INDY Week 10.2.19

DURHAM | CHAPEL HILL October 2, 2019

Why Des Ark’s Aimée Argote left music—and why she’s not coming back BY SARAH EDWARDS, P. 14

2 | 10.02.19 | INDYweek.com

WHAT WE LEARNED THIS WEEK DURHAM • CHAPEL HILL VOL. 36 NO. 38

DEPARTMENTS

6 In 2017, North Carolina farmers exported $162 million worth of tobacco to China. In 2019, that amount is likely to be zero.

6 News 17 Food

7 Orange County Schools appears to have authorized spending more than $50,000 on four separate investigations into a racial discrimination complaint at an elementary school.

19 Music 20 Arts & Culture 22 What to Do This Week 25 Music Calendar

8 How much is Charles Francis worth? “That’s none of the public’s damn business.”

29 Arts & Culture Calendar

14 “I think this is it,” says Aimée Argote of the legendary Southern punk outfit Des Ark, of her upcoming goodbye tour. “I’m gonna open it, do this, and close the book.”

17 According to part-time Hillsborough resident and Under the Tuscan Sun author Frances Mayes, food in Italy isn’t a cult, but a culture.

19 For two time-warping nights at Cat’s Cradle this week, it’ll be like the internet never happened.

20 How do you curate an LGBTQ-friendly comic section?

Start by hiring queer staff.

On the cover

Kristopher Gupton’s is one of 1,300 hemp farmers in North Carolina (see story, page 6). PHOTO BY DAVID PREWITT, COURTESY OF HIGH COUNTRY HERBS

Love the

DESIGN BY RUDI PETRY PHOTOS BY JEREMY M. LANGE AND JADE WILSON

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es s s e n i s u b e h t t r o p . p . . s Su u t r o p that sup

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INDYweek.com | 10.02.19 | 3

Raleigh Durham | Chapel Hill PUBLISHER Susan Harper EDITORIAL

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4 | 10.02.19 | INDYweek.com

backtalk

INDY VOICES

If Black Women Were Free …

Superficial Grandstanding This being the last issue before the October 8 elections in Raleigh and Durham, we’ll give critics of our endorsements (see Voter Guide, page 13) their say.

B. Taylor professes disappointment in our support for Durham incumbents Javiera Caballero, Jillian Johnson, and Charlie Reece: “Those three so-called progressives have completely abdicated their responsibilities to Durham in favor of an ego trip of epic proportions. Most of all, they have joined with our equally patronizing mayor to create an unholy mess in downtown. Let’s see them pay for all the front-end alignments and ruined tires citizens have suffered and the ill-planned over-development and gentrification of Durham. Just no, no, no. They are poster children for superficial, entitled progressive grandstanding.”

G.C., meanwhile, says Raleigh council member Stef Mendell is right to question our motives.

“Hellooooo? [The INDY’s] owner is Richard Meeker. Brother of former Raleigh mayor Charles Meeker, current mayor Nancy McFarlane’s political mentor and longtime ally. As is apparent to anyone who follows Raleigh politics, the mayor declared war on council members Mendell and David Cox long ago. Her husband verbally and physically berated council member Kay Crowder, which led to McFarlane’s decision not to run for re-election. That incident isn’t something you would know by reading the INDY, of course. Given the strong Meeker-McFarlane relationship, it isn’t inconsequential to the question of the INDY’s objectivity.”

Joy Toro writes that she’s with the NIMBYs: “I admire the responsiveness that Cox, Crowder, Mendell, and Russ Stephenson showed with the RDU quarry. Though the entire council has said (finally) that they are against the quarry, these four and Sam Hershey (running for District A) were the only ones who spoke out. I’m sticking with supporting the people who deliver on what they say, I’ve seen in action, and have made a stand for the environment.”

Want to see your name in bold?

Comment: indyweek.com Email: backtalk@indyweek.com Facebook: @IndependentWeekly Twitter: @indyweek

ARE YOU AFRAID OF BLACK FEMINISTS? OR JUST YOUR OWN FREEDOM?

BY ALEXIS PAULINE GUMBS

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.

NEXT WEEK: CHIKA GUJARATHI, a Raleigh-based writer and author of the Hello Namaste! children’s books, whose work can be found on her blog The Antibland Chronicles.

“If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free, since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression.” — Combahee River Collective Statement, 1977

T

his weekend at the Pride: Durham, NC parade, I wore a sports bra and a tutu. I allowed a stranger in a pickup truck to paint a rainbow on my bare arm. I felt safe.

It should go without saying that a queer Black woman like myself in a city like Durham that has benefited from years of coalition-building work at the intersection of my own identity, and where our district attorney, Satana Deberry, is a proud Black lesbian, would feel safe, especially at a parade celebrating the lives of LGBTQ people. But I have to say it because, just a few years ago, Black queer activist and artist Laila Nur faced harassment and silencing at the Pride parade in Durham. It makes a difference to me that the LGBTQ Center of Durham, founded

by Helena Cragg, a Black lesbian with an inclusive vision, is now organizing Pride.

And this year, I allowed my whole self to show up, tutu, afro, chucks, and all.

Part of the reason that I felt so safe, so free, so Black, so proud, as I pranced along the parade route, was because I was surrounded by Black feminists, people who have dedicated their lives to the freedom of all people by focusing on Black women as an epicenter of possibility.

The Black Feminist Bookmobile project participated in the parade this year. In my hands, I held booklets that contained the statement quoted above designed

by BFB co-founder Courtney Reid-Eaton. I handed them out to people in the

crowd. In front of me in a borrowed Mercedes-Benz, behind me dancing in the bed of a pickup, and all alongside me reveling were participants in the Mobile Homecoming, an experiential archive my partner Sangodare and I created to amplify the generations of Queer Black Brilliance, Many of them had come into town for our three-day revival. I was surrounded by generations of love, and people who work every day to make my freedom, safety, and dignity more possible.

And yet.

While fully experiencing my freedom, I also could not take it for granted. As I drove to the parade, I passed a truck waving a Confederate flag. And as we adorned our float, we were asked to wait in the parking lot across the street from Shooters II, which has been publicly protested over allegations that the nightclub has been complicit in sexual assault.

On its marquis was a sign welcoming Duke Lacrosse alumni into town.

I remembered that the first time I marched the streets of Durham was in 2007, as part of the National Day of Truthtelling organized by UBUNTU, a women-of-color-survivor-led coalition to end gendered violence that emerged in response to the Duke Lacrosse scandal and the vilification of a Black N.C. Central student, mother, and sex worker. I stood in the back of (yet another) pickup truck in front of the rental house of the Duke Lacrosse team and read a poem about a world where all of us are safe and honored in our skin. A block later, a multitude of survivors carried colorful adinkra symbols and blared the song “Survivor” by Destiny’s Child as we danced along the wall of East Campus,

the same wall where the Pride parade starts and ends.

And twelve years later, the NC NAACP’s failure to address sexual harassment of young Black women working in their organization for years is coming to the forefront in the current campaign for the organization’s president. And there are some who would once again silence and vilify Black women survivors instead of embracing the opportunity to heal and create a better organization and a better world.

I wonder if the freedom of Black women is a threat, not because it oppresses anyone else, but because it challenges all people to be free. Are you afraid of me and other Black feminists who consistently challenge oppression?

Or are you afraid of the bravery it would take to live into your own freedom?

So yes. This weekend I was in the streets again, half-naked, with a booklet explaining why Black women in 1977 created an organization and a political framework to address racism, sexism, and homophobia at the same time, surrounded by people who have made the possibility of freedom their daily practice. And my suggestion to every organization, initiative, and political group in Durham—and everywhere else—is this: Believe, support, uplift, and fight for Black women.

But only if you want to be free. backtalk@indyweek.com INDY Voices—a rotating column featuring some of the Triangle’s most compelling writers—is made possible by contributions to the INDY Press Club.

Visit KeepItINDY.com for more information.

INDYweek.com | 10.02.19 | 5

indynews

Up in Smoke

HEMP COULD PROVIDE AN OFF-RAMP TO STRUGGLING TOBACCO FARMS—IF THE LEGISLATURE DOESN’T GET IN THE WAY

BY JULIA MASTERS AND ANDREA RICE

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ristopher Gupton, a thirty-oneyear-old Appalachian State University student, co-owns High Country Herbs, a hemp farm in Caldwell County, with his wife, Heather Bryant. Until last year, they could only grow hemp as part of a research pilot program through ASU. It wasn’t very profitable.

Then Congress passed the Farm Bill, and everything changed.

In 1970, the U.S. government banned hemp production because it’s in the same family as marijuana. But the 2018 Farm Bill reclassified the plant as an agricultural commodity, permitted wide-scale cultivation, and allowed the sale of hemp-derived products across state lines. Though hemp doesn’t have enough THC to get you high, an increasingly popular variety does contain CBD, which is said to help with anxiety, insomnia, chronic pain, and other conditions.

Gupton and Bryant expanded their output with three climate-controlled greenhouses, and they expect to make as much as $98,000 per year from three acres of smokable hemp plants.

“This is a legit industry now in America,” he says. “Let’s try to make some money and put it to good use.”

In 2017, before the Farm Bill, the U.S. hemp market was valued at $820 million, according to the Hemp Business Journal.

The research firm Brightfield Group projects that the American CBD industry could reach $20 billion by 2022.

There are now 1,324 licensed industrial hemp farmers in North Carolina, according to the N.C. Department of Agriculture.

Hemp is a resilient plant that requires little water and few pesticides. And because the plants are so compatible, it could offer an off-ramp to tobacco farmers reeling from both steadily declining consumption and President Trump’s trade war.

In 2017, North Carolina farmers exported $162 million in tobacco to China, the state’s biggest tobacco customer. By 2018, 6 | 10.02.19 | INDYweek.com

Kristopher Gupton of High Country Herbs that had fallen to $4 million. In 2019, after China banned U.S. agricultural imports, it will likely be zero.

“I’ve never seen anything as exciting to the farmer as this advent of hemp,” says Larry Wooten, president of the N.C. Farm Bureau.

But even as the state embraces this burgeoning industry, lawmakers’ lingering fears about marijuana might get in the way.

Earlier this year, the General Assembly took up the North Carolina Farm Act, or Senate Bill 315, which, among other things, would give the state’s hemp industry a regulatory framework, turning a pilot program into a state agency, setting licensing guidelines, and requiring hemp farmers to be licensed.

But it comes with a catch: SB 315 classifies smokable hemp—the kind Gupton has planted—as marijuana and bans it.

That’s a big problem for farmers, says Marty Clemmons, president of the N.C.

PHOTO BY DAVID PREWITT, COURTESY OF HIGH COUNTRY HERBS

Industrial Hemp Association. Smokable hemp is a high-value element of the global CBD industry. Lawmakers, she adds, are “absolutely terrified that all cannabis is going to become legal in this country,” as it has recreationally in eleven states and Washington, D.C., and medicinally in twenty-two more, but not North Carolina.

That’s not lawmakers’ official rationale.

Instead, as the State Bureau of Investigation explained in a memo this spring, it’s that hemp flowers and marijuana look and smell alike, and there’s no field test to tell which is which. If law enforcement can’t tell the difference, that “defeats the previous basis for probable cause to seize items believed to be marijuana.”

“If smokable hemp is legal, it won’t be possible to enforce laws against marijuana,” says Eddie Caldwell, executive vice president and general counsel of the N.C. Sheriffs’ Association. And when officers

search for marijuana, they often come across harder drugs.

“If smokable hemp is legal, it will prevent them from coming across these other drugs, because they won’t have probable cause to search the car,” Caldwell says. “Drug dealers will be able to use smokable hemp as a cover.

If they get pulled over or the dogs are alerted, they can say it was just smokable hemp.”

Susanna Birdsong, senior policy counsel for the state ACLU, counters that classifying hemp as an illegal drug will only add to problems of mass incarceration and the over-policing of black and brown communities.

North Carolina isn’t the only state grappling with this question, and it wouldn’t be the first to ban smokable hemp. Indiana is among several that have. But on September 13, a federal judge issued an injunction striking down that ban after industry groups filed a lawsuit arguing that the federal Farm Bill pre-empted the state’s law.

If North Carolina’s smokable hemp ban becomes law, a lawsuit here is sure to follow, Clemmons says.

The Indiana ruling effectively rendered North Carolina’s debate moot, SB 315 lead sponsor Senator Brent Jackson said in a press release last week, and the General Assembly should move on: “It is my belief that this [ judicial] order has made clear that Congress and President Trump had every intention of legalizing all hemp products including smokable hemp throughout the United States.”

The Senate and House have gone back and forth on when the ban should go into effect. Under the Senate’s version of SB 315, it would start in December 2020 to give hemp farmers time to sell their existing supplies. The House originally wanted it to go into effect this December, but then settled on a compromise date, May 1, 2020, in the version it passed in August.

SB 315 is now back in the Senate, where it has been referred to the Rules Committee. balktalk@indyweek.com

news

Aftermath

IN THE WAKE OF A CONTROVERSIAL RACIAL DISCRIMINATION INVESTIGATION, ORANGE COUNTY SCHOOLS SETTLED A RETALIATION CLAIM MADE BY THE INVESTIGATOR

BY CHARLOTTE WRAY

I

n September, Orange County Schools settled two federal complaints filed by a senior district official over claims of discrimination and retaliation.

According to a settlement agreement obtained by the INDY, chief communications officer Seth Stephens filed a Title VI complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights against OCS on April 29, alleging that he had been subjected to retaliation. Months earlier, Stephens, who is black, had filed a separate discrimination complaint against the Board of Education with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The circumstances behind the EEOC complaint are unclear. But OCS interim superintendent Randy Bridges confirmed that the retaliation complaint stemmed from the aftermath of an investigation Stephens conducted into allegations of racial discrimination made by the parent of a first-grader at Cameron Park Elementary School.

In both cases, records requests that might shed light on why Stephens felt slighted have not yet been fulfilled.

Stephens declined to comment on the settlement, saying, “I hope that the focus is on the students and starting the school year on the right track.”

In a closed session on September 9, the school board approved the settlement, placing Stephens on paid administrative leave until his resignation becomes effective on January 31, 2020, according to the agreement. His contract had been set to expire in 2022.

Stephens’s salary is $98,549.40, according to Bridges. Under the agreement, he will be paid about $41,000.

In return, Stephens—who has worked at OCS since 2012—agreed to withdraw his complaints as well as another grievance he had filed at an unspecified time, according to the settlement.

It’s unclear why OCS spent $50,000 on three additional investigations.

Stephens’s mother, Brenda Stephens, is a school board member. She recused herself from the vote on her son’s settlement, Bridges says. In a 4–3 vote in May, the board removed her as chair shortly before her time in that role was set to end, citing in part a perceived conflict over her son’s involvement in the Cameron Park investigation.

As the INDY first reported, Stephens completed his investigation into the Cameron Park matter on March 8. His report upheld complaints of harassment and racial intimidation made in February by parent Krystal Little against staffers at the school—which, his report noted, had no black teachers.

According to Stephens’s report, he looked into the matter because “neither the Chief Human Resources Officer nor the Superintendent” was in the office, though they would usually be the ones to handle such complaints.

The school board evidently wasn’t satisfied with his investigation.

In April, OCS had its chief human resources officer conduct a second investigation. Asked at the time whether that was standard practice, then-outgoing superintendent Todd Wirt replied, “It depends on the situation.”

Then, in early May, OCS initiated a third investigation. It hired Bryan Martin, most recently the senior director for employee relations for the Wake County Public

School System, to review the Little case, according to his contract with the district.

He was paid $5,000, or $100 an hour for fifty hours of work through June 10.

But even that wasn’t enough.

On June 10, the school board hired Brooks Pierce, a law firm with locations in Raleigh, Greensboro, and Wilmington, to “conduct a comprehensive independent review of a parent’s complaint at Cameron Park, including all aspects of both the parent’s complaint and the administrative review of the complaint,” chairman Will Atherton told the INDY in an email. The board authorized OCS to pay Brooks Pierce attorney Shana Fulton $310 per hour and her paralegals $195 per hour, up to $25,000.

According to Brooks Pierce’s website, Fulton specializes in representing entities “facing white-collar criminal prosecution and government investigations” and has “represented public officials in investigations and administrative hearings, defending them against alleged government ethics violations.”

On August 26—two weeks before approving the settlement with Stephens—the board voted to amend OCS’s contract with Brooks Pierce to authorize paying the firm an additional $25,000.

It’s unclear where the school district’s inquiry into Little’s complaint stands, or why the district appears to have signed off on spending more than $50,000 on three additional investigations into what happened at Cameron Park.

Little removed her child from the school— and the school district—in March.

In June, as part of its efforts to ease racial tensions and reduce a gaping achievement gap, OCS hired its first chief equity director, Dena Keeling. The school district also named Bridges the district’s interim superintendent, replacing Wirt. Both started on July 1. backtalk@indyweek.com

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WHO IS CHARLES FRANCIS?

You can know a lot about the man who thinks he’ll be Raleigh’s next mayor without really understanding him

BY LEIGH TAUSS

8 | 10.02.19 | INDYweek.com

I. THE END IS THE BEGINNING harles Francis is tired.

He’s standing outside Noir Bar, a Glenwood Avenue nightclub, in the cold drizzle of early November, a dark figure on a dark street. Inside, dozens of supporters await. He adjusts his suit—gray, perfectly tailored, as it always is—and walks inside, back stiff, posture perfect, as it always is. He’s greeted by bright lights and applause.

He smiles, as he always does, his smile tempered by exhaustion. He raises his hand and waves.

“What I know deep in my heart, and I think what all of you know here, is that we did win tonight,” the fifty-four-yearold says in his booming baritone, the courtroom voice trial lawyers spend years perfecting.

But Francis hadn’t won. He hadn’t really come close. A month ago, in October 2017, Francis had barely prevented incumbent Nancy McFarlane from securing a majority; then, as the city’s power brokers rolled their eyes, he called for a runoff. Tonight, McFarlane trounced him by eighteen points.

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Charles Francis

PHOTO PROVIDED BY THE FRANCIS FOR MAYOR CAMPAIGN

He’s just gotten off the phone with her.

“What I told her,” he says, “was I would most certainly be available going forward, and I look forward to working with all of you and to working with the new city council and to working with anyone else who wants to do so to make Raleigh a truly great city.”

His speech goes on for fifteen minutes. This, he says, was not his campaign. This was our campaign. And in defeat, there is victory.

This election proved “you can do difficult things. You can achieve things that people told you that you could not do.

And God didn’t put us on this earth to wait until somebody told us it’s our turn. And although we didn’t get it done electorally tonight—” “This time!” a woman shouts.

For a second, Francis’s hard-won composure melts away.

“This time. This time. That’s right,” he says.

Francis grins.

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harles Francis never stopped running. It’s better to think of the period between November 7, 2017, and March 13, 2019—the day McFarlane announced that she wouldn’t seek a fifth term and Francis announced that he’d try again—as an intermission.

In his bones, Francis wants to be mayor, to be a transformational figure for Raleigh and its black community, like Maynard Jackson was in Atlanta.

For that to happen, however, he needed a new strategy. In 2017, about two-thirds of his support came from African Americans, much of the rest from white progressives energized in the early, urgent days of the anti-Trump resistance. For the first time, McFarlane, an independent, had faced a Democratic challenger amid brewing discontent over the city’s uneven prosperity.

That was good for 42 percent.

To get to 50, Francis had to broaden his coalition. It wouldn’t be enough to win Southeast Raleigh. He needed to attract white voters from outside the Beltline, homeowners worried about rapid growth changing their neighborhoods and clogging their commutes. He seemed to be thinking about that even in his 2017 concession speech, when he namechecked the four city council members who have made skepticism of development their casus belli—David Cox, Stef Mendell, Kay Crowder, and Russ Stephenson—and who, as a bloc, have dominated the council’s agenda the last two years.

As this year’s campaign hit the homestretch, he joined them to champion their signature issue, city intervention in a lawsuit over an RDU Airport Authority quarry lease. And like them, he’s offering himself as an outsider taking on entrenched, wellheeled interests.

In Francis’s view, his top rivals are part of an establishment that has run Raleigh for too long: Caroline Sullivan, the McFarlane-endorsed former Wake County commissioner with record-shattering fundraising hauls that have come courtesy of big-shot Democratic donors from outside the city, including a recent event in Manhattan with Hillary Clinton; and Mary-Ann Baldwin, the former five-term Raleigh City Council member who’s a favorite of the developers and the downtown business set.

Francis argues that he’s a break from this past—a new direction for a city that needs a new perspective.

But who is this man who feels destined to be Raleigh’s next mayor?

That’s not such an easy question to answer.

The more you probe, in fact, the more of an enigma Charles Francis becomes.

As it turns out, you can know a lot about Francis without really knowing who he is,

“HE WAS AN ABSENTEE LANDLORD WHO PROTECTED HIS OWN BUTT.” under the expensive suits and behind the finely calibrated answers that always sound like what you want to hear.

While he’s publicly aligned with Cox’s group on some issues, he’s distanced himself on others, signaling—in the candidate questionnaire he sent the INDY—receptiveness to increased density in downtown and along some traffic corridors (“with an ethic of inclusiveness”), accessory dwelling units, scooters, and whole-house short-term rentals, as well as reservations about neighborhood conservation districts.

On what he acknowledges is the biggest issue facing Raleigh—housing affordability—it’s hard to get a read on Francis’s plans.

He wants to expand homeownership programs and has suggested a property-tax freeze for some seniors. Beyond that, his proposals are frustratingly vague. He supports a bond but won’t specify an amount.

At the same time, he says he wants to keep taxes low, and in 2017, he called the city’s last tax hike to fund affordable housing “the wrong approach.” He talks in generalities about adding staff to cut red tape and boosting tax-credit-financed housing. He wants you to trust that he knows what he’s doing.

Despite “all of that technocratic mumbo-jumbo,” Francis says, Baldwin and Sullivan “are not dealing with those deeper issues that my campaign is working on because for three generations my family has been engaged in a struggle to rise. We understand these issues in a way that those candidates I don’t think do.”

But there’s a through-line in Francis’s life and political career, critics say. The image he projects today doesn’t always match the actions he’s taken, the jobs he’s accepted, or the positions he’s held. Some of these alleged

contradictions are detailed in an extensive opposition research document McFarlane’s campaign compiled but never used in 2017.

(The INDY has obtained the document— though not from McFarlane or any competing campaign—and independently verified the contents referenced in this story.) Others, they say, have become apparent during this year’s campaign.

Francis’s stance on the RDU quarry netted him the Sierra Club’s endorsement, for instance, but he spent years lobbying for the industrial company Alcoa, whose Badin plant has been accused of polluting the Yadkin River with toxic chemicals.

And while Francis says he can leverage his connections to bring about more effective government, he also lobbied for a pyramid scheme that ended with its CEO and Francis’s close friend and law partner convicted of federal crimes.

Moreover, although Francis says he’s the candidate best positioned to help residents displaced by gentrification, he’s spent a quarter-century as general counsel for the Raleigh Housing Authority—once arguing to the state Supreme Court that RHA tenants should not be allowed to sue over leadbased paint in their homes—even as his own family sold houses and rented out apartments in Southeast Raleigh.

And while some of Francis’s supporters see him as the embodiment of black Raleigh’s potential others say that, after the 2017 election, he vanished from Southeast Raleigh, retreating to his $3 million, eight-thousand-square-foot Birnamwood Road mansion.

In the harsh glow of a political campaign, it’s easy for Francis’s enemies to paint him in the worst possible light. Some of these allegations, he disputes; others, he says, lack context. Ultimately, like any brilliant, complex politician—and Francis is, by any measure, both of those things—Francis is more than the sum of a string of facts.

He’s at once idealistic and cynical, a man driven by ambition and ego but also a sense of the greater good—and a sense that Raleigh’s greater good is him.

II. LEGACY n a wall in Francis’s East North Street law office hangs a black-and-white photo of a stern-faced man with a white handlebar mustache and a hundred-yard stare.

James Irving was born a slave in Onslow County in 1840. He didn’t know freedom until the end of the Civil War. With nothing to his name, he eventually settled in Jones County, where he had a son, Charles Irving Sr., in 1896, the year the U.S. Supreme Court handed down Plessy v. Ferguson.

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After serving in World War I, Irving settled in Raleigh in 1919 and worked as a mailman for over thirty years while also writing for The Raleigh Independent, which became The Carolinian. He opened a printing press in 1947 with his daughter, Vivian, who later joined the front lines of the local civil rights movement through the NAACP, helped integrate the League of Women Voters, and spent three decades as Wake County’s registrar.

During elections, Vivian sometimes took her nephew, Charles, to check on polling stations.

Meanwhile, the Irving Swain Press became a hub of local black political life, hosting a rotation of movers and shakers, including Clarence Lightner, Raleigh’s first black mayor, and John Winters, its first black city council member.

As a child, Francis watched these men circulate through the shop. From a young age, politics coursed through his veins.

He also knew loss. His father died of a stroke when he was nine. His grandfather stepped in to raise him. Francis talks about this matter-of-factly.

“We kept going,” he says.

At campaign events, Francis repeats the story of his upbringing. He attended Raleigh public schools. He played point guard in high school. He swam in the Chavis Park pool. He spent weekends at the Hillsborough YMCA and summers at the Richard B. Harrison Library. His academic success propelled him to Princeton, then Duke Law. Francis worked as a federal prosecutor in North Carolina. Before age thirty, he served on Raleigh’s planning commission.

In 1993, he was appointed to fill a vacancy on the city council; he lost his election bid later that year. He started a law firm and later helped found North State Bank. In 1995, he became the general counsel for the Raleigh Housing Authority.

Along the way, Francis became wealthy.

(Asked how much he’s worth, Francis replies, “That’s none of the public’s damn business.”)

But as Francis thrived, Southeast Raleigh grew frustrated. Gentrification was taking root, and historically black neighborhoods were being razed and redeveloped. African Americans felt unrepresented and overlooked. By 2016, Francis says, he’d grown frustrated, too.

One night, Francis recalls, he was talking to his seventeen-year-old son, Chase—“playing Hamlet,” as he puts it—about the idea of running for mayor. Should I? Should I not?

“Dad, I think you should,” Chase said.

“Why?” Francis replied.

“Because I would think you would want to have a legacy beyond us, a broader legacy in the community,” Chase said.

10 | 10.02.19 | INDYweek.com

Francis, in his law office on East North Street Francis thought the city needed new leadership. But his selfish reason for running, he admits, “is that when I’m old, I want a part of my body of work to be public service.”

Charles and Vivian Irving had been inducted into the Raleigh Hall of Fame in 2006, alongside Senator Jesse Helms.

One day, perhaps, Mayor Francis could join them.

III. MAN IN A FANCY SUIT rowing up, Francis got used to winning elections. He became student-body president in fifth grade, then again in the ninth and twelfth grades. In high school, he was elected lieutenant governor of Boys Nation, an American Legion youth program. His friend Brent Wood was governor.

The two stayed close. Both became lawyers. After Francis’s failed run for the city council, Francis joined Wood’s firm, which became Wood & Francis. They saw themselves as fighting the system.

“We have a bit of the quality of the rock thrower in us,” Francis told the Triangle Business Journal in 1998. “We often find ourselves on the outside scaling the walls of the castle.”

In 1994, a man named Stan Van Etten hired the firm to represent International Heritage Inc., his multilevel marketing company, which sold luxury goods. In 1997, Francis became the company’s lobbyist.

A year later, Van Etten’s pyramid scheme unraveled. With state and federal regula-

G

PHOTO BY JADE WILSON

tors bearing down, International Heritage went bankrupt. A 60 Minutes investigation dubbed Van Etten one of the biggest con men of all time for defrauding investors out of millions. In 2005, Van Etten pleaded guilty to fraud and was sentenced to ten years in prison; after becoming a prison informant, he was granted early release in 2012. Wood, meanwhile, was disbarred in 2006 after being convicted by a federal jury of wire fraud, mail fraud, and money laundering—one of at least ten former Van Etten associates to have pleaded guilty or been found guilty of charges related to International Holdings.

Francis was not among them.

“I certainly wasn’t aware of any criminal activity,” he says.

The law practice dissolved in 2000, years before Wood and Van Etten were convicted, Francis points out—but after International Holdings dissolved and the 60 Minutes exposé. Francis says he and Wood remain friends. Wood donated $250 to Francis’s campaign, records show.

A

ll the while, Francis was general counsel for the Raleigh Housing Authority, a position he still holds. He has argued that his work there gives him insight into the city’s affordable housing crisis.

His tenure began with tragedy. A carbon monoxide leak killed a mother and son in Walnut Terrace. The RHA sacked its director and attorney and hired Francis in 1995.

The agency has come under scrutiny during Francis’s time. In 2006, a federal judge ruled that the RHA revoked a Section 8 voucher without giving the tenant a proper hearing. In 2014, WNCN reported that the RHA had awarded Section 8 vouchers to families making more than the median income. That same year, the state Labor Department fined the RHA for failing to tell employees they were working in asbestos-filled buildings. It then came to light that the RHA’s director, Steve Beam, was earning a $280,000 salary while taking a month off a year to pursue a side gig as a magician. Beam subsequently retired.

As general counsel, Francis reviewed Beam’s contract, but he didn’t set its terms.

Still, he thinks Beam may have been worth it.

“He was well-compensated,” Francis says.

“But, in general, I think that top performers in government are often under-compensated. We would get better service from our top people if you paid them well and then held them to account.”

Last year, the INDY reported that the RHA is facing a declining number of landlords willing to accept Section 8 vouchers, which has contributed to a three-to-sevenyear housing-assistance waiting list. Some landlords accused the agency of being a bureaucratic nightmare.

As the RHA’s lawyer, Francis isn’t responsible for its policy decisions. That’s up to the board of directors, which is appointed by the city council. But he does carry out

the agency’s evictions. And in 2002, when Tyrone Horton’s guardian ad litem sued the RHA on the ten-year-old’s behalf—arguing that the RHA had stuck him and his family in a housing unit with lead-based paint, which led to “lead poisoning” and “severe injuries”—it was Francis’s job to defend the RHA. He did, successfully. In 2004, Francis convinced the state Supreme Court that the RHA was protected by sovereign immunity, the doctrine that says governments can only be sued to the extent that they have insurance covering that type of lawsuit. (The RHA’s insurance policy specifically excluded lead-paint claims, according to the ruling.)

If Francis wins, he’d likely have to give up the RHA gig, which he bills at $150 an hour—less than half his usual rate, he notes.

J

ust before five o’clock on a September morning in 2008, Matt Moore discovered water dripping from a light fixture on the ceiling of his first-floor East Davie Street condo. He laid down towels to contain the spill, then he walked upstairs and knocked on the door of the apartment above. No one answered.

The leak continued. A few hours later, Moore was using buckets to catch the water.

He asked the condo’s homeowners association for help. The HOA told him that the condo upstairs belonged to Charles Francis, who rented it out. Moore called. An assistant from Francis’s law firm showed up later that morning and found that the source of the leak was a faulty water heater.

Then, Moore wrote in an account of the incident on social media, the assistant handed him a document to sign stating that Francis wasn’t responsible for any damages—with a handwritten addendum that added, “to the extent not covered by the insurance of the homeowners association.” (Moore confirmed this account to the INDY.) By that afternoon, the water had finally stopped dripping. A team from the HOA tore out a section of the ceiling. Later, they returned to pull up the hardwood floors in multiple rooms, remove drywall and insulation, and install industrial fans to dry out the condo.

Eventually, Francis—whom Moore described as a man in a “fancy suit”— stopped by.

“I know immediately by his posture and his words that I am an inconvenience,” Moore wrote. “I’m just paperwork and phone calls that weren’t on his docket.

Nor were they billable. I have never had a first-impression-stench from someone quite that strong. He doesn’t even budge in offering help, apology, or cooperation.”

Moore’s apartment needed about $15,000 in repairs, which were covered by insurance with a $3,000 deductible.

The HOA tried to recoup the funds from Francis, but Moore later learned that Francis’s unit was uninsured, and attempts to collect the debt were unsuccessful. Believing that challenging a “millionaire trial attorney” in court would unlikely go in his favor, Moore shouldered the costs himself.

“He was an absentee landlord who protected his own butt,” Moore wrote. “He didn’t care about the property he owned.”

Francis denies that he was negligent “in any way.”

“We didn’t pay for the damage down below because it wasn’t something that was our fault or that we were obligated to do,” he says. “I’m not in business to give away money, and I didn’t do that in this case.”

Francis still owns the condo, which he purchased in 1991 for $76,500. (It’s now worth three times that.) According to property records, he also owns his Birnamwood mansion and a more modest home next door, as well as two smaller homes near Meredith College.

His mother, Florence Irving Francis, owns twelve properties in Raleigh, according to Wake County records. She inherited most of them from Charles Irving Sr. or her sister, Vivian. The rest she secured through loans from North State Bank.

Several of those properties contain nice, well-kept homes. Others are older dwellings in lower-income neighborhoods or vacant, overgrown lots.

The city has issued three of the properties a total of four code violations since 2018, all of which were resolved within two weeks.

Two properties have been deemed unfit for human habitation; they were repaired and brought up to code.

Francis’s family has also reaped the benefits of Southeast Raleigh’s gentrification.

Property records show that Florence Francis has sold several properties that were later flipped, including some to developer Jason Queen, who specializes in historic renovations.

Francis says he shouldn’t be faulted for what his relatives do, and he doesn’t manage his mother’s properties.

“My mother, at the young age of ninety-four, is quite capable of managing her own affairs,” he says. “She has a memory that is better than most forty-year-olds and is fully in charge of her own business.”

He adds: “You can’t hold me responsible for a decision that was made by a family member in terms of a sale of a property or whatever the criticism may be. I don’t own any properties that I wouldn’t live in myself, period.”

INDYweek.com | 10.02.19 | 11

G

eraldine Alshamy believed in Francis.

In 2017, she was one of the many volunteers working for his campaign.

She knocked on on doors throughout Southeast Raleigh and registered people to vote. She thought Nancy McFarlane hadn’t done enough to combat gentrification or help the city’s homeless.

“I worked on his campaign like a Hebrew slave,” she says. “I really believed that he was really about all the people in East Raleigh, all the people. He said all the right things.”

Francis made his presence known in Southeast Raleigh in 2017. But after he lost, Alshamy says, he disappeared. For six months, she says, she tried to get in touch, but he never took her calls.

Finally, she got the message.

“To me, [he] made a lot of promises, I can’t say what he did for anybody else,” Alshamy says. “I will not support you. If one vote would be the reason you don’t get it, and that would be my vote, you wouldn’t get it.”

“Charles may have become preoccupied with some other things after the 2017 [election], and that may or may not be part of the issues that people are contemplating on whether they are supporting him or not,” says Danny Coleman, who chairs the South Central Citizens Advisory Council. “It’s been up to him to explain that away.”

Joshua Bishop El, a community activist who chairs Justice Served NC, is still backing Francis, who he says is the only candidate who understands the issues facing Southeast Raleigh.

“He’s basically the example of the American dream for the African American,” Bishop El says. “Some people try to look for the flaws or look where they can assassinate a person’s characteristics. It wasn’t easy getting to the position he’s in now. It was hard work, and the hard work is paying off.”

IV. ROLE OF LEADERSHIP wo weeks before the 2017 runoff, Francis met with the Triangle Urban Republicans, pitching himself as a bridge-builder willing to work across party lines. Amid the fury over President Trump’s then-recent remarks about the white supremacists in Charlottesville and the Durham protesters who had toppled a downtown monument to “The Boys Who Wore the Gray,” he told the mostly white audience that “there is too much shouting across town squares over the Confederate memorials.”

Instead of shouting, he said, “I’m going to listen to what you think and try to come to a solution and not focus on ideology.”

Asked about that quote, Francis says he was “obviously not making a point in support of Confederate memorials.” Rather, he

T

12 | 10.02.19 | INDYweek.com

“WHY ARE YOU GOING TO SHOOT YOUR BEST SHOT IN PRACTICE? YOU SHOOT YOUR BEST SHOT IN THE GAME.” was trying to show them that he could work across the aisle, he says.

Dredging up old quotes is a distraction, he says, pivoting to a familiar refrain: “What’s far more important than whether we have a Confederate memorial up or not is who owns the property in Raleigh, who has the job opportunities in Raleigh, who has business opportunities in Raleigh, who has housing opportunities in Raleigh.”

I

n April, a Raleigh police officer shot and killed Soheil Mojarrad, a man with a history of mental illness. The officer had turned off his body camera. According to the Raleigh Police Department, Mojarrad grabbed a folding knife from his pocket, “crouched in an aggressive stance,” and approached the officer while screaming profanities. The officer shot him eight times.

Mojarrad’s death renewed calls for a civilian oversight board. For years, the city council had dragged its feet on the issue, largely because creating a board with subpoena and disciplinary powers would require changing state law.

In June, Francis appeared to suggest that the city push to do just that. In an interview with the INDY, he said a civilian oversight board was overdue.

“It’s not acceptable to say [that] because it hasn’t been before, we’re not going to do it,” he said. “Sometimes a role in leadership is to go to the General Assembly and work with them to get changes in state law so we can move where we need to go.”

Months later, the ACLU sent candidates a questionnaire asking if they would support a police oversight board. Francis said yes, adding, “I am the first mayoral candidate to call for it, and believe that the city council and [the activist group Police Accountability Community Task Force] should actively work together.”

But in a survey from The News & Observer, Francis gave a different answer. He told the paper that “the community must continue to work in tandem with the police department, as opposed to merely overseeing its actions.”

Confused, the ACLU asked Francis for clarification. On September 14, Francis— who had received the endorsement of the Raleigh Police Protective Association— submitted a new answer to the ACLU, this time saying that, while he favored a review board, he didn’t think it should have subpoena power. (Francis’s response to the INDY’s questionnaire, submitted on September 17, had the same answer.)

Asked about his apparent change of mind, Francis says he’s received about twenty-five surveys during the campaign and hasn’t had time to complete them all, so he farmed some out. (Not the INDY’s, he promises.)

“Honestly, I haven’t even read the ACLU questionnaire you’re talking about. Just some staff person did that,” Francis says.

Francis says he never changed his position—and it’s “misleading in the extreme” to suggest that he did so.

“It is just false to leave the impression that I ever intended to say that I was for the subpoena power,” he says.

O

n August 22, at a mayoral forum hosted by real estate developers from the NAIOP, Francis said he “hadn’t come to a final decision” on whether the city should join the Umstead Coalition’s lawsuit the stop RDU’s quarry lease.

Three days later, Francis attended a screening of the anti-quarry documentary 400 Feet Down at the Rialto Theater, alongside members of the Umstead Coalition and the four council incumbents who have made the lease a focal point of their campaigns.

There, Francis gave a similar speech to the one he gave at the NAIOP forum, except now he’d reached a decision: He would be the fifth vote to join the lawsuit. His announcement was met with a standing ovation.

Asked what changed in those three days, Francis is candid: nothing.

“Why are you going to shoot your best shot in practice?” he explains. “You shoot your best shot in the game. The Rialto was the game.”

Francis’s opposition to the quarry won him the backing of some environmental advocates. But from 1993 to 2001, he worked as a lobbyist for Alcoa, an aluminum manufacturing company that had a smelting plant in Badin, a small town about forty miles northeast of Charlotte. (The plant closed in 2007 and was partially demolished in 2010.)

For sixty years, until the late seventies, Alcoa used the town’s unlined dump for its aluminum waste. Environmentalists have argued that toxins from the aluminum have leaked into nearby water supplies.

A creek near the landfill, for instance, was found to contain cyanide, while fluoride, cyanide, and other toxins were discovered in nearby wetlands. Areas around the smelting plant tested positive for PCBs—a heavy toxic chemical group banned since 1979—and the carcinogenic solvent TCE. In the area around the plant, people were dying of cancers that attorney Mona Wallace believed were connected to Alcoa’s pollution: colon, lung, stomach, brain, kidney, blood, esophagus, pancreas, bladder, throat, skin, tongue, some in conjunction with each other. Wallace—a partner at the North Carolina firm Wallace Graham, which has also brought a series of high-profile lawsuits against the hog industry—filed hundreds of complaints against Alcoa, but her clients often died before she could reach a settlement, according to a 2016 report from Energy & Environmental News.

Alcoa has denied any wrongdoing.

According to E&E News, in 1992—the year before Francis became an Alcoa lobbyist—Alcoa sued its insurers for the cost of pollution damage and remediation at dozens of its facilities across the country. It singled out its three smelting plants, including Badin, for high cleanup costs, more than $50 million each. The other two smelting plants have since been declared Superfund sites. Badin has not.

Francis points out that he hasn’t been the company’s lobbyist in nearly two decades.

He says most of his work for Alcoa involved helping a subsidiary called Yadkin Inc. “in its stewardship of the water and land and representing the company to legislators and state officials.”

“I’m proud of the work I did in helping the company to be a steward of the water and land,” Francis says. “But, of course, that representation does not mean that I had any involvement or influence over everything that the company did or even all of its legal matters beyond the scope of my work for them.”

This, too, is a distraction, Francis argues.

“In writing your story,” he cautions, “try to avoid false parallels that mislead more than inform in an effort to support a thesis.”

V. INDOMITABLE ou have to make hay while the sun is shining,” Charles Irving Sr. often told his grandson.

Irving went to work at the printing press every day until his ninety-seventh birthday. He died in his sleep exactly one year later.

Francis inherited his grandfather’s habits; he often works from “can’t see in the morning to can’t see at night.” He’s driven even in his hobbies. He runs—three miles a day, several days a week. He goes to the Y and lifts weights. He plays squash, smashing the ball against a wall until his opponent can’t return his serve.

Charles Francis goes after what he wants, and he usually gets it. When it doesn’t, he tries again.

That’s another lesson he learned from his grandfather.

“He was indomitable,” Francis says. “He would not give up. When there was business or family or something personal, he would not be defeated.”

“Y

U

ntil the end, Francis never got riled.

Every question elicited a swift, confident, yet dispassionate answer.

“When you step out into the arena, you expect that you’re going to get bloodied,” he said two weeks ago. “I’ve lived my life in a way that I’m proud of my accomplishments as a lawyer, I’m proud of my accomplishments in business, and I don’t have things to apologize for or be ashamed about.”

Then, on September 26, The News & Observer endorsed Mary-Ann Baldwin, a week after the INDY had done so. To Francis, this was a signal that the powers-thatbe weren’t going to give him a fair shake.

And in a final interview for this story—a last round of questions about Alcoa, about his mother’s Southeast Raleigh’s properties, about the N&O’s endorsement—he finally sounded upset, even mad.

The N&O’s “intellectually lazy” endorsement refused to deal with the “nuance of my positions,” he said. The “consensus establishment opinion” of “certain Democratic electeds” doesn’t want change because the status quo is “to their benefit. The rationale of my campaign is that too many people have been left out of that consensus.”

The hell with them all.

Like Charles Irving Sr., Francis sees himself as indomitable. His confidence is palpable. This time around, he believes victory is inevitable. With a strong enough turnout, he added, he might even win an outright majority on Tuesday.

And one way or another, he predicted, “I am going to be the next mayor of Raleigh.” ltauss@indyweek.com

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TEAM DRESCH WITH DES ARK Monday, Oct. 7, 8 p.m., $15 Motorco Music Hall, Durham www.motorcomusic.com

HOW TO QUIT YOUR JOB

Aimée Argote of Des Ark

To save herself, one of North Carolina’s most beloved musicians had to leave music behind

BY SARAH EDWARDS

W

e expect a lot from artists; sometimes, everything. We expect them to be vulnerable on command, to mine their discomfort for our comfort. We expect them to keep going.

One morning in 2016, the musician Aimée Argote woke up and said to herself, “I’m done.” She’d been touring on and off since she was in her mid-teens, and Des Ark, the beloved Southern punk outfit 14 | 10.02.19 | INDYweek.com

that she has fronted for twenty years, had attained something like cult status.

“I had a tour booked, I had things in the works,” Argote says, one bright day in September at the Durham farm where she lives with her partner, the musician Taylor Holenbeck. “I sat up and was like, it’s gone.

It’s gone. It’s gone. That thing that you have inside of you that says, go to work, make music, do your thing. There’s nothing there.”

Then she began to cry.

After finishing her tour for Des Ark’s last album, 2015’s Everything Dies, Argote went off the radar, maintaining a strong community presence—particularly on Twitter, where she reliably calls out music-scene misogyny in no uncertain terms—but not performing. People told her that she was just burned out, that time heals all wounds, that someday, she would feel the desire to give music a second chance.

Three years later, Argote is setting out on a short goodbye tour of the East Coast alongside queercore rock legends Team

Dresch. Lest this stoke rumors about an ongoing Des Ark reunion, though, she says that it’s a “one-time, one-off tour thing.”

Quitting doesn’t mean taking a break: Aside from this tour, she says she’s really finished.

When we pause at the doorway of a spare room filled with a piano, pottery, and merch for the upcoming tour, I ask if this is where she practices. She cocks her head.

“No,” she says. “I quit music.”

It took her three years to be ready to publicly talk about the reasons why. In July, Argote posted a statement on Instagram. “i left music because i felt unsafe, exhausted, poor as shit, and my body was super fucking broken,” the post began, going on to outline her frustration with a DIY music industry that requires relentless sacrifice—not to mention the burden of policing other people’s bad behavior—from women, queer people, and people of color; an industry that discourages taking care of basic needs or planning for the future.

Argote also detailed an abusive living experience with an unnamed person in

PHOTO BY JADE WILSON

the music scene who told her that he wanted to kill her, and who made continued threatening gestures toward her life.

She says that she went to his boss, his colleagues, and his friends. Most of them laughed her off.

“I thought they valued me as an artist and as a woman and a person, and I was just wrong,” she says, noting that the response shook her faith in the DIY community. She didn’t leave music immediately, but wrote that “there wasn’t much I could do to make music feel safe or productive anymore.”

Fighting abuse is at the heart of Des Ark: Many songs deal with trauma, and at shows, Argote has always made it a point to talk openly about the content of those songs, as well as about her experience as a survivor of sexual assault.

“There are so many rapists in the scene, and people don’t hold them accountable,” she says.

She also made it a point to never share a stage with an abuser, even though that

meant losing opportunities. “I would get a call—hey, this band you’re playing with tonight, the drummer raped me. I’m like, ‘cool, we’re not playing, fuck that.’ And we would cancel,” she says. “We didn’t play so many shows for that reason. My gut reaction was always: There is no show more important than you.”

A

s a pick for a final tourmate, Team Dresch is not just any band. Formed in Portland in 1994, Team Dresch’s wailing guitars and anthemic songs about queer desire and inclusivity are backed by a compassionate, boots-on-the-ground approach to community. They have known Argote since the very beginning of her career.

As Argote recalls, she and a couple of high school friends tried to sneak into a Team Dresch show at a lesbian bar in the Triangle, during one of the band’s stops in the late nineties. The underage fans were quickly kicked out and migrated to the parking lot, waiting for the show to end. When Team Dresch’s Kaia Wilson walked out, one of the friends shouted that Argote’s band was going to play its first show the next night at Captured Live Studios in downtown Durham.

When Argote looked out from the stage, that night, she says she saw Wilson standing in the crowd—and that she’d brought Kathleen Hanna and Ad-Rock (of Bikini Kill and the Beastie Boys, respectively) with her.

From then on, Team Dresch were mentors to Argote and the other members of her band, Rubéo, helping put out the band’s first seven-inch record and plan their first tour.

(Hanna even made the flyer for Rubéo’s second show; Argote recalls “High school singing sensations!” being scrawled at the top, which mortified her.) When it came time to tour, Argote’s parents were terrified—this was a pre-cellphone era, and the band was barely old enough to drive, let alone pilot a shitty tour van up the East Coast—but relented when Argote showed them a binder filled with detailed information about each tour stop. The teenagers drove to Portland, Maine and back.

Soon after that encounter, Team Dresch disbanded, only touring sporadically in the years since. As for Argote, she graduated early from high school, pinballing between different bands until the formation of Des Ark in 2001. Initially, the band was a twopiece, but after a few years of shifting configurations, Argote realized that the project was primarily hers. Over the years, she estimates that something like seventy people have been involved.

Aimée Collet Argote is an only child; her parents are from New Orleans and had her in Arkansas. When she was six, the family moved to France for Argote’s mother’s Ful-

“I HAD A TOUR BOOKED, I HAD THINGS IN THE WORKS. AND I SAT UP AND WAS LIKE, IT'S GONE. IT'S GONE. IT’S GONE.” bright Fellowship, a period that she credits for instilling her with fearlessness and a certain bent for songwriting; family lore has it that during that year in France, Argote wrote thousands of songs.

After the Fulbright, the family settled in North Carolina. Argote’s mother is an academic, and her dad has moved between jobs over the years, usually holding down several at once (according to Argote, at one point he was the Southeastern poker champion of the United States). Economic precarity was a through-line for the family, and this caused Argote’s father, at one point, to voice concern over her career.

“He said, ‘I wish you would stop and go to college because look at my life, you don’t want this life,’” Argote says. “It was hard for me to hear because my dad is such a hero to me, [but] I know that he meant, ‘I never get a break.’ I went to the mailbox the next day and I had gotten a letter from somebody who said, ‘I was going to kill myself’—I think that they had been assaulted—and they said, ‘I put it on your record and realized I wasn’t alone, so I’m gonna stick it out.’ I showed him that letter and was like, ‘I can’t quit.’”

E

xtremity defines Des Ark. The polarities of Argote’s lyrics—rage and reprieve, French fries and motherfuckers, shelter and the will to fight back— are reflected in the sonic range. All four albums shift between distorted maximalism, dynamic instrumentation, and strippeddown acoustics. Des Ark’s sound can be a bit hard to summarize because it bridges the heaviest punk and the most gossamer folk. In the middle, you’ll find performances that range from thrashing purgation to hushed reverence, and tender, rough-andtumble anthems about queer desire, nature, and growing up in the Carolinas alongside raw songs about grief and sexual assault.

Often, deceptively frivolous text-speak frames serious material in a way that almost feels incongruous. On “FTW, y’all!!!!” a beautiful instrumental build drops like a roll-

ercoaster into a howl about addiction and broken romance: “Too much time spent in Chapel Hill those years / ‘Cause when that town starts talking / It’s a whisper but it’s all you hear / She’s a queer and he’s a junkie with a thirst / I can hear them betting horses / On which one of us is gonna break first.”

Maybe incongruity is the point, though.

The early 2000s, when Des Ark got its start, was rife with pop-culture irony but Des Ark has always seemed less interested in putting distance between feelings than in articulating the ways we actually cope with pain.

If younger generations use surplus exclamation points to say, “I don’t really mean what I say,” then Argote’s use of them seems to signal, “I really fucking mean what I say.”

Over the years, this sincerity has collapsed boundaries between audience and performer, making even the most crowded, noisy show feel intimate, like a love song performed in a storm drain. Once, a friend described Argote’s artistic practice to her this way: “You walk into a cage with a lion, lock yourself in, and throw the fucking key away.”

For the first decade or so, Des Ark toured exclusively in the underground queer scene, but Argote became disenchanted with “preaching to the fucking choir.” In 2011, after years of handling all of the band logistics, she hired a booking agent. This caused pushback from some people in the punk scene who saw this as selling out, but Argote felt that, in order to reach more diverse audiences and not burn out, it was necessary.

“If people aren’t mad at you, you’re probably not talking up enough,” she says. “I need to go to places where I feel a little uncomfortable.”

S

itting at her kitchen table discussing these discomforts, Argote, now thirty-seven, is cheerful but straightforward. Over the years, in interviews sprinkled across zines, she’s always managed to be warm and honest about her work without resorting to self-deprecation or minimizing what her music means to people.

Today, she’s not minimizing the physical and emotional toll that life on the road can take. She suffers from chronic health issues and, between 2008 and 2012, nursed both of her parents back from bouts with cancer, a period she describes as a “black hole.” Hiring a booking agent had helped with burnout, but the increased industry pressure also caused some of the magic to recede.

She began to question the idea that artists must necessarily suffer to make good art.

For the past three years, she’s barely touched a guitar. “When I looked at [a guitar], it looked like something I had never seen before in my life,” she says. She stopped going to concerts, and doesn’t listen to anything resembling indie rock, instead preferring the New Orleans jazz she grew up with, or breezy Top 40, which she describes as “really fun to vacuum to.” She became a potter: “I found ceramics and, you know, it doesn’t require sadness.”

We don’t have much of a cultural vocabulary around quitting. It doesn’t jibe with either capitalism’s Horatio Alger showmanship or the not-unrelated mythology of artistic vision that says if you’re blessed with talent, you’re obligated to see it through. Of course, those narratives don’t have much to do with a punk culture, in which neither winning nor ego is the goal. As with most things, there’s a Patti Smith quote for that: “To me, punk rock is the freedom to create, freedom to be successful, freedom to not be successful.” Argote echoed that sentiment in her Instagram post when she wrote that “quitters never win, but winning’s not the fucking point.”

While her break with the industry may have been extreme, these days, Argote seems hopeful.

“There are so many amazing people who are making really tough and beautiful and true music,” she says. “I’m so excited for how many barriers I see getting crushed, constantly, how many young people, young women, and non-binary folks, are fucking shredders.”

The tour with Team Dresch represents a different side of the industry: an opportunity to perform in a safe, queer environment with an end date; an opportunity to put the key in the lock and say goodbye to the lion.

“It feels wonderful,” she says. “I realized, if I [went on] tour with my favorite band of all time, the shows are going to be so queer.

Every Team Dresch show I’ve ever seen is just people hugging, crying—the spectrum of emotions, but from a place of pure love, like the queer scene was and has been for me. This is the ultimate experience. I think this is it. I’m gonna open it, do this, and close the book.” sedwards@indyweek.com INDYweek.com | 10.02.19 | 15

indyfood

The Southern Part of Tuscany

UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN AUTHOR FRANCES MAYES DISHES ON HER NEW BOOK, INNOVATIONS IN ITALIAN COOKING, AND WHAT HILLSBOROUGH AND TUSCANY HAVE IN COMMON

BY ANDREA RICE

T

hirty years ago, Frances Mayes abandoned her life as a university professor and poet in San Francisco and blew her savings on a two-hundred-year-old farmhouse in the rolling hills of Cortona, Tuscany. Eleven books later, including The New York Times bestseller Under the Tuscan Sun, Mayes continues to call Bramasole—Italian for “it yearns for the sun”—her home away from home. She and her second husband split their time between Tuscany and Hillsborough, where they’ve lived for the past ten years on a former farm with a thriving vegetable garden, just two miles outside of town.

In mid-August in Raleigh, Mayes appeared before two hundred fans at the Art of Living Well Speaker Series at The Cardinal at North Hills, a senior living community. There, she shared stories of eight-hour dinners seated outdoors at long tables under the stars.

The Georgia native has always believed that the sun was her oldest friend. In her Italian farmhouse, Mayes says she learned to live by the seasons and with the sun, rather than the clock. Italians thrive on local markets and cultivate every last inch of the land they live on with flowers and vegetables.

Mayes says that food in Italy isn’t a cult, but a culture—a sense of community that’s been influential to her work.

Mayes’s new book, See You in the Piazza, is a travel narrative that journeys to some of the best off-the-beaten-path restaurants in Italy, unearthing a quintessential taste for each region.

“The most vivid pleasures of Italy are the simple ones,” she writes.

The INDY spoke with the celebrated author about why Frances Mayes at Villa Bramasole, her home in Tuscany. she’s chosen Hillsborough as her second home, as well as the up-and-coming Italian chefs, who, like many Southern tographers, and artists live, so it wasn’t like moving to the cooks, are innovating with creative, modern spins on tradi- country, even though we are in the country. We’d first lived in Durham when we moved to North Carolina, but we starttional, time-tested classics. ed making friends with all the writers in Hillsborough and This interview has been edited for length and clarity. saw that it was the right place for us.

INDY: Why Hillsborough, of all places, when you could Not everyone has the ability to pack up their life and probably live just about anywhere? Does it remind you move to Italy. So how might one bring the spirit of their of Tuscany?

FRANCES MAYES: Hillsborough and Cortona are definitely travels to a place like Italy back home? linked. There’s an intense sense of community. San Francis- There’s so much going on with food in Italy right now, it’s co, where I lived for decades, is a cordial city, but there are just burgeoning the way San Francisco was forty years ago. fewer binding elements. I didn’t know, when I chose Hills- There’s this innovating happening all over Italy, and I tried borough, how intense the social life would be, but it remind- to get at that in See You in the Piazza—we were traveling ed me of where I grew up in Fitzgerald, Georgia, so I had an everywhere to find new, unexpected places, and I realized instinct for the life there. It’s a village that’s just packed with how many incredible restaurants we found in these little, creative people—it’s where all the writers, painters, pho- out-of-the-way places. I was realizing this pattern of chefs 16 | 10.02.19 | INDYweek.com

PHOTO BY WILL GARIN

who love food, who had gone off to work in Milano, Rome, Paris, or the U.S., and had, like most Italians, this great attachment to home. So, after they’ve gone out and learned, they brought it back home with them.

What were some standouts?

La Subida [a family restaurant] in Cormòns [in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region] makes a pasta called “tadpole,” a new technique for pasta I’d never seen before. You mix the pasta dough—it’s quite thin—and you stand over boiling water with a colander with large holes and push the pasta dough through the colander. It comes out in these little tadpoles, and it was so good. It wasn’t easy, though—I had to make it three times before I caught on. Another one was from Del Cambio in Torino, a rice dish that uses two kinds of rice, venere [black rice], that you toast overnight in an

oven at a very low temperature, and carnaroli [medium grain rice], that you boil without covering it. You’ve got these two types of rice in the dish, and it’s just stupendous.

Ingredients are everything, and the ingredients in Italy are very good because food is so important to Italians. They won’t put up with bad food. If you’ve got a restaurant and it’s not good, it’s not going to last, whereas here, some restaurants can limp along forever serving really mediocre food.

Where do you shop for real Italian ingredients in Hillsborough?

I don’t do a lot of Italian cooking here because I can’t get the same things I get in Italy—and I also love Southern food. When we come back in the summer, I’m all over the corn, tomatoes, shrimp, butter beans, and lady peas, if I can get them. But there are some things I can’t get here, like good polenta. They think here that polenta is cornmeal, and it’s not. Real polenta is a coarser grind.

Usually, I do a lot of lightened-up Southern cooking, with not quite as much butter and cream as my mother used.

A lot of chefs are doing that here.

Most of the recipes in See You in the Piazza are not traditional Tuscan nor Italian recipes, because I wanted to reflect what these young chefs were doing, which is taking their local ingredients and being creative around them, just like what we were saying about Southern food. Several of the recipes are difficult, but traditional Italian food isn’t difficult, it’s easy. The ingredients are so good you don’t have to torture them. In these recipes, the chefs are mixing up the ingredients and having a lot of fun with them. They’re serving things in a real witty style, like roasted quail on a bed of hay, or they make a dessert that looks like an egg which you have to open. These kinds of whimsical, playful things are not a part of the Italian tradition—this, Nonna made it this way, and that’s the best way. Traditional Italian food is fantastic, and I love it, but it’s really great to see this new thinking coming in as well.

What do you think Americans could learn from Italian culture?

I don’t know whether it’s fit to print, but largely ignoring politics is one helpful thing.

You can’t escape it here, and it’s poisoning our lives, the inundation of news and horror—a terrible government and a horrible president. The Italians are cynical—they’re also joyous and generous, but they do not take politics into their every waking moment the way we do. arice@indyweek.com

Where

T O E AT AND DRINK THIS WEEK

KITCHEN’S FIFTH ANNUAL OKTOBERFEST Oct. 7, 6:30 p.m 764 MLK Jr. Boulevard, Chapel Hill kitchenchapelhill.com Dick and Sue Barrows of Chapel Hill’s French-inspired Kitchen will host their fifth annual Oktoberfest celebration on October 7, a three-course dinner featuring artisan sausages from Steve George—formerly of the sausage titan D’Artagnan— and German-styles brews from Cary’s Bond Brothers. Kitchen’s Oktoberfest is $50 per person excluding tax and tip. The restaurant recommends calling in advance to reserve a seat (919-537-8167).

CASKTOBERFEST AT BIG BOSS Oct. 3, 5 p.m 1249 Wicker Drive, Raleigh bigbossbrewing.com/casktoberfest Big Boss Brewing Company hosts the return of Casktoberfest, a celebration of old-world beer culture featuring the new Marzen and Big Boss lager, as well as the Single Hop Huel Melon Lager, Pecan Harvest, Cloud Duster NEIPA, the Peanut Butter Bad Penny, and more. To try them all, Big Boss suggests purchasing a wristband and sample glass, which will gain you an all-access pass to the cask ale beer hall; otherwise, you can pay as you go.

11th

THE ROOT CELLAR’S PORKAPALOOZA Oct. 5, 6:30 p.m 750 MLK Jr. Blvd., Chapel Hill porkapaloozafest.com The Root Cellar Cafe’s most “porktacular” night of the year includes an eight-course farm-to-table dinner plus wood-fired suckling pigs from Burnette Ranch in Pittsboro and beer from Mason Jar Lager Co. in Fuquay-Varina. Expect plenty of pork-centric plates like twicefried ribs with sweet and spicy apricot glaze, bacon-wrapped confit pork tenderloin skewers with bourbon-soaked figs, and chile-braised pork cheek tostadas with fried sweet plantains, spicy pumpkin puree, and microgreens. Tickets range from $50–69 and are available on the event website.

—Andrea Rice

5th Saturday, October 5th there’s only one place to be – the North Carolina Rural Heritage Center in Laurinburg for the Scotland County Highland Games. Watch athletes compete in events such as the caber and hammer throw, and what would the games be without piping, drumming, dancing and Tartan glory. Beer, wine, and food, and craft vendors will be on site. We will also have a special evening concert featuring Highland Echoes.

INDYweek.com | 10.02.19 | 17

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Here is our Pet of the Week, POPSICLE Meet Popsicle. He is as sweet as his name and he’s looking for his new home. Are you looking for a cute companion to love on and hang out with? Popsicle is your guy. Come meet him today!

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Cradle of Time

THE INTERNET’S TWO-DECADE NOSTALGIA CYCLE COMES TO LIFE AT THE CRADLE THIS WEEK. YAY? BY BRIAN HOWE BUILT TO SPILL: KEEP IT LIKE A SECRET TOUR Sunday, Oct. 6, 8 p.m., $28–$32

LUNA PERFORMING PENTHOUSE Monday, Oct. 7, 8 p.m., $20–$23 Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro www.catscradle.com

To advertise or feature a pet for adoption, please contact advertising@indyweek.com

Hey, remember the late 1990s, when rock was rap, rap was pop, and teen song-anddance acts reigned, selling music on plastic discs that cost a thousand dollars? When “All Star” and the internet were both just fads, not eternal all-consuming scourges? When the nation was seized by the mass delusion that American Beauty was a good movie?

Even if you weren’t born yet in those heady days, you probably feel like you remember them if you frequent pop-culture websites, which just wrapped a positively orgiastic summer of 1999 nostalgia. Roughly two decades has long been the nostalgia cycle’s sweet spot: In the ‘00s, VH1 debuted I Love the ‘80s. In the ‘80s, The Wonder Years enshrined the ‘60s, as Happy Days had done in the jaded ‘70s for the innocent ‘50s—a time when people were probably pining for, I don’t know, phosphate sodas and the telegraph and rolling hoops with sticks.

But online culture media has both cemented and weaponized twenty years as the magic number, and the retrospective format is a reliable click storm across every vertical. Of course, I read all of them (and pitch some of them) with candy-rush relish, and also with a certain gnawing unease as a sense of temporal monotony sets in. Canor youfeature imagine what To advertise it’s going to be like next summer, when the pet hit—all for adoption, Y2K thinkapieces the space that will please go to Santana and Robcontact Thomas’s “Smooth” instead of, you know, good new art? advertising@indyweek.com Perhaps it’s because there’s nothing new under the sun that everything old sends us over the moon. In this, as in most aspects, the late-twentieth-century thing called indie rock mirrors the pop landscape it was sold as being set against.

This week at Cat’s Cradle, two bands are playing modest nineties indie classics in their entirety, with Built to Spill performing 1997’s Keep It Like a Secret on Sunday and Luna performing 1995’s Penthouse on Monday. Both are fairly winning propositions—the former was a moment when Doug Martsch’s concern chilled on the Midwest-size guitar theatrics to craft concise songs, while the film-noir dream-pop of the latter, from the heyday of Dean Wareham’s post-Galaxie 500 band, remains charming and redolent of a fedora-wearing kind of nerdy nineties cool.

These shows are part of a trend of classic-album performances—the music you loved, played by older people for more money.

I don’t remember exactly when it began, but the first big one I remember was Belle and Sebastian performing If You’re Feeling Sinister live at the Barbican in 2005.

Though this aspect of nostalgia is a live phenomenon, it feels related to the online one sealing up our memories behind us. It’s a little alarming and very seductive. The risk of always looking back is missing what’s coming next, as the past exerts a continual drag on the present. But there’s something about knowing exactly what you’re getting. It’s like Nietzsche wondered: If someone told you that you had to live your life over and over, the same each time, would you call them a demon or an angel? If current trends continue, we’re all going to find out. bhowe@indyweek.com INDYweek.com | 10.02.19 | 19

indypage

Collect and Connect

COMICS SHAPED MY QUEER IDENTITY, BUT IT WASN’T ALWAYS EASY TO FIND THE RIGHT ONES. NOW THAT I SELL THEM FOR A LIVING, I WANT TO MAKE IT EASIER FOR OTHERS. BY SIENA FALLON

I

don’t remember the first time I walked into a comic shop. It should have been a monumental moment in my life, considering that I now help run three shops in the Triangle and help put on three comic-book conventions in North Carolina. But because I grew up around comics, I failed to file that memory as important.

My dad devoured comics as a child. Then, like everyone else, he started collecting again during the ‘90s boom. My childhood was filled with days spent digging through the huge plastic bins tucked away in his closet, reading and rereading every issue he had.

But despite their presence in my life, comics didn’t feel wholly mine. I always tied them to my dad. He was the coolest person I knew, and to me, comics were one of the secrets to becoming just as cool one day. Trips to the comic shop were mainly an excuse for us to connect.

Then junior high hit. I didn’t know it yet, but I was experiencing my first crush on a girl. She was in all my classes, super smart, and I had no idea why, but I desperately wanted to be her friend. When we found out we both liked comics, a friendship was born.

The only problem? She was a DC fan, and I grew up in a strict Marvel-only household. I felt completely out of my depth. I went straight to my public library and borrowed the entirety of their DC graphic novel section. By the time I was through, I had read decades’ worth of Batman continuity, and came to two realizations: I loved comics, and I might be sort of gay.

I was fourteen and terrified. So I did what any nerdy teenager facing an Identity Crisis (sorry, DC Comics joke) would do: I turned back to the library. I researched queerness like I could understand everything if I just read enough. Comics had been part of the initial revelation, so I tried to make them part of the solution to my newfound questions. Unsurprisingly, the library’s queer graphic novel selection was pretty sparse, consisting solely of Fun Home by Alison Bechdel. It was time to journey back to the comic shop.

There were two local comic shops in my area. The first could best be described as the tomb of a very specific kind of hoarder. Comics littered every inch of the store, with no organization system known to man. There was no indie section, no one to ask for help.

The only thing I remember about the second shop was how uninterested the staff was in helping a teen with a bunch of questions. I asked for Brian K. Vaughan’s hit series Runaways, which featured a lesbian superhero, and they scoffed.

20 | 10.02.19 | INDYweek.com

Siena Fallon

PHOTO BY HARRISON STEWART

It turned out comic shops were not the Meccas of cool that I thought they were, so I stayed away.

Then, in college, I found Chapel Hill Comics. The whole shop was an indie section. I practically lived there freshman year, wandering the stacks and talking comics with the staff.

I hung around so much they eventually offered me a job. That was where I discovered Love and Rockets, Dykes to Watch Out For, Marvel’s Young Avengers, and other works that transformed my understanding of queerness. I came out, got a girlfriend, and, above all, kept reading comics.

After the unfortunate closing of Chapel Hill Comics, Alan Gill, the owner of Ultimate Comics, hired me to work at his shops, and I haven’t looked back. As operations manager, I help manage all our locations throughout the Triangle, and spend my days doing my favorite thing: talking comics. My goal has always been to make the shops the antithesis of the shops of my childhood. Comics and queerness have always been intertwined in my life, and I never want a kid looking

for themselves in comics to come up empty-handed, the way I had. Here’s what I’ve learned in five years as a retailer curating queer comics: Having LGBTQ-identified staff is probably the best and simplest way to have a great LGBTQ section. Queer staff members will be passionate about developing the section and will have suggestions on what to include. They’ll also be there to put the books in the hands of customers. Had any of those shops I visited as a kid had any queer staff, I know that I would have realized how important comics were to me at a much younger age.

It’s also important to remember that the LGBTQ community is not a monolith where one representation fits all. The queer community is made up of a wide array of people with different sexualities and gender identities, not to mention races, ethnicities, and backgrounds. I try to make sure my selection is reflective of such a diverse community.

This means carrying books that feature diverse protagonists. It also means carrying comics that can be read by customers of all ages. Being a young queer kid can be a tough, alienating experience. Seeing people similar to you in stories can make a world of difference. Fun Home is an amazing graphic novel, but it wasn’t the book I needed at fourteen. Those were Lumberjanes and Young Avengers, comics I wasn’t able to get my hands on until college.

In truth, there isn’t necessarily a science to curating LGBTQ comics. The secret is caring enough to make the effort. And it helps that we’re in a golden age of LGBTQ comics. There is finally a wide range of stories being told.

Durham’s own Jeremy Whitley is one creator whose work is featured prominently in our LGBTQ section. His youngadult-friendly titles Raven: The Pirate Princess and Marvel’s Unstoppable Wasp both feature queer themes and diverse casts and are well-loved by the younger readers in our shops.

Comics are a storytelling medium, but to me, they’re much more than that. They’ve been vital in understanding who I am as a person, and without them, it’s unlikely I would have come to terms with my queer identity the way I have. All our comic shops should be havens for anyone who walks through the doors, especially the queer kids who come in looking to find the stories that will help them better understand their own. arts@indyweek.com This story was adapted from an article in Selling Comics, a publication for retailers by the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, which fights censorship in comics.

indystage

Room and Bored

THE ROOMMATE IS A STAR-MAKING VEHICLE FOR MADELEINE PABIS; “OPEN DOORS” HAS SOME SQUEAKY HINGES BETWEEN HIGHLIGHTS BY BYRON WOODS THE ROOMMATE

nded, the  a retailer Through Sunday, Oct. 13

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g Comics, al Defense

The Women’s Theatre Festival has taken the theme of “Women Are Wicked” for its first yearround season, which begins next week in Durham. But Bulldog Ensemble Theater has stolen a smidgen of that thunder in its season opener, Jen Silverman’s chimeri- The Roommate PHOTO BY ALEX MANESS cal 2017 domestic dramedy, The Roommate. ron proves a natural in the criminal arts, the The first hint of wickedness creeps in as pair’s initial odd-couple relationship gets the enigmatic title character, Robyn, deft- odder and odder. ly evades the usual getting-to-know-you At first, this show would seem little more questions—line of work, immediate fam- than a brisk walk around the block for vetily, things like that—that Sharon, a mid- eran actor Julie Oliver, who has immortaldle-aged homeowner living alone in Iowa ized a vivid series of vinegary women before City, really should have asked during the now. But under Marshall Botvinick’s direcscreening process. tion, her character’s vulnerability and subThe wickedness definitely escalates limated desires repeatedly catch her, and when the new roomie observes, “There’s a us, off guard. great liberty in being bad.” The line, ostenIt’s also very gratifying that the sibly about first poems, might not make far-too-gradual increase in opportunities much of an impact on most of us. But for for women on regional stages has finala woman as Midwestern-nice as Sharon, ly caught up with Madeleine Pabis. While who’s been trying to paper over the lonely, we’ve relished her stunningly diverse portloveless abyss in a sheltered life after being folio of supporting parts and cameos with abandoned by her husband and her adult Little Green Pig Theatrical Concern, she’s son, the words come as a revelation—one been a talent long in need of a leading role that raises the possibility of an entirely new in a full-length play. way of being.

Pabis and Botvinick carefully sculpt And when it gradually emerges that Robyn into a person who holds her secrets Robyn has acquired a highly specialized set close; as she divulges them, we can all but of illicit skills during her dodgy past in the hear the groaning of internal hinges that Bronx and other locales, what follows can’t haven’t moved in ages.

Though there are still too many like Pabis be called the seduction of the innocent.

Think seduction by the innocent, instead, on the local scene, productions like this as Sharon wheedles a reluctant Robyn into show what they are waiting to do when teaching her the nuanced language of the given a chance. arts@indyweek.com grift. When sweet, demure, harmless Sha-

OPEN DOORS SHORT PLAY FESTIVAL 

Through Sunday, Oct. 6 Sonorous Road Theatre, Raleigh www.sonorousroad.com

What’s wrong with saving your best for last?

Your audience might give up before they get there. That’s the issue with Sonorous Road’s fourth-annual festival of ten-minute plays by regional playwrights. Curation of scripts and performers is key in omnibus shows, a fact that still eludes the presenters who have tried to take up the mantle of Jeri Lynn Schulke and Lynden Harris’s original “10 by 10 in the Triangle” short-play festival.

There’s a long dry spell between Steffi Rubin’s amusing opener, Terminal, and Supriya Jaya’s cozy domestic comedy, Serial. During the wordless opening scene of the former, director Lynda Clark crisply telegraphs the schisms between Melanie Simmons and Bryan Bender’s husbandand-wife duo. But Bender and David Klionsky have trouble following Simmons and Angela Burks through Rubin’s hairpin curves as relationship revelations turn an awkward dinner party into a terminal event.

Directed by Noelle Barnard Azarello, the witty Serial is the highlight. Emily Livingstone and Sarah Richardson play a snarky but loving couple staying in for a night of TV. Though one rags on the other’s love for serial-killer cable, she’s slowly drawn in by the show, which raises a delicate question about their relationship.

Playwright Allan Maule’s generational satire Shared Calendar (directed by Michael Parker) pokes a sharp stick at a couple (Aubrey Hancock and Jason Christ) that embodies the worst traits of Millennials and Generation Z. A calendar conflict provokes a crisis in their self-absorbed, tech-dependent relationship. The script checks off groan-inducing cultural references until an unearned last-minute redemption. It rounds out a trio of shows that’s well worth seeing. Too bad you have to go through so much to get there.

Your Week.

Every Wednesday. indyweek.com INDYweek.com | 10.02.19 | 21

10.2–10.9

WHAT TO DO THIS WEEK

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 9 & THURSDAY, OCTOBER 10

ANNE TERESA DE KEERSMAEKER AND ROSAS Remember the midsize kerfuffle that ensued when Beyoncé’s “Countdown” video either paid homage to or plagiarized (it depends on whether you ask the Beyhive or modern dancers) the Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s Rosas danst Rosas, an important but, compared to the video’s Audrey Hepburn routines, relatively obscure piece? It was a fluke pop-culture moment for postmodern dance, which thereupon slunk back to its recondite lair, where De Keersmaeker added her late-postmodern capstone to the canon in 1983. In it, as the title lets on, a company of four women called Rosas dance themselves, with all of the rigorous repetition associated with the form but none of the willful tedium. With everyday gestures abstracted into a sort of whiplashing visual staccato on an iconic row of chairs, Rosas danst Rosas is taut and percussive, more possessed than ponderous. Building on De Keersmaeker’s prior explorations of minimalist composer Steve Reich’s layered patterns, the piece garnered international renown, and kept it; if you’ve never seen it, it’s about time. —Brian Howe UNC’S MEMORIAL HALL, CHAPEL HILL 7:30 p.m., $27, www.carolinaperformingarts.org

Rosas danst Rosas PHOTO BY ANNE VAN AERSHCHOT/COURTESY OF CAROLINA PERFORMING ARTS

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3–SUNDAY, OCTOBER 6

SHAKORI HILLS GRASSROOTS FESTIVAL OF MUSIC AND DANCE

For the uninitiated, Shakori Hills is a biannual festival with four days of music, camping, and workshops in the rolling hills of Chatham County. Fifty-seven musical acts will perform across the long weekend, in genres ranging from bluegrass and folk to Latin dance and dancehall. As usual, Donna the Buffalo will headline the festival, along with New Orleans funk group Galactic, blues-rock lapsteelist Roosevelt Collier, and singer-songwriter Ryan Montbleau. Local acts are always a huge focal point for the festival; this year, local-lineup highlights include bluegrass-punk fusion act The Tan & Sober Gentlemen, Raleigh garagerockers Ghostt Bllonde, and Durham’s Skylar Gudasz. As for child-friendly programming, there’s Junior Appalachian Musicians, Farmer Eno, Secret Monkey Weekend and School of Rock Chapel Hill. When you’re tired of grooving out in a field to Donna the Buffalo, Shakori also offers lots of dancing, from swing and square dancing to salsa and judgement-free ecstatic dancing. —Sam Haw SHAKORI HILLS, PITTSBORO Various times, $36–$143, www.shakorihillsgrassroots.org

22 | 10.02.19 | INDYweek.com

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4—SUNDAY, OCTOBER 13

WATERS RISE

In the world premiere of Justine Weisinger’s dark near-future comedy, many American towns are flooded, and people whose social status is insufficiently elevated must rely on ingenuity—and applied consumerism—to literally keep their heads above water. Luckily, Sarah’s got some things figured out, at least for now: a cabin still several inches above the waterline and a gas generator are keeping the allimportant creature comforts possible. She has an electric heater, a fridge for those irresistible frozen burritos, and TV to pass the time and stay informed, sort of. But now a local provisions vendor and government representative known as “the Avon of survivalism” is breaking the news—with a firearm—that women are no longer permitted to cohabitate, and Sarah and Holly have been seen spending too much time together. Meanwhile, gritty Magda from up the hill keeps hinting that the pair should really start assembling some survival skills. Women’s Theatre Festival founder Ashley Popio and Yvette Holder co-direct a cast including Jessica Flemming, Sara Levy, Sandra Wallace, and Laurel Ullman in the first production of the festival’s first full season of shows. —Byron Woods SHADOWBOX STUDIOS, DURHAM 7:30 p.m. Thu.–Sat./1:30 p.m. Sun., $5–$50, www.womenstheatrefestival.org

Mavis Staples PHOTO COURTESY OF THE CAROLINA THEATRE

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3

MAVIS STAPLES

It’s practically impossible to overstate the cultural impact and musical influence of Mavis Staples. Thanks to her family’s constant activism and close friendship with Martin Luther King Jr., the mighty gospel tunes Mavis sang alongside her father and siblings as The Staple Singers soundtracked the civil rights movement as hits like “I’ll Take You There” topped the charts. More than five decades into her solo career, Staples has expanded her range of collaborators to include the likes of Prince, Bob Dylan, Arcade Fire, and Gorillaz, and she still hasn’t lost an inch of her stature. Following a string of releases featuring writing and production by Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, Staples’s latest album, We Get By, was written and produced by Ben Harper. While her Duke Performances show at The Carolina Theatre will certainly include some of this recent material, expect a career-spanning set that also includes Staple Singers classics and some smartly chosen covers. —Spencer Griffith THE CAROLINA THEATRE, DURHAM 8 p.m., $10–$65, www.carolinatheatre.org

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 2—SATURDAY, OCTOBER 26

ALADDIN

You’ve got to be careful with wishes. The ancient Sibyl confidently chose eternal life, but without a thought for equally eternal youth or health. At least in the chiller The Monkey’s Paw, the protagonist has one wish left at the end to set things right, or at least, less wrong. But things have worked out differently for Disney. In 2014, its executives wished for a successful live adaptation of their blockbuster 1992 animated film. Presto: the Broadway version of Aladdin, a spectacle replete with flying carpets and sword-swallowers—and new characters and songs—is still running five years later, with ticket sales well north of $400 million. But since the live-action film version released in May has done more than double that amount at the box office, it’s a toss-up: Will the kids say the irrepressible Genie doesn’t sound like Robin Williams or that he doesn’t look like Will Smith? —Byron Woods DURHAM PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, DURHAM Various times, $30+, www.dpacnc.com

WHAT ELSE SHOULD I DO?

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BUILT TO SPILL AT CAT’S CRADLE (P. 19), DES ARK AT MOTORCO (P. 14), FILM FEST 919 AT SILVERSPOT CINEMA (P. 32), ALDOUS HARDING AT KINGS (P. 25), LUNA AT CAT’S CRADLE (P. 19), SOUTHERN CULTURES ISSUE LAUNCH AT CURRENT ARTSPACE+STUDIO (P. 30), ¡VIVA VICLAS! THE ART OF THE LOWRIDER MOTORCYCLE AT CAM RALEIGH (P. 29), WAKE FOREST DANCE FESTIVAL AT JOYNER PARK (P. 31) INDYweek.com | 10.02.19 | 23

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10.2–10.9

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4

ALDOUS HARDING

The release of New Zealand folk singer Aldous Harding’s silky single “The Barrel” this year was met with considerable online debate. What exactly was she getting at when she assertively crooned, “Looks like a date is set / Show the ferret to the egg / I’m not gettin’ led along”? In the accompanying video for that song—in which Harding, as one YouTube user aptly put it, resembles “Feist [as] a sleep-paralysis demon”—she shimmies along in a large white hat, looking as if she knows a dark secret that the rest of us rather wish she didn’t. (The video is well worth a watch.) Nonetheless, drawing audiences in and then keeping them at arm’s length is all part of Harding’s effective mystical playbook. With the cerebral vocal stylings of Nico, the hypnotically convulsive dance moves of Kate Bush, and the quiet psychedelia of a Laurel Canyon songstress, Harding is a sleep-paralysis demon you might actually want to keep around. And if, after a few listens, you still don’t entirely grasp why the ferret is being directed to the egg, no matter. You’ll find yourself singing along, regardless. —Sarah Edwards KINGS, RALEIGH 9 p.m., $18–$20, www.kingsraleigh.com

WED, OCT 2 CAT’S CRADLE BACK ROOM B Boys, Family Vision; $10-$12. 8:30 p.m.

THE CAVE Pocket Vinyl; 9 p.m.

KOKA BOOTH AMPHITHEATRE Lorraine Jordan & Friends; $5. 5:45 p.m.

LOCAL 506 Video Age, J Fernandez, Waldo Witt; $10-$12. 9 p.m.

THE PINHOOK Condado, Chris Larkin, Exit Mice; $7. 8 p.m.

POUR HOUSE RDGLDGRN, Treehouse!; $14-$16. 9 p.m.

UNC’S HILL HALL Alicia Olatuja; $37. 7:30 p.m.

THE WICKED WITCH Wingtips, Korine, Roseclouds, Animalweapon; $10. 8:30 p.m.

THU, OCT 3 BLUE NOTE GRILL Old Well All Stars; 7 p.m.

CAROLINA THEATRE Mavis Staples; $40-$65. 8 p.m.

CAT’S CRADLE Blanco White, shey baba; $13-$15. 8 p.m.

Aldous Harding PHOTO COURTESY OF 4AD INDYweek.com | 10.02.19 | 25

THE KRAKEN Michela Musolino, Fabio Turchetti; 8 p.m.

LINCOLN THEATRE Jimmy Herring and the 5 of 7; $28-$38. 8:30 p.m.

LOCAL 506 Operator Music Band, Distributed Systems, ING; $10$12. 9 p.m.

THE MAYWOOD Nova Mortis, Annabel Lee, Through All This Time, Among The Machines; $8. 8:30 p.m.

MOTORCO

Sheer Mag [$14-$16, 8 P.M.] Specializing in tough-asnails rock ‘n’ roll fueled by an endless supply of riffs, power-pop hooks, and Tina Halladay’s live-wire voice, Sheer Mag could have fit right in on Dazed and Confused’s soundtrack. The Philly quartet channeled that righteous, fistpumping energy into political rallying cries on their debut LP, while this year’s followup added a storytelling arc inspired by Halladay’s life.

—Spencer Griffith NCSU’S STEWART THEATRE

Nobuntu

[$28-$33, 8 P.M.]

Nobuntu performs at Motorco on Friday, October

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ARTISTS

KABOOM ART GALLERY Don Babylon, Orphan Riot, Becca Brady; $7-$10. 6:30 p.m.

NEPTUNES PARLOUR Pottery; $10. 10 p.m.

FRI, OCT 4

KINGS Acid King, Wizard Rifle, Warish; $17-$20. 8 p.m.

THE RITZ Wale; $20+ 8 p.m.

SHAKORI HILLS Shakori Hills GrassRoots Festival; 6 p.m.

BLUE NOTE GRILL Lisa R and The Lucky Stars; 9 p.m.

LINCOLN THEATRE Whitey Morgan, Alex Williams; $16-$75. 8 p.m.

MOTORCO The Way Down Wanderers, Infielder; $12-$15. 8 p.m.

SLIM’S Harborlights, Youth League, Juxton Roy; $5. 9 p.m.

CAROLINA THEATRE Andy Grammer; $28+. 8 p.m.

CAT’S CRADLE Vegabonds; $9-$12. 9 p.m.

KINGS Aldous Harding, Tiny Ruins; 7 p.m.

The women of a cappella quintet Nobuntu showcase traditional and contemporary music from Zimbabwe, as well as jazz and gospel, while performing in a style that draws from the neighboring South African tradition of mbube vocal music.

Richly textured vocals are accentuated by thumb piano, hand percussion, and dancing.

As member Duduzile Sibanda has said, in mbube, “You don’t just stand there and sing.” The event includes a 7 p.m. talk with the group.

—Josephine McRobbie NIGHTLIGHT

Black Twig Pickers [$10-$15, 8:30 P.M.] A group of old-time musicians initially centered around an

“intensely local Southwest Virginia tradition,” Black Twig Pickers has expanded both its inspirations and its network of collaborators.

They’re happy to experiment with drone improvisation, and have worked with a variety of adventurous pickers, including the NYC-based psych-folk guitarist Steve Gunn and Minnesotan country blues legend Charlie Parr. They’re also rare to tour, so catch ‘em while you can.

—Josephine McRobbie THE PINHOOK

Kampire [$10, 10 P.M.]

Party Illegal comes through with a clutch international booking: The DJ known as Kampire, who played her first-ever U.S. set at a Red Bull event in Brooklyn last June, is a member of Kampala’s red-hot Nyege Nyege collective, which The Guardian called “the Ugandan dance collective reversing colonial culture.” Her bassy sets are rhythmically and culturally diverse, spanning soukous, Afro-house, funk carioca, and much more, and they radiate the vitality of the special moment in East African electronic music she’s ensconced in. With Ma’duro and Femi the Femme.

—Brian Howe POUR HOUSE Rolling Stones & Bad Company Tributes: Beggars Banquet + Bad Inc; $7-$10. 9 p.m.

26 | 10.02.19 | INDYweek.com

DUKE COFFEEHOUSE Adult Mom, Fresh; $10. 8:30 p.m.

KABOOM ART GALLERY worlds greatest dad, Faster On Fire, Earther, Spaced Angel; $8-$12. 6:30 p.m.

LINCOLN THEATRE Perpetual Groove; $17. 9 p.m.

MEMORIAL AUDITORIUM Dream Theater; 8 p.m.

MEYMANDI CONCERT HALL N.C. Symphony: Video Games Live; 8 p.m.

NIGHTLIGHT Gel Set, Nadia Khan, Claudio Grava, DJ Sets; $10. 8 p.m.

POUR HOUSE Signal Fire, Sound Destroyer.; $6-$12. 9 p.m.

RED HAT AMPHITHEATER

Zedd

[$46+, 7 P.M.] Even when working behind pop stars, Zedd is hardly a retiring presence—the producer of Alessia Cara’s “Stay” and Maren Morris’s “The Middle” has minted a loudly recognizable sound in tracks that tick and burst like time-bombs full of confetti.

So naturally, his Orbit Tour finds him EDMing the hits while stationed in the center of a massive rotating ring, in a production suggestive of a James Cameron movie about Space Camp.

—Brian Howe

RHYTHMS LIVE Gail Nelson; $25+. 8 p.m.

THE RITZ Theory of a Dead Man, Spirit Animal; $23. 8 p.m.

SHARP NINE GALLERY Ricardo Pascal, UNC Jazz Faculty; $10-$20. 8 p.m.

SHARP NINE GALLERY Joshua Espinoza Trio; $10-$20. 8 p.m.

SLIM’S Bleeding Hearts, Royal Nites, Clothespins; $7. 8 p.m.

SAT, OCT 5

THE CARY THEATER Aoife Clancy; $15. 7 p.m.

CAT’S CRADLE Electric Six; $13-$15. 9 p.m.

CAT’S CRADLE BACK ROOM Tyrone Wells, Dan Rodriguez; $17-$20. 8 p.m.

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THE CAVE Blood Red River, Rye Baby, Lisa R. And The Lucky Stars; $5 suggested. 9 p.m.

SLIM’S Tuff Turf, Brev, Morning Bells; $5. 9 p.m.

THE STATION Shake Some Action, Secret Monkey Weekend; 8:30 p.m.

UNC’S HILL HALL UNC Jazz Band; $10. 8 p.m.

WALNUT CREEK AMPHITHEATRE ZZ Top, Cheap Trick; $29.50+. 7 p.m.

Sheer Mag performs at Motorco on Friday, October 4. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ARTISTS

SUN, OCT 6

POUR HOUSE Tomar & The FCs; $9-$12. 8:30 p.m.

ARCANA D Town Deuce, Neville’s Quarter, A Different Thread; 7 p.m.

SLIM’S Mo’ynoq, Cell, Hylic; $7 suggested. 9 p.m.

CAROLINA THEATRE The Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle; $30. 3 p.m.

UNC’S MEMORIAL HALL UNC Wind Ensemble & UNC Symphony Band; 7:30 p.m.

CAT’S CRADLE Built to Spill, Prism Bitch, Love As Laughter; $28-$32. 8 p.m.

TUE, OCT 8

KINGS Blackfoot Gypsies, The Backsliders; $10-$12. 8:30 p.m.

CAT’S CRADLE Elizabeth Moen; $10. 8 p.m.

LOCAL 506 Rod Hamdallah, Thirsty Curses; $8. 8 p.m.

LOCAL 506 Vein, Soft Kill, Higher Power, Silenus, Thirteenth; $15-$17. 6:30 p.m.

MOTORCO Kero Kero Bonito, Negative Gemini; $16-$18. 8 p.m.

POUR HOUSE Cygnus X2; $8-$12. 8 p.m.

THE RITZ Rick Ross; $38.50. 8 p.m.

MON, OCT 7 CAT’S CRADLE Luna, Olden Yolk; $20-$23 8 p.m.

THE MAYWOOD Skeletal Remains, Conjurer, Morose Vitality; $10. 9 p.m.

MOTORCO White Denim, Abram Shook; $15-$18. 8 p.m.

THE PINHOOK Mudhoney, Pissed Jeans; 8 p.m.

POUR HOUSE Apparitions of Myself, Emily Musolino, Megachrome, Highway Battery; $7-$10. 8 p.m.

THE CAVE A Silhouette Of A Nude; $5 suggested. 9 p.m.

RED HAT AMPHITHEATER

LOCAL 506 Thigh Master, Dag, Shortcuts; $8. 9 p.m.

[$35+, 8 P.M.]

MOTORCO Team Dresch, Des Ark; $15-$17. 8 p.m.

NIGHTLIGHT Malimpliki, Exotica, Public Acid, Vittna, Tizzi; $12. 9 p.m.

THE PINHOOK Cashavelly Morrison; $10. 8 p.m.

Sara Bareilles

Sara Bareilles is the epitome of the mid-aughts adultcontemporary pop-pianist.

Her turns on TV (as a judge on The Sing-Off) and on the stage (a Broadway production of Waitress, a televised adaptation

of Jesus Christ Superstar) have gotten her nominated for three-quarters of an EGOT. —Patrick Wall THE RITZ $uicideboy$; $50.

8 p.m.

SLIM’S Henbrain, Girih, Shagwuf, Augurs; $7. 8 p.m.

WED, OCT 9 CAT’S CRADLE Elder Island, Dirty Nice; $15. 8 p.m.

THE CAVE Shagwuf, The Medium, Abram Shook; $5 suggested. 9 p.m.

LOCAL 506 Stolen Jars, Gallus Mag; $8. 9 p.m.

THE MAYWOOD Skullshitter, Bleeding Out, Paezor, Feral Spectre; $7. 8 p.m.

NEPTUNES PARLOUR Vacant Company, Kal Marks, Bethlehem Steel, Brutal Junior; $8. 10 p.m.

THE PINHOOK Hey Champ!, Lunchbox Hero, Binder; $7. 8 p.m.

POUR HOUSE George Porter Trio, Casey & the Comrades; $20$25. 9 p.m.

SLIM’S CAMMO, Imelda Marcos, Scarecrow; $7. 8 p.m

Your week.

Every Wednesday.

ARTS•NEWS•FOOD•MUSIC INDYWEEK.COM INDYweek.com | 10.02.19 | 27

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ONGOING Andrew Kozlowski: Dark Days Prints and more.

Thru Oct 26. Artspace, Raleigh. artspacenc.org.

Katherine Armacost, Nikki Blair, Natalie Boorman, Peg Gignoux, Linda Prager & Carol Retsch-Bogart Group show. Thru Oct 5. FRANK Gallery, Chapel Hill.

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

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

The Art of Resistance Thru Dec 13. UNC’s FedEx Global Education Center, Chapel Hill.

The Atomic Photographers Guild: Nuclear Visions Photography. Thru Oct 31.

UNC’s Hanes Art Center, Chapel Hill. art.unc.edu.

Jayne Bomberg: A Unique Journey in Visual Art Thru Oct 20.

Skylight Gallery, Hillsborough. skylightgallerync.wordpress.com.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4

¡VIVA VICLAS! THE ART OF THE LOWRIDER MOTORCYCLE

Well, they’re putting a bunch of motorcycles in CAM Raleigh, and we can’t say we’re 100 percent sure it’s going to play. But before we automatically lump this in with a certain other Raleigh museum’s ill-advised Porsche show from a few years ago, let’s consider the provenance and context. ¡Viva Viclas! The Art of the LowRider Motorcycle focuses on the American Chicanx culture of motorcycle customization, with ten privately owned bikes from the West and Southwest, each rich with story, and nine supplementary artworks. The exhibit was curated by Denise Sandoval—a professor of Chicano/Chicana Studies at California State University, Northridge, who has long worked on lowrider culture both academically and curatorially—and historian Ken Gross, who directs the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. The artists, who include OG Able, Adriana Avila, Eren Cannata, and Mr. Cartoon, will be discussing the exhibit in the museum on a weekly basis, from this First Friday opening until it closes on February 9. Much rides on the museum’s presentation choices, but this is a far cry from gawking at Ralph Lauren’s Porsche. —Brian Howe

CAM RALEIGH, RALEIGH 6-10 p.m., free, www.camraleigh.org

April Flores riding “Firmosa”

PHOTO COURTESY OF APRIL FLORES/CAM RALEIGH

OPENING Mark Abercrombie Oct 3-28.

5 Points Gallery, Durham.

5pointsgallery.com.

All the Rembrandt Drawings Drawings. Oct 4-Jan 20.

Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill. ackland.org.

Anarchism and the Political Art of Les Temps Nouveaux, 18951914 Prints and graphics. Oct 15-Dec 15. Nasher Museum of Art, Durham. nasher.duke.edu.

Jasmine Best, Laura Little, Aaron McIntosh, Renzo Ortega: Dirty South Group show. Oct 4-Nov 30. Reception: Oct 4, 6-10 p.m. Artspace, Raleigh. artspacenc.org.

A Certain Uncertainty; from the Cassilhaus Collection Oct 6-Nov 24. Horace Williams House, Chapel Hill. preservationchapelhill.org.

Suzanne Dittenber: Momentary Memorial Sculptures and video. Oct 4-26. ation: Oct 4, 6-10 p.m.

Artspace, Raleigh. artspacenc.org.

Bill Brown, Jerstin Crosby, Sabine Gruffat, George Jenne, Lindsay Metivier, Alyssa Miserendino, Travis Phillips, Rachele Riley, Derek Toomes, Louis Watts: Another Potato Chip Weekend Group show. Thru Oct 13.

Oneoneone, Chapel Hill. oneoneone.gallery Maria Martinez-Cañas: Rebus + Diversions Mixed media. Thru Jan 12. CAM Raleigh, Raleigh.

Kennedi Carter: Godchild Thru Jan 31.

21c Museum Hotel, Durham.

21cmuseumhotels.com/ durham.

Peter Filene & Bill McAllister Photos. Oct 8-Nov 10. FRANK Gallery, Chapel Hill.

Cary Gallery of Artists: Art N Learning Thru Oct 23.

Cary Gallery of Artists, Cary. carygalleryofartists.org.

¡Viva Viclas!: The Art of the Lowrider Motorcycle Guest curator Denise Sandoval. Oct 4-Feb 9. CAM Raleigh, Raleigh. camraleigh.org.

Celebrating Nature Group show. Watercolor, colored pencil, graphite, and pen & ink. Thru Oct 27. NC Botanical Garden, Chapel Hill.

INDYweek.com | 10.02.19 | 29

arts

page

CO NT’D

conTEXT: A Calligraphic Journey Thru Nov 7. NCSU’s The Crafts Center, Raleigh. crafts.arts.ncsu.edu.

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

José Manuel Cruz: COLORICAN Various media.

Thru Oct 11. NCCU Art Museum, Durham.

José Manuel Cruz: Urban Cultural Footprints Thru Oct 31. Triangle Cultural Art Gallery, Raleigh. triangleculturalart.com.

Fahamu Pecou: DO or DIE: Affect, Ritual, Resistance Thru Nov 21. UNC’s Sonja Haynes Stone Center, Chapel Hill. stonecenter.unc.edu.

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

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

Raymond Goodman: Burlap Photography. Thru Oct 3.

Smelt Art Gallery, Pittsboro.

Elissa Farrow Savos Mixed media. Thru Oct 30. Gallery C, Raleigh. galleryc.net

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

She Who Tells a Story Thru Dec 1. Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill. ackland.org.

Larry Favorite, Marcy Lansman, Eric Saunders: Altered Surfaces Thru Oct 20. Hillsborough Gallery of Arts, Hillsborough.

HillsboroughGallery.com.

Feels Warm, Like Things Burning Group show. Thru Oct 26. Lump, Raleigh. lumpprojects.org.

Harriet Hoover, Vanessa Murray, Rusty Shackleford Thru Jan 5. Oneoneone, Chapel Hill. oneoneone.gallery John James Audubon: The Birds of America Ornithological engravings. Thru Dec 31.

NC Museum of Art, Raleigh. ncartmuseum.org.

Jim Kellough: Vine Paintings Thru Oct 10. Durham Convention Center, Durham. durhamarts.org.

More Outsider Art in the Visitors Center Folk art. Group show. Thru Nov 29. Alexander Dickson House, Hillsborough. mikesarttruck.com.

New Orleans Second Line Parades Photos. Thru Dec 31. Love House and Hutchins Forum, Chapel Hill. southerncultures.org.

30 | 10.02.19 | INDYweek.com

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3

John Rosenthal: Other Than Itself Photos. Thru Oct 12.

Through This Lens, Durham.

SOUTHERN CULTURES FALL ISSUE LAUNCH

The smell of decaying leaves, wood smoke, and/or impeachment proceedings got you in the mood for politics? Good, cause it’s time for “Left/Right,” the fall politics issue of Southern Cultures, the quarterly put out by UNC Press and The Center for the American South. Guest-edited by Emory historian Joseph Crespino, the issue marks the publication’s twenty-fifth anniversary. To celebrate the occasion, Jamelle Bouie, Kevin M. Kruse, and Nicole Hemmer join in conversation to explore the “undercurrents, challenges, and paradoxes of Southern political life.” Bouie is a columnist for The New York Times who covers campaigns, elections, and culture; Kruse is a professor of history at Princeton University; and Hemmer is a historian and research associate with the Obama Oral History Project.

The price of a ticket comes with a copy of the issue; contents include an essay by William J. Barber II and Timothy Tyson, a conversation between Chokwe Antar Lumumba and Kiese Laymon, and an essay reckoning with Southern Baptist history by Allison Collis Greene. —Sarah Edwards

Southbound: Photographs of and about the New South Thru Dec 21. Power Plant Gallery, Durham. powerplantgallery.com.

Southern Oracle: We Will Tear the Roof Off Interactive sculptures. Thru Oct 31. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh. ncartmuseum.org.

Damian Stamer: Unseen Watercolors and works on paper. Thru Nov 2. Craven Allen Gallery, Durham. cravenallengallery.com.

CURRENT ARTSPACE + STUDIO, CHAPEL HILL 7 p.m., $10, www.southerncultures.org

Leigh Suggs: No One Ever Makes a Promise in a Dream Thru Nov 3. Oneoneone, Chapel Hill. oneoneone.gallery Cheryl Thurber: Documenting Gravel Springs, Mississippi, in the 1970s Photos. Thru Mar 31. UNC’s Wilson Special Collections Library, Chapel Hill.

Jan-Ru Wan: You thought you are the center of the universe Found objects. Thru Oct 5. VAE Raleigh, Raleigh. vaeraleigh.org.

What in the World Is a Grain Mummy? Egyptology and art.

Thru Jan 8. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh. ncartmuseum.org.

Wojtek Wojdynski: Symbiosis Photos. Thru Oct 12.

Through This Lens, Durham.

READINGS & SIGNINGS Stella Fosse Aphrodite’s Pen: The Power of Writing Erotica After Midlife. Wed, Oct 2, 7 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill. flyleafbooks.com.

Bryant Holsenbeck The Last Straw: A Continuing Quest for Life without Disposable Plastic. Sat, Oct 5, 2 p.m.

McIntyre’s Books, Pittsboro. mcintyresbooks.com.

Earl Huband, Joanne Kennedy Frazer, Madeline Desautels The Innocence of Education (Huband), Being Kin (Frazer), Ink (Desautels). Sun, Oct 6, 2 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh. quailridgebooks.com.

Randell Jones In the Footsteps of Daniel Boone. Wed, Oct 9, 7 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill. flyleafbooks.com.

Kelly Starling Lyons Sing a Song: How Lift Every Voice and Sing Inspired Generations. Sat, Oct 5, 2 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh. quailridgebooks.com.

Jamie Mason, Eryk Pruitt The Hidden Things (Mason).

Townies and Other Stories of Southern Mischief (Pruitt). Sat, Oct 5, 11 a.m. McIntyre’s Books, Pittsboro. mcintyresbooks.com.

M. Randal O’Wain, Mesha Maren Meander Belt: Family, Loss, and Coming of Age in the Working-Class South (O’Wain), Sugar Run (Maren). Thu, Oct 3, 7 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill. flyleafbooks. com. — Wed, Oct 9, 7 p.m.

Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh. quailridgebooks.com.

Jacqueline Woodson Red at the Bone. Mon, Oct 7, 7 p.m.

Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill. flyleafbooks.com.

LECTURES, ETC. Iyanla Vanzant Inspirational speaker. $42+. Tue, Oct 8, 8 p.m. Memorial Auditorium, Raleigh. dukeenergycenterraleigh.com.

stage SATURDAY, OCTOBER 5

WAKE FOREST DANCE FESTIVAL

Once, the notion of a free, daylong modern dance festival featuring world-class companies in Wake Forest might have seemed like a pipe dream. Then Masha Maddux, a former principal dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company, came to town. The festival’s third year features its most ambitious lineup yet, with performances by the likes of Paul Taylor Dance Company alumni Laura Halzack and Michael Trusnovec, in Taylor’s Roses; dancers from Ailey II in artistic director Troy Powell’s Ebb and Flow; ADF choreographer Helen Simoneau Danse in a section from her latest work, Darling; and a closing performance by the African American Dance Ensemble. In the midst of all this, Carolina Ballet principal dancers Marcelo Martinez and Lara O’Brien will perform Meditation from Thaïs by this year’s guest of honor, the ballet’s director, Robert Weiss.

As always, the day begins with an open morning technical rehearsal and afternoon dances from emerging local artists and companies during a walking tour of Joyner Park, before the mainstage performance at 5:00 p.m. —Byron Woods

E. CARROLL JOYNER PARK, WAKE FOREST 9:30 a.m.–6:30 p.m., free, www.wakeforestdancefestival.org

Wake Forest Civic Ballet dancers Olivia Kramar and Richard Browne in last year’s Wake Forest Dance Festival PHOTO BY MOHAN RAO

OPENING Aladdin Musical. $30+. Oct 2-26. Durham Performing Arts Center, Durham. dpacnc.com.

Eric Andre Wed, Oct 2, 8 p.m.

Carolina Theatre, Durham. carolinatheatre.org.

Best of Enemies NCCU Theatre.

Play. Oct 4-13. NC Central University Theatre, Durham. nccu.edu.

John Caparulo Comedy. Oct 3-5. Thu: 8 p.m. Fri-Sat: 7:30 p.m. & 10 p.m. Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh. goodnightscomedy.com.

An Evening with C.S. Lewis Play. Oct 5-6. Sat: 3 p.m. & 7:30 p.m. Sun: 2 p.m. Fletcher Opera Theater, Raleigh. dukeenergycenterraleigh.com.

Criminal Podcast Live $30. Sat, Oct 5, 8 p.m.

Carolina Theatre, Durham. carolinatheatre.org.

Craig Ferguson Comedy. $38$88. Mon, Oct 7, 7:30 p.m.

Carolina Theatre, Durham. carolinatheatre.org.

Dracula $19-$27. Oct 4-20.

Theatre In The Park, Raleigh. theatreinthepark.com.

Rosas danst Rosas Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker & Rosas. Dance. $27. Wed, Oct 9, 7:30 p.m. UNC’s Memorial Hall, Chapel Hill. carolinaperformingarts.org.

Dusty Slay Comedy. $15.

Oct 3-6. Thu: 7 p.m. Fri: 7 p.m. & 9:15 p.m. Sat: 6:30 p.m. & 9 p.m. Sun: 7 p.m. Raleigh Improv, Raleigh. i mprov.com/raleigh.

Doug Stanhope Comedy. Sun, Oct 6, 7 p.m. Raleigh Improv, Raleigh. improv.com/raleigh.

Blake Wexler Comedy. $15-$23. Wed, Oct 9, 8 p.m. Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh. goodnightscomedy.com.

ONGOING

Joe Zimmerman Comedy. $15.

Wed, Oct 2, 8 p.m. Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh. goodnightscomedy.com.

The Roommate Thru Oct 13. Durham Fruit Company, Durham. bulldogdurham.org.

Blood at the Root Thru Oct 13.

Raleigh Little Theatre, Raleigh. raleighlittletheatre.org.

Transactors Improv With Dex Romweber. Sat, Oct 5, 8 p.m.

The ArtsCenter, Carrboro. artscenterlive.org.

FOR OUR COMPLETE COMMUNITY CALENDAR

INDYWEEK.COM

INDYweek.com | 10.02.19 | 31

screen SPECIAL SHOWINGS The Blair Witch Project Tue, Oct 8, 9:15 p.m.

Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh. drafthouse.com/raleigh.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari Live musical score. Fri, Oct 4, 10 p.m. Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh. drafthouse.com/raleigh.

Degas: Passion for Perfection Free. Sun, Oct 6, 2 p.m.

The Cary Theater, Cary. thecarytheater.com.

Documenteur Thu, Oct 3, 7 p.m. Rubenstein Arts Center, Durham.

Roger Waters: Us + Them Wed, Oct 2, 7 p.m. Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh. drafthouse.com/raleigh. — $8-$9.75. Wed, Oct 2, 7 p.m.

Rialto Theatre, Raleigh.

Sinatra in Palm Springs $9-$11. Mon, Oct 7, 7:30 p.m.

Chelsea Theater, Chapel Hill. thechelseatheater.com.

The Train Hillsborough Classic Films. Free. Sun, Oct 6, 3 p.m. Orange County Main Library, Hillsborough. co.orange.nc.us/library.

Wrinkles The Clown Sat, Oct 5, time TBD. Carolina Theatre, Durham. carolinatheatre.org.

Edge of the Knife Thu, Oct 3, 3 p.m. Nasher Museum of Art, Durham. ami.duke.edu.

The Zodiac Killer Wed, Oct 2, 9:30 p.m. Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh. drafthouse.com/raleigh.

Film Fest 919 Lineup TBA. Oct 9-13. Silverspot Cinema Chapel Hill. filmfest919.com.

OPENING

Hands of the Ripper, Vampire Circus $10. Fri, Oct 4, 7:05 p.m.

Carolina Theatre, Durham. carolinatheatre.org.

Home is Distant Shores Full schedule online. Oct 2-16.

7 p.m. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh. ncartmuseum.org.

How to Steal a Million $7. Wed, Oct 2, 7 p.m. Carolina Theatre, Durham. carolinatheatre.org.

In A Perfect World Free. Q&A to follow. Thu, Oct 3, 6 p.m.

Full Frame Theater, Durham.

Irma Vep Screen/Society. Wed, Oct 9, 7 p.m. Rubenstein Arts Center, Durham. ami.duke. edu/screensociety Martin $7. Wed, Oct 9, 7 p.m.

Carolina Theatre, Durham. carolinatheatre.org.

Mister America $13. Wed, Oct 9, 7 p.m. Carolina Theatre, Durham. carolinatheatre.org.

Monty Python & the Holy Grail $9-$12. Sat, Oct 5, 7 p.m.

IMAX Theatre at Marbles Kids Museum, Raleigh. marbleskidsmuseum.org.

Nosferatu Live musical score. Sat, Oct 5, 10 p.m.

Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh. drafthouse.com/raleigh.

Peppermint Soda $5-$7. Sun, Oct 6, 2 p.m. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh. ncartmuseum.org.

32 | 10.02.19 | INDYweek.com

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.

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.

Abominable—A yeti must be reunited with his family in this computer-animated adventure.

Rated PG. Ad Astra—A tortured but calm Brad Pitt traverses the solar system in search of his lost father. Rated PG-13.  After the Wedding— Julianne Moore and Michelle Williams outshine the script, in this gender-flipped remake of the 2006 Danish drama. Rated PG-13. —Glenn McDonald ½ Angel Has Fallen— Secret Service agent Mike Banning is framed for an assassination attempt on POTUS. It’s not as wretched as London Has Fallen, and Nick Nolte as a conspiracy theorist is almost worth it.

Rated R.—Neil Morris

Aquarela—Victor Kossakovsky’s documentary about the unruly beauty of water is set to a Finnish heavymetal score. Rated PG. Brittany Runs a Marathon— This comedy mines body image for laughs but does so with uplift rather than cringes, as a woman makes positive changes in her life by running a marathon. Rated R. The Death of Dick Long—A couple of ne’er-do-wells in small town Alabama find themselves covering up a crime, when their bandmate bro turns up dead.

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.  Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw—The testosterone-driven repartee between Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham is the only reason to endure this cartoonish, logically and temporally challenged CGI fest. Rated PG-13. —NM  The Farewell— A family travels to China to say goodbye to the family matriarch, who is dying of cancer. The twist? They feel that it’s more benevolent to not tell her she’s dying.

Rated PG. —Sarah Edwards The Goldfinch—Jezebel put it best: “Everyone already hates The Goldfinch,” which makes a pretentious muck of Donna Tartt’s Pulitzer-winning novel of art and grief. Rated R. ½ Good Boys—In this Superbad for tweens, a trio of sixth-grade BFFs have misadventures as they try to find the cool-kids party. The profuse profanity is cut by the kids’ infectious charm. Rated R. —NM

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 9–SUNDAY, OCTOBER 13

FILM FEST 919

In our fall arts preview, we highlighted some festival-feted films that we’re hoping to see on local screens. Lo and behold, a bunch of them are at Silverspot in the second-annual Film Fest 919. There’s Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story, starring Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver. There’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Céline Sciamma’s Cannes best-screenplay-winning study of queer desire. There’s Pedro Almodóvar’s autofictional Pain and Glory, which snagged Antonio Banderas a best-actor award at Cannes. There’s Parasite, the Palme d’Or winner by Bong Joon-ho (Snowpiercer), and there’sWaves, which, according to The Ringer’s Sean Fennessey, incited “an emotional hysteria I haven’t felt in a movie theater in years” at Telluride. This is just scratching the surface—see also Taika Waititi’s TIFF audience favorite Jojo Rabbit and FernandoMeirelles’s The Two Popes; the latter’s screenwriter, Anthony McCarten, will be present to receive an award, among other events with industry professionals. Thanks are due to the festival’s cofounders—Randi Emerman, Silverspot’s vice president of programming; veteran publicist Carol Marshall; and LA Film Critics Association president Carol Marshall—for making sure the Triangle isn’t left out of the liveliest cinema conversations of this fall. —Brian Howe

SILVERSPOT CINEMA, CHAPEL HILL Various times and prices, www.filmfest919.com

Waves PHOTO COURTESY OF A24 Judy—Renee Zellweger, in a role that will likely make her an Oscar frontrunner, plays Judy Garland during the last few years of her life. Rated PG-13. ½ The Lion King— Jon Favreau’s photorealistic palette is the boon and bane of Disney’s “live-action” computer rendering of an animated classic. Rated PG. —NM

Hustlers—The true story of strippers drugging and stealing from Wall Street stock traders is the stuff think pieces are made of. Rated R.

 Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of my Voice—This rockdoc uses Ronstadt’s vocal range as a stand-in for everything the Queen of Rock has represented: adaptability, doggedness, moral clarity. Unrated. —SE

IT Chapter Two—The mixed reviews for the second part of Stephen King’s killer-clown opus mainly agree that it’s just not that scary. Rated R.

 Once Upon a Time In Hollywood—Quentin Tarantino portrays the late-sixties Hollywood film industry and vaguely mumbles something

about the Manson family in this tedious, irrelevant exercise in bland nostalgia for a bygone era of unaccountable hypermasculinity. Rated R. —Marta Núñez Pouzols  The Peanut Butter Falcon—This heartwarming Tom-and-Huck tale features a breakout performance by Zack Gottsagen, who has Down syndrome, and a soulful Shia LaBeouf. Rated PG-13. —GM  Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins— Reviewed on page 29. Unrated.

Rambo: Last Blood—The Vietnam War was a long time ago now, but wily veteran Rambo is still out here, this time waging one-man war on a drug cartel. Rated R.

Ready or Not—A new bride is drawn into a brutal game of hide-and-seek with her husband’s wealthy family in this class-ragey, horrorcomedy-thriller. Rated R. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark—The classic anthology of ghoulish tales gets mined for incidents in this horror throwback. Rated PG-13. ½ Spider-Man: Far from Home—It’s a bedrock truism that a superhero story is only as good as its villain, and Mysterio’s motivations are entirely and conspicuously dumb. Rated PG-13. —GM  Toy Story 4—A spork’s severe ontological distress ballasts a half-daring, halfpredictable extension of a beloved animated franchise.

Rated G. —NM

indyclassifieds NOTICES

NOTICE OF CITY OF DURHAM MUNICIPAL ELECTION TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2019

The Election for Durham City Council and Mayor will be held in Durham County, NC on Tuesday November 5th. All City of Durham precincts will be open from 6:30 am until 7:30 pm. Precinct 26 – Rougemont will not be open because no city area lies within this precinct.

The following contests will be on the City of Durham ballot: City of Durham Mayor Durham City Council At-Large (3) The following contests will be on the ballot for other municipalities residing in Durham County: City of Raleigh Mayor and/or Council (If necessary) Town of Morrisville Town Council Town of Chapel Hill Mayor and Council ABSENTEE ONE-STOP (EARLY VOTING) LOCATIONS South Regional Library – 4505 S. Alston Ave, Durham North Regional Library – 221 Milton Rd, Durham Criminal Justice Resource Center – 326 E Main St, Durham NCCU Law School – 640 Nelson St., Durham Early voting schedule: Wednesday, Oct. 16th through Friday, Nov. 1, 2019 Hours are consistent at all four early voting sites.

Weekdays: 8:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.

Saturdays: 8:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. · Sundays: Noon to 4:00 p.m.

SAME DAY REGISTRATION: Voters are allowed to register and vote during early voting. It is quicker and easier to register in advance, but if you have not registered you can do so during One Stop voting with proper identification. This same day registration is not allowed at polling places on Election Day. Information regarding registration, polling locations, absentee voting, or other election matters may be obtained by contacting the Board of Elections.

Website: www.dcovotes.com Email: elections@dconc.gov Phone: 919-560-0700 Fax: 919-560-0688 PAID FOR BY DURHAM COUNTY BOARD OF ELECTIONS

DURHAM COUNTY BOARD OF ELECTIONS

Notice of Resolution to Adopt a Time for Counting of Absentee Ballots On 8/9/2019, the Durham County Board of Elections met at 201 E Main St., Durham, and adopted a resolution of the following effect: 1. The Board of Elections shall meet at 2:00 p.m. on Primary Election Day, Tuesday, 10/8/2019 at 201 E Main St., Durham (Room 126), to count absentee ballots.

2. The results of the absentee ballot count will not be announced before 7:30 p.m. on the date of the primary/ election.

3. The Board of Elections shall meet at 7:00 p.m. on Friday, 10/11/2019 at 201 E Main St., Durham (Room 126), to count additional timely-received absentee ballots prior to the county canvass.

4. Any member of the public may attend these meetings.

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for sale SMART HOME INSTALLATIONS?

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ATTENTION TIMESHARE OWNERS!

Were you victim to dishonest sales tactics? Overpromised?! Overpaid?!

We’ll legally resolve your timeshare nightmare and stop the payments!

CALL Timeshare Compliance FREE CONSULTATION! 855-940-1773

deep dive EAT • DRINK • SHOP • PLAY

The INDY’s monthly neighborhood guide to all things Triangle

Coming October 16:

FIVE POINTS/GLENWOOD SOUTH For advertising opportunities, contact your ad rep or advertising@indyweek.com INDYweek.com | 10.02.19 | 33

CROSSWORD If you just can’t wait, check out the current week’s answer key at www.indyweek.com, and click “puzzle pages” at the bottom of our webpage.

su | do | ku

this week’s puzzle level:

© Puzzles by Pappocom

There is really only one rule to Sudoku: Fill in the game board so that the numbers 1 through 9 occur exactly once in each row, column, and 3x3 box.

The numbers can appear in any order and diagonals are not considered.

Your initial game board will consist of several numbers that are already placed. Those numbers cannot be changed. Your goal is to fill in the empty squares following the simple rule above.

If you just can’t wait, check out the current week’s answer key at www.indyweek.com, and click “puzzle pages.”

Best of luck, and have fun! www.sudoku.com solution to last week’s puzzle

34 | 10.02.19 | INDYweek.com

10.2.19

CLASSY AT INDYWEEK DOT COM Book your ad • Email amanda: classy@indywEEk.com

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Book your ad • Email amanda: classy@indywEEk.com

INDYweek.com | 10.02.19 | 35

LEARN TAI CHI THIS FALL!

EXPERIENCE

THE JAPANESE ART OF

Improve balance, flexibility, strength. New classes start in Sept and Oct throughout the Triangle.

Visit www.taoisttaichi.org for details. 919-787-9600

919-286-1916 @hunkydorydurham CA$H for Records.

Dank beers on tap.

D E E P R E L A X AT I O N

WOMEN'S HEALTH STUDY (PRO00102284) Are you a woman at least 18yrs old & English-speaking?

Were you in a relationship w/a partner who abused you, but have been out of that relationship for at least 1yr?

• Must have smart phone and willing to be sent emails, texts.

We want to know— 1) Kind of symptoms you have & any patterns to those symptoms?

2) How easy or difficult it is to change symptoms?

3) What is it like to be in the study?

SING OR SPEAK WITH POWER & CONFIDENCE! www.laureceweststudios.com

DANCE CLASSES IN LINDY HOP, SWING, BLUES At Carrboro ArtsCenter. Private lessons available.

RICHARD BADU, 919-724-1421, rbadudance@gmail.com

SEVERAL EMPLOYMENT POSITIONS AVAILABLE AT WCPE 89.7 FM WCPE 89.7 FM, The Classical Station, has several open positions including Classical Music Announcer, Assistant Music Librarian, Traffic Assistant, Technical Assistant, Business and Underwriting Director, Electrical Engineer, Promotions Coordinator, and Accountant. Both full and part-time available. Applicants may apply for multiple positions, which are open until October 25. Retirees and Senior Citizens are encouraged to apply. Detailed job descriptions and information on how to apply is available at our website. WCPE is an Equal Opportunity Employer. www.TheClassicalStation.org

Financial compensation at the completion of each inperson session. Call 919-720-1294 if interested, for more information.

T H E U LT I M A T E

OUTDOOR SPA S A LT T U B S , M A S S A G E , W E T CEDAR SAUNA, DOUBLE COLD SHOWERS AND OVERNIGHT AC C O M M O DAT I O N S

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•James E. Shepard, founder of today’s NCCU, died in Durham on October 6, 1947. A graduate of Shaw University, Shepard served as NCCU’s president until his death.

•Wallace Wade, Duke University’s football coach from 1931 to 1941 and from 1946 to 1950, died in Durham on October 7, 1986. In 1967, Duke had renamed its football stadium in his honor.

Courtesy of the Museum of Durham History

LEARN IMPROV COMEDY Improv 101 Starts Oct 28th www.thisismettlesome.com/lab

ASHEVILLE, NC

HISTORY TRIVIA:

ASPECTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS ASCSI CONFERENCE AT ERUUF

BUSINESS STRATEGY. R.O.I. GUARANTEED. www.easilycreative.com

3 full days of lectures ASCSI.org 10/2/19 7pm Kevin Todeschi "Transformation of Personal Consciousness"

DANCE STUDIO SPACE FOR LEASE Wooden floatation floor. Ample parking, convenient to Duke. Available for yoga, Pilates, ballroom, dance. 3101 Guess Rd, Durham. Reasonable rates!

919-383-2939.

10/3/19 7:30pm Stephen Schwartz "Nonlocal Consciousness and ...

Spiritual Practices" 10/4/19 7:30pm Squire Rushnell "When God Winks at You" 10/5/19 7:30pm Harry Serio & Dale Graff "Cosmic Consciousness " ASCSI.org

Advertise with

UPCOMING SPECIAL ISSUES Nov 6

Fall Style

Oct 9

Business Spotlight: Local brands

Oct 16

Deep Dive: Five Points/Glenwood South Nov 20 Deep Dive: Wake County

Oct 23

Trick & Treats Issue

Nov 27

Gift Guide #1

Oct 23

FINDER: Newcomers Guide

Dec 4

Gift Guide #2

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