INDY Week 1.1.20

RALEIGH January 1, 2020

Explore the Triangle’s fantastic future of driverless cars, education innovations, progressive politics, gondolas, and joy—or our dystopian hellscape of sprawl, congestion, gentrification, and misery.

2040 vision

To welcome the new decade, we look 20 years ahead. P.5

(In the end, the nanobots win.)

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WHAT WE LEARNED THIS WEEK DURHAM • CHAPEL HILL VOL. 37 NO. 1

DEPARTMENTS

5 Twenty years ago, we were all freaking out about Y2K.

5 2040 Vision

7 Three of North Carolina’s one hundred counties accounted for half of its growth from 2010 to 2015.

27 What to Do This Week 29 Music Calendar

13 Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin says you’ll be able to get to downtown Raleigh from Dix Park by gondola.

31 Arts & Culture Calendar

15 What Durham looks like will have a lot to do with how the African-American community cultivates its own garden.

19 God help us all if McClatchy goes bankrupt and a hedge fund buys the N&O. 24 Local artists want Durham to invest more than $1 million in the arts. How the city responds will say a lot about the local art scene’s trajectory.

25 In twenty years, meat will be illegal.

26 Pretty soon, a misanthropic terrorist will be able to wipe out humanity within a few weeks.

Happy New Year!

Superchunk performs on Friday as part of the Cat’s Cradle fifty-year celebration. PHOTO COURTESY OF MERGE RECORDS

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Will the Triangle be better off two decades from now?

y Apple Watch beeps—a coworker on Slack, pointing me to a politician who has set up his own smartphone app.

A few minutes later, it buzzes, telling der anchard me to stand up; I’ve been sitting too long. Another buzz—a Washington Post push notification informing me that President Donald Trump said something te 200 outrageous on Twitter, followed by a reminder to practice mindfulness by 5 breathing; it seems my resting heart rate is too high.

Imagine writing any of that twenty years ago. eek.com Then imagine what we’ll write twenty years from now week.com that would make no sense today.

1972 I’ve been thinking about the future lately. Not flying cars or spaceships, utopias or dystopias, but, in practical terms, what the next two, three, four decades will look like. Think e about how the world has changed since 2000: We entered the twenty-first century worried about Y2K. We got 9/11, then Afghanistan and Iraq, then a global financial crisis, then Obamacare, then gay marriage, then Trump. The planet got hotter. The rich got richer. Oh, and: Google, Amazon, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, Tinder, Bumble, Spotify, Netflix, YouTube, YouPorn, 4G, LTE, soon 5G, smart homes, smartphones, smartwatches, tablets, telemedicine, text messaging—instant connectivity to anyone, anywhere, at any time.

centers of culture and innovation and experimentation, and they’re as American as any rural Rust Belt diner a New York Times reporter ever stumbled into. They’re young, diverse, educated,

By Jeffrey C. Billman and progressive.

They are the future.

In the five years I’ve lived here, the Triangle has seen tremendous change.

It’s gotten bigger, taller, busier—more The world of 2020 is more intense, more immediate, buildings, more businesses, more apartments, more more chaotic, more anxious, more interconnected, and— restaurants, more traffic, more development, more everything. counterintuitively—more isolated than ever before. I expect And it’s not going to stop—the good or the bad. the world of 2040 will be all of these things, but more so.

How we deal with it will be the story of the next two decades.

Our republic stands at a dangerous precipice, our country The INDY’s first issue of the 2020s is dedicated to our divided along cultural lines, our norms threatened. Despite future—the Triangle of 2040. We asked policy experts, the Wall Street records, our economy feels fragile after a academics, journalists, activists, and politicians from decade of tepid and uneven growth. I see little cause for across the region to imagine how we’ll evolve over the next optimism, at least in the next decade. twenty years—politically and demographically, in cities and My Apple Watch is telling me to breathe. housing plans, in media and the arts.

To the degree that there’s hope, it won’t come from D.C. It To be honest, I have no idea what the future holds. But I will come from places like the Triangle. feel confident that the next two decades are going to be a Across the country, cities and metro regions are taking long, hard slog—a perpetual scrap for every inch of progress. leaps forward on issues like housing and transit and Will we be better off two decades from now than we are justice reform and equity and smart development and today? If we are, we’ll have earned it. climate change, leading where the federal government— jbillman@indyweek.com and often state governments—have failed. They’re our INDYweek.com | 1.01.20 | 5

state the future of our

“I view the future for our state as an

opportunity,

a wide-open plain of unlimited potential if we seize it.�

6 | 1.01.20 | INDYweek.com

2040

State

How Will North Carolina’s Population Change by 2040?

BY JESS STANFORD families, college students, and military personnel. Counties with large population declines across North Carolina tend to have much older populations, as fewer adults choose to locate there or return after college. (Of course, there are exceptions to these patterns: Some of our fastest-growing counties are retirement destinations, like Brunswick County, with high net migration rates of older adults.)

With high and quick growth comes major headaches.

Average work-commute times are increasing faster than the state average in our largest metro areas, as most workers travel solo in their cars.

And housing prices continue to rise.

From 2011 to 2016, median rents across the state increased just $23. But across the Triangle, median rents saw increases of $100 or more. Barriers to homeownership for many young adults have meant that very few newly occupied units in North Carolina’s urban areas are owned.

So what does this mean for our region in 2040?

Based on current projections, we’ll continue to see uneven growth across the state—with two-thirds of growth taking place in the Raleigh and Charlotte metros alone.

Rural counties will continue to experience declines, as well as an overall “graying” of the population. By 2035, more than a quarter of the population in many rural areas will be sixty-five or older.

We’ll also see more jobs in the Triangle and Charlotte regions. Industries that have flourished in the past decade— information technology, biotechnology, and banking—all benefit from being in highly educated, dense urban centers.

As these industries develop, we’ll see growth in the indirect industries that support these businesses, as well as in the types of businesses that support new workers moving there, such as grocery stores and restaurants.

Barring unforeseen changes in the natural environment, public policy, or economy, these are the trends we can expect to continue through 2040. There will be more people working in or near the Triangle, more people commuting into the Triangle, and more people needing houses to live in or near the Triangle.

In other words, expect more delays on I-40. backtalk@indyweek.com Jess Stanford is a research analyst at Carolina Demography, an applied demography group within the Carolina Population Center at UNC that provides people with the data and analysis they need to make sense of population-level changes across the state.

Population Projections 15

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North Carolina Wake County Durham County Orange County

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Population (by million)

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’m a demographic analyst at Carolina Demography, an applied demography group located within the Carolina Population Center at UNC-Chapel Hill. That means I spend a lot of time thinking about how North Carolina’s population is changing and what that means in terms of housing, education, transportation, and our state’s economy.

In other words, I’m constantly projecting how population changes will affect our state’s future. But before we get into predictions about North Carolina in 2040, it’s important to talk about the last few decades, when North Carolina’s population shifted rapidly—but unevenly.

First, let’s talk about how our state has grown.

Every year since 1970, we’ve grown faster than the nation—and projections indicate we’ll add roughly a million new residents every decade for the next twenty to thirty years. But this growth has been highly uneven across the state. In fact, just three counties accounted for more than half of North Carolina’s growth from 2010 to 2015: Wake, Mecklenburg, and Durham. Meanwhile, nearly half of North Carolina’s one hundred counties have declined in population since 2010.

What accounts for this imbalanced growth? Largely, people moving here from other places.

Since 2015, North Carolina has averaged more than 110,000 new residents each year. Most of this growth is from net migration, meaning more people are moving to our state than are moving away. And those new residents tend to be more highly educated and live in more urban areas.

Since 2010, two-thirds of Wake’s growth has come from net migration, meaning about forty-two more people move into Wake County each day than move out. Charlotte and its suburbs have seen similar growth.

These urban counties now contain more people born outside of North Carolina than people born within our state.

They also attract younger adults from more rural counties, accelerating the population decline in rural counties.

These population changes aren’t happening in a vacuum.

People tend to follow jobs, and job growth in North Carolina has been highly concentrated. Between 2010 and 2019, statewide employment increased by more than seven hundred thousand jobs, but they were almost entirely in just ten urban counties. The remaining 90 percent of North Carolina counties accounted for just 30 percent of job growth in nearly a decade.

Migration is likely keeping us young. Counties with the highest net migration rates tended to have a steady influx of young adults, as they attract young professionals, new

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2040

State

What Will North Carolina Politics Look Like in 2040?

BY MAC MCCORKLE

D

emocrats could be on an unstoppable path toward demographic dominance in North Carolina politics by 2040. According to a report last year from researchers at the Brookings Institute and the Center for American Progress, minority groups will make up 40 percent of the state’s population by 2036. And the Brookings-CAP team projected that the state’s election results would turn solidly Democratic blue well before that date.

Of course, many Republicans dismiss such demographic analyses as “fake news.”

But the conduct of Republicans since taking over the General Assembly in 2010 suggests a party that senses a foreboding future. Their leadership has done virtually nothing to develop a durable governing style that could appeal to a broad coalition of voters. It instead has worked to maximize short-term gains and game the political system in its favor.

Back in 2012, when he was House Speaker, now-U.S. Senator Thom Tillis let slip the pessimistic GOP view of North Carolina’s political future. That fall, college students at N.C. State confronted Tillis about the Republicans’ state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. After declaring his support for Amendment 1, Tillis added, “It’s a generational issue. … If it passes, I think it will be repealed within twenty years.”

While Amendment 1 passed by a 65–35 percent margin, North Carolina progressives did not have to wait a generation for its repeal. Just three years later, the U.S. Supreme Court did the job by affirming that same-sex marriage deserved constitutional protection. The next year, Republicans in Raleigh responded with HB 2, banning any local government action supporting LGBTQ rights as well as minimum-wage standards and economic discrimination.

Obscured in the ensuing national condemnation of HB 2 was the fact that the Charlotte City Council’s passage of a strong

8 | 1.01.20 | INDYweek.com

pro-LGBT ordinance had pushed the Republicans’ reactionary button. And Charlotte now reliably delivers the same kind of supermajority margins for Democrats found in other big cities across the nation. So does Raleigh. In fact, all of North Carolina’s nine cities above one hundred thousand residents—as well as Greenville and Asheville, in the above-ninety-thousand category—are Democratic bastions or trending that way.

The 2.95 million North Carolinians now living in these Democratic cities out-populate the just over 2.2 million in the state’s rural and small-town (or “nonmetropolitan”) counties. The state’s Democratic cities also deliver bigger margins on the whole. In nonmetropolitan counties, pockets of black voters, as well as whites in college towns and in local government centers, can limit the size of Republican victories. And the population gap is expected to grow over the next few decades, as rural and small-town North Carolina continues to empty out.

So is Democratic destiny manifest in North Carolina? If true, Democratic dominance is assured in other purple states—and thus, American politics will also be decisively blue by 2040.

But such a progressive scenario could well be too good to be true.

Geographically speaking, the divide between Democratic cities and Republican rural/small town areas in North Carolina (and other purple states) gives only a partial picture. Indeed, it leaves out the majority of just over 5.2 million “in-between” North Carolinians—those living in metropolitan areas outside the state’s big cities.

A big red wall still stands out in North Carolina’s so-called exurban counties and smaller metropolitan areas beyond the higher-taxing confines of big-city counties. Democrats may want to write off these sources of Republican strength in outer metropolitan North Carolina as merely a function of the state’s soon-to-expire whiteness. But such areas may contain a deep-seated “coun-

trypolitan” resistance to any kind of urban or university-based liberalism. In cultural terms, its informal anthems could remain in the country-populistic vein of Darius Rucker’s “Wagon Wheel” remake rather than the rock-elegiac “Carolina on My Mind” of North Carolina expatriate James Taylor.

And such wellsprings of countrypolitan resistance raise a not-so-outside possibility that should deeply concern Democrats about a post-Trump era. This is the prospect that new non-white Republican politicians could harness this countrypolitan instinct into a powerful political persuasion. Although her association with Trump could plague her own political future, former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador Nikki Haley might be the harbinger with her Indian-immigrant family’s version of the American Dream.

And if Democrats fall into the trap of presenting themselves as the New Establishment, they will be inviting such a countrypolitan repudiation that could spread to all but the most highly educated and progressive voters. European versions of this scenario are already developing in the French Yellow Vest movement against Emmanuel Macron’s elitist liberalism and British voters’ rejection of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party leadership. Nonwhite Republican candidates in the Nikki Haley mold could significantly split the Democratic hope of a dominant multicultural coalition in a new North Carolina and America along education-class lines.

Bluntly put, the destiny of a new Democratic progressivism in North Carolina and the nation is not at all manifest. The political future may remain up for grabs in 2040 and beyond. backtalk@indyweek.com Pope “Mac” McCorkle is the director of the Center for Political Leadership, Innovation, and Service at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy.

2040

State

What Will Education Look Like in North Carolina in 2040?

BY MEBANE RASH

I

nnovation often starts with a disruptive question.

What is the purpose of education now, what will it be in 2040, who gets to decide, and how do we get from here to there?

In Singapore—a country many look to as the best in the world when it comes to education—policymakers believe schools should be designed to encourage students to be the creators of knowledge.

The creators of knowledge instead of the consumers of knowledge.

A new learning framework is defining “the new normal” for education in North Carolina, across the United States, and around the world. The intergovernmental Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development worked with a lot of smart people to figure out how to help states and countries transform their educational systems so that students have “the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values that learners need to fulfill their potential and contribute to the well-being of their communities and the planet.”

Student agency in learning will matter more and more.

The earliest adopter of this learning framework in North Carolina is the North Phillips School of Innovation in the Edgecombe County Public Schools, where thirty students were given the opportunity to redesign what school should look like. Now scaled to three grades, this pilot has become an incubator of hope for many across North Carolina who see that this can happen in any classroom in any school in any community without waiting for permission.

Innovations take place in a complex ecosystem of politics and public policy.

When we think about prompting this system change in education, three resolutions are going to be critical: good governance, alignment toward attainment from birth to career, and our willingness to work together.

Ask yourself: Who is in charge when it comes to education?

We have the governor, the governor’s education cabinet, the legislature, the UNC System with 17 campuses, the community college system with 58 campuses, 36 more independent colleges and universities, the State Board of Education, the superintendent of public instruction, the school boards and superintendents in 115 school districts, 198 charter schools (with 12 more on the way), and 100 boards of county commissioners that fund local education.

When it is not clear who is in charge, it is not clear who is accountable.

System coherence starts with good governance, but there needs to be alignment toward attainment across the birth-to-career continuum.

North Carolina was one of just five states without an attainment goal, but a cross-sector collaboration of leaders in education, business, and government came together and now, by 2030, two million North Carolinians will have a high-quality postsecondary degree or credential.

Getting to our attainment goal starts with itty-bitty babies and early childhood development. It continues through ameliorating third-grade fade and then keeping our students in school when they could drop out, so that they graduate from high school and either go to college or land in a job where they can earn a living wage and support a family.

While there is no federal right to education, courts have interpreted our state constitution to require access for all students to a sound, basic education.

Recently, an independent consultant found that if we don’t meet that requirement, “the future of the state hangs in the balance.”

If we are going to address the challenges we face in providing a sound, basic education, as our state constitution requires, or the twenty-first-century education our

economy of tomorrow requires, we are going to have to work together better.

Jeremy Anderson, president of the Education Commission of the States, says in states where leaps and bounds are being made, leaders have found ways to work across difference.

“It’s a simple litmus test,” he says. “Can the people who can move this policy meet for coffee even if they disagree and talk through some of these differences?”

We need future-forward solutions for all of our students, all of our teachers, in all of our schools, all of our colleges and universities—and that means in our twenty-three counties that voted 70 percent or more for President Trump, in our urban blue crescent, and in the rest of our very purple counties.

This—our students, our state, our future— is an all of us.

Answer the questions, North Carolina.

Make the resolutions around good governance, alignment toward attainment from birth to career, and working together across all the lines of difference, and you will get to the new normal where innovation takes hold and students become the architects not just of their own learning but of the future itself. backtalk@indyweek.com

Your week.

Every Wednesday.

Mebane Rash is the CEO and editor in chief of EducationNC, an independent civic news organization.

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2040

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State

Should North Carolina Be Hopeful About the Future?

BY ROY COOPER

T

he best part of my job is traveling the state of North Carolina, meeting with people from all walks of life. We’re a diverse state with many differences, but we are united in our mutual hope for the future.

I’m amazed at the depth of this hope, whether people face happy times or hardship. I remember meeting one woman in a shelter during Hurricane Florence. She told me about the brave first responders who swept her to safety as Florence crashed in on her world. She escaped with virtually no possessions, but she had gratitude and hope for the future, and she firmly told me, “I’m going to make it.”

The “future” is a term that can spark excitement, anxiety, dread, anticipation.

But I view the future for our state as an opportunity, a wide-open plain of unlimited potential if we seize it.

In my job as governor, nothing speaks to the future more than our focus on education.

Our teachers and school-support personnel have dedicated their careers to nurturing our youngest and shaping the leaders of tomorrow. That’s why I’m dedicated to supporting those educators and treating them like the professionals they are. In 2020, it’s time they get the raise they deserve.

Education is key to our success. In 2019, we recruited more than twenty-one thousand jobs to our state in both rural and urban areas—the most in one year since before the recession. How? By touting our education system, our workers, and the training we can offer through our universities and community colleges. These classrooms are portals to the future, and we have to prioritize them over more unnecessary, sweeping corporate tax cuts that rob from our students. From the world’s biggest companies to the small-business owners with the biggest ideas, our state is open for business and ripe for more economic growth.

No conversation about the future is complete without addressing climate change head-on. On this challenge—one of our greatest—I am forcing North Carolina to do its part. In 2019, we moved forward on the Clean Energy Plan, which calls for a 70

percent reduction in power-sector greenhouse-gas emissions below 2005 levels by 2030 with carbon neutrality by 2050. In the absence of leadership from Washington, North Carolina is charging ahead, showing that we can protect our air and water while creating clean-energy jobs of the future.

Together with our push for greater resiliency to protect us from natural disasters, North Carolina is moving forward to grow smarter and stronger.

Although Republicans blocked it in 2019, I remain hopeful that we will expand Medicaid in North Carolina in the new year. This is the right thing to do for the five hundred thousand North Carolinians who will be able to access affordable health care. But it’s also the smart thing to do for the rural hospitals struggling on the brink of bankruptcy, the forty thousand jobs it can create, the lower health insurance premiums it creates for the private sector, and the communities that will be transformed.

Over the last three years, we’ve built a strong foundation for the future. We repealed House Bill 2, restored our reputation, and signed a sweeping anti-discrimination executive order. We implemented paid parental leave for state employees. We banned state dollars from being spent on harmful conversion therapy. We worked together to achieve decreases in the rates of opioid-overdose deaths and infant mortality. We invested billions to recover stronger and smarter from devastating storms. The momentum we’ve built and the progress that lies ahead energize me and leave me with hope and optimism.

Since taking office, I’ve talked about my mission as governor. I want a North Carolina where people are better educated, healthier, and have more money in their pockets so that there will be more opportunities for people to have lives of purpose and abundance. For me, these are the keys to a hopeful future, and I’ll keep working every day until it’s unlocked for every North Carolinian. backtalk@indyweek.com Roy Cooper is the seventy-fifth governor of North Carolina.

“Forced out, priced out, and shut out.

There is no room in Raleigh for the black poor.”

cities

the future of our

“My greatest fear is that

Durham will fail to rise to our own greatness, and that the status quo will exert powerful inertia to block meaningful progress.”

INDYweek.com | 1.01.20 | 11

2040

Cities | Raleigh

What Will Raleigh Look Like in 2040?

The Raleigh of 2000 bears little resemblance to the Raleigh of today. Over the last two decades, Raleigh has grown from a sleepy capital town into a bustling big city with big-city amenities—and big-city problems. Here, we ask five residents—the mayor, a former mayor, and community advocates—to explore what the future holds.

MARY-ANN BALDWIN

It’s 2040. Raleigh (and the Triangle) is one of the top metro regions in the country.

What did we do right?

In Raleigh, we acted with urgency on housing affordability before it became a crisis. We teamed with Lyft on a firstin-the-nation transit experiment. And we partnered with our universities and colleges to create an unrivaled center of innovation and entrepreneurship. But most important, twenty years ago, our city leaders, county commissioners, and school board decided to work together to address poverty. No easy task.

What happened?

The city decided to be bold. It changed its zoning policies to accommodate housing choices—divisive at the time but now common across the country. Raleigh now has several thousand accessory dwelling units that comfortably fit in neighborhoods, requiring no new infrastructure. We partnered with Lyft to pilot a bus service that focused on moving people in a whole different way, from hub to hub. It’s automated, with dedicated lanes across the city; most trips take fewer than fifteen minutes. It also connects to commuter rail, created through partnerships with neighboring counties. We’ve made it so easy to travel that many people age forty and up don’t own cars. (They started the revolution, including our now-famous cycle tracks).

Even better, the city recently sold off some of its downtown parking decks for redevelopment due to the rise in autonomous vehicles and the reduced demand for parking.

We also have this incredible park in the center of the city that is visited by people from around the world. Once a mental health hospital, it now houses a world-class research facility where N.C. State, Duke University, and UNC researchers have discovered a cure for schizophrenia.

While paying homage to its history this way, the park also serves the community with play, preservation, nature, and connection. It’s a model for the world with twenty more years of future buildout.

And by the way, did I mention it’s connected to downtown by a gondola?

Although the city of Raleigh now has 750,000 residents, it doesn’t feel crowded. It feels vibrant. The downtown core has grown south with new hockey and soccer stadiums, in 12 | 1.01.20 | INDYweek.com

an area focused on entertainment and music. It’s one of the most diverse areas of the city. There’s a new greenway trail that connects from Downtown South to Umstead State Park, where people travel on e-bikes with amenities along the way. It’s pretty cool.

Remember when I mentioned the city, county, and schools working together? They identified underutilized properties and offered them to developers to build a spectrum of housing—creating mixed-use, mixed-income, walkable communities for all. They carved out space for amenities that create equity. These include day-care centers and early childhood education centers located (get this) next to senior housing. Seniors volunteer at the centers, helping young children see all they can be. Tech companies also created a give-back to the community, in which investments were made in workforce training to expose children living in poverty to new opportunities.

Our mayor twenty years ago, known as Notorious, started this thing with a young city council that dreamed big and demonstrated political will. They lobbied the federal government to revise its housing policies and invest in infrastructure. They worked with the legislature to connect rural and urban communities, providing jobs and technology.

They sought out partnerships with developers and corporations to do good.

They set the tone for the next twenty years.

Ten years ago, we got our first forty-story tower. And yes, that made us smile. But what really made us smile was that poverty was reduced by 30 percent over twenty years because our government entities, business community, and wealthiest individuals worked together to reach and teach our kids, to inspire them, to show them who they could be.

Looking back, we smile because our community made the decision to invest in what was most important—our people.

Mary-Ann Baldwin was elected Raleigh mayor in 2019.

She previously served on the city council from 2007–17.

OCTAVIA RAINEY

As I look into the future of Raleigh, I have to first talk about the past.

In 1974, Congress passed the Housing and Community Development Act, which required cities receiving Community Development Block Grants to further fair housing and undergo an analysis of their regulations and policies affecting the location, availability, and accessibility of housing before receiving money. It was supposed to ensure that black people who had faced discrimination for a century could access quality public and private housing.

And yet, today, there is no affordable housing in high-opportunity areas in Raleigh, not for those who earn 30 percent or less of the area median income. This statistic disproportionately affects members of the protected class—i.e., racial or ethnic minorities. The city pushed out people living in the inner city starting in 1960 with Smoky Hollow, in the 1970s with Fort Ward, and in the 1980s through today with Thompson Hunter I, Thompson Hunter II, Downtown East, the Moore Square area, South Park, Idlewild, and College Park.

All of these developments used CDBG dollars to displace black people. All of these neighborhoods were black, and now they are 80 percent white and higher-income areas.

The poor black folks who were displaced will never come back. People the city displaced had average incomes between $10,000 and $20,000 per year. The city moved them out to create a higher tax base.

Is this something to be proud of ? And the bus rapid transit line coming down New Bern Avenue will amount to the biggest displacement you have ever seen—with no affordable housing at all.

When the city announces its affordable rental housing program, it often neglects to say whether it’s targeted at those earning 30 percent of AMI, 40 or 50 percent of AMI, or 60 or 80 percent of AMI. Just saying it’s “affordable housing” isn’t good enough. The city has a real problem with housing for those in the 30 percent bracket, especially in high-opportunity areas.

Segregation is very high in Raleigh. Opportunity Housing Areas are located all over the city in areas with very high incomes. Yet we are building limited housing for those at or below 30 percent of the AMI. We have forty-two hundred

children who have been identified as homeless. These children are a part of a protected class. The city is not protecting the protected class.

The city is a long way from economic prosperity and equity for the have-nots. It is expanding housing choices for higher-income families, managing growth for higher-income families, and coordinating land use and transportation only for higher-density developments while excluding black communities.

So I believe that no blacks will live in the city by 2040.

There will no longer be black businesses nor a black voting bloc. Instead, all blacks will live deep in Wake County.

I have lived in Raleigh all my life, in the same neighborhood, and never have I seen poor black folks left behind at this rate. Forced out, priced out, and shut out. There is no room in Raleigh for the black poor.

Octavia Rainey has been a community and fair housing advocate since 1973.

CHARLES MEEKER

The pace of Raleigh’s change will increase over the next twenty years. This change will include our vehicles, which will become electric and autonomous. Downtown parking decks will be considered for conversion to housing—mainly affordable—since most residents will no longer own cars.

The trend toward density downtown and in other focus areas will accelerate, often with apartments and shops.

Office space will see less demand since there will be multiple users for each office.

Bus rapid transit and electric mini-vehicles will be prominent alternatives to cars. There will often be separate lanes, not just striping, for each. There will be no charge for buses. One-way streets will be gone downtown. Roadways will be more pedestrian-friendly, with a renewed emphasis on trees due to the increased length of the summer season.

The city will have several farmers markets, with fresh produce grown nearby in greenhouses and warehouses.

Raleigh’s reputation as a center of innovation will be enhanced. Technologies developed on N.C. State’s Centennial Campus will be the basis for many companies, large and small.

Raleigh will be an increasingly desirable city, in part because so many young and educated people want to live here. Lifestyle and cost will be more than competitive with larger cities. Many university graduates will take jobs here instead of going home.

Raleigh’s problems will not disappear. Many workers will not be paid enough to live in the city, and affordable housing will remain a major problem. In a city of over six hundred thousand people by 2040, traffic congestion in the suburbs will become an increasing complaint. Heavy rains from large storms will deepen our creek beds.

Though facing evolving challenges as 2040 arrives, Raleigh will remain one of our country’s top twenty-first-century cities.

Charles Meeker was Raleigh mayor from 2001–11.

His brother Richard Meeker owns the INDY.

CARLY P. JONES

What defines a city? The expression of its people. This is why arts communities and the creative workforce are the souls of a city.

Raleigh is not the same sleepy city I grew up in. When I graduated from high school in the early 2000s, I left North Carolina with a music scholarship, hoping to find more artistically and culturally diverse adventures. After graduating during the Great Recession, I came home, as many millennials did. I planned to save money before making my next move to a bigger, bustling city that would appreciate my fine-arts education.

Upon my return, however, I was pleasantly surprised to find a thriving and vibrant city with a growing arts community. Now that I am rooted in Raleigh, I look forward to the future and being a part of this dynamic metropolis as it experiences a pivotal time of growth and change.

As we tackle issues in our burgeoning city—public housing, transportation, food deserts, environmental problems—it is important to recognize the creative workforce as a crucial partner in building equitable and expressive communities. Often, planning for urban transformation focuses on improving a city’s image instead of the quality of life of its residents. Quality of life includes not only food, shelter, a clean environment, and economic opportunity but also ways to experience art and expression.

An example of this expression is Raleigh’s festival culture. Festivals create exciting spaces to immerse people in music, dance, film, and art. Raleigh is already a melting pot of nationally acclaimed musical festivals—e.g., Hopscotch, World of Bluegrass, and Dreamville. I see festivals also responding to community needs and establishing ways of thinking about heritage in communities that have been overlooked. Festivals not only cause an economic boost but can also make spaces that empower, expose, and unite.

In 2040, I visualize Raleigh as an incubator of creativity, bridging a shining business community with a creative workforce. Our city realizes that arts and culture are not just amenities that come with a rich civic life but are also important economic and tourism drivers. I envision a city where artists and arts leaders collaborate on panels and boards for community projects, as they have with Dix Park, with local leaders, business owners, and institutions to design creative solutions. These collaborations can meaningfully empower communities to articulate their experiences of the city on their own terms.

Raleigh in 2040? I see culturally vibrant arts communities celebrating their heritage; I hear music on street corners and melodies drifting out of living performance venues; I see the work of local artists hanging in our nationally renowned restaurants and colorful murals on the sides of buildings illustrating the rich history of our city and the stories of black and brown community leaders; I smell barbecue on one corner and curry on the next.

I see Raleigh as a mosaic of arts and culture.

In 2040, Raleigh will not only be the warm, beautiful city I’ve always known and loved. It will also be on the cutting edge in creativity, innovation, and artistic collaboration, embracing all who call it home.

HARRY JOHNSON

For our family, this Christmas was a little different. And by a little different, I mean oceanic-sea-change different.

It was our first Christmas with our son George, a threemonth-old boy whose primary items on his Christmas list included warm bottles of milk (check), fresh diapers (check), and tubs of Desitin cream (check). (Don’t worry, he also got some nice toys.) But for me—a new parent filled with the universal hopes and fears experienced by all new parents—a larger, long-term Christmas wish list for George is in order.

Call it a wish list for Raleigh—the city where I want to help my son learn, grow, and develop into a man and someday, hopefully, decide to make home.

So what’s on this wish list?

Well, it’s infinite, as is appropriate for a parent’s hopes and wishes for their child. But the long and short of it is that I want George to be able to enter into adulthood in a city, state, nation, and world that is more charitable, more equitable, and more sustainable than the one we live in now. That can mean any number of things—ensuring that a young boy growing up one zip code over from us has the same educational opportunity that George will, recognizing housing as a human right and not just an outcome of market forces, or (Dad’s favorite soapbox) reducing an omnipresent dependence on cars in a way that allows for a healthier, more equitable, and more sustainable community.

Over the next year or two, our city has a great opportunity to make significant gains toward these goals and others, and I’m excited to see what a young and energetic city council brings to the table.

But I also recognize that, in many ways, this important work still inevitably treats only some of the symptoms present in a country that has, over the past few years, proven to be very susceptible to the lesser angels of our nature.

In other words, in order for these “laundry list” items to be obtainable, Raleigh must also, to use one of the favorite words of our new mayor, act with compassion. I’d go further: In the season in which a significant number of Raleighites, including our family, celebrate the birth of Christ, we must work to ensure that the distilled Christmas message—to love our neighbors as ourselves—permeates our community work. We have to start with an effort to see ourselves in others, and our children in the children of others.

So that’s my Christmas wish for George. That, in 2040, when George comes home to Raleigh, he comes home to a community that has taken the lead in both the concrete policy actions necessary to allow anyone who calls Raleigh home the opportunity to lead a prosperous, abundant, and sustainable life, and to take on the challenge with a hearty dose of joy and compassion that informs the direction of our city in every decision it makes.

Harry Johnson, an attorney and local franchise specialist for Google Fiber, is the former political chair of the North Carolina Sierra Club.

Carly P. Jones is a singer, theater artist, and arts advocate.

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M

Will the Triangle be better off two decades from now?

y Apple Watch beeps—a coworker on Slack, pointing me to a politician who has set up his own smartphone app.

A few minutes later, it buzzes, telling me to stand up; I’ve been sitting too long. Another buzz—a Washington Post push notification informing me that President Donald Trump said something outrageous on Twitter, followed by a reminder to practice mindfulness by breathing; it seems my resting heart rate is too high.

Imagine writing any of that twenty years ago.

Then imagine what we’ll write twenty years from now that would make no sense today.

I’ve been thinking about the future lately. Not flying cars or spaceships, utopias or dystopias, but, in practical terms, what the next two, three, four decades will look like. Think about how the world has changed since 2000: We entered the twenty-first century worried about Y2K. We got 9/11, then Afghanistan and Iraq, then a global financial crisis, then Obamacare, then gay marriage, then Trump. The planet got hotter. The rich got richer. Oh, and: Google, Amazon, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, Tinder, Bumble, Spotify, Netflix, YouTube, YouPorn, 4G, LTE, soon 5G, smart homes, smartphones, smartwatches, tablets, telemedicine, text messaging—instant connectivity to anyone, anywhere, at any time.

centers of culture and innovation and experimentation, and they’re as American as any rural Rust Belt diner a New York Times reporter ever stumbled into. They’re young, diverse, educated,

By Jeffrey C. Billman and progressive.

They are the future.

In the five years I’ve lived here, the Triangle has seen tremendous change.

It’s gotten bigger, taller, busier—more The world of 2020 is more intense, more immediate, buildings, more businesses, more apartments, more more chaotic, more anxious, more interconnected, and— restaurants, more traffic, more development, more everything. counterintuitively—more isolated than ever before. I expect And it’s not going to stop—the good or the bad. the world of 2040 will be all of these things, but more so.

How we deal with it will be the story of the next two decades.

Our republic stands at a dangerous precipice, our country The INDY’s first issue of the 2020s is dedicated to our divided along cultural lines, our norms threatened. Despite future—the Triangle of 2040. We asked policy experts, the Wall Street records, our economy feels fragile after a academics, journalists, activists, and politicians from decade of tepid and uneven growth. I see little cause for across the region to imagine how we’ll evolve over the next optimism, at least in the next decade. twenty years—politically and demographically, in cities and My Apple Watch is telling me to breathe. housing plans, in media and the arts.

To the degree that there’s hope, it won’t come from D.C. It To be honest, I have no idea what the future holds. But I will come from places like the Triangle. feel confident that the next two decades are going to be a Across the country, cities and metro regions are taking long, hard slog—a perpetual scrap for every inch of progress. leaps forward on issues like housing and transit and Will we be better off two decades from now than we are justice reform and equity and smart development and today? If we are, we’ll have earned it. climate change, leading where the federal government— jbillman@indyweek.com and often state governments—have failed. They’re our

Downtowns should be surrounded by attractive neighborhoods. That makes the broken promise of urban renewal all the more embittering. Imagine what a revitalized Hayti could have meant to the city’s quality of life, job opportunities, and cultural richness.

Earlier this year, The News & Observer reported that N.C. Mutual, which as recently as 2000 had $77.3 million in revenue and 258 employees, is under “rehabilitation” by the state’s Department of Insurance, an attempt to bring the company back into solid financial standing after it lost money for years. That’s telling.

What happened with Durham’s urban destruction of Hayti during the 1960s and early ’70s had mirror images in black urban centers across the country, which were cleaved by the interstate highway system. Not coincidentally, the gentrification of communities near Durham’s downtown is being replicated in those same areas all over the U.S. Some fifty years after white flight, there’s a return of reclamation and displacement that feels like colonization.

At the heart of what Durham will look like in twenty years are issues of equity and who has a significant investment here, especially in housing and entrepreneurship. It seems the greatest equity will be held by private developers who are constructing new housing while wholesale displacements and evictions take place across the city. The red, white, and blue signs popping up in and around downtown that read ”Stop Evictions Now!” say it all.

What the city looks like will have a lot to do with how the African-American community—to borrow from Voltaire— cultivates its own garden. One of the more uncomfortable facts behind integration was black Americans’ abandonment of their economic integrity and what was built by the sweat of their own brow.

“You have some black folks who think the white man’s ice is cooler,” Vivian Austin Edmonds, daughter of legendary Carolina Times founder and editor Louis Austin, told me in the early 1980s, when she was the paper’s publisher.

Henry McKoy, director of entrepreneurship at N.C. Central, told the N&O in June that “at least in economic terms, integration went one way,” while “the dollars of the African-American community went out of the community and into white companies.”

How the city’s black presence will be shaped over the next twenty years will require a new type of activism that focuses on greater participation in local politics, preserving and supporting existing institutions like N.C. Mutual and Mechanics & Farmers Bank, while creating new businesses and opportunities among ourselves.

The old Hayti district and Black Wall Street can and should be more than a memory. They are templates of what can be accomplished over the next twenty years. African-American residents should rebuild Hayti and Black Wall Street in their own beautiful black image.

Black liberation theology minister Paul Scott best summed up what’s required for moving forward when he spoke with the INDY last month: The key to stopping blackon-black violence and black disempowerment is black culture and black power.

Thomasi McDonald is a staff writer for the INDY. He was previously a reporter for The News & Observer.

CHARLIE REECE

What will Durham look like in 2040?

I am confident about some things, I have fears about others, and I have fervent hopes about still others. Mostly I believe that what Durham looks like in 2040 depends on the choices we make together over the next twenty years.

I’m certain that there will be a lot more people living in Durham in 2040. My fear is that our growth will drive us to make unsustainable choices about what kinds of development we allow in Durham, where we allow that development to take place, and who benefits from that development. My hope is that the new comprehensive plan for Durham that is currently being written will chart a course that allows us to grow in ways that protect our natural environment, promote density and walkability, and that reduce sprawl.

I’m certain that more people will mean more cars in Durham in 2040. My fear is that we’ll see a tsunami of automobile traffic that will result in more gridlock on our roads, more dangerous streets for folks who walk and bike, and greatly increased greenhouse-gas emissions. My hope is that we can make the critical investments necessary to build a Durham that is far less car-dependent, including investments in our bus system and in protected bike lanes and greenway trails.

I’m certain that some Durham residents will still suffer from poverty in 2040. My fear is that far too many people will come to see this as inevitable, and that we will shy away from bold initiatives as a result. My hope is that we will never accept poverty in Durham, and that we will find new ways to empower our neighbors to access the resources that everyone needs to thrive—resources like housing, food, and health care.

I’m certain that racism will still be a pernicious force in Durham in 2040. My fear is that our social and political culture will merely pay lip service to the need for racial equity, and that nothing of substance will have been done to address structural and systemic racism in our community.

My hope is that our elected officials will have the courage to center racial equity in every decision we make, that our community will have a fuller understanding of how white supremacy is deeply embedded in our structures of power, and that Durham will make choices that reduce the impact of racism here.

I’m absolutely certain that we can make Durham a safer, more resilient, and more prosperous community in 2040.

My greatest fear is that Durham will fail to rise to our own greatness, and that the status quo will exert powerful inertia to block meaningful progress. My fervent hope is that all of us will commit ourselves to spend the next twenty years rejecting our fears and making our brightest hopes for Durham a reality.

It won’t be easy, and it won’t happen overnight. It will take all of us working together, committing ourselves to our common life together.

So let’s get to work: 2040 will be here before we know it.

Charlie Reece was first elected to the Durham City Council in 2015.

ALEXIS PAULINE GUMBS

And that was how the sacred land once known for the sweetness of tobacco and then more recently for cancer research and farm-to-table restaurants returned back to the discipline of breathing. Yes. Anywhere in the world you would know the people of Durham by our laughter. And it helped us deal with the temperature of the air, our nuanced core muscles, our tears.

Some say at first we laughed to keep from crying. Because how else could we explain to the children why the cheap duplexes for millionaires had already fallen down. Or how so much of the economy had been planned based on the needs of people who came to visit for an average of four years and then mostly left. Or what it took to remodel the high-rises when the imagined tech individualists had never moved into them and the migrants from what were once the coastal North Carolina towns pushed inland did come and did move in and actually liked each other. So many internal walls had to be knocked down. So many fixtures built for glitz had to be reinforced for long-term use. Try to say it with a straight face, how the rain-processing gardens on the roofs of the downtown apartments had once been empty space that no one walked on except to fix an air-conditioner.

Once even cheaper construction prices and other words for “cool” convinced the prospectors to prospect elsewhere, it became genuinely funny, just the word “plywood” and what it had been once, what it had done. Ply wood? What an absurd sentence. It became funny to even say it once the trees began taking back what they first made possible.

But I would say the muscle memory of laughter is strong in the people and older than all that because, right now in 2040, Durham is still what it was, land quenched by the love of the old ones, the Occaneechi band of the Saponi Nation who spoke with the Eno River and their children who speak now with its healing authority informing every collective decision. Durham is still what it was, dirt made into bricks

by Pauli Murray’s grandparents, a place where black people dream of freedom and build it.

Durham is what it could be, imagined by the people who stayed.

And we cultivated our laughter, tuned it in our guts with what it took to turn cancer back into medicine, blood money back into blood relations. We harmonized our laughter through our exasperation with the complexity and work of true coalitions, with what it took to create safety beyond policing, to reclaim farmwork with dignity, to place genderqueer black prophet Pauli Murray at the center of our history. We deepened our laughter with the work of being accountable to each other beyond ego and authorship, laughed at ourselves as we learned the difference between owning ideas and sharing them.

All over the world now they hear Durham. Laughing.

Maybe it’s true what the developmental psychologists say—that babies laugh not because adults are funny or absurd, but because laughter is a primordial release valve.

It’s what happens involuntarily when we realize that what we thought would kill us didn’t.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs is the author of M Archive: After the End of the World, Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity, and co-editor of Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines.

INDYweek.com | 1.01.20 | 15

2040

Cities | Chapel Hill

What Will Chapel Hill Look Like in 2040?

Chapel Hill has always been synonymous with the university that calls it home. But it, too, is growing—and it, too, faces affordability and identity challenges. Here, four residents—a town council member, the head of the downtown merchants association, a UNC professor, and a county commissioner (who lives in neighboring Carrboro)—assess the next two decades.

JESSICA ANDERSON

In twenty years, I envision a Chapel Hill in which my grown children will enjoy living as much as their parents do. We will continue to welcome people from across the state, nation, and world who come not only for UNC but also for our excellent elementary and secondary schools and the chance to live in a historic, exciting, and progressive community.

The North-South Bus Rapid Transit project will be part of a larger regional transit system that takes people wherever they need to go—including work, school, and the airport.

We will expand Chapel Hill Transit’s fare-free service—the first in the nation—across town and county lines, where our neighbors will join us in helping our region become more affordable for all to enjoy.

Development will provide our residents with opportunities to live near where they work and shop, making our town friendlier toward non-motorized travel. Our beautiful older buildings will be joined by modern construction that accentuates our character and charm. New development will encourage green design and preserve our tree canopy while providing a variety of housing and employment options that are convenient to our network of transit options. Our investments in affordability will enable those who make our town work—such as bus drivers, teachers, and nurses— to live here.

Our downtown will grow to be vibrant, fun, and beautiful, featuring things to do for young and the old alike. People will have green spaces and outdoor venues to mingle and meet their neighbors, friends, and visitors. Greenways and trails, as well as protected bike lanes, will allow people to get downtown and across town without getting in a car, while reasonable parking options will bring everyone downtown regardless of ability or mobility.

Of course, all of this depends on cooperation, partnership, and a community vision (not just mine). However, I truly believe that once our community sets a course, we can make great things happen.

Jessica Anderson was first elected to the Chapel Hill Town Council in 2015.

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TIM CROTHERS

I don’t know why the INDY chose me to predict twenty years into the future. Wouldn’t have predicted that. Maybe it’s because I moved back to Chapel Hill twenty years ago after moving here the first time as a student twenty years before that. Or maybe it’s because anytime I drive around town with my two teenagers, I find myself gazing wistfully out the window and starting sentences with, “You wouldn’t believe what this looked like twenty years ago …”

Maybe it’s because, as a journalism teacher at UNC, I issue an annual class assignment to project twenty years into the future. In those papers, my students often conjure a society full of human holograms or a world not unlike The Jetsons of my youth (Google it). If I’ve learned anything from that exercise, it’s that one can only reliably predict that there’s no reliably predicting the future. Exhibit A: Twenty years ago, would you have predicted Trump? Or Twitter? Or Trump on Twitter? Me neither.

Anyway, with that cowardly caveat, I’ll take a few tentative swings in the Nostradamus batting cage. What will Chapel Hill look like in 2040? Let’s start with the easy stuff.

I feel relatively safe in guessing that our political leadership will favor Democrats. (Can I quit now?)

Because so many of us can’t help blabbing about how wonderful it is to live in Chapel Hill, our population will continue to grow, and the expansion of our commercial borders, which have already merged with Durham and RTP, will continue to bleed out in the other directions, graying a lot of the green space toward Hillsborough and Pittsboro. My grandkids may be among the first alums of South Chapel Hill High School.

In 2040, I fear that Franklin Street will offer nothing but pizza joints, coffeehouses, T-shirt shops, TOPO, and Target.

(He’s Not Here, not here?) And, assuming we’re still driving cars, perhaps the realization of my inspired idea for a subterranean parking bunker that burrows halfway to China.

I believe all of our UNC athletes will be paid laborers and, because the NCAA will have been forced to allow more freedom of movement, sadly, the Cole Anthonys, Coby Whites, and potentially even the Sam Howells won’t bother to toil even briefly on campus anymore.

Hopefully, we will maintain the quirks that make this village unique: Carolina Blue fire trucks, Pit preachers, jumping the bonfires, etc.

Finally, as a resident of Chapel Hill in the early ’80s, the early 2000s, and now the early 2020s, there is clearly one tie that binds all of these eras together—and thus, should I be lucky enough to still call this place home in 2040, there is

one thing about which I am absolutely certain: We will still be arguing about Silent Sam. Tim Crothers, a former senior writer at Sports Illustrated, is a lecturer at UNC’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media.

MATT GLADDEK

Over the last twenty years, the world changed around downtown Chapel Hill; we need to spend the next twenty years taking control of our destiny. After hundreds of meetings with residents, business owners, property owners, and other downtown stakeholders, a vision for the future is beginning to take shape. Here are a few of the things I’ve heard and seen.

Public commons Imagine a space in downtown Chapel Hill—nothing too big, but a space of respite, with trees and shade, comfortable seating, old and young gathered together playing board games, students at tables with noses deep in books, someone picking at a guitar. Good public spaces increase equity and inclusiveness.

They provide places for the community to gather and interact across boundaries. We need this in downtown.

The walkable city In the next twenty years, Franklin Street will move away from being automobile-centric and back to the human scale. As we prioritize people walking, biking, and taking transit, our sidewalks will become more welcoming to sidewalk dining and stores spilling out to the street. People who need to drive will park in a nearby deck and find inviting, safe, and well-lit connections to sidewalks. Buildings that stitch together our walkable, human-scale, urban fabric will replace (swaths of ) surface parking and curb cuts that make walking less attractive.

Locally owned businesses Rising rents and the retail apocalypse brought on by changes in technology have adversely affected downtown shopping. But there is hope. Epilogue Cafe, which opened this past October, shows how a locally owned bookshop with a great landlord can respond to what the community wants. As we fill in vacancies, we can attract and cultivate unique shopping and dining opportunities. We need to patronize these businesses to encourage more entrepreneurs to take risks.

Office workers Unemployment is at record lows, and the competition for employees means that many employers are locating in urban areas with easy access to restaurants and amenities. Downtown Chapel Hill is experiencing this demand already. Well.co is converting the old Carolina Ale House space and the Chapel Hill Visitors Bureau building into office space because Franklin Street did not have any suitable space available. Providing office space downtown supports our existing businesses and reduces the tax burden on our residential properties.

Housing One hundred percent of housing in downtown Chapel Hill is full, and rental rates are increasing year after year because of high demand. More units will be built to meet this demand. These new residents will help businesses weather the summer doldrums as students leave and will support the walkability we all want.

We all want a Chapel Hill that is unique and true to itself. If the past twenty years have taught us anything, it’s that inaction is not an option; without a cohesive, proactive plan, we lose to the forces of sprawl, poor connectivity, and car-focused infrastructure that make being, living, and working downtown less and less appealing. The collective vision is clear and strong; it’s time to pick up the tools at hand and get to work on arriving there.

Matt Gladdek is the executive director of the Chapel Hill Downtown Partnership.

MARK DOROSIN

I approach the question of what Chapel Hill and Carrboro will look like in 2040 from my standard perspective: I believe in the goodness of people.

The alternative is simply too grim.

With that context, in 2040, we live in a metro area—which includes Hillsborough, Mebane, Pittsboro, and eastern Alamance— that has embraced its role as part of the Greater Triangle.

Critical changes in the previous two decades have fostered opportunities to accommodate new growth at a rate more consistent with that of surrounding communities but in a manner consistent with our social justice and environmental values.

Frustrated by increasing wealth disparities (among the highest in the state) and incremental gains in affordable housing, and in line with our commitment to containing suburban sprawl, the community increased density within its towns by allowing multifamily development on all residential par-

cels. Targeted housing programs have made it easier for public employees to live in the towns where they work.

Higher-density housing was also incentivized along transit corridors. After the closure of UNC’s coal-fired power plant, the railroad right-of-way that served the university is now part of a greenway and bike-path network that connects key transit hubs in Carrboro, Chapel Hill, and Hillsborough.

High-speed internet access is available to every household in the county (and the state), creating widespread opportunities for telecommuting and enhanced online education and training, thereby helping relieve traffic and transit problems and the related environmental impacts.

Carrboro’s downtown has continued to develop as an economic engine, with new commercial and residential development along Roberson Street (including buildings back-to-back with the existing ones on Main). In Chapel Hill, the redeveloped multistory University Place includes affordable and mixed-income housing, with units dedicated to residents displaced from the affordable but chronically flooded properties across the street, which have been restored to their natural state.

Universal pre-K has helped reduce the racial achievement gap and improve equity in our public schools, as has a strategic commitment to recruiting and supporting a diverse educator workforce, all of which has been substantially bolstered by the state finally living up to its constitutional obligation to fund a sound basic education for all students. Health care reform and living-wage policies have reduced some effects of poverty in the community. In the courts, we’ve eliminated cash bail and restructured the use of fines and fees so that the system no longer criminalizes poverty.

In recognition of the reality that the challenges we face are bound by jurisdictional lines, many local governments have strengthened their collaborations. Similarly, in recognition of the community’s many strengths and resources, which some of our neighbors may lack, there are numerous intercounty collaborations with Person, Caswell, Alamance, and Chatham Counties, similar to models already in place with Durham and Wake.

Carrboro-Chapel Hill 2040: Now with more inclusion, equity, and diversity. And the Cat’s Cradle turning seventy!

Your Week.

Every Wednesday.

Mark Dorosin, the managing attorney for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law Regional Office, was first elected to the Orange County Board of Commissioners in 2012.

INDYweek.com | 1.01.20 | 17

“First of all, meat will be illegal.”

region the future of our

“If you live within two to five miles of an area that is hip, described as walkable, or downtown, then you should prepare.”

18 | 1.01.20 | INDYweek.com

“The next twenty years for community organizers will be exhausting and mentally taxing, but the most important in modern history.”

2040

Region | Media

What Will Local Media Look Like in 2040?

JEFFREY C. BILLMAN

Within a few months, The News & Observer, like all McClatchy publications, will end its Saturday print edition, pushing readers toward an e-edition instead. If you think that’s the end of this trend rather than the beginning—if you think the N&O will be printing six newspapers a week a decade from now—I’ve got a bridge to sell you. I doubt they’ll be printing two.

The daily newspaper in Little Rock, Arkansas, is giving— as in, for free—its seven-day-a-week subscribers iPads so they can access an e-edition of the paper, then teaching them how to use it (many of them are old). Printing and circulating a physical newspaper is expensive; emailing a digital version is cheaper. Hell, iPads are cheaper.

The profitable Sunday edition, with its hefty supply of inserted ads, will still exist, for now; the others will vanish.

This is the near-future of the erstwhile daily newspaper: one print product per week, supplemented by daily e-editions and websites to which you are directed by push notifications, tweets, and lots and lots of newsletters—including morning and evening newsletters that serve the function that multiple editions of newspapers did decades ago.

The disappearance of an anachronistic medium is nothing to shed tears over. The disappearance of local journalism, however, would be. Without it, residents would be uninformed, local officials and special interests would be free to exploit their ignorance, and unexposed corruption would run rampant.

So, to my mind, the pertinent question isn’t what local journalism will look like in 2040, but the degree to which it will exist at all.

I’ll begin with our paper of record.

I have little faith in the N&O/Herald-Sun under its current ownership. To be clear, that’s not because I don’t think highly of the paper’s journalists and editorial managers.

I do. Rather, it’s because McClatchy has dug itself a hole from which I see no escape. As I write this, the entire company—almost thirty papers—has a market cap of just over $4 million (with an m). It has a mountain of debt, and while it’s adding digital subscribers, it’s hemorrhaging ad revenue.

Bankruptcy seems inevitable.

Sooner or later—sooner, probably—the N&O will be sold, either individually or as part of a group. If the buyer is a hedge fund or a vulture-like company like Digital First Media, the N&O will die quickly, and we’ll all suffer for it. A still-but-slightly-less-bad option is that it’s gobbled up by a chain like Tribune or, ugh, GateHouse.

Less likely but more optimistic: Local interests buy the N&O, aware that the margins will never be what they once

were but cognizant of the service the paper performs. Alternatively, like The Salt Lake Tribune or The Philadelphia Inquirer, the N&O is acquired by a nonprofit and operated as a public trust.

This is how local legacy media survives—not with companies that answer to shareholders, but with local owners whose first commitment is to their community.

As Philip Napoli mentions later, the future of television news is equally uncertain; viewers are aging, and younger people aren’t tuning in. And as Sarah Day Owen Wiskirchen discusses, an entire ecosystem of news organizations untethered to legacy operations has developed to fill the void, many of them excellent: The nonprofits Carolina Public Press and NC Health News come to mind.

But I wonder if there’s enough philanthropy to support all the local reporting that needs doing. I also wonder at what point reader-based revenue models will become untenable—i.e., when will readers tire of being asked to support nearly every website they visit? (Which reminds me: Please go to KeepItINDY.com today to join the INDY Press Club and support fearless local journalism in the Triangle.)

I’ve little doubt that community journalism will become democratized over the next two decades. My concern is whether this will be a sustainable profession as Google and Facebook continue to hoover digital ad dollars.

As for us alt-weeklies, I probably think about our futures too much—and about where the alts that fell over the last several years went wrong, and how the rest of us can avoid their mistakes and misfortunes. In pessimistic moments, I wonder if we, too, are anachronisms of a bygone era that needed hell-raisers and bomb-throwers; if alts were the voice of the internet before the internet existed, what are we now that the internet is everywhere?

At the risk of sounding Pollyannaish, however, I see a path ahead, though it will require adaptation. The INDY of 2040—fingers crossed—will look nothing like the INDY of 2020, much less The Independent Weekly of 2000.

Print, web, Twitter, TikTok, lasers beamed directly into your brain, whatever. The medium never mattered.

The journalism is what counts.

Jeffrey C. Billman has been the INDY’s editor since 2015.

SARAH DAY OWEN WISKIRCHEN

In 2040, when you access local news, it won’t be a newspaper.

You might access it as an event—a community gathering convened by a journalistic institution around a topic that matters. You might explore it as an AI chatbot that you can ask specific questions over audio or text message. It might be a database that shows you contextual information based on your location. It might be a well-designed electronic magazine that arrives in your inbox or a quarterly hard copy that sits on your coffee table.

It could be from a niche brand, a metro-wide organization with stories curated to your interests, a hyperlocal vertical, or a feed of voices you’ve chosen to follow.

What you won’t see in 2040: newsprint, appointment programming, and traditional advertising support.

The good news: Local media isn’t dying. The biggest players in the industry might be tied to legacy platforms that are becoming less relevant for audiences, but we’ve equated a business model with an entire industry. And this narrative overlooks the hard truth that local media will likely be a less straightforward business in the future.

Using both national trends and current statewide experimentation, here are five things I predict will happen between now and 2040.

1. Local newsrooms will get smaller.

Metro-focused legacy media will see further staff reductions and regionalized production. This trend could be visible at The News & Observer and WRAL. These organizations will still be crucial for their in-depth investigations, but community coverage will be deprioritized.

McClatchy is better positioned to shift to different models than some legacy organizations because it’s reached 50 percent subscriber revenue and because of its efforts in experimentation.

Two examples: the Google-funded Compass Experiment in Ohio (which works like a local digital startup) and the ten journalism labs in different sites funded by philanthropy and the community.

Most legacy giants, including my former employer Gannett (recently acquired by GateHouse), will try to find sustainability with scale, consolidation, and efficiency.

But in the process, regionalization could mean that more resources are committed to large areas with growing populations. Rural areas, suburban municipalities, and shrinking communities will be seen as less- aluable properties and will either be offloaded or given fewer resources.

If this happens, with fewer watchdog reporting resources in smaller and shrinking communities, local governments INDYweek.com | 1.01.20 | 19

will be held less accountable—until a hyperlocal startup fills the void.

2. Alt-weeklies become multiplatform brands.

Alt-weeklies, which have also seen retraction tied to legacy business models, will be nimbler in their shift to new media models, differentiated from startups by their institutional voice and content focus. The INDY and other alts with responsible ownership will be thought of less as weekly products.

Instead, they’ll be known on myriad platforms for their strong, often adversarial institutional voices questioning authority.

As equity becomes a more mainstream issue, alt-weeklies will help push forward important conversations in civic and cultural spaces through content and community events, taking on a greater activist role.

Weekly print will cease, instead shifting to a quality quarterly publication that looks more like Durham-based Scalawag, with longer pieces that audiences will want to hold on to.

Alts have long been pathways for marginalized folks in journalism to grow careers; they’ll be an important part of the greater journalism ecosystem.

3. Collaborations will create better journalism than could be done independently.

As newsrooms shrink, organizations will collaborate for statewide or region-wide projects with impact. Such examples exist already: The ten-organization project about draconian sexual assault consent laws caused a change in legislation this year. It was led by the Carolina Public Press, a nonprofit founded in 2011.

The Charlotte Journalism Collaborative, brought together by the Solutions Journalism Network and the Knight Foundation, will tackle affordable housing. The organizations in the group range from legacy media to public media to online media that serve black, Latinx, and LGBTQ communities in Charlotte.

Because of the unique collaborative efforts happening in North Carolina, along with Philly and New Jersey, we will be a state to watch for innovation in local media.

4. New revenue models, including readersupported, will emerge.

Communities concerned about equity in information will voluntarily support the information sources they believe in: The INDY and my own media organization, Raleigh Convergence, have asked for community support while keeping our respective content free.

Different media companies will try different community-funded models in the future. Membership is becoming common, 20 | 1.01.20 | INDYweek.com

but outside-the-box ideas include The Devil Strip in Ohio’s co-op model and Berkeleyside’s direct public offering (which raised $1 million). Some media companies will become B Corps, while others, like The Salt Lake Tribune, will become nonprofits.

Philanthropy is more likely than public funding to support journalism in a more divided political climate, though public radio is one area of media seeing growth now. Organizations like Local Independent Online News Publishers (I’m a member) will help startups become sustainable businesses.

5. Local media will focus on storytelling.

Storytelling should be a best practice for local media, but it’s too often information that’s pushed out on platforms that better suit the writer than the reader. The future of local media will have storytelling designed for the user’s understanding and engagement.

Local news will include cycles of conversation, where information is facilitated in a way that’s accessible to a large audience— not just the people who have been paying attention. The isolation and lack of civility on digital platforms will push communities toward in-person programming, community storytelling, and conversation. Journalism practitioners will be less extractive and more a part of their communities. Objectivity will fall to transparency.

Community members will learn journalism as a tool, from public records requests to reporting from public meetings, much like the City Bureau Documenters program in Chicago.

Sarah Day Owen Wiskirchen is the founder of Minerva Media Co. and the editor and publisher of Raleigh Convergence. She has previously been a reporter and editor for USA Today, The Des Moines Register, and The Augusta Chronicle.

PHILIP M. NAPOLI

Those of us who research local journalism feel a bit like climate scientists. But rather than warning of rising temperatures and melting ice caps, we chronicle newsroom closures, staff layoffs, and expanding “news deserts” across the country.

And as with the climate, we are at a point with local journalism where the future looks very grim unless we make some dramatic changes. So, in predicting what local journalism in the Triangle is going to look like twenty years from now, I’m going to offer two forecasts.

The first scenario assumes things continue as they are. The second assumes that we begin to make the kinds of changes necessary to revive and stabilize local journalism.

Scenario 1 Projecting from current trends, the next twenty years are likely to see the near eradication of local journalism as we have traditionally known it. The few local newspapers that remain in the Triangle will wither and die.

The economic hardships that have affected local newspapers will take a similar toll on the area’s local television stations.

Already, the typical local TV news viewer is quite old and getting older. As the current generation of local TV news viewers dies off, they are not going to be replaced because the next generation hasn’t included local TV newscasts as part of their regular news diet. As a result, over the next twenty years, we should see the investment that local TV stations make in local news decline substantially. In terms of online news sources, the question is whether, at some point in the near future, they find a way to actually make money when competing with digital giants like Facebook and Google for advertising dollars; and/or a way to get people to pay for digitally delivered news.

They haven’t found the answer over the past fifteen years, so it seems unlikely that they will find the answer sometime in the next twenty.

And when the economic motivation for providing news evaporates, that leaves the political motivation. We see the ramifications of this already, as we’re witnessing the rise of hyper-partisan local news outlets that really aren’t news organizations at all.

These are news sites financed and run by PACs, political parties, and political candidates. However, these digital sites often masquerade as traditional news organizations, frequently concealing the details of their ownership and sources of financial support. And what they produce seldom meets the accuracy and objectivity standards of traditional journalism.

As traditional local news outlets continue to fade away, these partisan propaganda outlets will increasingly fill the void.

As a result, the next twenty years will likely see the kind of hyper-partisanship that characterizes national cable news become the norm in local journalism, leading to increasingly contentious, polarized, and unproductive local politics.

Over the next twenty years, the last vestiges of the idea of objectivity in journalism may actually fall away.

Scenario 2 The more optimistic scenario is one in which we move on from the idea of local journalism being a sustainable commercial enterprise and embrace the idea of local journalism as a public service.

In this scenario, the majority of local news organizations operate as nonprofits, supported by an as-yet-to-determined funding model. Perhaps it’s a tax on social media platforms’ revenues, as some have proposed. Perhaps it’s a massive expansion of philanthropic support at the local, regional, and national levels for local journalism. Perhaps it’s an enlargement of our existing public broadcasting system into a more expansive public media system, with the U.S. finally emerging from its position bringing up the rear among developed nations in terms of how much we spend per capita on public service media.

Most likely, it will take a combination of all of these and more for local journalism to regain its footing. Scenario 2 requires a massive change in how communities, news organizations, journalists, policymakers, and philanthropies think about local journalism.

Fortunately, that change is starting to take place.

This scenario could lead to higher-quality journalism than what has been produced under the traditional commercial model.

This scenario could lead to journalism freed, to some extent, from the pressure to maximize views, clicks, likes, and shares. As a result, it could lead to journalism that is less sensationalistic, more substantive, and that better serves the information needs of local communities.

I return, in the end, to the climate change analogy. In terms of both the climate and local journalism, we are at a critical juncture in terms of deciding what the next twenty years will bring.

Philip M. Napoli is the James R. Shepley Professor of Public Policy at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy.

2040

Region | Housing + Transit

What Will Triangle Housing Look Like in 2040?

BY JAMES W. DEMBY

I

recently started a project tracking all of the new housing built in Raleigh (WhatIsRaleighBuilding.com), which means I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the future of housing in the Triangle. The predictions that follow are focused on three general questions: Where will homes get built? How will transportation infrastructure affect housing? How will housing prices change?

So where will future Triangle residents live?

I think there will be two main trends. The first, and we should not kid ourselves, is suburban sprawl—neighborhoods of single-family homes, but with more townhomes than in the past, outside of a city center where the land was previously “open” (except for the trees) in boomtowns like Knightdale, Apex, Holly Springs, and at the edges of Raleigh and Durham. There will also be more “New Urbanism”-style developments: Think Sweetwater Park in Apex or Briar Chapel in Chapel Hill—nice, but when built on the edge of a city, still sprawl.

The second trend will be bigger buildings in and near walkable downtowns. I think 20–25 percent of new homes will fall into this category, but in people’s minds it will feel like more than 70 percent. Think of John Kane’s Smoky Hollow development in Raleigh, which has one thousand units, but also three-hundred-unit apartments with parking decks near downtown Durham, Chapel Hill, and even smaller ones in Cary. If you look across the entire Triangle

in 2040, however, it will be surprising how many places like Apex or Knightdale still don’t have anything like this.

There will be some infill and smaller missing-middle multifamily developments, but I don’t expect to see a lot.

Raleigh had about ten duplexes built inside the Beltline in the last eight or so years, so we’d need a big change for there to be lots of those. That’s a shame, because this is the type of housing we really need. A lot of that will rest on the leadership of local governments around the Triangle.

Transportation infrastructure will see a diverging diamond trend. Interstate 540 in southern Wake County will open the floodgates to sprawl. Look up Gwinnett County in Georgia, population 927,000, a 30-to-90-minute drive from Atlanta. Everything south of Raleigh from Holly Springs to the middle of Johnston County will start to look like Gwinnett when I-540 is completed.

The yin to the highway yang will be public transit. I don’t think residents realize how hard it’s actually going to be to build BRT coming out of Raleigh, and that commuter rail in ten years really needs your support. (I give BRT a 75 percent chance of happening—and commuter rail a 49 percent chance.)

With BRT, Raleigh, Cary, and Garner will have a chance to get people out of cars if they allow dense development near transit stops. Compared to sprawl, this won’t be as big a housing trend over the next twenty years, but I am

optimistic that we will start to see denser housing with less parking and the things people need to live their lives all around BRT lines. If everything goes just right for commuter rail, we will even see the stations in Garner and RTP build up like small city centers.

The last thing I predict for the Triangle in 2040 is that housing prices will continue to rise. This should come as a shock to no one. There will be some affordable housing built with money from bonds and even some included in new development as a trade for increasing zoning. But market-rate housing is going to be expensive, and older home prices are going to keep creeping up as well. I see Triangle-wide housing moving toward a $403,000 average by 2040. Single-family homes of any age will become a luxury item, and townhomes will be the new (still expensive) starter home.

The big price trend that I can only imagine accelerates is gentrification in neighborhoods that don’t see it coming. If you live within two to five miles of an area that is hip, described as walkable, or downtown, then you should prepare.

In the next twenty years, we might start to run out of neighborhoods like these as they all turn expensive. Maybe the new ones will be near walkable transit stops in Garner and Knightdale.

James W. Demby tracks new housing built in Raleigh from 2018 onward at his blog, WhatIsRaleighBuilding.com.

What Will Triangle Transit Look Like in 2040?

BY NATHAN J. SPENCER

Y

ou’re already starting to hear about bus rapid transit—like a light rail line but using a modified bus—and commuter rail. By 2040, we’ll have a complete and connected transportation network. Local buses will have dedicated lanes and signal priority at traffic lights. Commuter rail will get you to any number of points between Johnston County and Wake Forest. BRT will run from Knightdale to RTP and from Triangle Town Center to Garner, both stopping in downtown Raleigh.

We’ll also see an array of micro-transit options connecting major transit lines.

What those will look like is still unknown, although things like scooters and short-distance electric vehicles are a good start.

Another big change will be the number of

people relying on transit instead of personal transportation like cars. Even as we expand our roadways, traffic is increasing beyond capacity, and by 2040, driving your own car will be time- (and likely cost-) prohibitive.

Driving yourself will be a last resort.

In order for this to succeed, though, we need to think beyond just building transit lines. We need to consider how we live in our communities and start making changes immediately.

We need residential density, like multifamily, multistory homes and sharing lots to break out of the one-family, one-home, one-lot cycle. Walking and biking are forms of public transit as well, and we should be building services—coffee shops, grocery stores, schools—within walking and bik-

ing distance of highly populated residential areas. We must find smart ways to use the space we already occupy instead of sprawling outward.

That’s not going to be easy. Even with wellplanned and executed affordable-housing and land-use policies, Clayton, Angier, and Youngsville will continue to grow. Transportation investments alongside the maintenance of our roads and bridges will have to continue. Our efficient transportation system will keep us on the map for great jobs and exciting new industries.

The challenge to stay ahead is the cost of a successful region.

To keep up, planners will be discussing the soon-to-come high-speed rail lines to the Northeast powered by renewable sourc-

es. The promise of biking to Raleigh Union Station and being in Washington, D.C., by brunch will occupy discussions at the community planning meetings held in coffee shops, parks, bars, and schools.

By 2040, the investments we’re making now, with a combined focus of mitigating the climate and equity effects of our decisions over the last seventy years, will be realized. Our land-use and transportation choices today will allow our children to call the Triangle their home, too.

backtalk@indyweek.com

Nathan J. Spencer is the associate director of WakeUP Wake County.

INDYweek.com | 1.01.20 | 21

2040

Region | Social Justice + LGBTQ Rights

The Future of Social Justice

BY ZAINAB BALOCH

W

e’re all too familiar with the problems the Triangle is facing: rising housing prices putting ownership out of reach (especially for millennials), sprawl, police brutality, long commutes, poverty, the climate crisis, etc. The path we choose now will determine whether we’ll be a region comprising moral, equitable, and sustainable cities or a failed urban landscape featuring inequity marked by unsustainable systems and processes.

Now more than ever, we need leaders and an engaged electorate focused on developing a model of morally based good governance designed to yield equitable, sustainable outcomes in a high-accountability environment.

What will organizers and activists be tasked with addressing over the next twenty years? Let’s use Raleigh as an example.

Right now, the amount of money you have determines how much you matter. As Raleigh grows, only the wealthy are seeing the benefits. We see politicians run on promises of affordable housing and equality while also

taking money from luxury developers who have made Raleigh the ninth-fastest-gentrifying city in the country. One out of every 7.1 residents lives in poverty, 131,740 people are food insecure, and, in the face of our climate crisis, Raleigh’s mediocre plan will take thirty-one years to become carbon neutral, while scientists have only the given the planet eleven years to head off disaster.

As our region grows, so will poverty and crime. The number of homeless children and youth in our school system has increased 27 percent in the past two years. We will face dwindling resources and inequalities in access to food and water; by 2040, the demand for water will exceed supply in Raleigh.

Social justice movements will have the difficult job of addressing present challenges while thinking innovatively about the future.

We’ll need to pursue a bold agenda: eradicating poverty and systemic racism, saving our environment, and changing the narrative about poverty from one that ignores the poor to one that recognizes their strengths while

The Future of LGBTQ Rights

BY JAMES MICHAEL NICHOLS

S

peculating about the future of a movement of any kind can be dangerous. But one thing I’ve learned writing about the LGBTQ movement over the years is that our community and the strides we’ve won are built on a shared sense of hope—hope for a better future and, at least locally, a better North Carolina, where society’s most vulnerable are cared for.

For that reason, I’m approaching this vision of 2040 from a place of idealism—envisioning the world that I’d like to see for LGBTQ individuals living in North Carolina twenty years from now, and a world that I know many of us are fighting for every day.

In many ways, the LGBTQ rights movement boils down to issues of access and safety. Twenty years from now, I’d hope that those concepts are realistically interwoven within the daily lives of LGBTQ folks living in the Triangle and all across this country.

That, of course, would include comprehensive nondis22 | 1.01.20 | INDYweek.com

questioning the morality of public policy. The next twenty years for community organizers will be exhausting and mentally taxing, but the most important in modern history.

Our region will need a moral revolution that places the needs of the poor and the planet at the heart of our policies and budget.

Issues will be advocated for holistically, and communities will need to collaborate strategically. We’ll need to utilize technology to scale out initiatives, build partnerships with public and private entities, and elect leaders who will value morality over money. But we’ll also need the power of the people to attend every public meeting to push forward this moral agenda. By building power, shifting the narrative, and by organizing, organizing, organizing, we’ll make sure that people have a right to thrive, not just (barely) survive.

Every resident will be affected by these issues, but our empowerment lies in the fact that we are not alone, and that we are willing to come together to fight, to answer the tough questions around sustainability, resil-

crimination protections and full rights and protections under the law. HB 2 and HB 142 would be distant memories—perhaps even laughable to consider that such legislation ever existed. Maybe kids would grow up without a socialized expectation of how their gender would shape their experiences in the world, and perhaps be given the space to self-determine their gender altogether.

In the Triangle, twenty years would ideally bring a wider breadth of spaces for LGBTQ people—particularly a variety of spaces, not just bars and nightclubs. LGBTQ people deserve places to gather and cultivate community that aren’t framed around alcohol. Sober spaces like LGBTQ coffee shops and other gathering points are crucial to catering to queer folks from all walks of life.

It would also be beautiful to see our community reflected more comprehensively in the world around us. The election of two openly gay Raleigh City Council members bodes well for future LGBTQ representation in our local political leadership, and ideally, that trend will continue.

I hope that the domination of Raleigh’s best downtown restaurants by openly gay restaurateurs continues, and that we continue to see openly LGBTQ business leaders push our cities into the future.

Beyond that, my vision for 2040 is a vision for the future of our movement beyond just the borders of North Carolina. Reparations for people of color. A breakdown of the prison-industrial complex and functioning alternatives to

ience, economic vibrancy, and inclusiveness.

The Triangle will need everyone—rich people, doctors, lawyers, businesspeople—but we will be working with the poor, not for the poor.

We’ll imagine a different region because things don’t have to be this way. We will redefine, reimagine, and retool new visions of prosperity. This will create more jobs, build our infrastructure, strengthen our economy, and protect our resources for future generations—generations that will be grateful for the generations before them who set them up to live equitably in the place they love calling home. This will redound to the benefit of all, instead of the few.

In the next twenty years, the Triangle has a rare opportunity to become an international model for how to shape a thriving and moral region. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “The time is always right to do what is right.” It’s time, y’all.

Zainab Baloch is a former candidate for Raleigh mayor.

incarceration. The eradication of homelessness and banning conversion therapy. Universal health care and a welcoming immigration policy. Eliminating AIDS once and for all.

It seems like a broad vision, but LGBTQ people are truly in every community, and, as a result, a better world for LGBTQ folks looks like a better world for all communities who suffer under the current structures governing the world.

In a world where the life expectancy of a trans woman of color is thirty-five, my biggest hope for 2040 is a North Carolina—and a planet—where the LGBTQ community no longer faces daily threats of fear and violence. For some members of our community, the culture of America has shifted in such a way that we no longer have to fear regular harassment, discrimination, or violence.

But for many people who call themselves LGBTQ, things haven’t gotten much better. Quite simply, I hope that the Triangle is a better place for them in 2040, and that queer and trans people feel safe and protected walking the streets in every part of our cities.

What will life look like for LGBTQ people in 2040? An unbridled sense of freedom for anyone who calls themselves LGBTQ. Oh, what a world that would be to live in.

backtalk@indyweek.com

James Michael Nichols is the director of communications for Equality NC.

2040

Region | Arts Education

The Future of Triangle Arts Education BY MARK KATZ

T

he 9th Wonder Department of HipHop at Duke University.

Sorry, this doesn’t exist—yet. A department of hip-hop is hardly an unimaginable prediction. But it would represent a fundamental change in the way many universities teach music, and the arts in general.

I’ll use the 9th Wonder Department of HipHop to represent three trends I hope to see in arts education among our institutions of higher learning over the next two decades: inclusivity, integration, and collaboration.

Specifically, I’d like to see more a more inclusive definition of what it means to major in the arts; better integration among the various arts at the university level; and a more robust and equitable collaboration between universities and local arts communities. A department of hip-hop would, or at least could, do all three. (By the way, if you’re not a Duke fan, imagine your preferred alternative, maybe the Rapsody Institute at N.C. State or the DaBaby Department at UNC-Chapel Hill.)

At any given moment, students are making beats on their laptops or rapping in front of their mirrors. Few see their university’s music departments as welcoming spaces, and, as far as I know, no area students can major in hip-hop. Most music departments cater to those who study Western classical music, and to a lesser extent, jazz and musical theater. Are you a rapper, or for that matter, a banjo player, rock drummer, or gospel singer attending one of our fine local universities? Giving a senior recital in your chosen genre is an unlikely scenario.

But why shouldn’t students have this opportunity? I believe that any student who wants to have a life in music should be able to major in music, and this is one of my wishes for 2040, though preferably sooner.

Hip-hop, contrary to common usage, is not synonymous with rap. Rap, a form of vocal performance, is just one element of hip-hop.

There are other musical practices (beatboxing, beat-making, and DJing), as well as dance, fashion, poetry, theater, and visual arts, under the umbrella of hip-hop. Imagine a department that housed so many different artistic practices (whether hip-hop related or not) under one roof, one mission, one overarching curriculum. What an incredible opportunity for students, faculty, artists,

and audiences to experience and witness transformative artistic encounters. Alas, the siloization of the modern university makes this kind of cross-fertilization the exception rather than the norm. The truly integrative arts department—and I don’t mean a school of art that houses music, dance, etc. as distinct units—is my wish for 2040.

For the last two years, I’ve been overseeing MUSC 493, Music Internship, at UNC-Chapel Hill. The student interns have been working with rapper and entrepreneur Kaze, owner of the recording studio VibeHouse 405 and co-owner of Local 506, a music venue. The students learn realworld music industry skills, while Kaze, who enjoys mentoring, has smart, industrious student assistants. Partnerships like this aren’t that unusual, but they’re not common enough, and our universities need to do a better job of fostering them.

And frankly, universities need to treat local artists better. Too often, we invite them into our classrooms without paying them, and it’s nearly impossible for many, however qualified they are, to teach as official faculty members. I know quite a few artists and arts entrepreneurs who can never be considered an “instructor of record” at UNC-Chapel Hill. That’s because they don’t have a PhD or a master’s. Why is having a master’s degree sufficient to teach hip-hop, but having Grammys and platinum records and decades of relevant experience not? So here’s another wish for 2040: University arts programs that forge truly collaborative and respectful relationships with the people who give life to our local arts scenes.

I call these wishes rather than predictions because I’m not confident we will see this kind of change. Institutions transform slowly, and although universities are said to be hotbeds of liberalism, faculty can be insistently conservative when it comes to change. But if we can adopt music streaming and mobile apps into our teaching, maybe my dream won’t languish in the realm of speculative fiction.

CELEBRATING 20 YEARS

JANUARY WINTER METAL FEST 6pm Sa 4 LOWBROW & STEAMROOM ETIQUETTE 7pm Su 5 AFTON MUSIC SHOWCASE FEATURING: Bonafide Fabian, Fr 3

Highlygifted And Friends , Og, Amanda Blackmarsh, The Gypsy Mystics, 600PhlyBoi & Guests. 5:30pm

WHO’S BAD (The Evolution of Pop) 7:30pm Sa 11 THE SHAKEDOWN performs the Fr 10

LOWBROW & STEAMROOM ETIQUITTE

Yacht Rock 7:30pm

Su 12 DAVID BROMBERG QUINTET 7pm We 15 THE DISCO BISCUITS 7pm Th 16 BADFISH–A TRIBUTE TO SUBLIME w/ Tropidelic & Little Stranger 7pm

January 4, 8pm

$9

WHO’S BAD

Th 16 GRACE POTTER At The Ritz 7pm Fr 17

TURKUAZ w/ Neal Francis. 8pm

2020

Sa 18 CITIZEN COPE 7pm Su 19 NATURAL WONDER (The Ultimate Stevie Wonder Experience) w/ Bless the Rains (The Ultimate Toto Tribute) 7pm

Jan. 10, 8:30pm

Fr 24/ AMERICAN AQUARIUM’S Sa 25 “ROADTRIP TO RALEIGH” 7pm Fr 31

THE BREAKFAST CLUB

Sa 1

JUPITER COYOTE w/ Old Habits 7pm GRASS IS DEAD & SONGS FROM THE ROAD BAND w/South Hills Banks 7pm

$17.50 to $30

w/ 8-Track Minds 8pm

FEBRUARY Th 6 Fr 8/ Sa 9

ZOSO The Ultimate Led Zeppelin Experience 7pm

Fr 14 Heartbreaker Ball Featuring:

THE SHAKEDOWN PRESENTS YACHT ROCK

January 11, 8:30pm

NANTUCKET/DRIVER/ ASHLY LARUE BAND 7pm

Sa 15 Before We Begin World Tour: ERIC NAM w/ Phoebe Ryan 7pm

DAVID BROMBERG QUINTET W/ PAUL LOREN

Su 16 Y&T 7pm Fr 21

$10 to $30

RAILROAD EARTH

w/Handmade Moments 7pm

ADV. TICKETS @ LINCOLNTHEATRE.COM & SCHOOLKIDS RECORDS ALL SHOWS ALL AGES

January 12, 8pm $20 to $30

919-821-4111 • 126 E. Cabarrus St. • Get your tickets today at lincolntheatre.com

backtalk@indyweek.com

Mark Katz is a professor of music at UNC-Chapel Hill and the founding director of the Next Level cultural diplomacy program.

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INDYweek.com | 1.01.20 | 23

2040

Region | Social Justice + LGBTQ Rights

The Future of Social Justice

BY ZAINAB BALOCH

W

Your week.

Every Wednesday.

ARTS•NEWS•FOOD•MUSIC INDYWEEK.COM

RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE

THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS

PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER

24 | 1.01.20 | INDYweek.com

e’re all too familiar with the problems the Triangle is facing: rising housing prices putting ownership out of reach (especially for millennials), sprawl, police brutality, long commutes, poverty, the climate crisis, etc. The path we choose now will determine whether we’ll be a region comprising moral, equitable, and sustainable cities or a failed urban landscape featuring inequity marked by unsustainable systems and processes.

Now more than ever, we need leaders and an engaged electorate focused on developing a model of morally based good governance designed to yield equitable, sustainable outcomes in a high-accountability environment.

What will organizers and activists be tasked with addressing over the next twenty years? Let’s use Raleigh as an example.

Right now, the amount of money you have determines how much you matter. As Raleigh grows, only the wealthy are seeing the benefits. We see politicians run on promises of affordable housing and equality while also

taking money from luxury developers who have made Raleigh the ninth-fastest-gentrifying city in the country. One out of every 7.1 residents lives in poverty, 131,740 people are food insecure, and, in the face of our climate crisis, Raleigh’s mediocre plan will take thirty-one years to become carbon neutral, while scientists have only the given the planet eleven years to head off disaster.

As our region grows, so will poverty and crime. The number of homeless children and youth in our school system has increased 27 percent in the past two years. We will face dwindling resources and inequalities in access to food and water; by 2040, the demand for water will exceed supply in Raleigh.

Social justice movements will have the difficult job of addressing present challenges while thinking innovatively about the future.

We’ll need to pursue a bold agenda: eradicating poverty and systemic racism, saving our environment, and changing the narrative about poverty from one that ignores the poor to one that recognizes their strengths while

The Future of LGBTQ Rights

BY JAMES MICHAEL NICHOLS

S

peculating about the future of a movement of any kind can be dangerous. But one thing I’ve learned writing about the LGBTQ movement over the years is that our community and the strides we’ve won are built on a shared sense of hope—hope for a better future and, at least locally, a better North Carolina, where society’s most vulnerable are cared for.

For that reason, I’m approaching this vision of 2040 from a place of idealism—envisioning the world that I’d like to see for LGBTQ individuals living in North Carolina twenty years from now, and a world that I know many of us are fighting for every day.

In many ways, the LGBTQ rights movement boils down to issues of access and safety. Twenty years from now, I’d hope that those concepts are realistically interwoven within the daily lives of LGBTQ folks living in the Triangle and all across this country.

That, of course, would include comprehensive nondis22 | 1.01.20 | INDYweek.com

questioning the morality of public policy. The next twenty years for community organizers will be exhausting and mentally taxing, but the most important in modern history.

Our region will need a moral revolution that places the needs of the poor and the planet at the heart of our policies and budget.

Issues will be advocated for holistically, and communities will need to collaborate strategically. We’ll need to utilize technology to scale out initiatives, build partnerships with public and private entities, and elect leaders who will value morality over money. But we’ll also need the power of the people to attend every public meeting to push forward this moral agenda. By building power, shifting the narrative, and by organizing, organizing, organizing, we’ll make sure that people have a right to thrive, not just (barely) survive.

Every resident will be affected by these issues, but our empowerment lies in the fact that we are not alone, and that we are willing to come together to fight, to answer the tough questions around sustainability, resil-

crimination protections and full rights and protections under the law. HB 2 and HB 142 would be distant memories—perhaps even laughable to consider that such legislation ever existed. Maybe kids would grow up without a socialized expectation of how their gender would shape their experiences in the world, and perhaps be given the space to self-determine their gender altogether.

In the Triangle, twenty years would ideally bring a wider breadth of spaces for LGBTQ people—particularly a variety of spaces, not just bars and nightclubs. LGBTQ people deserve places to gather and cultivate community that aren’t framed around alcohol. Sober spaces like LGBTQ coffee shops and other gathering points are crucial to catering to queer folks from all walks of life.

It would also be beautiful to see our community reflected more comprehensively in the world around us. The election of two openly gay Raleigh City Council members bodes well for future LGBTQ representation in our local political leadership, and ideally, that trend will continue.

I hope that the domination of Raleigh’s best downtown restaurants by openly gay restaurateurs continues, and that we continue to see openly LGBTQ business leaders push our cities into the future.

Beyond that, my vision for 2040 is a vision for the future of our movement beyond just the borders of North Carolina. Reparations for people of color. A breakdown of the prison-industrial complex and functioning alternatives to

ience, e The Tr ple, doc will be We’l things d fine, re prospe our inf and pro ations— the gen to live e home. T instead In th has a r nationa and mo said, “T right.”

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incarceration. The erad conversion therapy. Un immigration policy. Eli It seems like a broad every community, and, folks looks like a better under the current struc In a world where the color is thirty-five, my b lina—and a planet—wh faces daily threats of fe our community, the cu way that we no longer crimination, or violenc But for many people haven’t gotten much be angle is a better place trans people feel safe every part of our cities.

What will life look unbridled sense of fr selves LGBTQ. Oh, what a world tha

James Michael Nichol for Equality NC.

2040

Region | Food

What Will the Triangle’s Food Scene Look Like in 2040?

BY NICK WILLIAMS

B

eing asked to envision the Triangle’s food scene in 2040 is an open invitation to turn in a half-assed piece of futuristic satire. Something about driving our Cybertrucks to Michael Lee’s twenty-fourth “M” restaurant to eat “pan-manifested hypnotrout” from orbital Venusian AquaPlatforms. Or how we’ll be raising GMO beetle larvae for protein and brutalizing one another Thunderdome-style for the amusement of the entrenched 1 percent, who will reward the strongest with another week’s ration of Government-Issued Algae Loaf.

But the former looks hilariously unlikely, and the latter isn’t something I want to consider for my children, even in jest.

So I’d like to be as sincere as possible in my prognostications of what a local food scene will look like two decades hence.

Ultimately, the best I can hope for is that there will actually be a food scene in 2040, because in case you haven’t noticed—and, holy shit, so many people haven’t—we are experiencing systemic disruption on about seventeen different levels, the most obvious being epochal climate change that will dramatically alter growing regions and foodways.

We’re going to feel it. So what’s it going to feel like?

What does this mean for the currently robust community of chefs, restaurants, growers, markets, artisans, thinkers, and, of course, diners who encompass our muchhyped scene? I have a few ideas.

First of all, meat will be illegal.

Or at least, the wholesale factory farming of masses of farting livestock will become an impossible proposition, probably once global grain production collapses to the point where we need all of the available food for, you know, us.

If anyone is allowed to produce meat from actual animals, it’s going to be small, sustainable farms that manage to band together into French-style Appellation D’Origine

Contrôleé for the preservation of heritage breeds and the pleasures of the very rich.

Which is to say, you might be able to get a burger, but it’s going to cost $100, which is frankly what it should cost now. I love meat, but Greta Thunberg is probably correct that it’s an untenable habit.

Likewise, fish are fucked.

The oceans are rapidly becoming a deoxygenated plastic nightmare, and while there still might be sufficient billions of fish at the moment to supply enough horse mackerel and flounder and hamachi and sea bream to fill the planet’s sushi rolls, fish have proven that if they are good at one thing, it’s dying instantly in masses.

If the waves upon waves of dead sardines currently washing up on Pacific beaches are any indication, this has begun in earnest.

So we innovate.

In the absence of fat and blood and delicious muscle, chefs will shift their focus to things we can grow, preserve, ferment, and cultivate. That tomahawk chop will be permanently replaced by mushrooms grown under a restaurant’s dripping eaves. Rooftop gardens, parking lot gardens, alleyway gardens, gardens by the side of the highway: Cooks will brag about the tomatoes growing in their gutters. We’re going to pickle everything. We’re going to ferment things that seem unfermentable and let the dizzying flavor rainbow wash over us.

And we’re going to eat bugs.

Hell, the fanciest and most expensive restaurants in the world already serve meticulous creations under a sprinkling of ants. In the absence of quadrupedal or avian protein, expect to snack on Cool Ranch grasshoppers, deep-fried dung beetles (mmmmm), smoked silkworm pupae, Asian forest scorpions with their invigorating lip-numbing toxins, a crunchy smorgasbord of bigger, nastier, chitinous treats, until the inherent grossness of the act has drained away, and they’re just another source of precious tastiness.

This will end up being a good thing (except for the dead fish), a reduction in both greenhouse gases and cholesterol.

But it’s going to require a fundamental shift in the way most Americans eat—and the way chefs approach their sexiest and most luxurious dishes.

And technology will most likely progress to the point where lab-grown meat and plant-based alternatives are not only available but actually good. Personally, I will invest every dollar in the first company that can successfully 3D-print a ribeye.

But there’s one thing that really gives me hope for the future of our food scene— and for scenes everywhere—and that is the heady and relentless blending of cultures through the medium of cuisine.

The Asian food diaspora has already conquered mainstream America, and in the coming decades, I look forward to culinary waves from West Africa, the Middle East, the Philippines, South America, and Eastern Europe, as immigration continues to melt us all together. It will happen, despite the best efforts of the terrified idiots currently in charge.

Whenever I worry about the future, I think about one particular scene in Blade Runner, in which Harrison Ford’s character, Rick Deckard, weary from chasing rogue androids, hunkers down at a fluorescent-lit stall for a restorative bowl of udon in broth. The streets of 2019 Los Angeles (ha!) are a hostile place, awash with acid rain and suffused with the threat of sudden violence. But the steam rising from that bowl is a palpable comfort, and Deckard digs in with gusto.

The future is a scary place, but man, those noodles look good.

food@indyweek.com

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2040

indyweek.com

Region | Apocalypse

What Will the Triangle Look Like When the Robots Take Over?

BY PHIL TORRES

Your week. Every Wednesday.

News • Music • Arts • Food

26 | 1.01.20 | INDYweek.com

I

t might take only one.

A single robot, a few billionths of a meter wide, dropped somewhere in the woods or on a front lawn. In a matter of days or weeks, the entire North American continent would be dust. No trees, no insects, no animals—not even a single bacterium. All of this organic matter will have been converted into copies of that first, mischievous little nanobot.

This is the so-called “gray goo” scenario, which K. Eric Drexler famously discussed in his 1986 book Engines of Creation. More than thirty years later, the danger looms closer. Whereas current 3D printers add one layer of plastic at a time, a nanofactory would move one atom or molecule at a time to build products from the very bottom up. The result would be “atomically precise manufacturing”—APM, for short.

For example, two computers made this way would not only appear identical, but their atoms would also be in exactly the same position.

Once this technology arrives—perhaps by 2040—a misanthropic terrorist could design nanobots for the explicit purpose of disassembling organic matter and creating clones of themselves. Thus, the first nanobot would replicate itself, resulting in two nanobots. These two nanobots would then replicate themselves, resulting in four nanobots. As the nanobot population grows, they could be blown around by the wind, like loblolly pollen, until everything that can be converted into more nanobots has been.

While buildings, roads, and other signs of civilization would survive, cities like Durham, Raleigh, and Chapel Hill would be ghost towns. The streets would be silent.

The parks would be gone. The lights that illuminate the roads at night would eventually flicker out. And, if the army of self-replicating nano-scale robots were to spread across the continents, the human species could kick the bucket, like the dodo and dinosaurs before us.

How fast might this happen? Quite quickly, since the replication process would be exponential, and we are notoriously bad at grasping exponential functions. We let them sneak up on us.

So let me give you an example.

Picture a lovely little pond—say, the fishpond in Duke Gardens—that contains one water lily. But this isn’t an ordinary water lily. It’s a super-fast-growing plant that doubles in size every minute and will cover the entire pond in just an hour. How long would it take for the water lily to cover one-quarter of the pond?

The easiest way to answer is to work backward: If the entire pond is covered after sixty minutes, then, given the water lily’s rate of growth, it will be half-covered after fifty-nine minutes. Since a quarter is half of a half, it will be one-quarter covered after fifty-eight minutes.

And that’s the answer: Just two minutes before the entire pond is covered, a whopping three-fourths of the pond will be completely untouched by the superfast-growing plant. This is the power of exponentials!

Right now, no one knows exactly how dangerous self-replicating nanobots might be. But there are people out there who would destroy the world—even the entire biosphere—if they could. I know, because I’ve studied them.

To be sure, APM could introduce many profound benefits to humanity: Imagine a nanofactory “printing out” virtually anything you could possibly want in your own home for virtually zero cost. Say goodbye to Amazon!

But it could also empower bad actors with a death wish for humanity to push a metaphorical “doomsday button” that ends the human story once and for all.

Phil Torres, a North Carolina ex-pat, is an existential-risk scholar who can be found online at xriskology.com.

WHAT TO DO THIS WEEK

1.01–1.08 Firewalker

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ARTISTS

THURSDAY, JANUARY 2

THE SHADOWBOX SESSION #2 Stacy Wolfson and Curtis Eller, the choreographer/composer duo behind the hybrid music/dance/theater troupe The Bipeds, plunge into 2020 by launching a series of monthly, first-Thursday showcases where regional artists can explore collaborations in music and dance as unexpected as theirs once was. Musician/dancer/sculptor Matthew Young’s incisive movement work was a highlight in Renay Aumiller’s RAW last season; operatic soprano Andrea Moore Healy has recently sung with the N.C. Opera and Raleigh Civic Symphony. Meanwhile, striking dance-maker Kristin Clotfelter and lighting and environmental designer James Clotfelter have explored inclusive audience participation works over the past year, and dancer Dylan Reddish and percussionist Erik Schmidt recently collaborated in Greensboro on the dance music project Love Notes from the Skeleton in my Closet.

Photographer Cambria Storms has lately been performing sinuous, sculpted solo and collaborative movement works in Roanoke; Durham’s Jude Casseday creates soundscapes and electronic music under the nom de plume dejacusse. Who knows what they’ll create in the intimate room at the Shadowbox. —Byron Woods SHADOWBOX STUDIO, DURHAM 8 p.m., $10 suggested, www.shadowboxstudio.org

TUESDAY, JANUARY 7

THE FIRST RAINBOW COALITION The year 1969 is crowded with historic significance, from Woodstock to the first man on the moon. Lesserknown but equally as groundbreaking is 1969’s Rainbow Coalition, a multicultural organization created when Chicago’s Black Panther Party defied segregation, blended with movements including the Latino Young Lords Organization and the Young Patriots (leftist, working-class southern whites), and confronted issues ranging from police brutality to affordable housing.

UNC-TV Public Media, the Durham County Library, and the Durham Library Foundation are bringing the coalition’s legacy to the Triangle with Ray Santisteban’s The First Rainbow Coalition, a documentary featuring archival footage of the group and visceral interviews with former members. This special preview screening and the discussion following will kick off the First Tuesday Film Screening Series, a succession of documentary showings on the first Tuesday of 2020’s first four months. The event is free, but attendees should register on Eventbrite. —Rachel Rockwell

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 1

FIREWALKER, NOSEBLEED, THE FIGHT, TOE An assembly of East Coast hardcore bands descends upon Chapel Hill tonight, headlined by Boston’s Firewalker. With September’s The Roll Call EP, Firewalker merged the streamlined belligerence of their city’s forbears with a spacious dynamic and harsh vocal tones that veer toward sludge.

Their minute-long bursts of roiling fury feel equally indebted to Eyehategod’s vicious and viscous wrath as the punchy polemics of hardcore icons like SSD. Even when they stretch out, as on The Roll Call’s two-minute closer, “Spirits Roam,” Firewalker keeps its rhythm section tight, letting the guitars make the most out of spartan riffs. Tonight, the band makes its first-ever stop in North Carolina. On the undercard, Richmond, Va.’s Nosebleed offer a straightforward attack of searing, fast hardcore, while New York City’s The Fight funnels insistent D-beat through a haze of simple, heavily distorted riffs.

Raleigh’s Tired Of Everything opens with a set free of frills and full of anthemic refrains.

—Bryan C. Reed NIGHTLIGHT, CHAPEL HILL 9:30 p.m., $10, www.nightlightclub.com

DURHAM ARTS COUNCIL, DURHAM 7 p.m., free, www.durhamarts.org INDYweek.com | 1.01.19 | 27

Chocolate Lounge & Juice Bar

Sun 1/5

Jam Session 5pm

Fri 1/10

DEAD SOULS GOTHIC LOUNGE 9pm

Sat 1/11 Gracious Me Wed 1/15 Free Wine Tasting 5-7pm Fri 1/17 Chocolate Covered Comedy Music Performed from 6pm to 10pm Beer & Wine Served Daily Timberlyne Shopping Center, Chapel Hill 1129 Weaver Dairy Rd • specialtreatsnc.com

FR 1/3 CAT’S CRADLE TURNS 50 – NIGHT 4 SUPERCHUNK, BANDWAY, LUD, ZEN FRISBEE, BEN DAVIS & THE JETTS, MICHAEL RANK, TORCH MARAUDER ($15) SA 1/4 CAT’S CRADLE TURNS 50 – NIGHT 5 THE WHITE OCTAVE, SORRY ABOUT DRESDEN, THE POPES - A TRIBUTE, WHAT PEGGY WANTS, THE MAYFLIES USA, BIG FAT GAP, FLYIN' MICE REUNION ($15) SU 1/5 CAT’S CRADLE TURNS 50 – NIGHT 6 MANDOLIN ORANGE, SPEED STICK, PIPE, SOUTHERN CULTURE ON THE SKIDS, JOHN HOWIE JR. AND THE ROSEWOOD BLUFF, MELLOW SWELLS, NIKKI MEETS THE HIBACHI, MICKEY MILLS AND STEEL ($15) FR 1/10 & SA 1/11 - TWO SHOWS

HISS GOLDEN MESSENGER W/LILLY HIATT ($26) SA 1/18 AMERICAN AUTHORS AND MAGIC GIANT W/ SPECIAL GUEST PUBLIC ($25/$28) MO 1/20 CRACKER AND

723 RIGSBEE AVENUE • DURHAM, NC 27701

RECENTLY ANNOUNCED: great dane and Stayloose FRI

1/3

Crank It Loud presents

INTEGRITY

Fuming Mouth / Raw Hex / Joy / Blood Ritual SHIFT NC presents

SAT

1/4

FUNNY GIRL: A NIGHT OF FUNNY FEMMES! starring Hilliary Begley,

hosted by Vivica C. Coxx and Lauren Faber, with Stormie Daie

WED

1/8

FRI

1/10

ART ALEXAKIS OF EVERCLEAR (SOLO) Andrew Winter

SHRED FOR MUSIC ED 3:

Undrask, The Reticent, Stellar Circuits, Knightmare, Raimee

SAT

1/11

Cat’s Cradle Presents

MAGIC CITY HIPPIES with Argonaut & Wasp SUN

1/12

When We Knock, We Win:

FLIP NC’S 2020 LAUNCH PARTY

Duke Science & Society presents TUE 1/13 PERIODIC TABLES: Money Changes Everything: The Warped Incentives in American Healthcare WED

1/14

The Monti STORYSLAM—Resolutions

THU

WXDU presents

1/15 FRI

MICHAL MENERT / LATE NIGHT RADIO CARBON LEAF

1/16 Red Wanting Blue / The Alternate Routes

COMING SOON: Blackalicious, Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana, Grayscale, Hot Mulligan, Over The Rhine, Lost Dog Street Band, AJJ, Jason Ringenberg, Blockhead, We Were Promised Jetpacks, While She Sleeps, David Wilcox, Paul Cauthen, Remember Jones, Gnawa LanGus, OM, Little People, Frameworks, Ellis Dyson & The Shambles, Against Me!, Asgeir, Mdou Moctar, Tiny Moving Parts, Black Atlantic, Caspian, Deafheaven, Vundabar, Shannon & the Clams, Kevin Morby, Neil Hamburger

28 | 1.01.20 | INDYweek.com

CAMPER VAN BEETHOVEN

Get Tickets at our website or in person at the box office.

SUPERCHUNK

SAT

01.4

WE 1/22 MARCO BENEVENTO ($17/$20) TH 1/23 YOLA W/AMYTHYST KLAH ($20/$23) 1/25 SOLD OUT

THE ROAD TO NOW PODCAST ($35)

WE 1/29 ANAMANAGUCHI ($18/$20) TH 1/30 YONDER MOUNTAIN

STRING BAND/TRAVELLIN MCCOURYS ($25/$30)

FR 1/31 BEACH FOSSILS W/NEGATIVE GEMINI ($18/$20) SA 2/1 JAWBOX W/HAMMERED HULLS ($28/$30) SA 2/8 ABBEY ROAD LIVE! – FAMILY MATINEE (2 SHOWS) ($10/13) WE 2/12 ROSS MATHEWS ($35) FR 2/14 THRICE,

MEWITHOUTYOU, DRUG CHURCH ( $26/$30) SA 2/15 COLONY HOUSE THE LEAVE WHAT’S LOST BEHIND TOUR W/TYSON MOTSENBOCKER ($15/$18)

HISS GOLDEN MESSENGER W/LILLY HIATT

SU 5/3 THE RESIDENTS ($30/$35) TU 5/5 ANDY SHAUF W/ FAYE WEBSTER ($18/$20) MO 5/11 BARNS COURTNEY ($22/$25) TH 5/14 YOLA – WALK THROUGH FIRE WORLD TOUR W/AMYTHYST KIAH ($20/23) SA 5/11 BARNS COURTNEY ($22/$25)

FR 1/3 THE BLAZERS ‘HOW TO ROCK’ REUNION ($15/$18) SA 1/4 SUBLIMINAL SURGE / SNAKE SHAMING ($5) TH 1/9 SONG TRAVELER’S WRITER’S NIGHT W/SAM FRAZIER, ABIGAIL DOWD, AND WYATT EASTERLING ($20) FR 1/10 HEAT PREACHER & THE GONE GHOSTS W/TEXOMA ($7/$8) SA 1/11 MAJ DEEKA W/THE WRIGHT AVE, COSMIC SUPERHEROES ($6/$8) TH 1/16 QUETICO W/PHIL MOORE ($10)

TU 2/18 DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS ($26/$30)

DEACON ($15/$17)

SA 2/29 OF MONTREAL W/ LILY'S BAND ($17) WE 3/11 DESTROYER W/NAP EYES ($20/$23)

TU 3/8 DAN RODRIGUEZ ($15) MO 3/16 GRADUATING LIFE W/KING OF HECK TU 3/17 BAMBARA ($10/$12) MO 3/30 VILRAY ($12) MO 4/6 MIGHTY OAKS ($12/$14) TU 4/21 KATIE PUITT ($10) SU 4/26 SAMMY RAE & THE FRIENDS ($12/$15) LOCAL 506 (CHAPEL HILL)

SA 1/18 BAILEN ($12/$15)

ARTSCENTER (CARRBORO)

TU 2/4 CHRIS FARREN, RETIREMENT PARTY, MACSEAL ($10/$12) SA 2/8 SEERATONES ($13/$15) SU 2/9 MC LARS W/ SCHAFFER THE DARKLORD ($15)

SA 3/28 ANTIBALAS ($18/$22) FR 4/3 SHOVELS & ROPE W/INDIANOLA ($25/$28) TU 4/7 ATERCIOPELADOS AND LOS AMIGOS INVISIBLES ($32/$35) MO 4/20 REAL ESTATE ($25/$28)

SA 2/22 TIM BARRY W/ ROGER HARVEY & FRIENDS ($15) SU 2/23 SLOAN ($25) TU 2/25 SHAUN MARTIN OF SNARKY PUPPY AND ELECTRIC KIF ($12/$15)

NO QUARTER: Led Zeppelin Tribute

SAT

SCHOOL DAZE EU FEATURING SUGAR BEAR

01.25

2020 CHAPEL HILL RD. DURHAM 1-984-219-1594 | RhythmsLiveNC.com

RITZ (RAL)

SA 1/25 THE DEVIL MAKES THREE W/MATT HECKLER ($25/$30) HAW RIVER BALLROOM

FR 1/31 G LOVE AND SPECIAL SAUCE W/JONTAVIOUS WILLIS ($25/$30)

TU3/24JOHN MORELAND ($15/$18)

TH 2/20 THE BROOK & THE BLUFF ($12/$14)

FRI

01.24

(PRESENTED IN ASSOCIATION W/ LIVENATION)

MO 2/17 MICHIGAN RATTLERS ($14/$17)

FR 3/27 SOCCER MOMMY W/ TOMBERLIN ($18/$20)

MORNING SHOW: Black Tony & Friends

TU 4/14 DEAFHEAVEN W/INTER ARMA, GREET DEATH, ALL YOUR SISTERS ( $25/$28)

SA 3/21 BEST COAST THE ALWAYS TOMORROW TOUR

WE 2/19 BLACK LIPS W/WARISH ($15)

01.18

WE 3/25 TINY MOVING PARTS W/BELMONT, CAPSTAN, JETTY BONES ($18/$22)

SA 2/22 GARZA FT. ROB GARZA OF THIEVERY CORPORATION WHERE THE MOON HIDES TOUR ($20/$23)

TU 3/24 STEVE GUNN, MARY LATTIMORE, & WILLIAM TYLER ($20/$22)

THE RICKEYTOUR SMILEYW/BIG FAT GAP SAT FROM ELECTRIC HOLIDAY

FR 3/6 ELLIS DYSON & THE SHAMBLES W/DOWNTOWN ABBY AND THE ECHOS ($10/$12)

WE 2/11 BAY FACTION W/SUPERBODY ($12/$15)

TU 2/18 THE MATTSON 2 ($13/$15)

919 BAND

CHATHAM COUNTY LINE

MOTORCO (DUR)

SA 3/14 RADICAL FACE ($25/$28)

W/MANNEQUIN PUSSY ($25/$27)

MLK WEEKEND KICK OFFBALLROOM PROJECT FRI FR 12/20 @HAW RIVER

01.17

TU 3/24 JAMES MCMURTRY W/BONNIE WHITMORE ($22/$25)

TU 2/11 WE WERE PROMISED JETPACKS ($15/$17)

TU 1/21 TALL HEIGHTS W/ANIMAL YEARS ($15/$17)

IN GRATITUDE A TRIBUTE TO EARTH, WIND & FIRE

SU 3/1 HEMBREE TU 3/3 KNUCKLE PUCK W/HEART ATTACK MAN, ONE STEP CLOSER ($23)

SA 1/18 DJANGO FEST DAY 1 ONYX CLUB BOYS, DAVID DIGIUSEPPE & ROBBIE LINK (& WORKSHOPS) ($15/$20) SU 1/19 DJANGO FEST DAY 2 ULTRAFAUX (& WORKSHOPS)

SAT

01.11 8PM

FR 2/28 PALEHOUND ($13/$15)

SA 1/11 MAGIC CITY HIPPIES W/ARGONAUT & WASP ($17.50/$20)

FR 1/31 DAMN TALL BUILDINGS ($14/$17)

2/21 ARCHER'S OF LOAF ($25)

WE 2/26 WISH YOU WERE HERE (JESSEE BARNETT OF STICK TO YOUR GUNS) ($12/$14)

FR 1/17 MO LOWDA & THE HUMBLE W/ ARSON DAILY ($12/$15)

FR 1/24 ILLITERATE LIGHT W/CAMP HOWARD ($12/$14)

SOLD T OU2/27 TH DAN

SU 1/5 @ CAT’S CRADLE

SOUTHERN CULTURE ON THE SKIDS

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music

1.01–1.08

FRIDAY, JANUARY 3–SUNDAY, JANUARY 5

CAT’S CRADLE TURNS 50 The second weekend of the Cat’s Cradle’s fifty-year celebration features three packed, eclectic lineups. Friday showcases the area’s indie rock scene from the eighties to the aughts: Perpetual pogoers Superchunk and fellow slackers Zen Frisbee are joined by Michael Rank’s seventies soul send-ups and the moody, angular aggression of Ben Davis & the Jetts. The elusive Torch Marauder, the ever-evolving Lud, and the hilariously over-thetop Bandway round out the bill. Reunions abound Saturday, from The Pope’s hooky jangles to Flyin’ Mice’s jammy folk. Sorry About Dresden and The White Octave add varying strains of emo while Big Fat Gap supplies a shot of bluegrass and The Mayflies USA and What Peggy Wants bring power pop both classic and alternative. Sunday is highlighted by Mandolin Orange’s gentle harmonies and strings, Southern Culture on the Skids’ countryfried surfabilly, and Pipe’s raw, rowdy punk. Improvisational drum duo Speed Stick and honky tonk masters John Howie Jr. & the Rosewood Bluff are joined by Mickey Mills and Steel, Nikki Meets the Hibachi, and Mellow Swells. —Spencer Griffith CAT’S CRADLE, CARRBORO

6:30 p.m. Fri / 5 p.m. Sat & Sun, $15, www.catscradle.com.

Superchunk performs on Friday, January 3, as part of the Cat’s Cradle fifty-year celebration. PHOTO COURTESY OF MERGE RECORDS

WED, JAN 01

THU, JAN 02

THE CAVE TAVERN D&D Sluggers, Jaguardini, Heavy For Vintage; $5 suggested. 9 p.m.

ARCANA Jaguardini, D&D Sluggers, Magician’s Hand Practice; $5 suggested. 8 p.m.

NIGHTLIGHT Firewalker, Nosebleed, The Fight, Tired of Everything; $10. 9 p.m.

BLUE NOTE GRILL The Old Well All Stars; 7 p.m.

THE CAVE TAVERN Jet Phase, Solar Bear, Blue Frequency; 9 p.m.

FRI, JAN O3 BLUE NOTE GRILL The Goodloves; 9 p.m.

CAT’S CRADLE BACK ROOM The Blazers $15-$18. 8 p.m.

KINGS StrangeLady, Jump Mountain, Torn & Frayed; $8-$10. 7 p.m.

INDYweek.com | 1.01.20 | 29

LINCOLN THEATRE

SLIM’S DOWNTOWN Nu Clear Twins, Steady Sun, State of the Secretary; $5. 8 p.m.

WAKE FOREST LISTENING ROOM Stray Local, Gatlin, Kelsey Abbott; $15. 2 p.m.

Winter Metal Fest

Local metal veterans Outliar headline this “Winter Metal Fest” to celebrate the release of a new EP. Merging classic thrash intensity with modern metal tones, death-leaning low-end and a knack for scathing riffs, Outliar offers more than simple revivalism in its thrash attack. The ascendant Raleigh band WoR also celebrates an album release tonight, fusing metalcore and heavy groove metal to strong effect. Among the Machines, Inanimus, and Era Gone open. —Bryan C. Reed

MON, JAN 06 THE CAVE TAVERN Dexter Romweber; 9 p.m.

LOCAL 506 Wringleyville, Stay Here, The Fairview, Burnsie; $7. 7:30 p.m.

NEPTUNES PARLOUR Atomic Rhythm All-Stars; $5. 8 p.m.

THE PIT Monsey; 7 p.m.

TUE, JAN 07

[$13, 7 P.M.] MOTORCO MUSIC HALL Integrity, Fuming Mouth, Raw Hex, Joy, Blood Ritual; $20-$25. 7:15 p.m.

THE CAVE TAVERN Spoon Dogs, Red Rodeo; 9 p.m.

POUR HOUSE MUSIC HALL Solar Bear, Andy Lyle Hall; $6-$8.

9 p.m.

THE PINHOOK Vaughn; $5. 8 p.m.

POUR HOUSE MUSIC HALL

SLIM’S DOWNTOWN Huffer, Acne, Sister, Brother; $5. 9 p.m.

Kate Rhudy

Since her 2017 debut, Rock N’ Roll Ain’t For Me, Kate Rhudy’s lead—and unforgettably catchy—track “I Don’t Like You or Your Band” has become somewhat of an anthem.

And for good reason: the lyrics are as perfectly clever and cutting as her voice is controlled and honeyed (key lyric: “Your middle-class white boy blues / You’ve become something I can’t stand /I don’t even missing holding your hand”). This show comes on the heels of “Dance it Away,” a brand-new single produced by Jack Hallenbeck (Maggie Rogers). Brimming with warm eighties tempo, this shimmery, bittersweet ballad arrives just in time for New Year’s Eve. Catch Rhudy—and dance it all away—at this Pour House show alongside Skylar Gudasz and Brian Dunne.

—Sarah Edwards [$12-$15, 8:30 P.M.] SLIM’S DOWNTOWN Wednesday, Walkhome, Toss, Goth Dad; $7. 8 p.m.

WED, JAN 08 THE CAVE TAVERN Trevor Daniel and the REEF; 9 p.m.

THE MAYWOOD Automb, Hubris, Arghast, Rale; $10. 8 p.m.

Kate Rhudy plays at The Pour House Music Hall on Friday, January 3. PHOTO BY KENDALL BAILEY PHOTOGRAPHY

SAT, JAN 04

NIGHTLIGHT Sunny Slopes, Tacoma Park, Barb; 8 p.m.

ARCANA The Skipping Stones; 10 p.m.

BLUE NOTE GRILL Mel Melton, The Wicked Mojos; $10-$15. 8 p.m.

CAT’S CRADLE BACK ROOM Subliminal Surge, Snake Shaming; $5. 9 p.m.

THE CAVE TAVERN The New Creatures, David Taylor and the Tallboys, Juniper Avenue; 9 p.m.

LINCOLN THEATRE LowBrow, Steamroom Etiquette; $9. 8 p.m.

LOCAL 506 Tracksuit, Open Field, Certain Seas; $8. 8 p.m.

MEYMANDI CONCERT HALL North Carolina Symphony: Happy Feet to a Latin Beat; 1 p.m. & 4 p.m. showtimes. $27.

THE PINHOOK FemiTHEFemme, GEMYNII, LEXONLOUD; $10. 10 p.m.

POUR HOUSE MUSIC HALL School of Rock; 12 p.m.

ragtime and woozy murder ballads. Rebekah Todd’s vocals enchant with equal grace and power, matched by writing that speaks directly to the heart.

—Spencer Griffith [$12-$15. 9 P.M.]

POUR HOUSE MUSIC HALL

RHYTHMS LIVE MUSIC HALL The Embers, Craig Woolard; $20. 8 p.m.

Rooted in Appalachian and Celtic traditions but charged with a flaskful of whiskey, the Tan & Sober Gentlemen will blow the roof off with all the stomping and hollering of their rabid fiddle-music demands.

Ellis Dyson & The Shambles use banjo and horns to stir up an old-time elixir of jittery

SCHOOLKIDS RECORDS Raleigh Glow, Juxton Roy, Lunchbox Hero; 6 p.m.

Tan & Sober Gentlemen

SLIM’S DOWNTOWN Spaced Angel, Swansgate, Apples and Airplanes; $5. 9 p.m.

THE STATION Cowbaby, Alo Ver, State Park Ranger; 9 p.m.

SUN, JAN 05 ARCANA Albert Ayler; 8 p.m.

BLUE NOTE GRILL Cory Luetjen & The Traveling Blues Band, Ruth Wyand & The Tribe of One, Jon Shain; $10. 5 p.m.

THE KRAKEN Mike Hartley Memorial Benefit; $10 suggested. 4 p.m.

LINCOLN THEATRE Afton Music Showcase; With Bonafide Fabian, HighlyGifted and friends, OG, Amanda Blackmarsh, The Gypsy Mystics, and 6PhlyBoi. $12. 6:30 p.m.

THE NIGHT RIDER Elephant Jake, In The Water, Dododo; 7:30 p.m.

POUR HOUSE MUSIC HALL School of Rock; 12 p.m.

POUR HOUSE MUSIC HALL DJ Midnite Cowboy, DJ Uno Dose; 7 p.m.

FOR OUR COMPLETE COMMUNITY CALENDAR

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30 | 1.01.20 | INDYweek.com

MOTORCO MUSIC HALL Art Alexakis, Andrew Winter; $20-$30. 8 p.m.

POUR HOUSE MUSIC HALL The Standby, The Bronze Age, Faster on Fire, Dead Casual; $7-$10. 9 p.m.

RUBY DELUXE Pale Blue Dot, bad Horoscope, Stranded Bandits, Art Critic; $8. 10 p.m.

SLIM’S DOWNTOWN Noisays, Trenchlung, Herculean Locusts; $7 suggested. 9 p.m.

THE STATION Choo Choo Anoo; 7 p.m.

UNITY CENTER OF PEACE The Yale Russian Chorus; $15. 7 p.m.

art

1.01–1.08

submit! Got something for our calendar? Submit the details at:

indyweek.com/submit#cals DEADLINE: 5 p.m. each Wednesday for the following Wednesday’s issue.

QUESTIONS? spequeno@indyweek.com

OPENING CAM Raleigh First Friday Make and take art projects and DJ. Fri, Jan 3. 6 p.m. CAM Raleigh, Raleigh.

CAM Raleigh Free Family Day Free exhibits and projects. Sat, Jan 4. 12 p.m. CAM Raleigh, Raleigh.

Coffee and Donuts: Bill Flick Artist talk. Sat, Jan 4. 10 a.m.

FRANK Gallery, Chapel Hill. frankisart.com/coffee.

Abie Harris: Painting Music Paintings based on music.

Jan 5-Mar 1. The Community Church of Chapel Hill Unitarian Universalist, Chapel Hill. c3huu.org.

Shelly Hehenberger, Luna Lee Ray, R.J.Dobbs Mixed media and sculpture. Jan 7-Mar 7. FRANK Gallery, Chapel Hill. frankisart.com.

Let It Sale, Let It Sale, Let It Sale!

Different mediums by women artists. Jan 3-31. Local Color Gallery, Raleigh. l ocalcoloraleigh.com.

George McKim Paintings.

Jan 5-Feb 2. Horace Williams House, Chapel Hill. preservationchapelhill.org.

Paintings From The Estate of Robert Broderson Paintings.

Jan 4-Feb 9. Gallery C, Raleigh. galleryc.net.

SUNDAY, JANUARY 5

GEORGE MCKIM: PAINTINGS North Carolina artist George McKim works in an “intuitive manner” with his robust oil and acrylic paintings. Vibrantly colored and so heavily textured as to almost feel sculptural, these dimensional works range in size from six inches to six feet tall and draw on “Cubism, the Bauhaus movement, and Expressionism.” McKim holds an MFA in Painting and Drawing from East Carolina University and has had work exhibited at the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Tampa Museum of Art, and Lee Hansley Gallery in Raleigh, among others. This exhibition will run through February 2nd; following the January 5th reception, the gallery will be open during the afternoons between Thursday and Saturday, on Sundays between 2:00 and 5:00 p.m., and by appointment. —Sarah Edwards

HORACE WILLIAMS HOUSE, CHAPEL HILL 2-4 p.m., free, www.preservationchapelhill.org

George McKim, “Feet of Clee”

PHOTO COURTESY OF PRESERVATION CHAPEL HILL

Reception: Lois Blasberg, Suzanne Love, Dr. Jane Steelman Mixed media. Sat, Jan 4. 12 p.m. Cary Gallery of Artists, Cary. carygalleryofartists.org.

Reception: George McKim Paintings. Sun, Jan 5. 2 p.m.

Horace Williams House, Chapel Hill. preservationchapelhill.org.

Reception: Resolutions 2020 2D & 3D media. Jan 10, 6-9 p.m. Hillsborough Gallery of Arts, Hillsborough.

HillsboroughGallery.com.

Residents Showcase Paintings.

Jan 3-23. Litmus Gallery, Raleigh. litmusgallery.com.

Resolutions 2020 2D & 3D media. January 6-26, 2020.

Reception and Juror Talk: Jan 10, 6-9 p.m. Jan 6-26. Hillsborough Gallery of Arts, Hillsborough.

HillsboroughGallery.com.

ONGOING Altered Chapel Hill Pop-Up Exhibit Interactive art piece.

Thru Jan 5. Gallery 109, Chapel Hill. chapelhillarts.org.

Lety Alvarez, Pepe Caudillo, Allison Coleman Paintings.

Thru Jan 25. Artspace, Raleigh.

Art for a New Understanding: Native Voices, 1950s to Now Contemporary Indigenous art.

Thru Jan 12. Nasher Museum of Art, Durham. nasher.duke.edu.

Art of Mental Health Mixed media. Thru Jan 24. Rubenstein Art Center Gallery 235, Durham. artscenter.duke.edu.

Art’s Work in the Age of Biotechnology Biotechnology: Shaping Our Genetic Futures With guest curator Hannah Star Rogers. Other exhibits at NC State Libraries and GES Center. Thru Mar 15. Gregg Museum of Art & Design, Raleigh. gregg.arts.ncsu.edu.

Scott Avett: INVISIBLE Paintings and prints. Thru Feb 2. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh. ncartmuseum.org.

John Beerman: The Shape of Light Paintings. Thru Jan 25.

Craven Allen Gallery, Durham. cravenallengallery.com.

Christopher Bickford: Legends of the Sandbar Photos.

Thru Feb 15. Through This Lens, Durham.

Lois Blasberg, Suzanne Love, Dr. Jane Steelman Mixed media. Thru Jan 28.

Cary Gallery of Artists, Cary. carygalleryofartists.org.

Kennedi Carter: Godchild Thru Jan 31.

21c Museum Hotel, Durham.

21cmuseumhotels.com/durham.

Cosmic Rhythm Vibrations Art inspired by music and rhythm. Thru Mar 1. Nasher Museum of Art, Durham. nasher.duke.edu.

Stephen Costello: Places Sculpture. Reception: November 16, 5-7 p.m. Thru Jan 25.

Craven Allen Gallery Durham cravenallengallery.com.

Rosana Castrillo Díaz: Trust me. You are t/here.

Mixed media. Thru Jan 12. CAM Raleigh, Raleigh.

Fantastic Fauna-Chimeric Creatures Thru Jan 26. Gregg Museum of Art & Design, Raleigh. gregg.arts.ncsu.edu.

Festive 5 Points Mixed media.

Thru Jan 13. 5 Points Gallery, Durham. 5pointsgallery.com.

Fine Contemporary Craft Craft.

Curated by Mia Hall. Thru Feb 1.

Artspace, Raleigh.

Joe Frank: At the Dark End of the Bar Radio shows. Thru Feb 25.

Lump, Raleigh. lumpprojects.org.

Holiday Exhibit Mixed media.

Thru Jan 4. FRANK Gallery, Chapel Hill. frankisart.com.

Harriet Hoover, Vanessa Murray, Rusty Shackleford Thru Jan 5. Oneoneone, Chapel Hill. oneoneone.gallery Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernism Paintings. Thru Jan 19. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh.

Law and Justice: The Supreme Court of North Carolina, 1819- 2019 Artifacts, images, texts. Thru May 31. NC Museum of History, Raleigh. ncmuseumofhistory.org.

Lost and Found: Stories for Vernacular Photographs Photos. Thru Jan 12. Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill. ackland.org.

Maria Martinez-Cañas: Rebus + Diversions Mixed media. Thru Jan 12. CAM Raleigh, Raleigh.

Material Mixed media. Thru Jan 3. Durham Arts Council, Durham. facebook.com.

Eleanor Mills: Wildflowers of Crested Butte, Colorado Photography. Thru Apr 18. Duke Campus: Lilly Library, Durham.

NC Chinese Lantern Festival Lanterns. 6 p.m.-10 p.m. every day. Closed Mondays.

20. Thru Jan 12. Koka Booth Amphitheatre, Cary.

INDYweek.com | 1.01.20 | 31

Nuevo Espíritu de Durham: New Spirit of Durham Personal stories and images.

Thru Jan 5. Museum of Durham History , Durham. cityofraleighmuseum.org.

Kelly Popoff: At Home With Our Histories Paintings. Thru Jan 3. UNC Campus: Hanes Art Center, Chapel Hill. art.unc.edu.

Portraying Power and Identity: A Global Perspective Thru Jan 31. 21c Museum Hotel, Durham.

21cmuseumhotels.com/durham.

Press Prints. Thru Jan 10. United Arts Council of Raleigh & Wake County, Raleigh.

Property of the People: The Foundations of the NCMA, 19241945 Photographs. Thru Feb 9.

NC Museum of Art, Raleigh. ncartmuseum.org.

Leanne Shapton: La Donna Del Lago Painting and photography.

Thru Feb 25. Lump, Raleigh. lumpprojects.org.

QuiltSpeak: Uncovering Women’s Voices Through Quilts Thru Mar 8. NC Museum of History, Raleigh. ncmuseumofhistory.org.

Sydney Steen: Fault Lines Vignettes. Thru Oct 25. 21c Museum Hotel, Durham.

21cmuseumhotels.com.

Doug Tabb: What Did I Just See? Sculpture. Thru Jan 13.

5 Points Gallery, Durham.

5pointsgallery.com.

Teens, Inspired: Home Poems, mixed media. Thru Jan 3. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh.

Cheryl Thurber: Documenting Gravel Springs, Mississippi, in the 1970s Photos. Thru Mar 31. UNC’s Wilson Special Collections Library, Chapel Hill. ¡Viva Viclas!: The Art of the Lowrider Motorcycle Guest curator Denise Sandoval. Thru Feb 9. CAM Raleigh, Raleigh. camraleigh.org.

What in the World Is a Grain Mummy? Egyptology and art. Thru Jan 8. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh. ncartmuseum.org.

Jade Wilson: Trigger Warning Photography. Thru Jan 4. Golden Belt, Durham.

Wintertide Oil paintings.

Thru Feb 1. V L Rees Gallery, Raleigh. vlrees.com.

32 | 1.01.20 | INDYweek.com

page

screen SPECIAL SHOWINGS 63 Up Time TBD. $8-$10.

Fri, Jan 3, Carolina Theatre, Durham. carolinatheatre.org.

Advocate $13. Sun, Jan 5, 6 p.m.

Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh. drafthouse.com/raleigh.

The Apollo $9. Sat, Jan 4, 4:15 p.m. Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh. drafthouse.com/raleigh.

Aquarela $9. Sat, Jan 4, 1:45 p.m. Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh. drafthouse.com/raleigh.

Barry Lyndon For Victory Members only. Sun, Jan 5, 5:30 p.m. Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh. drafthouse.com/raleigh.

The Big Lebowski Tue 8 p.m., Wed 9 p.m. $13. Jan 7-8, Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh. drafthouse.com/raleigh.

The Biggest Little Farm $9. Sun, Jan 5, 11:15 a.m.

Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh. drafthouse.com/raleigh.

The Cave $12. Tue, Jan 7, 6:30 p.m. Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh. drafthouse.com/ raleigh.

The Great Hack $12. Mon, Jan 6, 6:30 p.m. Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh. drafthouse.com/raleigh.

An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power $3-$6. Thu, Jan 2, 7 p.m. The Cary Theater, Cary. thecarytheater.com.

Independent Lens: The First Rainbow Coalition Tue, Jan 7, 7 p.m. Durham Arts Council, Durham. durhamarts.org.

Knock Down The House $13. Sat, Jan 4, 7 p.m.

Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh. drafthouse.com/raleigh.

Official Secrets Thu, 2 p.m.

Fri, 9 p.m. $3-$6. Jan 2-3.

Chelsea Theater, Chapel Hill. thechelseatheater.com.

One Child Nation $12.

Wed, Jan 8, 7 p.m. Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh. drafthouse.com/raleigh.

The Outsider SOLD OUT. Wed, Jan 8, 8 p.m. Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh. drafthouse.com/raleigh.

Puzzle of a Downfall Child $8. Mon, Jan 6, 9 p.m.

Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh. drafthouse.com/raleigh.

Renzo Piano: The Architect of Light $9-$11. Mon, Jan 6, 7:30 p.m. Chelsea Theater, Chapel Hill. thechelseatheater.com.

Rocketman $8. Mon, Jan 6, 8 p.m. Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh. drafthouse.com/raleigh.

Sing Both days 10 a.m. $5.

Jan 2-3. Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh. drafthouse.com/raleigh.

Underwater Followed by livestream Q&A. $5. Tue, Jan 7, 9 p.m. Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh. drafthouse.com/raleigh.

OPENING The Grudge—Real estate difficulties (among other things) are exacerbated when a cursed suburban house goes on the market. Rated R.

N OW P L AY I N G The INDY uses a five-star rating scale. Unstarred films have not been reviewed by our writers.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood—Audiences can’t get enough of the Mr. Rogers content, and for good reason. In this rendition, Matthew Rhys plays a jaded journalist assigned a profile of Fred Rogers, who is played by a perfectly-cast Tom Hanks. Rated PG. The Addams Family —In this star-studded Addams family installation, the macabre clan face-off with a reality television show host. Rated PG. Black and Blue—A rookie cop captures a murder by corrupt cops, in this timely thriller.

Rated R. Bridges—In this action thriller, the NYPD undergoes a manhunt so massive that police shut down all twentyone bridges leading out of Manhattan. Rated R. Charlie’s Angels—Producer and director Elizabeth Banks helms a new generation of the angels. Rated PG-13.

Countdown—Apps may kill us all, and in this horror film, they do (the app in question is a countdown clock that predicts your time of death; not surprisingly, it may also be a killing mahine). Rated PG-13.

Doctor Sleep—Stephen King sequel to The Shining. Rated R. Downton Abbey—King George V and Queen Mary pay a visit to the abbey and cause a flurry of activity in this spin-off of the television series. Rated PG. Frankie—Isabelle Hupert stars as an ailing matriarch in this sprawling family drama. Rated PG-13.

Ford v. Ferrari—Matt Damon and Christian Bale star in a biographical sports drama about a legendary race. Rated PG-13.

Frozen 2— In search of the origins of her powers, Elsa and her sister Anna strike out beyond their frosty homeland. Rated PG. The Good Liar—Sparks fly between an elderly couple who meet on a dating website. One of them, though, is a con artist.

Rated R. Harriet—Kasi Lemmons stars in this biographical film about the heroic abolitionist Harriet Tubman. Rated PG-13.

Hustlers—The true story of strippers drugging and stealing from Wall Street stock traders is the stuff think pieces are made of. Rated R. Jojo Rabbit—Black comedy about a German boy who discovers that his mother is hiding a Jewish girl in the attic.

Rated PG-13.

Joker—At first, the buzz around this star vehicle for Batman’s greatest villain was all about Joaquin Phoenix’s intense turn in a role Heath Ledger made famous. But as more details of the plot have emerged, there’s been a justified backlash about what sounds like an antihero myth for violent incels. Rated R. Jumanji: The Next Level—This adventure comedy picks up where the 1995 flick left off.

Rated PG-13.  Knives Out— A powerhouse portraits of the tension between American oligarchy and America’s promise—and also one of the wittiest films of the year. Rated PG-13. —Neil Morris Last Christmas—An unlucky department store elf falls in love.

Rated PG-13.

The Lighthouse—Birds caw, fog looms, and waves crash in this hallucinatory horror film about two lightkeepers trapped in a remote lighthouse. A campy art house flick that will leave you paranoid about both seagulls and other people. Rated R. — Sarah Edwards Maleficent: Mistress of Evil— Angelina Jolie was perhaps born to do many things, but surely playing one of Disney’s greatest villianesses is one of them. Rated PG. ½ Marriage Story—An amicable split turns supernova when lawyers get involved. One of the best movies of the year (but maybe don’t watch with your spouse). Rated R. —Glenn McDonald Midway—This WWII flick about Pearl Harbor and the subsequent Battle of Midway stars a fleet of hunks.

Rated PG-13. ½ Pain and Glory—In this auto-fictional exercise, the director Pedro Almodóvar is honest about his life but guarded about his psyche.

Rated R. —Marta Núñez Pouzols  Parasite—This highlyanticipated social satire from filmmaker Bong Joon-Ho is crammed with dark twists and intricate metaphors.

Rated R. —SE  Queen & Slim— A bad Tinder date turns into a nationwide manhunt after Queen and Slim kill a police officer in self-defense at a traffic stop. Rated R. Richard Jewell—Clint Eastwood reconsiders the story of Richard Jewell, a security guard falsely accused of bombing the 1996 Olympics. Rated R. Terminator: Dark Fate—It’s like nothing after Terminator 2: Judgement Day ever happened as James Cameron returns to the fold of the classic sci-fi franchise. Rated R. Uncut Gems—This stressful Safdie brothers flick stars Adam Sandler as a New York City jeweler who puts everything on the line for a high-stakes bet.

Rated R. Waves—An emotional movie about a suburban AfricanAmerican family navigating loss.

Rated R.

READINGS & SIGNINGS Donna Everhart The Moonshiner’s Daughter. Tue, Jan 7, 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh. quailridgebooks.com.

LECTURES, ETC. Samantha Crain, Tift Merritt, Kym Register, Kamara Thomas Wed, Jan 8, 7 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham. thepinhook.com.

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arts

stage 1.7 1.11 1.14

Donna Everhart The Moonshiner’s Daughter 7pm Kate DiCamillo Beverly, Right Here 2pm at NCSU’s Hunt Library SOLD OUT Diane Chamberlain Big Lies in a Small Town 7pm

David Zucchino Wilmington’s Lie 7pm HOW TO WRITE FOR COMICS WORKSHOP 1.24-25 with Jeremy Whitley (registration required) 1.21

www.quailridgebooks.com • 919.828.1588 • North Hills 4209-100 Lassiter Mill Road, Raleigh, NC 27609 CHECK OUT OUR PODCAST: BOOKIN’ w/Jason Jefferies

1/24-26

“HELLO, I’M JOHNNY CASH” PRESENTED BY DAVID BURNET 2/9 JOAN OSBORNE 3/13 LEAHY 3/14 JOHN JORGENSON BLUEGRASS BAND

Get tickets at artscenterlive.org

Follow us: @artscenterlive • 300-G East Main St., Carrboro, NC

BILL BURTON ATTORNEY AT LAW Un c o n t e s t e d Di vo rc e

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 8

THE SIMON & GARFUNKEL STORY Reports from the road say the touring version of this 2015 West End concertstyle tribute effectively captures the essence of iconic folk-rock troubadours Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, whose close harmonies and wistful lyrics were ultimately interwoven into the soundtrack of the 1960s in songs from “Scarborough Fair” to “The Boxer.” Lightly leavened with biographical talking points, the show’s primary focus is on a first-act playlist covering the decade they collaborated before breaking up in 1970. The second act follows each as they go their separate ways in the ensuing years: Simon (George Clements), pursuing African influences in records including 1986’s Graceland; Garfunkel (Andrew Wade) in lower-key recordings, film acting, writing and a literal walk across the world. —Byron Woods

SEPARATION AGREEMENTS Mu s i c Bu s i n eDIVORCE ss Law UNCONTESTED In c o r p oBUSINESS r a t i o n / LLAW LC / MUSIC Pa r t n e r s h i p INCORPORATION/LLC Wi lls WILLS

C o l l967-6159 ections (919)

967-6159

bill.burton.lawyer@gmail.com

DURHAM PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, DURHAM 7:30 p.m., $45+, www.dpacnc.com

OPENING The Amish Project Play.

Showtimes: 7:30 p.m. WedSat; 2 p.m. & 7:30 p.m. Sun. $35. Jan 8-12. Center for Dramatic Art, Chapel Hill. playmakersrep.org.

Mick Foley Comedy. $25+.

Wed, Jan 8, 7 p.m. Raleigh Improv, Cary. improv.com/raleigh.

Funny Girl: A Night of Funny Femmes Comedy. Fundraiser for LGBTQ Center of Durham & SHIFT NC. $17. Sat, Jan 4, 8 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham. motorcomusic.com.

Michael Kosta Comedy.

Showtimes: Fri 7 p.m. & 9:15 p.m.; Sat 6:30 p.m. & 9 p.m. $20+. Jan 3-4. Raleigh Improv, Cary. improv.com/raleigh.

The New Year, New You Party Comedy, live music, and art. $15-$30. Fri, Jan 3, 8 p.m.

Proof, Raleigh. facebook.com/ ProofFivePoints.

Preacher Lawson Comedy.

Showtimes: Fri & Sat, 7:30 p.m. & 10 p.m.; Sun, 7 p.m. $25-$33. Jan 3-5. Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh. goodnightscomedy.com.

The Simon & Garfunkel Story Musical/tribute. $45+. Wed, Jan 8, 7:30 p.m. Durham Performing Arts Center, Durham. dpacnc.com.

Krish Mohan, Jordan Hale Comedy. Sun, Jan 5, 9 p.m.

The Station, Carrboro. stationcarrboro.com.

Stone Cold And The Jackal Comedy. SOLD OUT. Wed, Jan 8, 7:30 p.m. Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh. goodnightscomedy.com.

Andrew Wade and George Clements in The Simon & Garfunkel Story PHOTO BY LANE PETERS

INDYweek.com | 1.01.20 | 33

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Jan 15

Valentines Day Special Ad Section

Jan 22

Business Spotlight: Wellness/Health

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