. It’s the same with Jeff; he’s Time Society Old Time music and Yet, Beckler and Craven both said one of the biggest hurdles doing things that are different from everybody else around Bluegrass 7:30 for the niche is the hypersexualization and shaming of womhere.”

Wednesday Live music with J Timber and en’s bodies.

Joel Henry with special guests 8:30 “In America, it’s still very taboo,” Craven said. “There’s Pick of the Week a message of, ‘Your body is nasty and dirty and you should Thursday Joymongers Band aka Levon Zevon aka Average Height Band always have it covered.’”

8:30pm The End of Evangelion @ Geeksboro Coffee (GSO), Satur“Body painting isn’t pornography,” Beckler added. “A lot of day, 1 p.m. people have the mindset that it’s for sexual satisfaction…[but] Friday, Saturday, Sunday BEER Geeksboro celebrates the 20th anniversary of the anime when they come watch the process, they have a realization; film The End of Evangelion with an early-afternoon screenthey see it does take six or seven hours to create, and they joymongers.com | 336-763-5255 ing. For more information, visit the Facebook event page. appreciate it as an art form more.”

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CULTURE Corner Bar embraces the taboo

by Lauren Barber

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July 20 – 26, 2017 Up Front News Opinion Cover Story Culture Sportsball

SPORTSBALL

Geometry and precision govern decades of darts

K

risten King could win it in one throw. From a distance of just under 8 feet she needed to hit a short red arc only a few centimeters wide. She had three attempts to end the game, but then so did her opponent, Jennifer Hill.

by Joel Sronce In the Ladies’ Singles 501 Final at the Piedmont Dart Association Championships on July 15, both contestants began with 501 points. Each successful hit knocked the corresponding points from a player’s total, and the first to reach 0 — exactly 0 — would win.

But 501 is a double-out game; players could only emerge victorious through a direct hit into the thin doubles track that rings a dart board’s wedges.

King had narrowed her score to 40 points. She aimed for the small stripe designating double 20 at the crest of the board, ready to end the game with one of her three throws.

The Piedmont Dart Association — a member of the JOEL SRONCE North Carolina Dart Organization — was formed in Members of the Piedmont Dart Association face off in the 501 finals.

1978 to organize and promote darts around the Triad.

According to current association President Brian Lee, at the board, intentionally but effortlessly. Bullseye: “The hypotenuse is the true distance,” Lee said. the group draws members within an approximate 25She’d start the next round. Best two out of three.

“Many of the floors can be uneven.” mile radius from Colfax — an area that reaches LewisOn a pool table in the middle of all the action, Coley The sport’s short channel of play validates the ville to the west, Lexington to the south, Burlington to had set out 12 trophies for the winners of all the singame’s precise geometry, but surprisingly the players’ the east and envelopes the Triad cities in between. gles and doubles events. Beside the awards, Coley laid approaches to their release vary.

The July 15 contest at Players Sportsbar & Billiards out dozens of sheets of paper with the results of each “Every single person up there has a different in Greensboro marked the association’s 32nd Chamchampionship over the past years. stance,” Coley said. “Some people like to have both pionships. Yet unlike their league-play — a 27-team, “I put these out each year just so people can come feet straight, but most stand with their [favored] foot 16-week season across four skill levels — the champilook and say, ‘Where does my name appear first?’” forward.” onships were a separate event that actually involved Coley explained.

Coley discussed how different throwers place their less pressure and competition.

In the earliest recorded results — January 11, 1986 feet, the importance of balance, the “Today you get mostly bragging — the winners of the Ladies’ Doubles 501 Final were angle of the front foot to the throwrights,” said Nancy Coley, who has Karen Kirk and her partner, Nancy Coley. ing line, the tilt of the back foot, and To find out more been a member of the dart associahow some players shift completely about the Piedmont tion since 1981. after each release.

Miss. Miss. Miss. All of King’s shots “There is no right and wrong,” Coley Dart Association, visit hit just barely too high, lost to the said. piedmontdarts.org. black vacancy that rims the board.

King returned to the throwing line.

Hill stepped up, sporting a score of Her first throw missed high, but her 30 points. She aimed for the double 15. second hit the double 1 — the notch beside the double Miss. Miss. Her first two attempts pricked wide into 20 — bringing her score to 38. She now re-aimed for the black void. But her third throw landed in the 2 — the double 19, but hit its neighbor, 7, to the left. She the slice of circle just below the 15. Hill ended her turn ended the round at 31 points. with 28 points remaining.

“Part of this game is messing yourself up,” Lee whisEleven boards hang on the walls of Players, a weathpered. “ Now [she can’t win] in one throw.” ered sportsbar that ends a short row of businesses on For the members of the dart association, the game West Market Street. Though the sight of dart boards fulfills a social desire for community and camaraderie Pick of the Week mounted on barroom walls might not often demand more than anything else. But there are a couple other much consideration, their positions must be precise for aspects that keep them coming back.

Yong-In Presidential Cup Tournament @ Han’s serious dart competitions.

“As soon as you throw a dart that goes exactly White Tiger Tae Kwon Do (GSO), Saturday, 7 a.m.

The standard US rules require the bullseye to sit where you wanted it to, you want to do it again,” Coley Students compete in forms, board breaking and exactly 5-feet-8-inches above the floor and 7-feet-9¼theorized. sparring in the eighth annual tae kwon do compeinches from the throw line. But Lee explained that it’s Hill stepped back up and hit the double 14 with her tition. The tournament also includes a demonstrathe diagonal measurement — 9-feet-7½-inches from first throw, bringing her score to exactly 0. The first tion team competition. For more information, visit the bullseye to the front of the floor’s throw line — round was over. the Facebook event page. that really matters.

King then returned to the line and whipped a throw

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CROSSWORD ‘It’s PAT’ some pat answers, yes.

by Matt Jones

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Culture

Across 1 Chicken ___ (Italian dish, informally) 5 TV logician 10 Blot 14 Hairy twin of the Bible 15 Fluorescent bulb gas 16 ___ cosa (Spanish “something else”) 17 French term for a temporary residence 19 Algerian setting for Camus’s “The Plague” 20 Did some pranking 22 One-named ‘50s-’60s teen idol 25 Shelley’s elegy for Keats 26 Castaway’s refuge, perhaps 27 Fix eggs, maybe 29 Running count 30 Cross-shaped Greek letter 31 Diva’s rendition 33 “___ Ho” (“Slumdog Millionaire” ©2017 Jonesin’ Crosswords (editor@jonesincrosswords.com) song) 34 Duo behind the CW series “Fool Us” 39 Giants giant Mel 40 Brand in the pet aisle 41 Bigwig 43 Handled 46 Tar clump 47 John who once co-hosted “Entertainment Tonight” 48 First Lady and diplomat Roosevelt 50 Got to the point?

52 With 56-Across, low-budget programming source 55 “It seems to me,” online 56 See 52-Across 60 Has ___ with (is connected) 61 Without ___ in the world Answers from previous publication.

62 Golden State sch.

63 Construction area 31 Sagrada Familia architect Gaudi 64 “Death of a Salesman” protagonist 32 Splinter, for one 65 Marshmallow Easter treat 33 Leader of the Holograms, on Saturday morning TV Down 35 Like horror movie characters, as they eventually 1 Rally feature find out 2 “___ told you before ...”

36 Running account 3 “Insecure” star Issa ___ 37 Opening for Quest or glades 4 Kid’s dirty “dessert” 38 Shine’s partner?

5 “Damn Yankees” villain, really 42 Dissertation writer’s goal 6 Gazelles, to cheetahs 43 Tintype tints 7 Fairy tale baddie (unless it’s Shrek) 44 Homecoming attendees 8 “Marat/Sade” character Charlotte 45 Visit to an Internet page, informally 9 Work out some knots 46 ___-Roman wrestling (var.)

10 Symbol of deadness 47 Game show question that determines which 11 Like some fibrillation team plays 12 Thymine (T) : DNA :: ___ (U) : RNA 49 Using half as many digits as hexadecimal 13 Graffiti artist who opened (and closed) 50 Most common throw with two dice (D6es, for Dismaland in 2015 those of you playing at home) 18 Words between “chicken” and “king” 51 TV show that took in Ted Danson 21 Wrecks 53 Seafood in a shell 22 Qualified 54 “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” star Michael 23 “The faster the better” 57 0∞F phenomenon 24 “Kind of ___” (classic Miles Davis album) 58 Torero’s encouragement 27 Stereotypical last word of art films 59 Quick snooze 28 “This American Life” medium

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Can we stop with this #GoodwillDateNight thing?

Cover Story Culture Sportsball Crossword

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

they all slummed it in last season’s shrouds. (Jesus does love a Bloomin’ Onion.)

Yes, the Pauleys are outspoken Christians whose blog header says they’ve been “called to follow Jesus,” and apparently He only shops at the Gap. “John the Baptist wore camel hair and probably got the same weird looks that these kids got,” Howell said. “But he wasn’t wearing it ironically. It was a sign of being separated from high society and a sign of poverty. He was showing his solidarity and prophetic witness. That’s a very different approach.”

Again, my religious beliefs are limited to the Eternal Church of David Bowie, but even I understand the disconnect between their #GoodwillDateNight and all of those neatly typed New Testament allegories.

If you’ve seen the Pauleys’ posts and want to have a date night that involves secondhand clothes, maybe you could volunteer at a local clothing closet and meet some of the real people who benefit from those services in your community. Or if you feel like you know a thing or two about fashion, then maybe challenge yourselves to pick four or five items out of each other’s closets to donate, possibly to one of the organizations that provide clothing to those who need something nice to wear for their job interviews. (Surprisingly, Noel Pauley’s Facebook page has a section where she’s selling some of her old clothes, and that sound you just heard was both of my eyeballs ricocheting off the back of my own skull). If you want to enjoy dinner together, the two of you can help serve a meal at a homeless shelter. It seems like volunteering to help those who are less fortunate would feel better than chewing a chain-restaurant steak and spending two hours pretending to be “pitiful.”

You might not go viral — and you’re not going to have a cutesy hashtag — but you’ll be better for it. And people like me can get back to writing about that new bookstore and our own overgrown eyebrows. You’re welcome.

News

out, which couldn’t have been more insensitive if she’d just written “Someone might’ve mistaken us for one of the poors!” LOL, LOL, LOL, amirite?!

“It just seems like, to do this, you’ve never had your options so limited that you could only shop at Goodwill,” Sarah Howell, the associate minister of worship and missions at Centenary United Methodist, told me. “They can’t relate to people who are seen by and ridiculed by broader society, because they can change out of those outfits when they get home. Other people have external markers of their poverty and their social status that they can’t just take off.”

In one of the previous paragraphs, Pauley said that people “snickered” at them as they walked into the restaurant and, although some of the other diners might’ve glanced toward their table between bites of overcooked calamari, “NO ONE said a word to us about our outfits.” That clearly says more about the other Longhorn customers than it says about the Pauleys themselves — and it also sort of implies that if Noel and Shane saw a couple wearing similarly unfashionable or outdated outfits, they’d lock eyes, lean across the smudged wooden table and say something like, “Well somebody had a big day at Goodwill.”

What the Pauleys don’t seem to understand is that a lot of people do the Goodwill Challenge every day, without the hashtags or the smug sense of superiority.

Their LIVES are an effing Goodwill challenge — and it’s not for laughs, to entertain each other, or a cute idea for going viral on the internet.

According to the 2015 US Census, there are some 43.1 million Americans who live below the poverty line, millions of people whose lives involve trying to find something for themselves or for their kids to wear for 10 bucks — the equivalent of 90 minutes worth of minimum wage work — and they aren’t stopping for steaks on their way home either.

“We only have a great marriage because we put our relationship with Jesus Christ first and let Him tell us how to live and love,” Pauley wrote as a disclaimer at the end of her blog post. Oh, right. I’ve skipped Sunday School since about 1992, but I totally remember that time Jesus and the disciples went to Outback while

Up Front

here were so many things I could’ve written about this week, like the fantastic new Bookmarks bookstore in downtown Winston-Salem or about the woman at Sephora who asked if I was there “to do something

by Jelisa Castrodale about my eyebrows” (I was not) or about how much profanity one can use when your upstairs neighbor aggressively vacuums before breakfast. (REALLY, TODD? REALLY?!)

But then I saw a Facebook post from Noel and Shane Pauley, a Georgia couple who have gone viral because of their dopey hashtagged date night, one that made me raise one of my massive, tangled eyebrows and shout “Really?” for the first time since the dude upstairs stopped Dyson-ing each individual carpet fiber.

Last Friday, the Pauleys posted a picture of themselves grinning in front of their local Goodwill after deciding that they’d do something “hysterical” — Noel’s word — and buy clothes for each other in the store.

The couple said they’d each spend $10 bucks, then go out in public in their new outfits and “act like it was completely normal!” After they selected each other’s casual separates, they went to Longhorn Steakhouse and probably both ripped their rotator cuffs trying to pat themselves on the back, because OMG THEY WOULDN’T EVER REALLY BUY CLOTHING AT GOODWILL, THAT’S THE JOKE! I’m not one of the 290,000 people who gave them a virtual thumbs up on Facebook, because I don’t think this is cute or clever or adorable. Their toothy selfies should be distributed as a cautionary tale for what white privilege looks like: It’s playing dress-up in second-hand clothes before you cut into a ribeye, giggling to yourself about how you’d never really wear something like that, and there’s no way you’d ever reduce yourself to wearing someone else’s hand-me-downs, ugh!

“We were hoping someone might think we were pitiful and buy our dinner, but no such luck,” Noel commented on her own blog post about their night

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