10.12 Indy Week

Raleigh October 12, 2022

by Sarah Edwards Edwards

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Raleigh W Durham W Chapel Hill VOL. 39 NO. 41

CONTENTS NEWS 6

After a long wait, North Carolina's Freedom Park is coming together to celebrate the African American experience. BY CHAD KNUTH

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As an outreach worker with Bull City United, Reshaun Cates was turning his life around before it was taken tragically. BY THOMASI MCDONALD

10 Neighborhood advocates, social justice activists, CAC proponents—and incumbents—are running for the Raleigh City Counil's eight seats.

BY JASMINE GALLUP

Spelling plays at The Pinhook on Friday, October 14. (See calendar, page 24.)

ARTS & CULTURE

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE PINHOOK

14 The photographer Avery Danziger has shot locations all over the world. But the NC State Fair keeps drawing him back. BY SARAH EDWARDS 15 From Rattlesnake Corn Dogs to Pepsi-Glazed Mini Donuts: five can't-miss new food oddities to try at the state fair. BY LENA GELLER 16 Every Friday night at Salsa Social Night in Durham, rhythm is in the air.

BY CHASE PELLEGRINI DE PAUR

18 A CLICK! Photography Festival showcase at the Fruit shows never-beforeexhibited Vivian Maier vintage prints. BY SARAH EDWARDS 20 Reviews of four new local productions.

BY BYRON WOODS

22 “You can just go ahead and put a little sign on Matt Kelly’s grave that says ‘The guy who gets it,’” Scott Howell says, about Kelly's recent purchase of Nana's.

BY LENA GELLER

THE REGULARS 3 Backtalk

4 Op-Ed

24 Culture Calendar COVER Design by Nicole Pajor Moore

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WE M A DE THIS P U BLISH ER John Hurld EDITOR IAL Editor in Chief Jane Porter Managing Editor Geoff West Arts & Culture Editor Sarah Edwards Staff Writers Jasmine Gallup Thomasi McDonald Lena Geller Copy Editor Iza Wojciechowska Interns Chad Knuth, Lia Salvatierra Nathan Hopkins Contributors Madeline Crone, Grant Golden, Spencer Griffith,

Lucas Hubbard, Brian Howe, Lewis Kendall, Kyesha Jennings, Glenn McDonald, Nick McGregor, Gabi Mendick, Dan Ruccia, Rachel Simon, Harris Wheless C REAT I VE Creative Director Nicole Pajor Moore Graphic Designer Jon Fuller Staff Photographer Brett Villena AD VERT I S I N G Publisher John Hurld Sales Digital Director & Classifieds Mathias Marchington C I RC UL AT I O N Berry Media Group

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BACK TA L K

Last week, Lena Geller wrote a long profile looking at U.S. Senate candidates Cheri Beasley and Ted Budd, comparing and contrasting their campaigns, platforms, and personalities. On Facebook, readers had a lot of thoughts about Geller’s piece.

“This independent voter has looked at both sides, and I’m voting for the team that has the best interests of middle class and working families in mind,” wrote commenter ANDREA HOWARD. “I am voting a straight Democratic ticket. There is a grave danger for massive cuts in Social Security and Medicare if the Republicans take over. In fact, just the other day, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham announced that he wants to see Social Security eligibility raised to the age of 70.”

Other readers had questions about Beasley’s campaigning strategy.

“She has my vote but, so far I have only seen one TV ad from her,” wrote reader DAVID T. GURNEY. “I cant help but feel that if they put a more aggressive campaign like John Fetterman in Pennsylvania, it would be a wipe out.”

“Beasley needs to spend commercial time & expose TB once & for all,” wrote commenter BETTY WYATT DAVENPORT. “He lies about her past & what she hopes to accomplish!

TB would not need to be spending so much … terrible much … millions upon millions to get elected if he had truly served the people instead of taking. The twisted commercials on CB are to build fear @ divert from his horrible record.”

“Dear Ms. Beasley: I support and have donated to your campaign multiple times,” wrote commenter DEAN BILLINGS. “I know you are trying to take the high road, but Budd and McConnell are turning people against you with their constant and false negative ads. Please have your team respond to these ads with ads. They have people scared to death that armed IRS agents will break into their homes like Democrats are some right wing fascist goons. These ads must be answered and Budd and Mconnell need to be called out as the liars they are. They are playing dirty. We need you in the Senate, but to ignore these attacks would be a mistake.”

Some Budd supporters showed up to comment, too.

“Why is Beasley losing support from the law enforcement coalition?” asked commenter MIKE ROSTAD. “Maybe her anti-cop rhetoric has something to do with it? Budd seems to be the best choice.”

“Bud has business experience,” wrote commenter RE EVERHART. “While Beasly has nothing but lawyer. We need business in Washington. Running a country is a business. Not bs attorneys. I am for business. BUDD. Tell me where Beasly has anything other than hot air to offer.”

“A Christian can’t justify voting Democratic,” wrote commenter KEN WATERS. “Which kind, there are so many flavors,” commenter ERIC SIMPSON rejoined.

“Oh yes I can,” responded commenter MARGARET MALONE LARSON.

There are 28 days until Election Day. We still have a long way to go.

Also last week, for the web, Jasmine Gallup wrote about a small group of homeowners from Raleigh’s wealthy Hayes Barton area who want to stop a 17-unit luxury townhome development from being built in their neighborhood. No, it’s not affordable housing, but the project would add density.

From Twitter: “Raleigh didn’t take care of the natives that have always lived here. They took them out of their homes and moved in new residents.

We are the ones that have been born here, went to school here. Our parents worked and raised families here. While they kept it stagnated,” wrote commenter MAMA SERATI. “I’ve lived in Raleigh for 23 years in an old neighborhood. I am not wealthy. You cast a wide net to claim that everything in the missing middle policy is opposed. The problem is the POLICIES (that’s plural, if you didn’t notice) incentivize bulldozing in unintended ways,” wrote commenter BARRY ERIKSEN. “$2 million dollar townhomes are not ‘AFFORDABLE HOUSING!’” “If the plan was for a complex of affordable housing units, that neighborhood would still fight it,” replied commenter @SHAWNGRANNIS. “Stop giving these people airtime!! The story is we need more housing, not white people want to stop housing!!” wrote commenter RALEIGH MONITOR. “I am gonna put a home depot tuff shed in the middle of a cul-de-sac and cousin Eddie it every morning … Sh*tters full,” wrote commenter BEER GORILLA. Honestly, Beer Gorilla, it would be funny to see you try.

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October 12, 2022

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Mass Displacement Future generations will one day learn about the large-scale removal and replacement of one people with another on a scale not seen since urban renewal. Will we be able to tell them we did everything possible to stop it?

BY NATE BAKER backtalk@indyweek.com

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n the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s, the federal government embarked on programs of urban renewal and freeway construction, dramatically reshaping American cities and lifestyles. The political coalitions behind such programs were diverse and often tenuous and imbalanced. Wendell Pritchett at the University of Pennsylvania Law School wrote that “renewal programs were controlled by a small number of real estate interests and politicians …. Several studies have shown how urban elites promoted redevelopment to reorganize urban areas and to protect and enhance their real estate investments.” Similarly, conceived by elite coalitions and lobbied by industrial interests in oil, automobile manufacturing, and road construction consistent with the political economy of car dependence, massive freeway construction projects were carried out across the country.

In Durham, historian Jean Bradley Anderson documented that, with the backing and support of lending and realty companies, construction, architectural, and legal firms, and influential civic groups, the city combined local bond money with federal dollars to embark on large-scale redevelopment projects that demolished homes and businesses. NC 147, the Durham Freeway, tore through the once thriving and distinct Hayti District, displacing over 4,000 residents and 500 businesses, and the culture that went with it. The urban, walkable built pattern of Hayti was replaced with automobile-oriented suburban city design.

“Before the highway came through and before urban renewal, we literally used to walk everywhere,” explains Constance Wright, a Durham resident and community organizer who grew up in the Hayti District. “Wherever we wanted to go, we would walk.”

As the South crept out of the Jim Crow era, one institutionalized system of racism was slowly replaced with other more opaque, decentralized, and deceiving but cruel forms of racism and class-based exploitation. The new system included “right to work” state laws and the destruction of labor unions, prohibitions on rent control and minimum wage policies, white flight and inner-city disinvestment, nullification of development impact fees and other progressive forms of public revenue genera4

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tion, and the defunding and privatization of public housing and public schools.

The role of government changed in this process in ways that “promote, intensify and extend market rule,” as urban researchers Gilles Pinson and Christelle Journel observe.

Laissez-faire real estate policy regimes of Durham and other American cities and ill-serving and inadequate regulations—combined with corporate dominance of federal and state policy making—unleash vicious effects of neoliberal capitalism.

“I just don’t think it’s fair for them to be able to come in here and just keep displacing people.”

We now face a modern-day moral crisis in Durham. Hundreds of residents, especially Black, Latino, and low-wealth residents of all races living near services, transit, and walkable neighborhoods, are once again being uprooted and displaced by profit-motivated forces, replaced by wealthier residents following high-wage jobs and seeking an urban lifestyle—and with the means to attain it. “Most of the areas in Durham that I have lived have either gentrified or they no longer exist at all,” Wright says. “Because I have seen what big development does as far as displacing people from what they know, I just don’t think it’s fair for them to be able to come in here and just keep displacing people.”

This time, instead of government channeling business alliances to build large-scale projects, profit-seeking interests channel themselves through discrete and decentralized means, like opportunity zones, supply-side

policy making, and dominance of individual private property rights particularly benefiting the corporate finance, insurance, and real estate industries. Like during urban renewal displacement, residents once living in tight-knit walkable communities with access to services and transit, but also victims of decades of disinvestment, are pushed out when investment finally arrives. Some residents are pushed into the city’s periphery where land is cheaper but transportation more expensive and where each year Durham approves over 1,100 acres of corporate-fueled, automobile-dependent sprawl lacking adequate services and inaccessible to transit. Many residents are pushed out of Durham entirely.

Black populations in some neighborhoods have undergone mass displacement in alarmingly short time periods.

In one census block group, where local developer Matt Lee hopes to displace 20 families from their apartment building to construct townhomes, the Black population plummeted from 80.5 percent in 2016 to 43.8 percent in 2020, according to census and ACS data made available by Durham-based nonprofit DataWorks NC. In total numbers, the Black population in that block group alone fell from 930 to 403.

In another census block group, where the Southside neighborhood is located, residents experienced state-sponsored gentrification in the 2010s. Phase three of a $48 million affordable housing project involved demolition and reconstruction of 48 affordable single-family homes. However, only 13 percent (12 of 94) of Black applicants for the program were preapproved for homes, compared with 60 percent of white applicants. The houses were made only temporarily affordable, resulting in the total loss of that stock of affordable housing to the speculative real estate market just years after project completion. The Black population in that block group fell from 77.3 percent in 2016 to 46 percent in 2020.

Other census block groups in desirable locations close to jobs and services have undergone similar patterns.

Not since urban renewal has Durham witnessed such aggressive displacement of residents and culture. While

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some residents, especially renters, are forced out by unregulated landlords, homeowners face coerced displacement through predatory buying practices as well as unplanned inheritances and the regressive nature of property taxes.

Even if they wanted to use them, local governments in North Carolina have been stripped of key policy tools, not to mention desperately needed financial resources, to be able to stop the current market-fueled displacement and provide stable housing. But they do have tools to dull gentrification’s sharp edges and provide some protections to marginalized residents. For example, Durham should create and implement a housing plan as Wake Forest is in the process of doing and establish a small area planning division that prioritizes areas that are home to vulnerable populations undergoing intense development pressures.

The city also needs to end suburban sprawl and ensure all new growth consists of complete communities that incorporate sustainable design and equitable social elements—changes that thus far have been thwarted.

2016 Black population

2020 Black population

1

Tract 9 Block Group 2

80.5%

43.8%

2

Tract 7 Block Group 2

39.6%

14.6%

3

Tract 23 Block Group 1

77.3%

46.0%

4

Tract 11 Block Group 1

59.1%

42.8%

5

Tract 5 Block Group 3

63.5%

34.1%

In 2019, Durham residents approved an affordable housing bond, and the city, county, and Durham Housing Authority have used local and federal dollars for affordable housing, including RAD conversions, but ultimately the dollar amounts fall far short of need. Meanwhile, low-income housing tax credits and other local, state, and federal supply-side funding mechanisms often result in only temporary affordability, inevitably exacerbating problems for future generations. Affordable housing is critical infrastructure, just like other types of public infrastructure, and prioritizing the maintenance and growth of permanent affordable housing stock must be a central goal of an equitable city.

Combating displacement will require a broad patchwork of intentional planning policies, especially leveraging the power of zoning and implementing a variety of measures that help allow vulnerable residents to remain in their neighborhoods, even as neighborhoods grow, change, and evolve. “There has to be a better way for developers and

communities to be able to connect, work together, put their ideas together,” says Durham resident and community organizer Vanessa Mason-Evans. In Durham, the battle for an equitable city consists of two fronts: One is pushing the city government to make use of the underutilized tools it already has available. The other is building momentum to enact changes needed at the state and federal levels.

Every day, more vulnerable residents are moved out of their homes and neighborhoods, often pushed to the sprawling suburbs Durham enables on its outskirts, areas built for automobiles and without accessible services.

Many residents are pushed out of Durham entirely. Businesses and civic spaces, like churches, are also being displaced or demolished. We have an urgent moral obligation to fight against displacement and build a more inclusive city with every policy tool available. W Nate Baker is an urban planner and member of Durham’s Planning Commission.

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Raleigh

Beacon of Freedom North Carolina’s Freedom Park celebrates the African American experience.

BY CHAD KNUTH backtalk@indyweek.com

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s Confederate statues continue to topple, the centerpiece of North Carolina’s first monument to honor the African American experience has finally been erected in Freedom Park, just one block from the state’s capitol building in downtown Raleigh.

“This monument makes an important statement about freedom from [the perspective of] the Black experience in a way that hasn’t been done before,” says Reginald Hildebrand, a member of the Freedom Park Board of Directors.

The park will offer visitors a space to gather to reflect on history and celebrate the future, and while the remainder of the park is still just shy of a year away from completion, the installation of the 40-foot-tall metal structure dubbed the Beacon of Freedom is a major milestone for the project.

“It took us years and years to raise the $6.5 million that we needed,” explains Marsha Warren, who has been with the project since its inception and is one of the founding members of the advisory board for Freedom Park.

Warren is the former director of the Paul Green Foundation. In 2000 the foundation had come to the realization that North Carolina was in need of a monument to honor and celebrate the African American experience unique to the state, a realization that ultimately catalyzed the decades-long process of what has now become Freedom Park.

The beacon, along with the rest of the monument, was designed by renowned architect Phil Freelon of Perkins & Will in 6

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2016, shortly after his team completed the recently dedicated Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall in Washington, DC. Freelon was chosen to design the park to be “a testament of Truth about our past and a beacon of Optimism about our future,” according to the Freedom Park board’s website. The acclaimed architect died from ALS in 2019.

But even after choosing an architect and acquiring the necessary funding for the park project, several unforeseen delays occurred, further pushing back the park’s completion.

At one point a major steam pipe was found to be buried below the site, and shortly thereafter, an archeological site was discovered during the dig, unearthing remains of the home of Thomas Devereux Hogg, a businessman who had enslaved 18 people. The site was then contained and excavated by state archeologists.

“It just took a long time,” Warren admits.

But she is pleased to have come so far.

Reginald Hodges, chair of the construction committee on the Freedom Park Board of Directors, has been on the project since 2004.

“When [Freelon] started putting together what the beacon could look like, he had several different interpretations,” Hodges says, turning to admire the towering beacon standing before him. “I’m really glad that we chose for the two points to be going in similar directions. [Freelon] said that if you’re going to do a symbolism of a flame, a flame comes out in different directions, but ultimately that doesn’t reflect unity. What

The Beacon of Freedom

PHOTO BY CHAD KNUTH

we have here shows you the flame, but it also shows you unity.

“The symbolism of this is the flame that burns in Black people to be free, which has been passed on from generation to generation. That’s what it means.”

Hodges fell quiet, letting his words settle in.

Along the walls surrounding the beacon will be 140 molded panels that will have inscribed on them quotes from African Americans, beginning from as early as the 1700s and running all the way up until 2020, the last of the quotes being “I can’t breathe,” by George Floyd.

“When people talk about this being a park that honors the African American struggle for freedom, that’s probably the wrong way of saying it,” Hodges continues. “More accurately, this park is honoring Black North Carolinians.”

“Everyone depicted in here is a North Carolinian, George Floyd included; he was from Fayetteville,” Hodges explains. “There’s going to be a quote on the wall that reads, ‘The struggle for freedom begins every morning.’ You didn’t need great people to make quotes like that.”

Hodges says the board members wanted to make sure some of the quotes were very simple “so that younger students coming in could understand the meaning on the wall.”

Warren seconds the importance the

monument will have on educating students.

“This is about the schoolkids who come to Raleigh every year to study North Carolina history,” she says. “We wanted to level the playing field. You have the old capitol grounds with [statues of] white supremacist governors and Confederate soldiers, while more than 25 percent of our kids who come here are African American.”

In the past five years, fervent national movements have demanded the removal of Confederate monuments, with 73 removed or renamed last year alone.

While these movements in themselves don’t rectify a long history of paying homage to slaveholders, there is hope in that the construction of monuments such as Freedom Park will allow for new generations to better grapple with the nation’s tumultuous past, bringing unity where there is division.

As advisers and board members stand below a canopy of 200-year-old oaks at the future site of Freedom Park, Hildebrand speaks with conviction.

“Our call is to make sure that the torch that is symbolized by that beacon never goes out. That the struggle for freedom continues. When people come to this park they’re not just learning about history, although they are, but that they are also being inspired for what will go on in the future.” W

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Durham

A Final Chapter As a worker with Bull City United, Reshaun Cates was trying to turn his life around before it was tragically taken.

BY THOMASI MCDONALD tmcdonald@indyweek.com

Reshaun Cates

R

eshaun Cates took one life, but he saved so many more.

Cates, in 2009, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for a home invasion robbery two years before that left Eva Jacobs, a Cedar Grove woman, mortally injured with multiple gunshot wounds.

Cates, after serving nearly 16 years in prison, was released in 2020 according to state corrections records. He wanted to make amends and started work last year as a “violence interrupter” in several of the city’s toughest communities, including the one where he grew up.

Cates, and nearly two dozen young men and women like him, want to heal their communities by doing outreach work with Bull City United (BCU), a joint county and city initiative that relies on reformed gang members to stop gunfire in violence-prone neighborhoods before it happens.

Cates’s journey to redemption was interrupted by the type of gun violence he wanted to stop. On October 2, police reported that someone had shot Cates dead. Officers found him in a blue Honda that had stopped on the off-ramp of I-85 North on Hillandale Road.

Police have not disclosed a motive for the shooting, but investigators think he was targeted.

Cates was the father of a one-year-old son. He was 34, and 11 days from celebrating his next birthday.

On another warm, sunny Sunday afternoon, exactly one week after Cates died, 8

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his family, friends, and coworkers paid their respects during a viewing at Hanes Funeral Service in East Durham. Cates’s body was at rest in a red metallic casket adorned with a spray of red and white blooms and baby’s breath. He was outfitted in a Chicago Bulls basketball jersey. A Chicago Bulls cap lay atop his chest. A fresh haircut and long, tapered sideburns framed his youthful coconut-brown face.

“He was a good-looking boy,” Franklin O. Hanes, the funeral services director, said while looking at the red coffin.

“He looks like he’s asleep,” said his mother, Doris Cates, who was at the viewing with several other family members.

Doris told the INDY that Reshaun was the oldest of her six sons, who was “fun-loving and loved to make you laugh” while he was growing up in the Cornwallis apartment complex where they lived. His nickname was Marbles.

He also loved fishing, playing cards, and playing basketball.

Doris says her son coached a city league youth basketball team that played its games at the Hope Valley Baptist Church gym, won the league championship this year, and recently had a banquet to honor his young charges.

She says her son loved his little boy, Malakai, most of all.

“Malakai was his world,” she says. “He put everything on hold when he was with his son. You couldn’t get him to do nothing when it was time for ‘daddy duties.’

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE CATES FAMILY

He would put you on hold for Malakai. He would put me on hold for Malakai.”

Reshaun Cates was 22 in 2009 when an Orange County superior court judge sentenced him to a maximum of 16 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for the 2007 home invasion robbery and shooting death of Jacobs in Orange County. The News of Orange County at the time reported that the robbery netted a stolen shotgun and about $300 worth of marijuana.

Cates served 15 years and 11 months behind bars before he was released on June 23, 2020.

Doris Cates, while speaking late last week with the INDY, acknowledges her son’s troubled past but says he had become very family oriented since his release from prison.

“He got out and went straight to work,” she says. “That was his mentality, and to enjoy his family. His girlfriend got pregnant, and he enjoyed his son. He wasn’t thinking about any trouble. He went to prison, but he turned his life around. He was working with Bull City United. He wanted to see everyone happy.”

Two young men, one wearing a lime-green BCU shirt, walked into the funeral parlor for the viewing. They were accompanied by a young woman carrying a baby on her hip.

“There go Bull City United right there,” Doris Cates said by way of welcoming the trio who had arrived to pay their respects.

After exchanging greetings, they quietly walked over to the coffin, signed the visitor’s book, and left.

“Probably hundreds,” one of the young men, Zaquan Gentry, replied later when asked how many people he thought Reshaun Cates had helped avoid gun violence.

Gentry told the INDY he was one of those people Cates had helped. He last spoke with him the week before he died.

“He told me, ‘I’m helping you protect your son,’” Gentry said.

The other young man was wearing the BCU shirt. He declined to give his name but said he knew Cates “before and after.”

“I saw the transformation,” he said. “He saved fathers, daddies, brothers, cousins, kids, grandkids, and great-great-grandkids.”

Doris Cates says her son had been working during a probationary period for a little over a year with BCU. He worked in several communities, including the Cornwallis apartment complex where he grew up.

“He had just got hired full-time, [permanently], back here about a month ago,” Doris says.

The slain man’s mother says he loved BCU and getting out into the community to help mediate disputes that threatened to spill over into gun violence.

“He was mostly in Cornwallis, and McDougald Terrace, and Southside,” she says. “He loved those kids. He would do everything he could to keep those kids on the right track.”

Doris says her son often talked about his work. It was purposeful and felt like he was making a difference.

“He loved working there, and he loved the people he worked with,” she adds.

Within the BCU ranks, Cates was among a cadre of trained county-funded teams of “violence interrupters’’ and outreach workers who started in the gun- and gangplagued Southside neighborhoods on South and Fargo Streets and the McDougald Terrace public housing complex in 2016. The aim of the initiative is to address and treat violence as a public health issue not unlike cholera or influenza outbreaks. The local initiative is modeled after CeaseFire, an antiviolence program developed in 2000 and implemented in Chicago neighborhoods where there are high rates of shootings and gun murders.

There have been marked results.

Two years ago, BCU reported that between March 1 and September 12, 2020, there were 556 shootings throughout the city. But only 63 happened in BCU’s target areas: McDougald Terrace, which in 2015 was deemed the most violent neighborhood in the city, and Southside, the city’s second-most-violent neighborhood.

In response, city and county elected leaders last year reached an interlocal agreement that expanded BCU to four more gunfire-prone neighborhoods.

BCU’s work has also been noteworthy in recent months. According to data made public by the initiative—between July of last year and June of this year—BCU workers who were formerly part of the city’s gun violence dilemma had participated in nearly 900 mediations to resolve conflicts in their communities before they could escalate to deadly gunplay.

The end result: only eight of the city’s 24 homicides during that period were reported in areas where BCU violence interrupters are working.

In early August, the county’s board of commissioners unanimously approved the more than $6 million purchase of the old John Avery Boys and Girls Club, which will house the newly developed Neighborhood Intervention Services department that will house BCU, and two other initiatives to address gun violence while providing wraparound services and educational opportunities.

Sadly, Reshaun Cates’s death is the latest—and certainly most tragic—misfire involving BCU workers in recent months.

On September 14, police arrested Rodriguez Smith, 41, for a misdemeanor

weapons violation.

One day later, police charged Nicole Taybron, 40, a BCU outreach worker, with possession with intent to sell and deliver crack cocaine.

There have been calls for greater scrutiny and also calls for continued support.

City council member Mark-Anthony Middleton told a local news outlet after Tayborn’s arrest that the charge should not tarnish the entire program.

“While I am saddened to learn of this arrest, without knowing anything about the person’s guilt or innocence, I remain convinced of the value of the dangerous and critical work of Bull City United,” Middleton told CBS 17. “The arrest of one person is no more an indictment on the work of an entire organization than the conviction of a corrupt legislator is a repudiation of our whole democracy.”

“I saw the transformation,” he says. “He saved fathers, daddies, brothers, cousins, kids, grandkids, and great-greatgrandkids.”

Doris Cates spoke to Reshaun every Sunday morning. Three hours before the police found his body, they had talked on the phone. She had no idea it would be the last time she ever heard him alive.

“We talked about normal stuff,” she says. “‘What are you doing today? Are you cooking? Are you going to pick up your son?’

That was our normal conversation. ‘Did you win a scratch-off? What’s the winning number today?’”

Doris says her son was driving to pick up Malakai when she hung up the phone.

Shortly afterward, she received a text message that someone had been killed on Hillandale Road in North Durham. “[Reshaun’s] son lives on Hillandale Road,” Doris remembers thinking, before calling her oldest child.

He didn’t answer when she called his phone, and another one of her sons, Tyree,

called, saying “someone had just got shot on Hillandale Road.”

But her younger son was hopeful. Doris says he told her, “Maybe [Reshaun] got stuck in traffic.”

Things, the distraught mother says, “were going back and forth,” as she was calling Reshaun’s phone and Tyree was using his phone to track his brother’s location.

“He told me, ‘Marbles’s car [has] been in the same place for 20 minutes,’” Doris says.

Tyree soon received an instant message.

“It said, ‘Marbles been shot. Marbles been shot,’” Doris says. “That’s how we found out it was him.”

Late last week, Doris Cates organized a balloon release on the grounds of the Grace Baptist Church on Cole Mill Road to honor her son.

“It was a big turnout,” she says. “We had over 500 balloons, all red, white, gold, and black. Some of them spelled out his name.”

She wonders if her son wasn’t the victim of someone jealous of his transformation.

“Sometimes when people see you trying to do good, you got enemies that just don’t like what you’re doing,” she says.

There was standing room only early Monday afternoon for Cates’s funeral service at Bell Yeager Freewill Baptist Church, just across the street from the apartment complex where he grew up.

The overflow crowd of mourners, many dressed in red and black, filled the pews of the handsome church with its redbrick interior and tall, rectangle-shaped stained-glass windows. Among the attendees were Brenda Howerton, cochair of the county’s board of commissioners, and three city council members: Javiera Caballero, Leonardo Williams, and Middleton, the city’s mayor pro tem.

Many of the mourners were in their 30s or younger. Distraught mothers, some who had also lost children to gang-fueled gun violence, stood and pleaded with young people in the pews to stop hating and killing one another.

As a convicted murderer, Reshaun Cates was fighting to stop that hate, against all odds.

“Every one of us has a chapter in our lives that we don’t want to end there,” council member Middleton told the mourners about Cates’s journey to redemption. “Reshaun kept writing his story. He didn’t want it to end with gangs.

He wanted to be there for his son. He worked for us because he would not let the story end with a chapter he was not proud of. Reshaun kept writing his story and it ended on a good chapter.” W INDYweek.com

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Raleigh Dozens of people attended a ONE Wake forum Thursday to hear from Raleigh City Council candidates on affordable housing.

PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA

New Composition CAC proponents, neighborhood advocates, and social justice activists are running for Raleigh mayor and in all five city council districts and at large.

Could the city, which will see at least three new members on the council, also see a change in course?

BY JASMINE GALLUP jgallup@indyweek.com

I

t’s the height of campaign season, and Terrance Ruth, a mayoral candidate who has been campaigning for nearly two years now, is calm and collected as he answers questions about housing, community outreach, and social justice.

“My vision for the city starts [with community engagement],” he says, determined. “I think before we get to concrete policy … we have to seriously [address] the deficit of trust. That starts with allowing residents to be seen and heard again.”

Ruth, 39, a lecturer in NC State University’s School of Social Work, is the primary opponent of Mayor MaryAnn Baldwin in the race for the city’s top seat. DaQuanta Copeland, a single mom and public health advocate, is also running for mayor.

Baldwin, the incumbent, seems to have the most support so far, having raised about $700,000 with 592 individual contributors to her campaign. Ruth comes second, with 10

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about $40,000 in campaign donations, about 6 percent of Baldwin’s total haul. Copeland has raised less than $100, according to campaign finance reports.

Ruth, like all challengers, is promising change. Baldwin and her coalition of supporters have dominated the city council since 2020, when three newcomers replaced development-skeptical incumbents. Since then, a bloc of six, sometimes seven, city council members has typically supported Baldwin on issues ranging from affordable housing to community outreach.

The 2022 election gives slow-growth candidates who are proponents of the city’s officially disbanded citizen advisory councils (CACs) the chance to retake the city council, with neighborhoods and CAC advocates, in addition to grassroots social justice activists, running in all five districts and at large. With three incumbents declining to run for reelection, Raleigh residents will see at least two new faces on

the council come January, some of whom would likely push back on Baldwin’s pro-growth agenda.

But do the majority of voters agree the city needs new leadership? Baldwin has amassed her fair share of critics, but she’s also ushered in some significant successes and made strong efforts to address the main challenge facing the city today: the massive influx of people moving to the metro area coupled with the city’s shortage of housing.

Affordable housing It’s no secret that one of the biggest issues facing residents today is housing prices.

From the INDY’s reporting in the last year, Tina Love-Hinton, a mother of five, spent eight months looking for her first home, outbid again and again by out-of-state transplants willing to put down $30,000 or $40,000 in cash.

Francisco Ceron-Sagastume, a renter near Dix Park, was forced out of his home after it was sold to a developer planning to build a high-end apartment complex.

Stories like these aren’t unusual in Raleigh nowadays, and they speak to a common theme: a shortage of homes that middle-class workers can afford to rent or buy.

Baldwin argues the solution to Raleigh’s housing crisis is reforming zoning rules to allow more houses to be built, meeting increased demand. In some ways, that strategy has worked. Since last year, the number of homes for sale in Wake County has doubled, going from 1,234 in August of 2020 to 2,562 in August of this year, according to Triangle MLS, a website that tracks home listings and other market trends.

The number of months it would take for Raleigh to

sell out of homes has also increased, from about two weeks to six weeks.

Baldwin touts the city’s $80 million housing bond. The city is now on track to build 5,700 affordable housing units by 2026. The running total is currently 3,910, and the bond is also helping fund a homebuyer assistance program and a home repair program.

“We have probably done more on housing affordability than any council has done in the past,” Baldwin says.

“We now allow for the construction of [accessory dwelling units]. We got rid of exclusionary zoning and we now allow missing middle housing, which gives people more of a choice in homes. The partnership with Campbell Law to prevent evictions, that’s never been done before. We’ve really stepped it up in terms of looking at housing affordability and choice.”

“Raleigh is growing,” Baldwin continues. “We’re the third-fastest-growing city in the country. And I know there are people who want to stop growth, but we can’t stop growth. We have to plan for it.”

Baldwin’s critics—namely the neighborhood advocacy group Livable Raleigh—argue her development-friendly agenda hasn’t created more affordable housing, just more unaffordable “luxury” apart-

ments and skyscrapers. Livable Raleigh and other community groups also accuse Baldwin of being in the pocket of developers.

During her first year in office, Baldwin went to work as the director of business development for Barnhill Contracting, one of the largest builders in the Triangle, drawing criticism until she resigned a little over a year later. Before that, Baldwin worked for Holt Brothers Construction and as executive director of the company’s foundation. Currently she is the vice president of a nonprofit that helps children learn skills through golf.

Some of Baldwin’s top donors are executives of contracting and real estate development companies, but she has denied any connection between campaign contributions and policy decisions. Baldwin has also received $5,600 from the NC Homebuilders Association PAC, a political action committee advocating for “pro-housing candidates,” according to its website.

The city has made a strong effort to build more affordable housing but hasn’t been able to keep up with escalating demand. Despite Baldwin’s efforts, housing prices continue to soar and much of Raleigh’s existing affordable housing has disappeared. Even as the city builds thousands of new homes, nearly 9,000 affordable apartments

have been lost since 2019. This year, Raleigh had a deficit of nearly 20,000 affordable apartments, according to a report by United Way of the National Capital Area.

In some ways, Ruth’s approach to housing is similar to Baldwin’s. Like the incumbent mayor, he says he supports buying land for future affordable housing projects by the city, arguing the city can’t control rent prices unless it controls the land. He supports investing more money in permanent supportive housing for the homeless and other vulnerable populations.

But he also wants the city to be more aggressive in controlling where and what developers build. Ruth says he wants to create affordable housing overlay districts, which provide additional incentives to developers to build affordable housing in certain areas.

“Affordable housing overlay is critical, especially in areas where there’s high demand, high interest, [like where there’s] Bus Rapid Transit,” Ruth says. “New Bern and Method are two historically Black communities. How do we demonstrate that the council is representing those voters?”

Ruth also thinks the city should follow Wake County’s lead in creating an affordable housing department and use a new tracking system to see what existing housing may be going on the market. Finally, he wants to work more closely with developers and landlords who are willing to take on affordable housing projects, creating a database or pipeline to draw on.

Community engagement and transparency

Terrance Ruth

PHOTO BY JADE WILSON

Mary-Ann Baldwin

PHOTO BY ALEX BOERNER

“Community engagement” isn’t just a buzz-phrase in this year’s election; it’s a central issue. Ever since the Raleigh City Council voted 6-2 to defund CACs—neighborhood groups that met monthly to discuss community issues, but also a format residents used to oppose new development projects—in 2020, many Raleighites say they have felt ignored.

For the last two years, the most direct way to communicate with city council members has been through public comment at council meetings, which comes with strict rules and a one- to three-minute time limit on speaking.

The city council disbanded CACs, it appeared, but didn’t seem in a rush to replace them with a new system of public outreach.

After a year of inaction—also the year of the COVID pandemic—the city created the Office of Community Engagement in 2021, led by manager Tiesha Hinton. This year, the community engagement board has started meeting, and communication between the city government and residents seems to be improving. The city council recently added an option to leave public comments via voicemail, addressing concerns about people unable to attend meetings in person.

But the limited means of engaging with the city council since 2020 have fostered feelings of distrust among residents. Many continue to assert that their voices aren’t being heard, and candidates are making community outreach a central campaign issue. Ruth is leading the charge.

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“Right now, as I’m going around the city, it feels like the weight of engagement is on the voter,” he says. “If the voter doesn’t attend the [city council] meeting, they’re unheard and unseen. That weight should be on the council and the mayor.”

Ruth says engagement for the past few years has been primarily meeting-based. He wants to expand outreach to meet people in their communities. City staff should attend neighborhood gatherings and work with community leaders, he says. Staff should reach out to residents online and know whom to call if they need to hear the concerns of people in a particular area.

Some city council candidates take a stronger stance, saying CACs should be refunded. Mary Black, running in District A for the seat currently held by Patrick Buffkin, who declined to run again, says CACs, some of which are still operating, need to be heard by the city council.

“You don’t get rid of an almost 50-year institution because there are some flaws in the way things work,” she says. “Not having that engagement is going to increase the issues that we’ve already had here with unaffordability and overdevelopment in ways that don’t work for the communities here and the people who live in them.”

According to Baldwin, however, CACs are a thing of the past.

“In one survey we did, 90 percent of people in Raleigh had never heard of a CAC or attended a CAC. So it really was not an effective way of doing outreach,” Baldwin says. She added that the city council made several attempts to reform CACs before defunding them, saying, “We had two studies done on how we could enhance the CACs and we got very strong pushback both times from the CACs.” “Our decision to no longer fund the CACs was made because we believed we could do something better, and that’s the path we’re on right now,” Baldwin continued. “Obviously COVID got in our way, but what we’re looking at right now is more outreach in the community.”

Baldwin went on to describe a kind of place-based outreach that matches Ruth’s philosophy of “meeting people where they are.” Hinton has plans for mobile “community engagement” vehicles that will go into neighborhoods, according to the mayor.

The vehicles will come equipped with computers and city staff to spread awareness about the activities of local government and get input from people.

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“The other thing we’re talking about is literally door-to-door communication, door knocking, going where people live and the places they frequent,” Baldwin says. “So having meetings in dog parks, community centers, senior centers. It’s really about getting out and engaging in a personal way. And that’s what Tiesha [Hinton] is passionate about.”

Ultimately, most candidates running for office say they want the same things when it comes to community engagement—comprehensive outreach programs that don’t put additional burdens on residents and ensure the voices of minori-

cy move, it gave city council incumbents a bonus year in office, an outcome that outraged some citizens. Likewise, allowing candidates to win future elections by plurality rather than majority may be more efficient, but it gives incumbents an edge, critics say.

The nonpartisan good government advocacy nonprofit Democracy North Carolina (along with some local state lawmakers and Governor Roy Cooper) took issue with the move.

“Democracy North Carolina took an official opposition to [SB 722] because of that permanent change to how Raleigh was going to elect its local officials,” says Joselle

“You don’t get rid of an almost 50-year institution because there are some flaws in the way things work.” ty populations are heard. But the unceremonious demise of CACs and frustration with how long it has taken to take even the smallest steps forward has resulted in disagreements on the best ways to achieve community engagement.

When it comes to building trust in the political process, the council has made its share of missteps, too. In the past three years, the council disbanded the CACs without notice, moved a city election in a closeddoor meeting, and voted through new city districts opposed by local community groups based on U.S. census data.

The bill with election changes, Senate Bill 722, was passed by the state legislature last June. And while rescheduling the election to an even-numbered year to coincide with a midterm wasn’t necessarily a bad poli-

Torres, the communications manager for the nonprofit. “[They] basically gave themselves 12 more months in office without any public comment, without appropriate public notice either.”

Social justice When George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police in 2020, Raleigh residents took to the streets for days to protest police violence and call for reform. Two years later, however, not much has changed.

“We never had a conversation about community and policing in our city,” Ruth says. “We never reconciled that at all, we just moved forward. We need to build coalition and conversation about community

and safety right now. We don’t need to wait for another George Floyd; we need to reconcile the concerns of 2020, which we have not done.”

Following the protests in 2020, the city did replace its police chief. The former police chief, Cassandra Deck-Brown (who was in charge when police officers and sheriff’s deputies fired tear gas and nonlethal ammunition into crowds of protesters) retired last year to make way for Estella Patterson. The former city manager, Ruffin Hall, resigned at the end of 2020 following the protests as well.

Ruth and Baldwin agree that Patterson is passionate about community outreach.

“She’s everywhere,” Ruth says.

“One thing I love about Chief [Patterson] is that she is great with community relations and building trust,” Baldwin says. “She is out there, and I think that has helped make a difference. [October 5] was National Coffee with a Cop Day, so we had our officers out at six locations meeting with the community. [Patterson] was at the McDonald’s on Poole Road, and she said it was packed.”

The city council has also expanded the ACORNS unit, a group of police officers and social workers who respond to mental health crises, Baldwin says. The council is also working with the NAACP and Moms Demand Action to reduce gun violence.

But Black Lives Matter activists remain frustrated with the city council’s overall policing policies, as well as the police department’s nearly $8 million budget increase over the last fiscal year. A campaign earlier this year by community group Refund Raleigh to divest from the police force and invest in social services and nonpolice response units was essentially ignored by the city council.

And police violence hasn’t slowed. In the last two years, Raleigh police have shot and killed five people. Refund Raleigh is asking this year’s city council candidates to vote against a 2023 budget that increases police spending and is working with the Wake County Sheriff’s Office to cut ties with U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.

“The police cannot be a container for the things we need in order for our communities to thrive,” says local social justice activist Ajamu Dillahunt. “The de-escalation that has supposedly been attempted is just not adequate. The institution is deeply flawed and has a history of racist and brutalizing tactics.” W

Who’s running for the Raleigh City Council?

A

Raleigh Mayor

E

Mary-Ann Baldwin (incumbent) maryannforraleigh.com

B

DaQuanta Copeland N/A Terrance Ruth truth4raleigh.com

D

C

Raleigh City Council At-Large

ke up w a W i

th

us

James Bledsoe electjamesbledsoe.com Josh Bradley bradleyforraleighworkers.com Stormie Forte (incumbent, District D) stormie4raleigh.com

Raleigh City Council District B

Raleigh City Council District D

Anne Franklin annefranklinforraleigh.com

Minu Lee leeforraleigh.com

Robert Baumgart robraleigh.com

Jonathan Melton (incumbent) jonathanmelton.com

Jakob Lorberblatt jakobforraleigh.com

Jane Harrison janeforraleigh.com

John Odom N/A

Meghan Patton pattonforraleigh.com

Todd Kennedy kennedyforraleigh.com

Portia Rochelle rochelleforraleigh.com

Frank Pierce pierce4nc.com

Jennifer Truman jennifertruman.com

Raleigh City Council District A

Raleigh City Council District C

Raleigh City Council District E

Mary Black mary4districta.com

Corey Branch (incumbent) coreybranch.com

Christina Jones christinaforraleigh.com

Whitney Hill whitneyforraleigh.org

Frank Fields frankfieldsfordistrictc.com

David Knight (incumbent) knightforraleigh.com

Catherine Lawson catlawson.com

Wanda Hunter wanda4raleigh.com

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A FAIR OF THE HEART: PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE NC STATE FAIR, 1972-2022

Through This Lens Gallery, Durham | junglegossip.com

Seeing the State Photographer Avery Danziger has taken pictures of phenomenons all over the world. For fifty years, the magic of the NC State Fair has stayed a favorite subject.

BY SARAH EDWARDS sedwards@indyweek.com

T

here is no shortage of interesting things to see at the North Carolina State Fair, but as anyone who’s ever been knows, people-watching is half the fun.

Active in Raleigh in various forms since 1853, it’s an event that draws attendees from all corners of the state, showcasing everything from large vegetable phenomena and hair-raising rides to rattlesnake corn dogs (see page 15), allowing us all to share, as the photographer Avery Danziger says, the “mundane, wonderful stuff that makes up our lives.”

Danziger should know: since 1972, he’s been visiting the fair off and on to try and capture its magic. To commemorate that 50-year mark, Danziger’s A Fair of the Heart: NC State Photographs, 1972-2022— which include both film in black-and-white and color—will be exhibited at downtown Durham’s Through This Lens Gallery beginning October 21 and running until November 12. The event is a part of the CLICK! Photography Festival, the monthlong celebration of photography that plays host to more than 85 events in 45 venues across the Triangle.

Danziger grew up in Chapel Hill and has had work shown by the Mint Museum in Charlotte, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. Despite this sprawling reputation, though, the state fair has always drawn him back. His photos—of a couple shyly holding stuffed sharks, a boy coyly standing in front of a pig print, a woman pausing to eat below a “Guess the Weight” sign—tell a story, not just about the state fair but about North Carolina itself. Most photo14

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graphic series over time track change; in a comforting way, though, these photos show just how much has stayed the same.

Danziger lives in Chapel Hill, where, he says, he serves as a “caretaker” for a one-bedroom house with a pool that served as the setting for the Natalie Wood’s final movie, Brainstorm. Recently, I met him in the backyard of Durham’s Accordion Club to learn more about his work. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

INDY Week: When was the first time you went to the NC State Fair?

AVERY DANZIGER: The first time I went to the state fair was when I was probably six or seven years old with my parents—that would have been around 1960 or so. We would go every other year and it was a rare occasion for all the kids to be together, and it was a strange thing we did in almost a religious way for at least three or four years.

After that, I would go with one of their friends or employees.

And as soon as I started taking photographs, I would return. That started around 1972, and I would go back every few years and take photographs. I left North Carolina when I was 18 and returned five years ago, and since I’ve come back, I’ve continued to go.

And what did you see?

It’s always been fascinating. As a child that can easily escape from their parents, I would do that as soon as I could—and in those days, at least with my parents—they didn’t look for you. They just assumed you’d

Two NC State Fair attendees in 1975

PHOTO BY AVERY DANZIGER

come back, and usually there was some kind of odd prearranged place that you’re supposed to meander around.

I was always attracted to the sideshows.

That to me was fascinating—the three-headed woman or the bear-headed snake, or whatever it was; it still exists today. Miracle things, not so much the womp-games and things that came in later—shooting contests, that kind of thing.

What kept you going back, and not just going back but going back and taking pictures?

Several themes are a part of my photography. I love to take pictures of things that people have already taken tons and tons of pictures of—that, to me, is incredibly exciting. Take the most hackneyed thing—dogs, girlfriends, buildings, plants, doesn’t matter—and try and find what was the original essence that made people so attracted to take the photograph in the first place, what power they had, and then try to stir that up.

There’s so much of the insignificant that’s extraordinary when you examine it. One of my series, you may have seen it, was of the interior of an abandoned psychiatric facility called Harlem Valley. It was exciting to me because I made, I don’t know how to put it, portraits of walls. I subtracted something that I thought was beautiful out of chaos.

What about the NC State Fair itself?

It’s a marvelous microcosm of the state.

It’s the coolest thing I’ve seen that represents the state. The whole public is, is looking at things that are normally divided up in our society, and they get to see a little window into it—everything from, you know, the Christian churches with their Christ up front and, you know, how to milk a cow or a pumpkin the size of a small house. It’s an extraordinary thing that brings all of those people together.

They seem to abandon whatever political concerns they have for their fellow man and actually go there and enjoy themselves and eat funnel cake and do all this kind of mundane, wonderful stuff that makes up our lives. For a lot of people it’s a real break for them from whatever it is they do normally, and it’s a reconnection with a whole different type of festive spirit that during COVID had disappeared. I’m looking forward to going back this weekend.

When I’ve shown [my photos] at the state fair—and I’ve shown at other state fairs—I love it because it’s the largest venue I’ll ever have to show my work, like 50,000 people.

Some people scoff at the idea of showing at a state fair, but I don’t. I think it’s a great opportunity to get your work seen by a lot of people who would not normally walk in a gallery or museum. And to me, that’s what photography is about. W

FOOD & DRINK

d o o F

from the

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here are 40 new dishes at the NC State Fair this year— most of which look like they came straight out of a Chopped episode—so be sure to save some room for new traditions in between your Krispy Kreme cheeseburgers and grist mill hush puppies.

The fair runs October 13-23. Here are five of our picks for the most innovative new menu items.

THANKSGIVING STUFFED TURKEY LEG

by Lena Gel l er

Fa i ar

ts@ ind yw eek. com

r

DORIESQUITES

Douglas Farms Roasted corn is another state fair classic, and this dish— de-cobbed Mexican street corn with crema, cotija cheese, hot sauce, and a squeeze of lime, served in a bag of crushed Doritos—offers an enticing enhancement. It’s the best thing to happen to North Carolina Doritos lovers since 2006, when a beached cargo container spilled thousands of bags of Doritos onto the shores of Hatteras Island.

Hickory Tree Turkey BBQ A twist on a state fair classic, this dish is best described as a Thanksgiving leftovers sandwich turned inside out, with a hollowed-out smoked turkey leg—instead of the typical stale bread roll—acting as a vehicle for stuffing, gravy, and cranberry sauce.

I really like this idea; putting stuffing between slices of bread has always seemed superfluous, and turkey is such dry meat that it makes more sense as a husk than a filling. Optional additional fillings include candied yams, collards, and mac ’n’ cheese.

YOUR WEEK. EVERY WEDNESDAY. FOOD • NEWS • ARTS • MUSIC

RATTLESNAKE CORN DOG

Pioneer Wagon Rattlesnake meat is exceedingly bland—in the Southwest, it’s often called “desert whitefish”—so the quality of this serpenton-a-stick will be governed by its seasoning. If the spice is right, this dish could be a menu highlight; if it lacks flavor, it will still come with the bonus of making you feel like Bear Grylls without having to drink your own pee.

PEPSI-GLAZED MINI DONUTS

S2 Concessions Our governor self-identifies as a “diet soda sommelier” and loves Keurig Dr Pepper’s diet Sun Drop, but North Carolina remains a Pepsi stronghold. (If you’ve worked at a North Carolina restaurant that doesn’t serve Pepsi, you know this better than anyone.) With a Pepsi-infused glaze and a crunchy peanut topping, these donuts are a spectacular showcase of our state’s food and drink culture.

DoriEsquites

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE NC STATE FAIR.

DEEP-FRIED COUNTRY HAM WITH PEACH BOURBON JAM

Ragin’ Cajun In August, The News & Observer reported the sad news that the state fair’s venerated country ham biscuit booth, operated by two Cary churches for more than a century, will not be returning to the fair this year. To soften the blow, head to the Ragin’ Cajun booth for a new iteration of the beloved staple: deep-fried slices of local country ham served with a sweetand-smoky peach bourbon jam. W

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Forward and Back On a Friday Salsa Social night at Durham’s Arthur Murray Dance Studio, rhythm is in the air.

BY CHASE PELLEGRINI DU PAUR arts@indyweek.com

Dancers at Salsa Social Night

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t is the first Friday of the month at Durham’s Arthur Murray Dance Studio—Salsa Social night—and couples are twirling and prancing to the beat on the main dance floor. But around the corner, away from the group, Liza Salmon dances alone, barefoot. Salsa dancing isn’t hard, says Salmon, a baker by day and aspiring dancer by night. She says the key is to “let the music flow inside of you.”

The spicy dancing in the Arthur Murray studio seems a bit out of place in this neighborhood of warehouses and garages that have been converted to bars and restaurants. Across from the studio, crowds of college kids stream into (and stumble out of) Boxcar Bar + Arcade for the weekly “Fireball Friday” deal, looking to drown their sorrows in cinnamon shots. Something, though, has convinced the salsa crowd to forgo the bars and spend a weekend night learning the tango and bachata.

Arthur Murray, traditionally focused on ballroom dance, might invoke images of lonely old ladies looking to recapture their youth. Tonight’s dancers, however, are diverse in age and gender.

Many of them are professional workers in their 30s. Of the roughly two dozen people in the room, most are white of skin (although two are purple of hair), with a few people of color sprinkled throughout. Some are here on dates, others came 16

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alone. Salmon brought a male friend in hopes of dragging him out of his comfort zone. For now, he stands at the refreshment table by himself.

The monthly Salsa Social is open to anyone who pays the $10 cover. The participants get in the spirit with flowery shirts and dancing heels for an hour-long group lesson followed by unstructured dancing until midnight.

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aria Espinosa Spencer strides around the room in a black high-low dress, playing host to newcomers and returning dance students with chips and boxed wine. Maria and Joel Spencer, Maria’s partner in business, marriage, and dance, opened the studio about a year and a half ago while Durham was still reeling from the COVID pandemic.

Maria and Joel have been with Arthur Murray for 18 and 14 years, respectively.

After her introduction to the chain as a student in Kentucky, Maria got hired as an instructor and trained in Chicago before settling in Durham to be closer to her family. As the only instructors at the studio, they sometimes wish they could find another set of hands. “Most dance studios are small businesses. It’s hard to compete with places that can afford health insurance.”

Arthur Murray claims to be one of the oldest franchises in America. According to the company website, Arthur was a famous

PHOTO BY KULSOOM RIZAVI, THE 9TH STREET JOURNAL

instructor and dancer in the early 1900s.

After his retirement in the ’60s, the modern company’s franchise model took hold, with studios opening in places such as Dubai, Taipei, and Tokyo.

Lessons cover “anything that you can do with a partner,” Maria says with a smile. While tonight is about salsa, the Durham studio offers at least a dozen types of lessons. “We specialize in weddings, all of the swing dances, all of the Latin dances, all of the country dances, all of the ballroom dances.”

Maria says the studio’s downtown location helps business. “People come in sometimes and just inquire about what’s going on here, especially with the loud music.”

Since the pandemic, Maria has noticed her clientele getting younger. “COVID put a hold on so many weddings, and now everyone’s trying to get married.” Couples take a few lessons to impress their guests with that perfect first dance. Maria and Joel teach as many as 15 lessons a day and are looking to build a back porch on the studio to help people feel comfortable in close proximity with strangers and their germs.

T

o kick off the lesson, Joel Spencer, dressed in black, sweeps onto the floor.

The lights of the studio glint off his earrings and his “S” (for Superman) belt buckle as he claps his hands and shouts, “Let’s dance!

Come on!”

At first the only sound is Joel’s loud counting as he walks his students through the basic steps of salsa. He takes command of the studio and leads by example, striding around the room on slender legs.

“Let’s pick up one foot—it doesn’t matter which one—and then put it back down—and then pick up the other foot and come back down.” In a matter of seconds, Joel has his students marching in place.

“And that’s the whole dance!” he jokes.

There’s an unspoken commitment from Joel to his students: Give me your feet and I will make you the sexiest person on the dance floor! I will make you the star you’ve always known you are! I will make you a salsa dancer!

Seated on the side of the dance floor, Anne and Joe Reese patiently await their cue. They are probably the most senior and experienced couple in the room. They smile politely, careful not to judge the newcomers too harshly.

The Spencers and the Reeses are so good they compete in regional and national Arthur Murray events. Loud posters for these line the walls of the Durham studio, highlighting events such as Charlotte’s “21st Annual Southern Summer Showcase” and Virginia Beach’s “Beach Blanket Bingo—The BEACH PARTY gang goes DANCING!!!”

Joel teaches one sequence of the salsa dance, then commands the students to

rotate to a new partner. “Introduce yourselves if you haven’t already!” he says before immediately making that impossible by launching into a rapid-fire explanation of the next step.

As the lesson continues, DJ and dance aficionado Jack Wolf strolls into the studio. The colored lights illuminate his white fedora. There is an air of wisdom about him, with white hair flowing out beneath his hat.

“I know everything about the salsa scene,” he says matter of factly, conjuring a white business card with the deftness of a magician finding a quarter behind an ear. He says his website “lists every dance in the Triangle of every kind.” At one point, he stops mid-sentence and jogs away to hit play on “Betece,” a song that Wikipedia describes as part of a project to “unite New York–based salsa musicians with Senegalese vocalists.”

“It’s the music that moves you—that’s why I love salsa!” Wolf says.

A dancer at heart, Wolf can’t resist the pull of his own playlists. He leaves the DJ stand and clutches his partner close. This is not his first dance of the week, and it won’t be his last.

“You can find a dance every night of the week except Monday.”

B

y the end of the lesson, Joel has torn down any remaining social barriers. How could you be nervous to speak to someone after practicing your under-arm single spin together? How could you feel alone while a man named Wolf queues up dozens of dance hits?

The night is coming to a close. Salmon’s friend has been dragged to the floor several times by eager partners. Salmon has been dispensing her “feel the music” philosophy to anyone who will listen.

Anne and Joe Reese watch attentively for a few songs until Wolf puts on a Cuban chacha. The Reeses, finally hearing the beat they’ve been waiting for, rise to their feet and glide to a corner of the floor. “This is their jam,” says one of the regulars.

They orbit each other with straight spines and steps rehearsed in the two decades since they met at an Arthur Murray in 2001. Having danced their way across the country, they are now the undisputed royalty of the Durham studio.

Just as Maria predicted, a man drawn by Wolf’s music wanders into the studio and pays the $10 cover.

As Anne Reese says, “Dancers always come together.” W

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October 12, 2022

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E TC.

SEEING THROUGH VIVIAN MAEIR’S EYES: THE VIVIAN MAEIR RESARCH PROJECT

Saturday, Oct. 15 & Sunday, Oct. 16, various times | The Fruit, Durham | clickphotofest.org/vivianmaiertalks FROM THE JEFFREY GOLDSTEIN VIVIAN MAIER VINTAGE PRINT COLLECTION

Through the Glass A collection of never-exhibited Vivian Maier vintage prints find a home in Durham. They offer new ways of seeing the world—and the mysterious street photographer behind them. BY SARAH EDWARDS sedwards@indyweek.com

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he story of how the Durham artist and collector Jeff Goldstein came to own several thousand vintage Vivian Maier prints begins, as Goldstein tells it, with “everything from bedbugs to guns.”

Goldstein teases this story on a call from TROSA Thrift Store on North Roxboro Street, one recent Friday afternoon. He’s there collecting items to fashion onto a multi-mirrored selfie booth that he built for Seeing through Vivian Maier’s Eyes: The Vivian Maier Research Project, a two-day showcase that’s part of the sprawling, monthlong Triangle CLICK! Photography Festival.

These vintage prints, which were developed during Maier’s lifetime, have never been shown to the public before.

Later, once he sits down and tells the whole thing, 18

October 12, 2022

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Goldstein’s story lives up to its teaser. But there are so many stories, and scaffolds, to the legendary photographer Vivian Maier’s mythology—a midwestern hall of mirrors reflecting a hundred different stories about art, imagination, privacy, power, and identity—that it’s best to begin with a few basic structural levels.

In 2007, a young auction hunter named John Maloof plunked down $400 for a hefty box of negatives that had been repossessed from a Chicago storage locker previously owned by an ailing elderly woman. As he began to scan the 30,000 images in the box, he grew impressed by their artful, exacting scenes of street life, and he hunted down and purchased other boxes of negatives from the locker.

The photographer behind the images, though, remained a

mystery until 2009, when Maloof Googled a name scribbled on an envelope: Vivian Maier.

The search pulled up a Chicago Tribune obituary, posted just days before, for a beloved nanny and “photographer extraordinaire.” She had died earlier that week.

That kind of sliding-door moment is a constant in Maier’s story, though it doesn’t define it. Born in 1926, Maier spent her childhood moving between New York City and rural France, where her mother was born. Her adult years took her to New York City, where she worked at a sweatshop, and then to Chicago, where she worked for decades as a nanny. The shape of Maier’s life was one spent on the fringes and this was largely, as far as we know, by choice.

She was fiercely independent, describing herself as a kind of “spy” to friends, seeking out bolted doors in the rooms she lived in, and using aliases when she went to get rolls of film developed.

“With the film she was using, there were 12 pictures on a strip,” says Christine Benoodt, the collection manager for Goldstein’s Vivian Maier vintage print collection. “When she was approaching her prime, the people who developed her negatives and prints look at her contact sheets for a strip of 12 and say that she had gallery-level images at a hit of one in three or one in four. That’s almost like a savant level.”

Maier also liked using herself as a subject in photos, appearing with cropped hair and a determined gaze at surprising angles, and sometimes only as a shadow: in the picture but on her own terms. If Maloof had managed to contact her while she was still alive, it’s hard to know how she might have responded, Her work is celebrated at CLICK! Festival this weekend, with a two-day showcase at the Fruit that includes the exhibit of Goldstein’s collection, a screening of the documentary The Vivian Maier Mystery, a keynote presentation, and a roundtable discussion with the printers who took painstaking care to bring some of her negatives to life.

The festival offers an exceptionally rare chance not just to see her photographs—which have been the subject of heated estate battles for years that have put them behind red tape—but to see works from Goldstein’s private collection that skew from the Chicago street life photos that most people are familiar with, and broaden what we know of Maier’s life and vision.

Included in the exhibition is the first photo she ever took while visiting her childhood home in France, as well as photos of the celebrities she surreptitiously photographed and the crime scenes she haunted.

“There are so many flashes in the pan with artists,” Goldstein says of the attention that Maier’s photos began to attract after the discovery was made. “I was waiting for it to stop. And then it just kept going and going.”

A

nother scaffold in the posthumous story of Maier’s life: the people who discovered her work—John Maloof and Goldstein, among a few others—and made it their mission to share it with the world.

Mostly these people were men, which tos from the collector Randy Prow. By this makes for a complicated pairing. As point, interest in Maier had reached somerecounted in documentaries and biogra- what of a mania and the photos’ value had phies by people that knew her, Maier was gone up. For the transaction, the two met wary of men. She’d made her own way in in a hotel conference room off the highlife and was fearless, taking the children she way. Goldstein brought a friend with a gun nannied all over town and venturing out on as protection.

“When you’re carrying $140,000 …” Benoher own to the seedier areas, her camera odt trails off. “Well, that’s just a lot of money.” leveled at its usual spot at her chest.

While it’s a little jarring to hear MaiSome scholarship about Maier, including a 2017 biography by Pamela Bannos, is also er’s work spoken about in the context of wary of the men who purchased her pho- such red-blooded moments, in some ways, tos, suggesting that Maier would have been it makes sense. She may have flown under the radar, but she didn’t seem afraid of it. resistant to her contemporary portrayal.

I was first introduced to Maier’s work Several weeks ago at the Durham Farmers Market, Christine Benoodt and Gold- around 2012, when it began to trickle into stein set up the selfie booth they’d built—an the mainstream, through Tumblr—a perfect homage to Maier’s predilection for self-por- platform for her photography to take flight trait—alongside information about the fes- (and in fact, it’s fair to wonder if her work would ever have taken off tival and Maier’s work. without the internet).

According to BenI was drawn to the way oodt, one woman “There are so Maier’s photos tell long paused by the booth. many flashes stories in nanosecond Benoodt asked if she’d Like another female heard of Maier. in the pan with shots. midcentury artist, the “Yes,” Benoodt author Grace Paley, they recalls the woman sayartists. I was have the quality of a fraging, “she’s overrated.

And men have taken waiting for it to ment captured just as the hammer comes down: you control of her work.”

Goldstein’s part stop. And then it can picture Maier capturing, for instance, the quiet in the story began a just kept going moment of emotion in a decade ago, when he story like Paley’s “Wants,” lent money to a friend and going.” which begins “I saw my who was fleeing a bedex-husband in the street. bug infestation. At the time, Goldstein was an artist in Chicago, I was sitting on the steps of the new library. and no stranger to the city’s famous out- Hello, my life, I said.”

Her work is often compared to renowned sider artist scene—he recounts selling discounted paper to the eccentric artist Lee street photographers like Garry Winogrand Godie—and had heard murmurs of the tal- or Robert Frank, though they stylistically ent in the boxes of Maier negatives. When differ: while Frank’s portraits were intenthe friend he’d lent money to offered to tionally muddy and grainy, like the trail pay him back in 57 Maier prints instead of a finger across a windowpane, Maier’s of cash, he reluctantly agreed. An obses- are crisp, minimalist, and well-salted with sion was born. Goldstein now owns the emotional detail.

The fever pitch around Maier’s work has largest collection of vintage Maier prints quieted down, in part because of ongoing in private hands.

“If there was dust or hair [on the photos] tugs-of-war around copyright. The mystery that we couldn’t easily blow off, we left it of her life, too, has often overshadowed there, because we didn’t want to damage it,” actual access to it, and she’s never gotGoldstein says, over coffee at Triangle Cof- ten the big retrospective treatment many fee House. “It’s like archaeology. We were other artists have—perhaps because of a pervading public belief that the way she very, very careful with the material.”

Goldstein, who moved to Durham in was discovered means she is “overrated.”

2016, is a fourth-generation carpenter and The opportunity to see Maier’s work here, cabinet maker. He has something of a cow- in person—and not in a big city or at a big boy carriage—when we meet, he’s wearing festival—is a rare one. It may shape the way a worn pink T-shirt and sports a gray soul you, too, see the world.

“We’re here,” Goldstein says. “This is our patch—but he grows earnest and technical when describing the particulars of Maier’s new home and we’re using this as a passport to integrate ourselves into the art work and how he has cared for it.

The guns part of the story comes when community and to give something back to Goldstein bought the third batch of pho- the community.” W INDYweek.com

October 12, 2022

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STAGE

ALL THE WAY | HHHH Justice Theater Project | Umstead Park United Church of Christ | Through Oct. 23 | thejusticetheaterproject.org

A scene from All the Way: Johnson in the Oval Office, signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 PHOTO BY NAVEED MOEED

The Powerbrokers From All the Way to Richard III: Reviews of four significant local productions, this October. BY BYRON WOODS arts@indyweek.com

I

n a November 1963 conversation with Martin Luther King Jr., the activist Stanley Levison described Lyndon B. Johnson as “a Southern politician who’s spent his entire life trying to be president …. For the first time he can do whatever he wants.”

But All the Way, playwright Robert Schenkkan’s gritty, panoramic drama about Johnson’s first year as president, underscores how wrong Levison was. The brisk and occasionally breathtaking production at the Justice Theater Project reminds us of the few moves available to Johnson in his delicate, high-stakes dance across the minefield of issues that threatened to rip America apart after the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

In retrospect, it’s amazing that this brusque, earthy legislator nimbly threaded among civil rights leaders, segregationist Southerners, senators, liberal legislators, and the press, not only keeping the fabric of American society from unraveling but enacting profound social change with the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964.

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Under Brook North’s direction, artistic director Jerry Sipp’s riveting, supersized performance as Johnson captures the contradictory facets of his personality. We see an idealist devoted to realizing the Kennedy administration’s loftiest goals (which Johnson would extend in his own Great Society initiatives) and dismantling a racism deeply entrenched in Southern culture and politics.

We also see a manipulative, ruthless politician adept at the “Texas Twist”—the coarse and callous realpolitik of cut-throat governance at the highest level. Before observing that “there’s no place for nice in a knife fight,” Johnson notes, “Politics is war, period …. You’re not running for office; you’re running for your life.”

As Johnson stands toe-to-toe with 1960s icons including partisan FBI director J. Edgar Hoover (Dan Oliver) and future vice president Hubert Humphrey (Alex DeVirgilis), we also witness, through the FBI’s covert bugging of social activists, the divisions that challenged the civil rights movement.

The impatience of young activists Stokely Carmichael (Daniel Cryer-Muthedath Ryder) and Bob Moses (Akili Holder-Cozart) manifests in growing arguments with NAACP leaders including King (sonorous Preston Campbell) and Roy Wilkins (robust Juan Isler).

Their direct action in the subsequent Mississippi Freedom Summer project, whose efforts to register Blacks to vote resulted in 35 burned churches and three activists’ deaths, is depicted in an electrifying funeral scene. The split among the leaders is made plain when Congress of Racial Equity leader David Dennis (Holder-Cozart) interrupts King’s eulogy with a call for action: “If you go back home and sit down and take what these white men in Mississippi are doing to us … and don’t do something about it—then God damn your souls! STAND UP!” It is deeply jarring when Johnson seeks a modulated level of federal intervention in Mississippi afterward—one that doesn’t provoke open revolt among Southern politicians, weeks before the Democratic National Convention where he’s running to be his party’s candidate for president. It also reflects a conventional—and disturbing—political reality: it’s hard to effect change as a politician if you can’t get elected.

History shows that Johnson got the Voting Rights Act passed in August 1965, less than a year after being elected. In a theatrical version of a cinematic split screen, Shenkkan underlines the similarities in Dr. King’s acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize and a speech in New Orleans where Johnson made plain his stand on civil rights: “Whatever your views are, we have a constitution … [and] a new law of the land. A civil rights law. And you can vote for me or vote against me but I signed it, and by God, I am going to enforce it.”

Still, Schenkkan’s script and Sipp’s performance don’t smooth most of the rough edges of a leader who was largely unapologetic for the road he took.

He acknowledges the quantum imperfections, horse trading, arm twisting, and backroom deals that are a part of the political process when he knowingly asks the audience in a closing monologue, “Did it make you feel a little squeamish? Did you have to look away sometimes?” Then he pauses, before concluding, “This is how new things are born.”

A GREAT BIG WOOLLY MAMMOTH THAWING FROM THE ICE | HHHH

Burning Coal Theatre | Through Oct. 16 | burningcoal.org

It’s best to know whom you’re traveling with before heading into the Alaskan outback. In the suspenseful world premiere of British playwright Tatty Hennessy’s tautly written drama, the wilderness experience destabilizes relationships among a superbly directed and acted quartet. First, free spirit Leah (A.C. Donohue), an environmental activist on a third date with Justin (Matt Hager), a rich Silicon Valley

tech developer, learns that Jim, the opinionated father of their trail guide, Chris, is a longtime oil rigger on the Alaskan pipeline.

Then we learn Justin’s been hiding something, about the time Jim (impressive Gene Cordon) really starts losing patience with Chris (Ben Apple). As jealousy, economic desperation, and differences in class and age further alienate the characters from each other, we learn that 60 miles away from civilization is no place to renegotiate a relationship, much less rewrite the social contract. Still, the abrupt ending made us feel we’d only seen the first two acts of a three-act play.

RICHARD III | HHHH Sweet Tea Shakespeare | Leggett Theatre, William Peace University | Through Oct. 16 | sweetteashakespeare.com

Believe it or not, a sociopath can rise to the highest peak of power in a country: all it takes is money, connections, and a willingness to lie and manipulate people’s deep-seated prejudices and fears. In the title role, David Henderson’s deeply dimensional Richard repeatedly breaks the fourth wall to convey to us his cunning as he gulls the credulous, including Michael Foley’s Clarence. Director Wade Newhouse sees in the widowed Queen Elizabeth not a woman fooled by Richard’s power-motivated wooing but one with no allies or protection after her husband’s death. Designer Denise Schumaker’s intriguing costumes outfit an ensemble featuring strong performances by Aaron Alderman as the shady Buckingham, Ris Harp’s murderer, and Shaun Schneider’s Richmond. But when the cast started walking out through Richard’s last soliloquy, we wondered if we should follow suit.

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Raleigh's Community Bookstore

E V E NTS WED

10.12 7PM

THUR

10.13 7PM FRI

10.14 7PM

SUN

10.16 MON

10.17 7PM

Martha Ann Toll, Three Muses Gavin Larsen, Being a Ballerina: The Power and Perfection of a Dancing Life Barbara Quick, What Disappears Frances Mayes, A Place in the World: Finding the Meaning of Home AT MEREDITH COLLEGE

Jodi Picoult & Jennifer Finney Boylan, Mad Honey

WITH THERESE FOWLER | TICKETED EVENT

10:30AM Cathy Fishman, A Fall Frolic in the City 3P M Michael Beadle, What Makes a Giraffe Laugh: Animal Poems Wiley Cash, When Ghosts Come Home

Register for Quail Ridge Books Events Series at www.quailridgebooks.com www.quailridgebooks.com • 919.828.1588 • North Hills 4209-100 Lassiter Mill Road, Raleigh, NC 27609 FREE Media Mail shipping on U.S. orders over $50

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN | HH1/2 Theatre in the Park | Through Oct. 16 | theatreinthepark.com

Cozy little chills are scattered throughout this Halloween-season offering, but Jack Thorne’s stage adaptation of the famous 2008 vampire flick (which Showtime is reviving as a series this fall) is kludgy, with stage transitions that take longer than some of its most momentary scenes.

There’s always a risk when casting children in leading roles, a necessity here since the two principal characters are twelve. Unfortunately, under Ira David Wood IV’s direction, narrow emotional bandwidths and rushed line deliveries indicates the kids still aren’t entirely ready for the mainstage. W INDYweek.com

October 12, 2022

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FO O D & D R I N K

NANA’S Reopening March 2023 | 2514 University Drive | mattkellyhospitality.com

Matt Kelly inside Nana’s PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA

ventures in downtown Durham: soon after opening Mateo, a Spanish tapas bar, Kelly launched Italian trattoria Mothers & Sons and Lucky’s, a New York-style delicatessen that closed in 2020 when COVID-19 put an indefinite pause on employee-driven lunchtime traffic—but whose space now houses Alimentari, a casual extension of Mothers & Sons.

In late 2017, a year after inaugurating Lucky’s, Kelly opened Saint James Seafood on Durham’s Main Street. It was the beginning of a calamitous five years.

Eighteen months after it opened, Saint James shut down in the wake of a massive gas explosion that killed two and devastated its block in the Brightleaf District.

After rebuilding, the restaurant resumed service in January 2020, only to be shuttered by the pandemic 39 days later. And in February of this year, Kelly debuted Saint James for the third time—only to learn, recently, that the restaurant’s lease had been terminated by Asana Partners, the Charlotte-based real estate firm that purchased Brightleaf Square in 2019.

On Saturday, Saint James served its last dinner. Kelly won’t tell me much about the restaurant’s tragic demise but says he feels touched that his staff stuck around for the final weeks of service and expresses disgust that a multibillion-dollar real estate firm “can come and take one of the most historical places in Durham.”

In With the Old As the new owner of Nana’s, Matt Kelly wants to bring the legendary restaurant back to life—and back to its golden era.

BY LENA GELLER lgeller@indyweek.com

W

hen I arrive at Nana’s, the front door is locked, as it has been for the past three years.

I’m here to interview Matt Kelly—the prolific restaurateur who recently purchased renowned Durham restaurant Nana’s from longtime chef-owner Scott Howell, with plans to revive it—but he doesn’t seem to hear me knocking. I walk around the side of the building and enter through the kitchen door, which is propped open.

While the restaurant’s terra-cotta orange exterior looks as polished as it did 30 years ago, the kitchen is completely gutted; a lone prep station, repurposed as a storage shelf for power tools, is the only indicator of the room’s intended use.

After wiggling a few more handles, I find a swinging door behind a tarp.

On the other side, Kelly is sitting at the bar in the main dining room, several feet from the restaurant’s main 22

October 12, 2022

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entrance, looking unbothered. Without glancing up from his laptop, he asks if I’ve been through the back door of a kitchen before.

“Yes,” I tell him, “but not as many times as you have.”

The first decade of Kelly’s culinary career would amount to a lifetime’s worth of achievements for the average chef.

In the late nineties, shortly after graduating from culinary school, Kelly landed a job at the Inn at Little Washington— one of the most lauded restaurants in the world—and, after moving to the Triangle a few years later, worked stints at famed fine dining establishments Four Square and Fearrington House before being promoted from chef to co-owner at French bistro Vin Rouge in Durham.

Under Kelly’s leadership, Vin Rouge garnered national attention as one of North Carolina’s top dining destinations, and it wasn’t long before Kelly started racking up James Beard nominations with a string of his own solo

N

evertheless, Kelly is trying to move on. And when considered alongside the loss of Saint James, his acquisition of Nana’s comes with a number of poetic throughlines.

Saint James has two namesakes: one, of course, is the patron saint of fishermen; the other, as Kelly revealed in 2019, is the hospital where his grandfather once worked. It seems fitting, then, that his next venture has a “Nana” in its name, symbolizing a maternal counterpart to the late Saint James and perhaps an adoptive parent for Mothers & Sons.

Kelly opened Saint James, in part, as an homage to the space’s former tenant, Fishmonger’s, a Durham seafood institution that stood on Main Street for more than 30 years. Similarly, when Kelly opens Nana’s next spring, it will be the revival of a restaurant that Durhamites patronized for nearly three decades.

And like Saint James’s February launch, this will be the third time that Nana’s has opened.

When Howell founded Nana’s in 1992, it was one of the only fine dining spots in Durham besides Magnolia Grill, where Howell had worked as a sous chef.

A white-tablecloth restaurant with a menu of upscale, Southern-tinged European classics, Nana’s caught national attention with its exquisite flavors but won the hearts of locals with its convivial, posh-yet-casual atmosphere; if you talk to someone who frequented Nana’s in its early years, they’ll likely have hazy memories of cocktails and camaraderie but a crystal-clear recollection of the risotto they ate in 1997.

A destination neighborhood restaurant, Nana’s was a paradox—a lavish eatery with the soul of a dive bar.

Then, in the early 2010s, Durham started to change, and change fast. For the city’s influx of young professionals, fine dining restaurants like Nana’s were too stuffy, too slow, too expensive. As Durham topped “Best Foodie Town in the South” lists, the restaurants that had helped put the city on the map started to drop. Magnolia Grill went first, in 2012. Four Square shuttered a few years later. In 2018, Howell closed Nana’s, citing rising expenses and the end of Durham’s fine dining era.

The next year, Howell had second thoughts. After giving the restaurant’s dining room a fresh coat of paint, he announced plans to reopen.

“You can tell everyone out there, I’m coming,” Howell told The News & Observer in 2019. “It is the old Scott Howell, it’s not the new one, and I am freaking fired up.”

The reimagined Nana’s didn’t last long: The pandemic stilled Howell’s second wind. Nana’s shut its doors. Howell retired and bought a boat. Nobody expected another reopening.

Behind the scenes, though, Howell was in talks with Kelly, an old friend.

Howell first reached out to Kelly in 2018, around the time of the gas explosion, to ask whether Kelly might consider buying the building that houses Nana’s.

“I was like, ‘Bro, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to keep my house,’” Kelly says.

But two years later, Howell still hadn’t sold the property, and Kelly had an epiphany.

“All these restaurants were closing because of the pandemic, and I was like, man, I don’t want to lose Magnolia Grill again,” Kelly says.

He realized that Nana’s could be a pretty good deal: the restaurant had more parking space than he’d be able to find downtown; he would own the building, so he wouldn’t have to worry about a lousy landlord; and the city had finally fixed the stormwater issues that had caused Nana’s to perpetually flood.

Kelly tells me he thinks Howell asked a bunch of different people to buy the restaurant, but Howell debunks this: Kelly was always whom he envisioned as a successor, he says, and when it came down to it, Kelly was the only person with the capital, the diligence, and the culinary prowess to pull it off.

“You can just go ahead and put a little sign on Matt Kelly’s grave that says ‘The guy who gets it,’” Howell says.

Alternatively, if Kelly were to pick his own epitaph, it might read “A bit of an asshole,” which is how he describes himself, a few minutes into our interview.

Indeed, Kelly does have a bit of a reputation for being blunt and intense, in the way chefs often are. When the INDY’s photographer asks him to roam around the restaurant so that he can get candids of him, Kelly flatly replies, “I don’t do a lot of aimless walking.” During our conversation, he says the word “fuck” 89 times. And at one point, he launches into a rant about so-called food journalists and their fixation on buzzwords.

“You don’t have food writers anymore,” he says. “You don’t have someone where it’s like, ‘Yo, this is a professional fucking food writer who’s been monitoring the food culture in this area.’”

As someone who fits that definition, I’m rebuffed and briefly consider turning around and shouting, “Hey, has anyone seen a professional chef in here?” but think better of it. I know what he’s getting at.

Matt Kelly wants diners to slow down and smell the Riesling. He wants reporters to see individual restaurants as the whole picture, not just as fragments of a larger trend. He wants to go back to how things were, in Nana’s golden days.

Howell says he would’ve been fine with Kelly turning Nana’s into a different restaurant, but he’s honored that Kelly wants to retain its ethos.

“Grandmas,” Kelly says, “don’t really go out of style.”

He plans to make a few design changes—he’s renovating the kitchen and giving the dining room a “sexier update”—but by and large, Nana’s will fulfill the same three purposes it always has.

One: serving good food and drinks. Kelly says that “regional European cooking with ingredients from the American South is my thing,” so the cuisine won’t be changing too dramatically; his current menu draft includes hand-cut pasta, chicken liver pâté, seasonal mussels, a martini, and cellar wine.

Two: promoting mentorship. In the decades that Nana’s was open, Howell mentored a number of chefs who have since launched their own ventures, and Kelly wants to keep the family tree alive. He also thinks Howell’s history of mentorship deserves more recognition.

“Imagine if this was like biotech or pharmaceutical,” Kelly says. “Like, who the fuck creates that many drugs? Having an independent restaurant owner, a chef, who has that kind of influence—that’s a big thing.”

And three: Serving as a warm, versatile, communal space for engagement dinners, after-work drinks, and everything in between.

Nana’s is slated to open its doors, for the third time, in March of 2023.

“This restaurant,” Kelly says, “it’s the city’s living room.” W

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October 12, 2022

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C U LT U R E CA L E NDA R

Please check with local venues for their health and safety protocols.

The NCMA hosts an exhibit reception for A Modern Vision on Wednesday, October 12. Art

by Wassily Kandinsky. PHOTO COURTESY OF NCMA

screen Edge of Darkness $8. Wed, Oct. 12, 7 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

DogVideoFest 2022 $10. Thurs, Oct. 13, 7 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

Rocky Horror Picture Show $6.

Fri, Oct. 14, 7:30 p.m. The Cary Theater, Cary.

page

art

stage

A Great Big Woolly Mammoth Thawing from the Ice $20.

Sept. 29–Oct. 16, various times.

Interactive Gong-fu Burning Coal Tea Ceremony and Theatre Company, Exhibition Tour Thurs, Raleigh.

Oct. 13, 6 p.m. Gregg ALL THE WAY $23.

Museum of Art & Oct. 7-23, various Design, Raleigh. times. The Justice Seeing through Theater Project, Vivian Maier’s Eyes Raleigh.

Oct. 15-16, various Into the Woods times. The Fruit, $18+. Oct. 7-16, Durham. various times. The Kennedi Carter: Forest Theatre, Artist’s Reception Chapel Hill.

Sun, Oct. 16, 2 p.m.

Horace Williams House, Chapel Hill.

A Modern Vision Exhibit Reception $45. Wed, Oct. 12, 7 p.m. NCMA, Raleigh.

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October 12, 2022

A Trio of Ballet Books Wed, Oct. 12, 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.

INDYweek.com

Sister Act $57+.

Oct. 11-16, various times.

Raleigh Memorial Auditorium, Raleigh.

Funk of Your Soul $10+. Fri, Oct. 14, 8 p.m. The ArtsCenter, Carrboro.

Steve Martin and Martin Short SOLD OUT. Sun, Oct. 16, 7:30 p.m. DPAC, Durham.

Craig Ferguson: The Fancy Rascal Tour $33+. Wed, Oct. 12, 8 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

LUEWWD XVIII: Beyond Thunderdome $10.

Fri, Oct. 14, 8 p.m.

Motorco Music Hall, Durham.

Annie $25+. Oct. 18-23, various times. DPAC, Durham.

Carolina Ballet: Dracula $48+. Oct. 13-30, various times.

Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

A Walk in August $8. Oct. 15 and 17, various times. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

Lightwire Theater $12. Sun, Oct. 16, 3 p.m. Stewart Theatre, Raleigh.

Farkas in America: A One Woman Show Tues, Oct. 18, 7:30 p.m. Durham Arts Council, Durham.

Grace MacNair: Even as They Curse Us Thurs, Oct. 13, 6:30 p.m. Letters Bookshop, Durham.

Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore: Romare Bearden in the Homeland of His Imagination Wed, Oct. 12, 6 p.m. The Nasher, Durham.

Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan: Mad Honey Fri, Oct. 14, 7 p.m.

Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.

Ed Burmila: Chaotic Neutral Thurs, Oct. 13, 5:30 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.

Keith Knight: Good on Both Sides Fri, Oct. 14, 5:30 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.

Frances Mayes: A Place in the World Thurs, Oct. 13, 7 p.m.

Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.

Cathy Goldberg Fishman: A Fall Frolic in the City Sun, Oct. 16, 10:30 a.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.

Michael Beadle: What Makes a Giraffe Laugh Sun, Oct. 16, 3 p.m.

Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.

Wiley Cash: When Ghosts Come Home Mon, Oct. 17, 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.

Nita Tyndall: Nothing Sung and Nothing Spoken Tues, Oct. 18, 5:30 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.

like to like to plan plan ahead? ahead?

FOR OUR COMPLETE COMMUNITY CALENDAR: INDYWEEK.COM

!

!

CULTURE CALENDAR

music Duke Symphony Orchestra Wed, Oct. 12, 7:30 p.m.

Baldwin Auditorium, Durham.

Queer Country Night Wed, Oct. 12, 8 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

Wardruna $35+.

Wed, Oct. 12, 8 p.m.

DPAC, Durham.

Battle of the Broker Bands $20.

Thurs, Oct. 13, 6 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.

Dead Horses $14. Thurs, Oct. 13, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Half Gringa $10.

Thurs, Oct. 13, 8 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

Here Come the Mummies: The Pyramid Scream Tour $23+. Thurs, Oct. 13, 8 p.m.

The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

Jonathan Richman $20. Thurs, Oct. 13, 8 p.m.

The ArtsCenter, Carrboro.

Stereolab SOLD OUT. Thurs, Oct. 13, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

Vakili Band $10.

Thurs, Oct. 13, 8 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.

North Carolina Symphony: Beethoven Eroica $39+. Oct. 14-15, various times. Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh. $21+.

Tues, Oct. 18, 7:30 p.m. Memorial Hall, Chapel Hill.

Duke Jazz Ensemble $10. Fri, Oct. 14, 8 p.m. Baldwin Auditorium, Durham.

Martha Bassett’s Quarteto Brasil $15+. Fri, Oct. 14, 8 p.m. Sharp Nine Gallery, Durham.

Mustard Service $15. Fri, Oct. 14, 8 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.

Spelling $15. Fri, Oct. 14, 9 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

Africa Fest 2022: Meklit $15. Sat, Oct. 15, 8 p.m. Memorial Hall, Chapel Hill.

Chelsea Cutler: When I Close My Eyes Tour $30. Sat, Oct. 15, 7 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.

Diana Krall $65+.

Sat, Oct. 15, 8 p.m.

DPAC, Durham.

Duke Chorale, Duke Symphony Orchestra, and Duke Wind Symphony $10. Sat, Oct. 15, 7 p.m. Duke Chapel, Durham.

Frankie Alexander Trio $15+. Sat, Oct. 15, 8 p.m.

Sharp Nine Gallery, Durham.

Heathenson $10.

Sat, Oct. 15, 7 p.m.

Local 506, Chapel Hill.

Jooselord $10.

Sat, Oct. 15, 7:30 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

Ariel Pocock and Keith Ganz Sun, Oct. 16, 3 p.m.

White Memorial Presbyterian Church, Raleigh.

Bob Mould Solo Electric: Distortion and Blue Hearts $24. Sun, Oct. 16, 8 p.m. The ArtsCenter, Carrboro.

The Glorious Sons $20. Sun, Oct. 16, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

The Luka State $15.

Sun, Oct. 16, 8 p.m.

Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Zo! & Tall Black Guy $25. Sun, Oct. 16, 2 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

KMFDM $32. Mon, Oct. 17, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

Madison Cunningham $20.

Mon, Oct. 17, 8 p.m.

Haw River Ballroom, Saxapahaw.

Bands at Brookside Tues, Oct. 18, 5 p.m.

Brookside Bodega, Raleigh.

Calexico $30. Tues, Oct. 18, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

Charly Lowry Tues, Oct. 18, 8 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

Kitchen Dwellers / Daniel Donato $18.

Tues, Oct. 18, 8 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.

Mightmare $12.

Tues, Oct. 18, 8 p.m.

Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Mother Mother $69. Tues, Oct. 18, 7 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.

Don’t miss your favorite band in town.

Follow @INDYWeek on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for breaking news.

Tiger Beach / Saturnalias / Day & Dream $8.

Tues, Oct. 18, 8 p.m.

The Pinhook, Durham.

Greta Van Fleet $67+. Tues, Oct. 18, 7 p.m. PNC Arena, Raleigh.

Julie Fowlis $27. Sat, Oct. 15, 7:30 p.m.

Cary Arts Center, Cary.

Pierce Freelon: Black to the Future $5. Sat, Oct. 15, 11 a.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

Psychic Hotline Block Party $45.

Sat, Oct. 15, 3:30 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

Hear about that great new BBQ place.

Mightmare performs at the Cat’s Cradle Back Room on Tuesday, October 18. PHOTO COURTESY OF CAT’S CRADLE

Visit INDYWeek.com for restaurant reviews and food & drink news.

INDYweek.com

October 12, 2022

25

P U Z Z L ES

T OUN DISC FREE C LU B A L L FOR ORS & E CAT EDU LTH CAR S A HE KER WO R

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.

In-Store Shopping Curbside Pick Up www.regulatorbookshop.com 720 Ninth Street, Durham, NC 27705 Hours: Monday–Friday 10–7 | Saturday & Sunday 10–6

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.

6 5 7 2

3

1 7 4 6

1

4 1

8

3 7

7 2

4

9 6

1

2 8 8 4

6 3 3 2

MEDIUM

4 # 21

7 6

1

8 1

3

2

1 9 2 5 7 7 1 2 8 4 3 4 5 9 6 4 9 4 7 MEDIUM

# 22

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 10.12.22

solution to last week’s puzzle

8 26

1 7

5 9

October 12, 2022

7 3 4 INDYweek.com

2

6 9 4

5

4 2

1 3 6 3 4

6 9

7 2

1

7 INDY CLASSIFIEDS classy@indyweek.com

C L AS S I F I E D S EMPLOYMENT

EMPLOYMENT

engg positions performing/utilizing the following: dvlpg of web-based s/ware/applications using various comp prgmg languages; performing s/ware testing & quality checks per QC guidelines; creating & maintaining ASP.NET based websites & their web applications; dsgn backend d/ base structures for web applications; generating complex stored procedures for s/ware maintenance purposes; & utilizing experience w/: Operating Systems: Windows 7/ XP/2003 & UNIX; .Net; C#; ASP.NET; VB.NET; MVC; Web Services; WCF; Entity Framework; Java; JQuery; KnockoutJs; HTML5; Bootstrap; PEGA; Moodys Risk Analyst; GIT; TFS; SSIS; SSRS; D/base: SQL Server 2008/2012 & Oracle 9i/10g; & Microsoft Azure. Email resume w/ cvr ltr to: Paige.Whitesell@Truist.com (Ref. Job No. R0068896)

HEALTH & WELL BEING

Software Engineer III Software Engineer III sought by LexisNexis USA in Raleigh,NC to perform daily build work necessary to integrate & assemble software components into large-scale enterprise apps to then be deployed to certification & production environments. Minimum of Master’s or equiv in Comp Sci, Comp Engg, Math or rltd + 2 yrs exp in job offered or rltd required. EE reports to LexisNexis USA office in Raleigh, NC but may telecommute from any location within US. Apply by mail to T. Hayward, RELX Inc; 1100 Alderman Dr, Alpharetta, GA 30005.

Lead Data Systems Engineer Lead Data Systems Engineer, F/T at Truist (Raleigh NC) Provide consultation & tech’l direction on translating business reqmts & functional specs into logical program dsgns.

Facilitate the implmtn & maintenance of complex business & enterprise s/ware solutions to ensure successful deployment of released applications. Must have a Bach’s in Comp Sci, CIS, or related tech field. Must have 5 yrs of progressive exp in d/base admin or analyst positions demonstrating proficiency w/ following: D/base technologies; working on project(s) involving the implmtn of solutions applying SLDC; performing d/base admin in a fin’l services & IT solutions environment; planning, dsgng & implmtg Oracle d/base platform changes & patch upgrades, migrations, using Oracle AWR & OS Watcher capacity tools; implmtg mission critical d/base infrastructure solutions to ensure compliance w/ business continuity ratings & audit access policies; analysis of security vulnerabilities specific to the d/ base environment in order to determine risk level & ensured d/bases are maintained w/ latest security updates; planning, dsgng, & implmtg automated patch workflows using HPDMA tool; dsgng & automating regular patch activities using Python; providing production & non-production tech’l d/base support for any tech’l issues (triaging, resolving, & providing root cause analysis) for multiple d/base platforms, incl Oracle, IBM Db2, & SAP d/bases; ensuring infrastructure changes adhered to ITIL, & Change Mgmt, security access procedures & policies, using Oracle AWR & OEM; & assessing & testing d/base infrastructure changes (service requests, automated incidents, & change mgmt) to evaluate business risk from a server, storage, network, & d/ base perspective using Service Now & OEM. Position may be eligible to work remotely but is based out of & reports to Truist offices in Raleigh, NC. Must be available to travel to Raleigh, NC regularly for meetings & reviews w/ manager & project teams w/in 24-hrs’ notice. Email resume w/ cvr ltr to: Paige.Whitesell@Truist.com (Ref. Job No. R0068804)

919-416-0675

www.harmonygate.com

LAST WEEK’S PUZZLE

EVENTS AND FESTIVALS

Software Engineer II Software Engineer II, F/T at Truist Bank (Raleigh, NC) Deliver tech’lly complex solutions. Perform system integration support for all project work. Consult & partner w/ the business product owners to understand the end goal & offer solutions & recommendations during the dsgn. Dvlp customized coding, s/ware integration, perform analysis, configure solutions, using tools specific to the project or the area. Must have Bach’s deg in Comp Sci, Comp Engg, or related tech’l field. Must have 4 yrs of exp in s/ware INDY CLASSIFIEDS classy@indyweek.com

INDYweek.com

October 12, 2022

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