July 9, 2025
NEVER FORGET
The World Trade Center Health Program, which provides health care to some 2,000 survivors of 9/11 in North Carolina, faces a $3 billion shortfall and more than $1.2 billion in federal funding cuts.
BY JANE PORTER, P. 7
Raleigh | Durham | Chapel Hill
The late author Daphne Athas at her Chapel Hill home in 2010. A new podcast, Who Killed Rachel Crook?, drew inspiration from a chapter in Athas's memoir, Chapel Hill in Plain Sight (see story on the podcast, p. 30).
NEWS
6 How a Republican power grab flipped the balance of deep blue Durham's board of elections. BY JUSTIN LAIDLAW
7 North Carolina is fifth in the U.S. for enrollment in the World Trade Center Health Program, which provides health care to 9/11 survivors. BY JANE PORTER
10 Voters approved $31.3 million in transportation bonds for improvements to Six Forks Road. Last week, city council scrapped the project. BY JANE PORTER
11 In a rare budget vote disagreement, the Chapel Hill Town Council split over whether to raise taxes again. BY CHASE PELLEGRINI DE PAUR
CULTURE
13 Three new Durham bars do things a bit differently. BY LENA GELLER
28 Lunch Money: Pork Adobo about the Filipino Express. BY LENA GELLER
29 In Durham writer Nate Dixon's debut short story collection, Radical Red, William F. Buckley's legacy meets body horror. BY SARAH EDWARDS
30 A new podcast from Hillsborough producer Elizabeth Woodman revisits the shocking 1951 murder of Rachel Crook. BY SARAH EDWARDS
34 Character Studies: Meet Durham cyclist Eross Guadalupe. BY JUSTIN LAIDLAW
35 In Morrisville, a pinball collective finds its home base. BY EVA FLOWE
THE REGULARS
3 Backtalk
4 Op-ed 5 Ask INDY 36 Culture calendar
COVER Robert Young, president of the Raleigh 10-13 Association, a union composed of New York City Police Department retirees, poses for a portrait with a replica of the twin towers on Monday, June 23, 2025, in Graham. PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS
Publisher John Hurld
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BACKTALK
Last week, Jane Porter reported online that the City of Raleigh was scrapping plans to make Six Forks Road wider and more bike and pedestrian friendly after more than 10 years of planning and $9 million already spent (read her story on page 10 of this issue). Readers shared their thoughts.
From Reddit user CARYTRIVIADUDE:
This needs to be investigated. We, the voters, approved the money for the project over a decade ago, six years for the study is absolutely absurd, and then they didn’t even start design or community engagement until 2020?!? This isn’t a new beltway cutting across peoples land, it’s a road widening and re-design process.
An excerpt from Reddit user XYZZYDUDE:
Did it take so long because…. There were a lot of changes to the plan from community input.
There were delays caused by fronting property owners who did not want to be affected and fought plans.
Did the city hold this project to wait for a bond election that bundled enough other projects together that they thought it had a better chance to pass?
Were there other, more critical road updates in line in front of this one?
What was the interest rate environment for muni bonds at various points during the planning?
How did the pandemic affect all this?
I’m just saying, “hurrr durr government incompetence” is almost never the real answer when the details are explored.
Jane also recently reported on the firing of two state troopers who lied about a chase preceding the crash that killed Tyrone Mason in Raleigh last year. Jane noted in her story that a Raleigh Police investigator also knew the truth but misled Mason’s family for months, which struck a chord with one reader.
From reader EMILY TYO-BARRERA by email:
Upon reading the article written by Jane
Porter which was published this afternoon, I was awestruck that the Raleigh Police Department continues to protect their own instead of providing a service to the people they can be proud of. Along with the sustained systemic racism of policing habits, not enforcing rules and proper behavior of the officers on their routes and districts makes citizens fear calling on those who have taken an oath to protect. It’s shameful that Raleigh has quietly been perpetuating an “us versus them” mentality instead of telling a grieving mother the truth and spending their budget paid by her and our tax dollars to attempt to cover up this terrible event. My heart goes out to Ms. Mason and I hope that her labor of having to pursue the truth on her own while grieving for her lost loved one is seen by the courts. Publicizing these important events makes our decisions as voters more informed when those who work in administration for law enforcement come up for reelection, and for that I thank editor Porter for their work.
Last month, we published an op-ed from Walt Barron arguing for Major League Baseball to give Raleigh a professional team and relocate its research and development work to RTP. Readers really want that baseball team.
From Bluesky user PUNSTININGALLS: What a great idea. There’s nowhere in America better suited for @mlb.com to innovate through data analytics and realworld testing and market research than the Triangle.
And Bluesky user MICHAELCRAWFORD: I would do terrible, terrible things to get an MLB team in the Triangle.
Why I Take My Kids to Punk Shows in the Trump Era
I want my kids to know what solidarity and protest look like. Punk shows teach not just resistance but joy, creativity, and collective care.
BY NATHAN BOUCHER backtalk@indyweek.com
As a parent, I care deeply about what kind of world my kids will inherit—and who they’ll grow up to be in it. That’s why, amid rising political authoritarianism, white nationalism, and book bans, I take them to punk shows. Not just for the music (though that’s part of it), but because punk—especially the antifascist, antiracist strain that has long thrived in underground spaces—is one of the few places where resistance isn’t just theoretical; it’s loud, embodied, and lived. Punk shows offer my kids a crash course in moral clarity and historical memory at a time when those values are under open attack in our America. This might seem like an odd educational strategy. After all, punk has never been about decorum or safety. But that’s precisely the point. In a moment where public schools are being stripped of honest history, where LGBTQ+ books are being pulled off shelves, and where Donald Trump openly echoes fascist rhetoric—calling immigrants “animals,” urg-
ing the military to police American streets, and promising “retribution” in his second term—I want my kids to see what it looks like to say no. Punk shows model that refusal in ways that are visceral and unforgettable.
Historically, punk has always been a thorn in the side of fascism. In 1970s Britain, bands like The Clash and Crass took on the National Front and Thatcherism with biting lyrics and community organizing. In the United States, Dead Kennedys mocked Reagan-era warmongering, while Black Flag’s raw fury gave voice to alienation under neoliberal capitalism. Later, bands like Anti-Flag and Propagandhi explicitly championed antifascist and antiracist politics. These were not just bands with a message—they created spaces where kids could see that being against oppression wasn’t fringe, it was necessary. Today, that spirit is alive and well—and I try to engage my kids with lyrics and the message regularly.
Compare that to what’s happening outside those walls. Trump has reiterated that the left is trying to destroy America, echoing language used by actual fascist leaders to justify censorship and violence. In states like Florida and Texas, anti- “woke” laws have banned educators from teaching about systemic racism or gender identity. Trans kids are being denied health care, book bans are metastasizing, and vigilante-like action is rising—often targeting the same communities celebrated in punk spaces.
This is not a neutral political moment. Raising children in it means making choices. I want them to know what solidarity looks like, what protest feels like, and how to recognize propaganda when they hear it. Punk shows—often organized by people barely scraping by but still finding ways to create a safe, defiant community—offer that kind of moral education. They teach not just resistance but joy, creativity, and collective care.
Some might argue that punk is too angry, too confrontational for kids. But have you seen the news? What’s “too much” is letting my children grow up thinking this is normal: leaders praising dictators, mobs threatening school boards, and presidential candidates promising to hunt down those with whom they disagree. I’d rather they scream along with a band calling out fascism than sit quietly while the world burns.
Luckily, many venues in our area are “all ages” and attended by an eclectic audience feeling the gravity of this American moment. You will see me and my kiddos throwing our heads around at Local 506 and Cat’s Cradle in Chapel Hill or The Ritz in Raleigh. Come join in the fun—all are welcome. Recently, we caught some West Coast thrashing at The Vera Project in Seattle. These venues—their audiences and the music erupting from them—are, at once, ragged, honest, and lovely.
Punk, in all its imperfect, chaotic glory, is a reminder that another world is possible—and worth fighting for. That’s the lesson I want my kids to learn now. Because by the time they’re old enough to vote, they’ll need not only the tools to recognize tyranny but the courage to defy it.
Dr. Nathan Boucher is an associate professor of public policy, nursing, and medicine at Duke University.
ILLUSTRATION BY NICOLE PAJOR MOORE
What Are Some Under-the-Radar Items in Durham’s Budget?
BY JUSTIN LAIDLAW jlaidlaw@indyweek.com
On June 16, the Durham City Council approved $722 million for next year’s budget. Major highlights include investments in public safety, transportation, employee pay, and infrastructure projects. But in a growing metro like Durham (the budget a decade ago was $388 million), those hundreds of millions are split up nearly 100 million ways, and line items can go from grand to microscopic.
Reddit user SAFE_WALLABY228 inquires about the latter:
A lot of news organizations are posting about similar large items on the budget, but I’d love to know if there are smaller budget additions that you think citizens may be interested in as well.
City Council Salaries
I’m sure this is of interest to everyone, especially the Reddit watchdogs. City council members each make $45,560, plus $53,761 for the mayor, totaling $327,121. Since 2022, their salaries have been tied to the Durham Minimum Livable Wage; the city council just received a raise thanks to an increase from $19.58 to $21.90 per hour. City council members are not precluded from having other jobs, but voters may be put off by potential conflicts of interest and there’s only so many hours in a day.
These stories are part of our ongoing series, Ask INDY, in which INDY staffers put their expertise (and impeccable taste) to use answering your questions about navigating life in the Triangle.
Sister Cities
Next time you visit Durham Central Park, look out for the totem pole with arrows inscribed with a city name and distance. Each represents one of 10 sister cities. The program aims to maintain friendly, intercultural relationships with cities around the world and received $18,500 this year, or about 0.002562 percent of the budget.
When I was a student at Brogden Middle School, some of my classmates hosted exchange students from sister city Toyama, Japan. The program’s budget allocation is barely a raindrop in the ocean, but Durham’s shimai toshi program signals to communities around the world that Durham is a welcoming place.
Trees
Other communities may have given up on DEI, but Durham is committed to planting 1,300 trees in communities most affected by climate and economic hardship using an unspecified amount of Inflation Reduction Act funding. The city is a long way from replacing all the trees that have been cut down in service of our housing needs, but 1,300 is a start.
Reckless Roxboro
The potential two-way conversion of Roxboro and Mangum Streets is an ongoing saga with many twists and turns, but the city remains committed to the idea of reimagining the streets. The budget includes $1.2 million (0.17 percent) to continue moving the conversation down the road. Stay tuned for an update on this project from me soon.
You could spend days diving into Durham’s budget and still not completely understand what it takes to keep the city financially solvent. But if you’re a government wonk and want to learn more about how it all fits together, sign up for the Durham Neighborhood College or join a local board or commission.
How Have Local Workers Been Hit by Federal Policies?
BY LENA GELLER lgeller@indyweek.com
For this Ask INDY, we received questions about everything from wage theft to remote work trends. One question stood out as particularly timely:
How has local labor been impacted by government funding cuts— other than the Duke purge—as well as tariffs?
The Triangle’s federal workforce has been gutted. At the EPA’s Research Triangle Park campus—the agency’s largest facility—many workers, including my father, were placed on administrative leave in the spring, and leaked plans indicate as much as 75 percent of the Office of Research and Development workforce could be laid off in coming months. Meanwhile, workers at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which employs a number of Durham residents, including four federally appointed financial regulators, faced mass layoffs in April before a judge temporarily halted them, leaving employees in limbo.
Hundreds of local workers who were either directly employed by USAID or who held positions at organizations like RTI, FHI 360, and NIEHS—which rely on USAID, NIH, and other government funding—have lost their jobs. The refugee resettlement group Church World Service of Durham announced in March that it was furloughing two-thirds of its staff. A few weeks ago, Urban Ministries of Durham, which helps feed, clothe, and provide shelter for some 6,000 people each year, announced cost reduction measures, including staff layoffs,
A new Ask INDY topic is posted weekly. Send us your questions at indyweek.com/ask-indy or ask@indyweek.com.
in response to federal cuts. Pretty much every scientific and social agency across the Triangle is slashing staff as grant support evaporates, and we haven’t even touched on the new impacts of the federal budget bill that passed shortly before press time. The ripple effects spread even wider to organizations that rely on contributions from organizations that rely on federal funding. Legal Aid of North Carolina, for example, which provides legal services to low-income residents, faces potential elimination of its largest funding source—Legal Services Corporation—threatening jobs for attorneys who serve all 100 counties. Now, about those tariffs. Much of the impact is yet to come. Restaurant owners have reported surging prices for commercial equipment—one local bakery owner told me he expected to pay $10,000 to $15,000 extra for a piece of machinery. Even businesses that prioritize buying local still need to import goods that are made or processed outside the United States. These costs could certainly trickle down to workers. Restaurant owners could raise menu prices to offset price increases, which could lead to lower tips from customers. Staff could see their hours cut as owners try to run leaner operations.
As for organizing in this crisis? North Carolina isn’t exactly fertile ground for labor power. But service industry workers can join the Union of Southern Service Workers, which shows up in force to protests and strikes, helps workers file unfair labor practice complaints, and provides know-your-rights trainings. The NC chapter of the AFL-CIO has been connecting laid-off workers with resources and pressuring elected officials to act, and unions representing federal workers at EPA, the CFPB, and other agencies are fighting proposed reductions and advocating for their members. And there’s always room for new labor movements to form, whether within individual workplaces or across sectors. W
Durham
Red Wave
A Republican power grab of local elections boards across the state flipped the balance of the Durham County Board of Elections.
BY JUSTIN LAIDLAW jlaidlaw@indyweek.com
The Durham County Board of Elections is under new management.
Following an overhaul of local elections boards across the state late last month, Durham’s five-seat board of elections is now majority Republican.
On June 24, state auditor Dave Boliek promoted Republican David Boone to board chair, a position previously held by Democrat Dawn Baxton, who was reappointed to the board by the State Board of Elections along with fellow incumbent and Democrat Pamela Oxendine. Republican Jim Weaver was also reappointed, and Natalie Beauchaine, who serves as second vice chair for the Durham Republican Party, was appointed to replace outgoing board member Donald Beskind, a Democrat.
Each member will serve a two-year term once they are sworn in on July 22.
County boards of elections are responsible for overseeing local election administration, including operating voting sites and maintaining voter registration logs. Each county board is composed of two Democrats and two Republicans who are recommended by the state party chairs and appointed by the State Board of Elections.
Until recently, the governor appointed the fifth board member—so recently that the State Board of Elections website still says as much. But shortly after the 2024 elections concluded last November, Republicans in the state house passed Senate Bill 382, which stripped power over the state board away from incoming Democratic governor Josh Stein and gave it to Boliek, a Trump devotee with ties to staunch elec-
tion deniers. The bill also included myriad provisions aimed at taking power away from the governor’s office and reallocating the responsibilities to positions more favorable to Republicans.
On May 1, Boliek officially assumed power over the state elections board, appointing a 3-2 Republican majority to serve in office. And on June 24, Boliek appointed Republican board chairs to all 100 counties in the state, giving the Republican Party overwhelming power over how elections are conducted in North Carolina for the foreseeable future.
In Durham, Derek Bowens, who has served as director of elections since 2017, isn’t concerned about potential conflict within the board, even with the new political makeup.
“This Board has worked collaboratively in the best interest of Durham County voters during my tenure with the organization, regardless of political composition,” Bowens said in an email to the INDY. “I fully expect that to continue and have full confidence in this board.”
The last time the Durham County Board of Elections was led by a Republican was in 2018, when Luke Farley was appointed to the position. Farley, who is now state commissioner of labor, was an outspoken proponent of stripping election power from Stein. Less than 10 percent of registered voters in Durham County are affiliated with the Republican Party.
In a news release from the Durham County Board of Elections, Boone said, “I am honored to serve the Durham commu-
nity in this new capacity for the 20252027 term. I look forward to working with my colleagues to facilitate honest, fair, and accurate election administration in Durham County.”
Fair elections are an essential tenet of American democracy, at every level of government. In Durham, a Democratic stronghold, election integrity at the local level is rarely an issue for voters. But the insurrection on January 6, 2021, and the failed attempt by Jefferson Griffin to discard 60,000 votes in his North Carolina state Supreme Court race against Allison Riggs, have given voters more cause for concern.
“This [election integrity] is a charge for every county board of elections in North Carolina and is actually our internal motto,” Bowens wrote. “The new Board Chair, with whom I have had a tremendous relationship since he began his tenure on the Board in 2021 as a member, has maintained this perspective from day one. This has been a standard call for both Democrats and Republicans alike serving on this Board.”
Davit Melikian, vice chair of the Durham Democratic Party, agrees with Bowens.
“David Boone has been somebody that’s worked well with our party,” Melikian says, “but there’s still somebody above him. Especially with the whole board of elec-
tions now being controlled by Republicans, we’re very cautious with everything.”
Even with Boone’s reputation as someone willing to work across the aisle, members of the Durham Democrats aren’t taking any chances when it comes to fortifying Durham’s election process.
“The Riggs situation really got us on our toes to expect the unexpected from the Republican Party,” Melikian says.
Requirements for voting in North Carolina are always changing, and now that Republicans have control of all local boards of elections, the number of early voting days and polling locations could be up in the air. Despite the shift in power, Melikian says the Durham Democrats will continue to lean into its core functions—voter registration and generating voter turnout— and ensure everyone has the resources they need to vote.
“Somebody that was registered in 1999 or 2000 wasn’t required to give the same amount of information as is required now, which is one of the bases that Griffin was using,” Melikian says. “So that’s kind of our approach to it is being diligent and making sure that people are up to date with their voter registration, even if they are registered, just making sure that they have all the pieces to the puzzle. They have their proper IDs and everything like that.” W
ILLUSTRATION BY NICOLE PAJOR MOORE
Never Forget
The World Trade Center Health Program, which provides health care to some 2,000 people living in North Carolina who survived or responded to 9/11, faces a $3 billion shortfall and more than $1.2 billion in federal funding cuts.
BY JANE PORTER jporter@indyweek.com
Clayton resident Harold Delancey was working for the New York Police Department on September 11, 2001. Delancey says he is haunted by memories of the Twin Towers falling and the work he had to do around Ground Zero that day, and in the weeks afterward, as a first responder. Nearly 25 years later, he is treated for post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health issues, as well as COPD. In July 2023, Delancey had his prostate removed at WakeMed following a cancer diagnosis.
As a medically certified member of the federal World Trade Center Health Program (WTCHP), it should be easy for Delancey to receive the free coverage he’s entitled to for his treatment. But after moving to North Carolina in 2013, with 20 years of service to the NYPD under his belt, Delancey says accessing and paying for health care here has been anything but easy. And it could get even
harder for him and 9/11 survivors across the country if Congress doesn’t continue to fund the program that provides them free health care, or makes further cuts to the agencies that administer it, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Right now, the WTCHP faces a $3 billion shortfall and more than $1.2 billion in CDC cuts because of a federal restructuring of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) included in the recently passed “big beautiful” budget and reconcialiation bill.
“I got sick because I had to go to work,” Delancey says. “I didn’t have a choice in the matter. I had to show up for work.”
Delancey is one of more than 2,000 North Carolina residents who are certified and enrolled in the WTCHP, and North Carolina is fifth for the number of enrolled members across all 50 states, behind New York,
New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Florida.
Those residents include first responders like Robert Young, another former NYPD officer who now lives in Graham and has to travel up to New Jersey every year for treatment.
They include people like James Stack from Apex, a former laborer who was sent into a building in Lower Manhattan two days after the 9/11 attacks. Stack has since been diagnosed with three different kinds of cancer.
And North Carolina’s 9/11 survivors include residents like Lorraine Meehan of Apex, who watched the towers fall from her office directly across West Street.
“[These residents] need the protections of the World Trade Center Health Program, just like the people from New York,” says Michael Barasch, a 9/11 survivor and attorney whose firm, Barasch & McGarry, has recovered billions of dollars for 9/11 victims, survivors, and their families. Barasch is currently traveling up and down the East Coast, meeting with survivors to encourage them to reach out to their congressional representatives and lobbying lawmakers themselves to adequately fund the WTCHP in the upcoming federal defense spending bill this fall.
“There were people from all 50 states who responded in New York, and New Yorkers retired to all of those 50 states as well,” Barasch says. “They all promised they’d never forget. Every politician loves to say it.”
Above left: Harold Delancey, a retired New York Police Department officer Above: Delancey’s police badge, lapel pins, and a service recognition award he received for working during 9/11 PHOTOS BY ANGELICA EDWARDS
On a scorching Monday afternoon in early June, more than two dozen retired police officers, EMTs, firefighters, office workers, teachers, utility workers, and veterans are seated in the ballroom at the Renaissance hotel in North Hills. All WTCHP enrollees and their families, they’re listening to Barasch make his pitch to them about calling their congresspeople to impress upon them the importance of fully funding the program.
Barasch is describing how, five days after 9/11, Wall Street reopened, and not long after that, people came back to work and school, including to Stuyvesant High School (which was used as a morgue), New York Law School, Pace University, and some 20 elementary schools south of Canal Street, all blocks from the World Trade Center site.
On September 18, then–EPA administrator Christine Whitman publicly announced that the air in Lower Manhattan was safe to breathe, a statement that was determined to be untrue.
Following Barasch’s remarks, Lorraine Meehan tells me about her experience on 9/11. She was working as an HR manager
“Nine-eleven didn’t end on 9/11 and people continue to get sick every day.”
at 2 World Financial Center, just across the street to the west of the Twin Towers.
“I worked on the fourth floor,” Meehan says. “I heard the first plane hit. I rushed to the window facing that tower. My most clear memory was a woman, literally on fire. She was running towards [West Street]. I watched fire and EMS and … the fire department and the police pull up, people running into the building, with all their hoses and their equipment and no hesitation, chunks of the building falling down.”
Meehan says she went back to her seat and saw the second plane hit above her.
“The sky went black, and there was all this paperwork that seemed to have been shredded, it was like a snowstorm,” she says. “People screaming, and pandemonium. We were evacuated not long afterwards. We were told to wait in the marina
behind my building, and there, we watched the injured come through.”
But more than her own experiences that day, Meehan tells me she thinks of her husband, John, a federal law enforcement officer with the Department of the Interior who was deployed to recover the bodies of the dead from the rubble. John, who suffered various respiratory conditions including RADS and COPD, was enrolled in the WTCHP for over a decade before he died during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“About two years [after 9/11, John] developed symptoms from his exposure,” Meehan says. “That impact is immeasurable in somebody’s life.”
In 2010, the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act established the World Trade Center Health Program and
reauthorized the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. President Obama signed it into law in January 2011. The WTCHP, which has about 131,000 members currently enrolled in the United States, is administered through two agencies under the federal HHS: the CDC and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), a research agency within the CDC.
James Zadroga, who died at age 34 in 2006, was an NYPD officer who responded to the 9/11 attacks and developed a respiratory illness that his doctors linked to his exposure to toxic chemicals and dust at Ground Zero. He was one of Barasch’s clients.
“When they did the autopsy, they found ground glass in [Zadroga’s] lungs as well as asbestos, lead, benzene, all these known carcinogens,” Barasch says. “And that was the evidence that doctors at [NIOSH] needed, to link all these respiratory illnesses that guys were suffering from.”
Before he died, Zadroga had received some compensation from the federal government from the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, established for people—and their surviving family members— who were injured or killed in any of the 9/11 attacks, including those at the Pentagon and the downed United Airlines Flight 93.
The Victim Compensation Fund was reauthorized under the Zadroga Act and expanded to include anyone with medically certified 9/11-related health conditions, especially those developed from exposure to toxic dust and other chemicals at Ground Zero. To date, a host of illnesses, including respiratory illnesses like asthma, COPD, and rhinosinusitis, gastrointestinal issues such as GERD, mental health issues including PTSD and depression, and some 60 different types of cancers, are linked to that exposure.
Apex resident James Stack has been diagnosed with three of those types of cancers.
Two days after 9/11, Stack, a laborer, was sent into what was known as the 140 West New York Telephone Company (now the Barclay Vesey building), two blocks north of the World Trade Center site, for debris removal and cleanup.
“We were down there seven or eight months, then pulled out, and sent back again,” Stack says. He speaks in a soft voice with a heavy Irish accent.
In 2012, while working on the World Trade Center station transportation hub, Stack was injured on the job. Along with broken bones, his doctors found thyroid and kidney cancer.
“I had enough time for the Laborers’ Local 79 [union], so [I] retired,” Stack explains. He and his wife, Margaret, relocated to North Carolina, where they’ve lived in pretty good health thanks to the WTCHP—until last
Lorraine Meehan of Apex poses for a portrait with a photo of her late husband, John Meehan, who died in 2020. John Meehan, Special Agent in Charge, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Law Enforcement division, sorted through debris at ground zero following 9/11
PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS
November, when Stack was diagnosed with prostate cancer.
“If he didn’t get hurt, it would have been too late when they found the cancer,” Margaret Stack says of her husband, who is tall and uses a cane to walk. “He was in ICU, and they said we could put bones back together, but they really needed to get the cancer.”
In 2015, President Obama signed a bill reauthorizing the WTCHP and extending it for 75 years, until 2090. In 2019, following a pressure campaign from 9/11 survivors and championed by the comedian Jon Stewart, President Trump signed a bill raising the benefits for newly enrolled 9/11 responders and certified-eligible 9/11 WTCHP survivors from $25,000 to $75,000.
But this year, in the first few months of Trump’s second term, the U.S. health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and billionaire Elon Musk cut HHS’s workforce by about a quarter, or some 20,000 positions, which included a 20 percent staffing cut to the WTCHP and the termination of 16 doctors and nurses.
The bipartisan backlash was swift, and those positions were reinstated in February, only for a second round of cuts in April to eliminate another 16 staffers. Dr. John Howard, the WTCHP’s longtime leader, was terminated in the April round of cuts. He, along with the 16 staffers, were again rein-
stated following a bipartisan outcry—but only on a temporary basis.
Living outside of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut creates another layer of hardship for many 9/11 survivors. And recent cuts to NIOSH have exacerbated the issue.
Former NYPD officer Robert Young did rescue and recovery at the World Trade Center site for two weeks after 9/11, “digging up on the pile.” Then, he ran a security detail around the perimeter of the site out of Stuveysant High School. Then he was assigned to set up offices for the newly emerging Joint Terrorism Task Force.
“I was involved with it from the start to finish,” he says. “I was there when that second building fell, and didn’t leave kind of until that investigation was completely done.”
In 2008, Young moved to Graham, where he found it more difficult to access care than it was in the Tri-State area. Now, he travels to Rutgers University to receive treatment for rhinosinusitis and other conditions linked to exposure to dust and chemicals at the World Trade Center site. While not ideal, Young is OK with making the trip, and by accessing the health care up north he’s been able to avoid some of the issues that fellow 9/11 survivors living in North Carolina have had to contend with.
become more frayed.
“Mr. Musk took a blow torch to NIOSH, so I don’t know who’s in charge of it, I don’t know who to complain to anymore … about Sedgwick,” Barasch says. “I can just hope that if I keep putting pressure on them, through NIOSH or whatever’s left of it, through the World Trade Center Health Program, through my clients, that eventually [Sedgwick] will lose the contract, or they’ll make improvements. I want to see the government select a much more responsible and empathetic carrier when the Sedgwick contract is over, but right now, it’s the devil we know.”
Barasch worries that cuts to the WTCHP, a total amount of about $1.2 billion passed in the recent budget bill, will be made permanent. This is why he’s lobbying senators and congresspeople—including North Carolina senators Thom Tillis and Ted Budd—to support the WTCHP.
“What could be more bipartisan than this?” he asks. “Because let’s face it, those toxins didn’t care if you were a Democrat, Republican, New Yorker, North Carolinian, Black, or white. It affected everybody the same.”
“I’ve got five of my members in the [USOA Local] 1013 in Raleigh that are in collection,” Young says. “That’s how bad it is, OK, they are in collection from hospitals.”
Delancey, the Clayton resident and former NYPD officer, has experienced some of these issues. In 2022, the WTCHP transitioned its nationwide provider network from Logistics Health Incorporated (LHI) to MCA-Sedgwick. It has not been a smooth transition, Delancey says.
“It’s a lousy, lousy company,” Delancey says. He’s still trying to get his prostate surgery from 2023 and follow-up doctors’ visits covered. Unlike Young, he doesn’t want to travel back to New York every year to get the health care he needs.
“I moved away from New York for a reason, and I don’t really want to go back,” he says. “And it brings back a lot of memories, because, you know, the towers, and it just triggers some emotion.”
These issues aren’t unfamiliar to Barasch. Anyone in the WTCHP who isn’t living in the New York area has to go through Sedgwick for referrals, claims processing, provider network management, and member communications. NIOSH, the CDC’s worker arm, oversees the nationwide provider network for the WTCHP, and following the DOGE cuts to the CDC and NIOSH, its managing relationship with Sedgwick has
The INDY reached out to Senators Budd and Tillis for comment for this story but did not receive a response before our deadline. Even if the cuts to the program are reversed, medical inflation and new enrollees mean that the WTCHP needs to be funded at higher levels—$150 million more per year—than it has been in the past. If the program continues to be funded at current levels, Barasch says, it won’t be able to accept new patients after 2027.
“Well, I don’t think people are going to stop getting sick in 2027,” Barasch says. “I am signing up and putting into the health program over 100 new people every week, and I lose two clients a day to the 9/11 cancers. So we, the 9/11 health program, need this additional funding.”
Along with getting more eligible people into the program or care, Barasch says he’s been fighting a battle in Washington, D.C., to get WTCHP funding. There’s another chance for lawmakers to include the money in the national defense budget that’s coming up in September, if they can muster the political will to do it.
“Nine-eleven didn’t end on 9/11 and people continue to get sick every day,” Barasch says. “We need to take care of these people. We gave them a pledge never to forget that the government lied to these people, telling them the air was safe. So we owe this duty to them to provide the health program that we promised them. Let them know it’s not too late. W
Robert Young, president of the Raleigh 10-13 Association, a union composed of New York City Police Department retirees, at his home in Graham with a photo of himself working in New York PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS
Deep Sixed
In response to ballooning costs, Raleigh scrapped its Six Forks Road improvements project after a decade of work and $9 million already spent.
BY JANE PORTER jporter@indyweek.com
It was a project more than 10 years in the making, but last week, the Raleigh City Council voted unanimously to scrap planned improvements to the Six Forks Road corridor.
Two successful municipal transportation bonds—one on voters’ ballots in 2013 and one in 2017—were supposed to have paid for the improvements that, in 2020, were given a price tag of $31.3 million.
But by 2024, the project’s budget had ballooned to $119 million, and after spending the last year attempting to re-scope the project, the council ultimately decided at its July 1 meeting that it is unfeasible. The city already spent more than $9 million on the project, according to city staff.
“This was a corridor project of extreme interest but we could now see the escalation in cost, which makes it just impractical, or impossible, to do,” said first-term council member Mitchell Silver from District A, where the project was planned.
In 2012, the City of Raleigh kicked off a study around how to best improve the corridor, which runs through Raleigh’s bustling Midtown and North Hills district, and sees some 50,000 car trips each day.
The corridor study took six years to complete, and was adopted in 2018 following design recommendations and community engagement.
The design and community engagement phases—based on the $31.3 million budget—didn’t start until spring 2020 and
lasted into 2021. The final designs proposed establishing a six-lane, median-divided street section between Rowan Street to the south and Lynn Road to the north, with separated bicycle and pedestrian lanes on each side and protected intersection designs to improve crossing safety, as well as street lighting, landscaping, stormwater enhancements, and improved transit stops.
But “market escalation for both construction and real estate has had a significant impact on the estimated costs of this project,” city officials wrote in last week’s meeting agenda. Staff tried to salvage the project, with $14.6 million reallocated to the project in 2023 under the city’s Capital Improvement Program. The city also secured an additional $14 million in federal funds.
In March, city staff told the council that the re-scoped project had grown to a cost of $93.5 million, an increase of $37.4 million, or 67 percent, over the new planned budget, and city officials started assessing “all options” for the corridor due to the “staggering change,” according to the agenda materials.
Now, the funds that were originally allocated for the project will be redirected to make spot improvements for safety and infrastructure along the corridor, including closing a 500-foot sidewalk gap in front of Carroll Middle School and adding a multimodal bridge connecting communities in the Midtown area to the city’s greenway system.
“I know this is incredibly frustrating for
everyone,” said Raleigh mayor Janet Cowell. “And I guess I would also want to highlight, we’ve talked a lot about process, and it is extremely frustrating to hear it took six years for a corridor study, years of design. Just, you know, what are the ways we can do these things more efficiently?”
At-large council member Jonathan Lambert-Melton proposed using the bulk of the funds that would have gone to the corridor improvements for other smaller improvements in District A.
“I won’t, you know, beat a dead horse. This is disappointing to have this in front of us again, but dealing in the reality of the situation, I would like for us to do the sidewalk [extension] in front of Carroll Middle School,” he said. He added that he’d like to see signalized pedestrian crossings at Northbrook and Northwood Drives, a new signal at North Glen Drive, intersection improvements at Millbrook Road, and the multimodal bridge.
“I think that at least addresses the safety and connectivity concerns in the corridor,” he said. “On the other possible funding considerations, I think if we can keep some of this money in the area, then that makes a lot of sense, since it’s supposed to be going here.”
The rest of the money will go to completing improvements to Lake Wheeler Road
from South Saunders Street to Maywood Avenue and widening Barwell Road from Rock Quarry Road to Berkeley Lake Road.
While city officials say the “market environment” especially post-pandemic is to blame for the ballooning cost of the project, some residents say the council killing the project raises accountability issues with the stewardship of money that was approved for the project in two separate municipal bond referenda.
Tim Canning lives a block off of Six Forks Road and has long been a supporter of the project. He says he’s not surprised that the council scrapped it, but he’s “really ticked off that [city council and staff] don’t take the time to explain to the voters who voted in good faith for this.”
Voters approved $1.8 million to initiate design for the project in Raleigh’s 2013 transportation bond, and an additional $29.5 million was approved in the city’s 2017 transportation bond to bring the project to completion.
“Not only have they taken this money and done whatever they wanted with it, but they ignore the will of the people, the vote,” Canning says. “That was, overwhelmingly, ‘We want this project done,’ and they’ve never explained that—the city or council has never explained to the [residents] what is really going on.” W
ILLUSTRATION BY NICOLE PAJOR MOORE
Chapel Hill
A Council Divided
The Chapel Hill council split 5-4 over whether to raise taxes at the recommendation of an outgoing town manager. That divide is likely to show up in municipal elections this fall for incumbents and challengers alike.
BY CHASE PELLEGRINI DE PAUR chase@indyweek.com
At the end of a three-hour budget work session on June 4, Chapel Hill Town Council members looked just about ready to throw in the towel.
Adam Searing and Karen Stegman were slumped in their chairs. Camille Berry snapped at mayor Jess Anderson for seemingly interrupting another council member’s speaking time. And Melissa McCullough, suffering from a poorly timed bout of laryngitis, could only painfully whisper (“Is the microphone on? Do you want to write it down and someone else will read it?” others asked her).
Finally, in the culmination of a months-long process, a slim majority gave the informal go-ahead on a $164 million budget funded by another tax increase for the town, the fifth hike in as many years.
Voting yes: Berry, McCullough, Paris Miller-Foushee,
Theo Nollert, and Elizabeth Sharp. Voting no: Anderson, Searing, Stegman and Amy Ryan.
The split, and the exasperation around the process, was the result of a pressure cooker of a year with a brutal county-wide tax revaluation, a federal firing clusterfuck, a just-completed search for a new town manager, and a looming November municipal election that will see the mayor and half the council up for reelection.
“We are catching up on long deferred costs, many of which have caught up with us because we adopted revenue neutral rates in the last decade,” Nollert said at a May meeting. “That was a mistake. We shouldn’t have done it, but we did, and we have to deal with the consequences now.”
Anderson, one of the four members who opposed the
budget, said that the tax rate was too high.
“I’m deeply concerned that we are putting an extra burden on our residents at a time of uncertainty,” she said at a June 18 meeting to formally adopt the budget, noting the federal cuts that have hit this part of North Carolina particularly hard. “We are in for a few more bumpy years, at least, and we can’t make up for all the cuts that we’re experiencing by raising property taxes on people.”
A Triangle mayor voting against her council’s budget is uncommon, but not unheard of. Over in Durham, former mayor Elaine O’Neal voting against the 2023 budget was not the most dramatic occurrence on that dysfunctional council.
The economic problems that burdened this year’s council are not going anywhere, so opinions over the tax rate may serve as a dividing line for incumbents and challengers alike in this fall’s municipal election.
Anderson has already announced her reelection bid, and her only declared opponent is Chris Suttle, a pirate portrayer and cannabis lobbyist who decided to run for mayor after being hit by a town bus. Without a challenger from within the town’s political establishment, Anderson is unlikely to have a difficult campaign.
Four council seats are up for election. Two are wide open, as Searing and Stegman announced this month that they’re not running. Miller-Foushee is defending her seat, and Berry has not announced a decision and did not respond to a request for comment from INDY (during a recent council meeting she noted that she has been behind on responding to budget-related emails).
Planning commission member Wes McMahon and consultant Erik Valera (who fell just about 550 votes short of winning a seat in 2023) have declared their candidacies, and one or two other names have been buzzing across lips for months (the filing period runs from July 7-18).
Part of Anderson’s budget nay vote can be chalked up to a difference in approach between her and interim town manager Mary Jane Nirdlinger.
“Knowing that we were getting a new manager in, I was kind of hoping we could wait on a big tax increase to see the new energy and new ideas and the vast, vast experience that our new manager [Ted Voorhees] has,” Anderson tells INDY after the vote, referring to Nirdlinger’s just-hired successor. “I did have some hope that we could let him take a crack at leadership and bring in a new perspective.”
The budget is based on many estimates because the town doesn’t know exactly how much money it will raise from revenue streams like sales tax. Anderson clarified that she supported the staff pay increase, but thought that the town could have started with a lower property tax rate based on rosier revenue predictions, and then raised taxes later if those didn’t materialize.
PHOTOS VIA THE TOWN OF CHAPEL HILL, ILLUSTRATION BY NICOLE PAJOR MOORE
THE BUDGET, BY THE NUMBERS
• The property tax rate is set at 50¢ per $100 of value. That is, of course, on top of the county’s recently adopted 63.83¢ per $100 as well as the 14.79¢ special school district tax that helps make Chapel Hill-Carrboro an appealing place for wealthy people to live.
• Roughly 70 percent of the town’s budget will go to personnel. That sounds pretty huge, but a town really is just a large service company that does things like building parking garages downtown and enforcing the law.
• The 50¢ rate is 5.8¢ higher than the revenue neutral rate, which would have generated the same amount of revenue for the town as last year.
• Of that increase above revenue neutral, the largest single item in the increase is 2.2¢ to go to a 5 percent pay increase for town staff
Nirdlinger, a former deputy manager, has been in the interim role since Chris Blue retired early this year. At the time of his departure, municipal microblog Triangle Blog Blog noted that “Staff only learned of his departure shortly before the public announcement. It raises our spidey senses!”
While the council and mayor ultimately vote on the budget, the manager wields some quiet power during the process. Council members are not usually finance experts, so the town staff presents suggestions and recommendations for the council to consider.
Early on in this year’s budget process, council member Sharp asked Nirdlinger to bring a more detailed explanation of the budget levers that the council could play with, especially if they were to consider a cutback in services in order to keep taxes lower.
are meant to be part-time jobs, but Hemminger was known for a hands-on full-time approach. She also had more of a business background, while Anderson is literally a policy professor at UNC Chapel Hill.
A manager rarely pontificates like the electeds, but their deep involvement in the budget makes them almost like a tenth person on the dais through the process. Five members eventually agreed on Nirdlinger’s recommended tax rate, but in closed sessions through the spring the council was also weighing options for her replacement.
The path from deputy manager to interim manager to full-time manager is well-trodden. Durham’s current city and county managers were both deputies who graduated from interim to fulltime. The just-announced Chapel-Hill Carrboro schools superintendent was also an elevated deputy.
AZ ROC 344027,
1035795,
HIC.0671520, FL CBC056678, IA C127230, ID RCE-51604, LA 559544, MA 176447, MD MHIC111225, MI 262300173, 262300318, 262300328, 262300329, 262300330, 262300331, MN IR731804, MT 226192, ND 47304, NE 50145-22, 50145-23, NJ 13VH09953900, NM 408693, NV 86990, NY H-19114, H-52229, OR 218294, PA 179643, 069383, RI GC-41354, TN 10981, UT 10783658-5501, VA 2705169445, WA LEAFFNW822JZ, WV WV056912.
“I would very much like to have those trade-offs explicitly detailed for us,” Sharp said at the May 7 meeting. “I very much want us to know specifically what that means, and that we not just understand that as a vague concept of trade-offs.”
To keep the tax rate low, some council members considered a smaller staff pay increase and cuts to the $36 million transit fund, which helps power the fare-free socialist bus system that the town shares with its conjoined sibling Carrboro and UNC Chapel Hill. Both items ultimately received full funding.
The town budget process has a steep learning curve, and the current council is stocked with relative newcomers. While Anderson was the endorsed heir to former mayor Pam Hemminger, who ruled for eight years, they certainly have different mayoral styles. North Carolina mayoralties
It’s not clear if Nirdlinger even wanted the full-time role because the hiring process is one of the few official actions that the council can carry out behind closed doors. At the council’s June 25 meeting, Nirdlinger gave a brief and slight smile as town hall applauded her for her service and welcomed her full-time successor, Voorhees.
Voorhees is perhaps more prepared for some council herding and wrangling thanks to his experience in Wilmington, Fayetteville, Orange County, Virginia, and even Durham (author’s note: in 2008, the INDY criticized Voorhees for his response to a drought, but we are willing to give him another shot given 17 years have passed).
“I pledge to you that I will do my best to serve with empathy and to practice deep listening during my first several months here,” Voorhees told the council once he was announced.
“Have a great vacation.” W
company enforcing the
F
FIZZWERKS
618 Ramseur St #103, Durham
111 W Main St, Durham
Points of Departure
Three new Durham bars do things a little bit differently.
BY LENA GELLER lgeller@indyweek.com
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Before opening their doors, the owners of three new Durham bars considered the obvious route, then said: What if we didn’t?
Ragen Lowek and Andy Pruss saw the local craft beer scene frothing and opened a seltzer brewery instead. Mike Douglass spent years perfecting daiquiri recipes, then launched a downtown lounge that doesn’t serve them—yet. The Ibarra brothers— whose family has been building an empire of Mexican restaurants across the Triangle for over 30 years—just went French.
Why the departures? Each owner paid attention to what their specific locations called for and where trends were heading. Here’s how those bets are playing out at Fizzwerks, Primrose, and The Lenny.
Fizzwerks
Inside a former tile factory on the fringe of downtown Durham’s Government Services District, Fizzwerks is coded as a typical brewery: there’s trivia on Wednesdays, a shuffleboard table, exposed ductwork.
But the keg lines aren’t primarily running IPAs. They’re pumping alcoholic seltzer, brewed in-house with seasonal fruits.
“We couldn’t open another brewery without it being differentiated in some way because of, like, how many breweries there are here,” says Andy Pruss, who owns the spot with his wife, Ragen Lowek. “We saw gaps in what people were doing and thought we could fill in those gaps and do it a little better.”
Fizzwerks opened in March on Ramseur Street. Between the tables inside and on the rooftop deck, it seats 200, joining the
area’s lineup of spots like Ponysaurus and Mezcalito that have become go-tos for large groups who can walk in and find a place to sit without a reservation.
The rotating seltzer flavors read like a farmers’ market haul: peach (using produce sourced from an orchard two hours south), melon mint (made with cantaloupes that accidentally sprouted in the duo’s home garden), blackberry-plum. Fizzwerks also brews hard root beer, a Delta-9 drink, and several nonalcoholic seltzers, including a ginger beer that just about punches you in the face. There are also a few local beers and an espresso martini on tap, and some standard domestic and imported cans of beer.
The food matches the light, fresh ethos of the drinks: dips (hummus, whipped ricotta and feta, labneh, roasted eggplant) served with regular or gluten-free bread; a chicken sandwich and a sloppy joe, both available with soy protein substitutes; several salads; and flatbreads.
“The theme for us, when we were building out this idea, was like, ‘You just got back from hiking, you want to have a beer, but you don’t want to be stuffed,’” Pruss says.
It’s a tightly executed vision. Pruss and Lowek are industry veterans who, in a quintessential food industry love story, met while working at Aramark 21 years ago. They’ve spent their careers bouncing around different gigs as “puddle jumpers, trying to get the biggest splash,” Pruss says. Lowek worked at coffee shops in the Philadelphia airport and opened a coffee shop in that city; Pruss
555 S Mangum St Floor 11, Durham PRIMROSE
managed restaurants on the Las Vegas strip and helmed a Vegas restaurateur’s New York expansion; both did catering stints at food service giants like Levy Restaurants.
Don’t mistake the healthful menu at Fizzwerks for asceticism. Pruss, who sports the textbook chef look of bald head and tattoo sleeves, loves burgers—it’s a bit of a sacrifice not having them on the menu, he says, but one he made for brand consistency. And some comfort foods did make their way on: pickle chips, “Chickie tendies,” and pierogi made fresh daily using a family recipe.
In its first few months of business, Fizzwerks has cultivated a Tuesday night Dungeons and Dragons crowd and seen the rooftop deck packed for DJ nights and private events. The ongoing challenge is getting locals to venture outside of their regular haunts, the couple says. Foot traffic tends to flow toward established spots.
“We actually get more people from Raleigh, because they’ll search for something on Google and we’ll pop up,” Pruss says.
With plans to collaborate with neighboring businesses on branding the district and events in the works, they’re betting on the long game.
Primrose
The wall art has an uncanny digital gloss: Taylor Swift is depicted as the “Mona Lisa,” Michael Jackson and Britney Spears as “American Gothic,” Walter White as Vincent
van Gogh’s “Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat.” Fake flowers hang from the ceiling. There are chartreuse accent walls and at least three different floral wallpaper patterns. The lampshades have fringe. Neon signs, including a flat image of a marble bust wearing light-up sunglasses and a cursive “We Drink and We Don’t Judge” slogan, trim the space. One bathroom is pink down to the toilet seat. The other features an ornate floor-to-ceiling mirror angled so you can see your whole body at all times.
Owner Mike Douglass estimates that about half of customers come to Primrose to drink and half come purely to take photos and leave.
“Durham is known for art and food,” Douglass says. “If you can create a beautiful piece of art, people are going to cherish it, whereas other places they’d probably just walk right by.”
Primrose opened in April on Main Street. The drinks, cocktails that lean sweet, share the space’s kitschy, internet-inflected sensibilities. “Becky with the Good Pear,” a reference to a Beyoncé song about cheating, blends pear vodka with vanilla and cinnamon. “Sippin’ on Some Sizzurp” nods to an early 2000s hip-hop classic about purple drank, though the syrup in question here is lavender simple, not cough.
It’s not quite the bar that Douglass originally envisioned. His journey to bar ownership started with teenage stubbornness: a young Douglass begged for years to try his great-aunt Flossie’s famous daiquiri, to no
THE LENNY
Left to right: Offerings from Fizzwerks, Primrose, and The Lenny PHOTOS BY LENA GELLER
avail. At age 20, he recalls, he argued that if you counted his time in the womb, technically he’d been on the planet 21 years and was of legal drinking age; Flossie still said no.
Years later, recipe finally in hand, Douglass started tinkering with flavor variations, showing up to parties and game nights with test batches and stacks of rating cards. In 2018, he met Darryl Coleman, who had extensive event planning experience. The pair began to plot a frozen daiquiri bar.
But COVID hit as they were still scouting locations. Douglass, who has no previous food industry experience, kept his job in finance. When he and Coleman finally found their Main Street location, which previously housed an architecture firm, at the end of 2023, the concept had evolved from daiquiri bar to speakeasy to what it is now. Part of the issue was seasonality.
“The longevity of something that’s really more popular during the summer was not going to be sustainable,” says Douglass of the planned daiquiri focus.
The location also influenced the pivot— with lots of passersby, the owners wanted something that would stop people in their tracks. They hired an interior designer with bartending experience who turned their vision of something “beautiful and postable” into a maximalist wonderland.
“We wanted something that you could post online,” Douglass says. “Right now, we’re in an age of social media and things like that. The prime example of that is ‘I want something that I can post on my page that’s going to have the beautiful background, the beautiful this, the beautiful that.’”
Douglass still pays homage to his greataunt on the menu with “Violets for Aunt Flossie,” a floral cocktail with gin, crème de violette, and fresh lemon. The name Primrose—a flower that, like a bar, blooms in low light—stuck through the bar’s respective concept changes.
As for the famous daiquiri that started it all? “I haven’t received her blessing to add her recipe to the menu,” Douglass says. “So I honored her with a cocktail for now and I’ll make it a seasonal drink soon.”
The Lenny
From The Lenny’s rooftop roost, you can see Duke Chapel on the horizon, Durham Bulls Athletic Park spread out immediately below, and, on game nights, fireworks detonating just beyond the railing.
“It feels like you can reach out and grab one,” Angel Hernandez Gomez, the restaurant’s events manager, says of the fireworks. The Lenny was conceived after the own-
ers of 555 Mangum approached Joel and Charlie Ibarra about creating a restaurant concept for their towering office building’s crown jewel space. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Charlie says, and he and Joel—who, between the two of them, run Raleigh’s acclaimed Jose and Sons and Cuya Cocina Latina (formerly Cortez) and have a stake in spots like Chido Taco and La Rancherita—knew they wanted to do something different.
“We didn’t want to do Mexican again,” Charlie says. “We were thinking about the baseball. I was like, dude, what’s more American than baseball?”
But the dramatic setting also demanded something more than a simple American sports bar. The brothers ultimately landed on what Charlie describes as a contemporary French brasserie with “rock ‘n’ roll Americana and global touches.” The restaurant takes its name from Lenny Kravitz, the musician known for blending rock and funk with other genres.
“Sort of like how a rock ’n’ roll artist can wear a leather jacket one day and then another day throw on a mink coat—we were like, let’s not stick to one specific thing,” Charlie says.
That philosophy comes to life through the restaurant’s team: French chef Lotfi Ouaazizi, whose restaurant experience spans the European continent; Mexican Spanish chef Manny Rosales, who spent 16 years working in restaurants in New York City; and Hernandez Gomez, a fixture in the Durham bar scene who also owns his own private event bar service.
The bar, which smells of vanilla smoke and dehydrating oranges, features a wine program heavy on French varietals and craft cocktails inspired by the view. When it comes to the food, Ouaazizi says he channels the dexterity of the restaurant’s namesake.
“He’s crazy artistic,” he says of Kravitz. “It’s not just music—he’s doing modeling too, he does design. He’s really a complex guy.”
Bar snacks and small plates include a raw bar with oysters and crab claws, truffle Gruyère croquettes, patatas bravas, and panzanella salad. Mains, which range from lamb chop ratatouille to grilled hanger steak, are abundant in elements: the summer fettuccine—with pea pesto, zucchini, mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes, edible flowers, and microgreens—presents as though someone cupped their hands around a garden bed and gently transferred it onto a plate.
That expansive spirit extends to the clientele. On a given night, Durham Bulls fans decked out in merch might drink alongside newlyweds still in their courthouse attire, while DPAC-goers mingle with families and office workers from the building below. W
Triangle residents know the sight well: stars bearing the INDY logo lining walls, windows and websites of local businesses. For two decades, readers have identified their favorite restaurants, bookstores, dentists, elected officials and more in our annual INDY BEST OF THE TRIANGLE readers' choice awards.
In this section, you’ll find the winners for Durham County — a roundup of so many of the people, places, and organizations that make the Bull City special. Whether you’re deciding where to eat dinner, where to see art, or where to take your car for a tune-up, our readers’ top picks have you covered. We hope you’ll spend some time perusing them all.
WINNERS!
Thanks to everyone who nominated their favorites and congratulations to all of the finalists, who will receive our coveted star decal and a poster to display. Wake County winners were announced back in April (find them online if you missed it) and next up we’ll share your picks for Orange and Chatham Counties. And stay tuned for a special print edition in December rounding up the BEST of the BEST across the Triangle.
FOOD & BEVERAGE
Be S t Al c oholi c c o c ktail S
The Velvet Hippo
Runners up: Alley Twenty Six, Kingfisher
Be S t Bagel
Isaac's Bagels
Runners up: Monuts, Everything Bagels
Be S t Bakery
Guglhupf Bakery & Restaurant
Runners up: Loaf, Ninth Street Bakery
Be S t Barbe c ue
Q Shack
Runners up: Picnic, QueDogs
BEST Beer Retail S tore
Beer Study
Runners up: Durham Beer Garden, Growler Grlz
BEST Bi S c uit S RISE
Runners up: Monuts, Bojangles
BEST Brewery (BREWED LO c ALLY)
Ponysaurus
Runners up: Fullsteam, Durty Bull
BEST Brun c h Re S taurant
Guglhupf Bakery & Restaurant
Runners up: Vin Rouge, Grub
BEST Hot Dog
QueDogs
Runners up: Kings, Alley Twenty Six, Dain's Place
BEST Burger
Bull City Burger
Runners up: Queen Burger, Alley Twenty Six
Be S t c atering
Dames Chicken & Waffles
Runners up: Succotash, Isaac’s Bagels
BEST c heap Eat S
Cosmic Cantina
Runners up: Queeny's, Dain's Place
BEST c hine S e Re S taurant
Shanghai
Runners up: Happy China, Hong Kong
BEST c offee S hop
Cocoa Cinnamon
Runners up: Joe Van Gogh, Bean Traders
BEST De SS ert S
The Parlour
Runners up: Guglhupf, Sweets by Shayda
BEST Draft S ele c tion
Beer Study
Runners up: Growler Grlz, DSSOLVR
BEST Ethni c Gro c ery S tore
Li Ming's
Runners up: Compare Foods, Al Taiba
BEST Food Tru c k
Chirba Chirba
Runners up: Lao Lao Food Truck, Gussy's Food Truck
BEST Indian Re S taurant
Viceroy
Runners up: Cheeni, Anjappar Chettinad Indian
BEST Italian Re S taurant
Gocciolina
Runners up: Mother and Son's, Cucciolo Osteria
BEST Japane S e Re S taurant
M Sushi
Runners up: Dashi, M Tempura
BEST Late Night Meal (PaS t 10 p.m.)
Queeny's
Runners up: Cosmic Cantina, Alley Twenty Six
BEST Mexi c an Re S taurant
Mezcalito
Runners up: La Vaquita, Fonda Lupita
BEST Neighborhood Bar
The Velvet Hippo
Runners up: Growler Grlz, Queeny’s
BEST New Re S taurant
(within 12 month S)
QueDogs
Runners up: Aaktun Coffee- Restaurant and Bar, Anjappar Chettinad Indian
BEST Non-Al c oholi c Drink S (not coffee)
The Velvet Hippo
Runners up: Alley Twenty Six, Da Kine’s Kava
BEST Pizza
Pizzeria Toro
Runners up: Hutchins Garage, Tomato Jake's
BEST Wine Retail S tore
Wine Authorities
Runners up: LouElla Wine Beer & Beverage, Hope Valley Wine
BEST S eafood
SaltBox Seafood Joint
Runners up: M Sushi, Locals Seafood
BEST S mall Plate S /Tapa S
Mateo
Runners up: Juju Durham, Little Bull
BEST S outhern Food
Succotash
Runners up: It's a Southern Thing, Grub
BEST S u S hi
M Sushi
Runners up: Shiki Sushi, Sake Bomb
BEST Thai Re S taurant
Thai Cafe
Runners up: Thaiangle, Thai on Main
BEST Vegetarian Eatery
Pure Soul
Runners up: Viceroy, Banu Vegan
BEST Wine Li S t
LouElla Wine Bar
Runners up: Killer Queen, Delafia
BEST Wing S
Heavenly Buffaloes
Runners up: The House Restaurant, Tomato Jake's Pizzeria
PLAc ES
BEST Wedding/Event Venue
Museum of Life and Science
Runners-up: Duke Chapel, Bay 7
BEST Al c ohol-Free Venue
Durham Farmer's Market
Runners-up: The Scrap Exchange Gallery, Duke Chapel
BEST ARBORETUM OR GARDEN
Sarah P. Duke Gardens
BEST Bike Trail
American Tobacco
Runner-up: Ellerbee Creek
BEST c o-Working S pa c e
Durham County Main Library
Runners-up: Cocoa Cinnamon Lakewood, American Underground
BEST Dan c e Venue
The Fruit
Runners-up: The Velvet Hippo, Pinhook
BEST Golf c our S e
Washington Duke Inn & Golf Club
Runners-up: Hillandale, Treyburn CC
BEST Park
West Point on the Eno
Runners-up: Durham Central Park, Duke Park
BEST Hotel
Washington Duke Inn & Golf Club
Runners-up: Durham Hotel, 21c Museum Hotel
BEST Hotel Lounge
Rooftop at Durham Hotel
Runners-up: Washington Duke Inn, Unscripted
BEST Karaoke Pla c e/Event
Pinhook
Runners-up: Ruby’s, The House Restaurant
BEST Pla c e to take a Fir S t Date
Duke Gardens
Runners-up: The Velvet Hippo, Growler Grlz
BEST Pla c e To Take An Out-of-Towner
Duke Gardens
Runners-up: Durham Bulls Game, The Velvet Hippo
BEST Pla c e to People Wat c h
Durham Farmers Market
Runners-up: Downtown Durham, American Tobacco Campus
BEST S port S Bar
Bull McCabe's
Runners-up: The Boot Room, Durham Beer Garden
BEST S ummer c amp
Schoolhouse of Wonder
Runners-up: Carolina Friends School, Piedmont Wildlife Center
BEST Trivia Bar/Event
Hammered Trivia at Durty Bull
Runners-up: Tomato Jake's, Growler Grlz
BEST Pre S c hool/ Early Edu c ation Program
Schoolhouse of Wonder
Runners-up: Carolina Friends School, First Environments Early Learning Center
BEST c hef
PEOPLE & MIS c .
Carrie Schleiffer - Alley Twenty Six
Runners-up: Ricky Moore - Saltbox Seafood Joint, Oscar Diaz - Little Bull et al
BEST DJ
DJ Ayo VIP
Runners-up: DJ RNB, Jorden the DJ
BEST Draft- S linger
Tom Fisher - Queenys
Runners-up: Bear Bennett - Growler Grlz, Heather Atkins - DSSOLVR
BEST Mixologi S t
Will Swart-Alley Twenty Six
Runners-up: Leslie Matista - The Velvet Hippo, Elise at Club Era
BEST Lo c al A c tivi S t Group
Bike Durham
Runners-up: NC Triangle Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Durham Association of Educators
BEST Non-Profit TROSA
Runners-up: Independent Animal Rescue, Hope Animal Rescue
BEST Kid S Non-Profit
Emily K Center (Emily Krzyzewski Center)
Runners-up: Schoolhouse of Wonder, Piedmont Wildlife Center
BEST Rea S on to Love Durham c ounty
Community
Runners-up: Diversity, Nida Allam
BEST Lo c al Band
Sylvan Esso
Runners-up: Bangzz, Zealotrous
BEST Lo c al Influen c er
Naomi Dix
Runners-up: Bull City Political Nerd, Lynn MagikCraft Swain
BEST Politi c ian
Nida Allam
Runners-up: Mayor Leo Williams, Nate Baker
BEST Rea S on to Leave Durham c ounty
Housing prices
Runners-up: to vote in a swing electoral district, Crime
Be S t U S e of Publi c Money
Durham Public Schools
Runners-up: HEART Program, Durham County Library
Bigge S t Wa S te of Publi c Money
Charter Schools & Private School
Tuition Vouchers from the GA
Runners-up: Sheriff's Training Facility, Tesla Charging Stations
HEALTH
Be S t Barber S hop
Rock Paper Scissors
Runners-up: Great clips (homestead), Dennis BEST Mens Hair Salon
Be S t c hild c are
Schoolhouse of Wonder
Runners-up: Bright Horizons RTP, KIN Childcare
Be S t c hiropra c ti c Pra c ti c e
Carolina Pain & Performance
Runners-up: Precision Chiropractic - Dr. David Martin, Complete Chiropractic Sports & Wellness
Be S t Dental Pra c ti c e
Durham Pediatric Dentistry and Orthodontics
Runners-up: Bull City Smiles, Sunrise Dental Renaissance Parkway
Be S t Dermatologi c al Pra c ti c e
Triangle Dermatology
Runners-up: Duke Dermatology, Regional Dermatology
Be S t Gym
Duke Health and Fitness Center
Runners-up: YMCA Lakewood, Courage Fitness Durham
Be S t Hair S alon
Rock Paper Scissors
Runners-up: H2O Hair Salon And Spa, Culture Hair Studio
Be S t Holi S ti c Medi c ine
Duke Integrative Medicine
Runners-up: Magiccraft Bull city Magic, Meridian Health Solutions
Be S t Ma SS age Therapi S t
Hayley at Auroraflow
Runners-up: Michael Barriskill- Mindful Massage, Graham Wolfson Bull City Pilates and Massage
Be S t Pediatri c Pra c ti c e
Duke Pediatric Primary Care
Runners-up: Regional Pediatrics, UNC Pediatrics at Southpoint
Be S t Phy S i c al Therapy Pra c ti c e
Bull City Physical Therapy
Runners-up: The Obstacle Doc, Bull City PT
Be S t S pa
Blue Water Spa Brier Creek
Runners-up: Auroraflow, H2O Hair Salon And Spa
Be S t Dog Veterinary Pra c ti c e
Eno Animal Hospital
Runners-up: Urban Tails Veterinary Hospital, Southpoint Animal Hospital
Be S t c at Veterinarian
Eno Animal Hospital
Runners-up: Urban Tails Veterinary Hospital, Southpoint Veterinary Hospital
Be S t Women' S Health Pra c ti c e
Chapel Hill OBGYN
Runners-up: Durham Women's Clinic, Waypoint Counseling & Maternal Wellness
Be S t Yoga S tudio
Blue Point
Runners-up: Virge Yoga, The Yoga District
BUSINESSES
BEST Attorney
Law Offices of James Scott Farrin
Runners-up: Payne Family Law & Mediation- PA, Nicholson Pham
BEST Auto Me c hani c Wasp Automotive
Runners-up: Massey Brothers Automotive, Lonnie's University Auto Center
BEST c BD/Head S hop
MagikCraft Bull City Magic
Runners-up: Carolina Hemp Hut, Sherlocks Glass & Dispensary
BEST c lothing c on S ignment
Rumors
Runners-up: Scrap Thrift, Plato's Closet
BEST Dan c e S tudio
Ninth Street Dance
Runners-up: Fred Astaire Dance Studio, Davis Dance Company
BEST Dog Boarding
Eno Animal Hospital
Runners-up: Camp Bow Wow, The Pet Wagon
BEST Dog Grooming
Elliotte's Pet Spa
Runners-up: Eno Animal Hospital, Woof Gang
BEST Dog Training
Pawsitive Empowerment
Runners-up: Whole Dog Institute, Coneflower Canines
BEST Dog Walking
Kate's Critter Care
BEST Dog S itting
Go Dog
Runners-up: Kate's Critter Care, Bull City Pet Sitter
BEST Ele c tri c ian
Dynamic Electric (Sarah Fulcher)
Runners-up: Streamline Services, Obsidian Electric LLC
BEST Flori S t
Ninth Street Flowers
Runners-up: Bowerbird Flowers, Covenant Creations Flowers
BEST Game S tore
Atomic Empire
Runner-up: Guildhall games
BEST HVA c c ompany
Alternative Aire
Runners-up: Streamline Services, Comfort Monster Heating & Air
Be S t In S uran c e c ompany
Mike Embree Insurance Agency
BEST Jeweler/Jewelry S tore Jewelsmith
Runners-up: Hamilton Hill, John David Jewelers
BEST Land S c aper
TROSA Lawn Care
Runners-up: Agape Lawn Co., Bland Landscaping
BEST Lo c al Book S tore
Regulator Bookshop
Runners-up: Golden Fig Books, Letters Co-op
BEST Men' S c othing S tore
Scrap Thrift
Runners-up: Jos A Bank, Ascend Collection
BEST New Bu S ine SS (WITHIN 12 MONTHS)
Aaktun Coffee- Restaurant and Bar
Runners-up: Daughters Coffee and Books, Club Era
BEST Painter S
Zarazua Painting
Runners-up: Hansell Painting, Brush Up Painting
BEST Real E S tate c ompany
Inhabit Real Estate
Runners-up: Fathom Realty, Jason Dalton & Associates
BEST Realtor (INDIVIDUAL'S NAME)
Dara Shain
Runners-up: Marie Brockenbrough, Jarrett Jost
BEST Pla c e to Buy Lo c ally
Made c raft S /Art
Durham Farmers Craft Market
Runners-up: Cecy's, The Artisan Market at 305
BEST Vintage S tore
TROSA Thrift Store
Runners-up: Gibson Girl, Durham Vintage Collective
BEST Women' S c lothing S tore
Scrap Thrift
Runners-up: Vert & Vogue, Rose & Lee
indy BeSt of the Triangle 2025: Durham county
ARTS
Be S t Art Gallery (ART FOR SALE)
Durham Art Guild
Runners-up: 5 Points Gallery, The Artisan Market at 305
Be S t Art Mu S eum
Nasher Museum of Art
Runners-up: 21 C, Historic Tuba Collection
Be S t S c ien c e/Hi S tory Mu S eum
Museum of Life and Science
Runners-up: Museum of Durham History, Vincent and Ethel Simonetti Historic Tuba Collection
Be S t c omedy c lub/Event
Mettlesome
Runners-up: Durty Bull, The Monti
Be S t Theatre c ompany
Durham Regional Theatre
Runners-up: Bulldog Ensemble Theater, Redbird Theatre Company
Be S t Mu S i c Fe S tival
Festival for the Eno
Runners-up: Biscuits and Banjos, Slingshot
Be S t Drag S how/Event
Vivica C. Coxx Music Bingo at The Velvet Hippo
Runners-up: Club Era House Cast, Cult Your Nights
Be S t Ele c troni c c on c ert Venue
The Fruit
Runners-up: Motorco, Rubies at Five Points
Be S t Unplugged c on c ert Venue
Pinhook
Runners-up: The Fruit, Sharp 9
Be S t Film Theatre Venue/ Event
Carolina Theatre
Runners-up: Carolina Theatre-Full Frame Film Festival, Shadowbox Studio
Be S t Lo c al/Regional Pod c a S t Embodied
Runners-up: Artist Soapbox, Scene on Radio
Be S t Mural
Pauli Murray
Runners-up: DSSOLVR, Celebrate by Michael Brown (108 E. Main St.)
Be S t Radio S tation WUNC
Runners-up: WXDU, That Station
Pork Adobo at the Filipino Express
Purple treats, a free Bible, and an addictive lunch combo at a Raleigh restaurant tucked inside an Asian grocery store
BY LENA GELLER lgeller@indyweek.com
This story is part of a column, Lunch Money, in which staff writer Lena Geller visits restaurants in the Triangle in an attempt to dine out for less than $15.
Several weeks ago, a reader emailed to politely point out that my po’ boy roll at Imbibe wasn’t stale, as I’d written in a previous column—it was Leidenheimer bread, an intentionally crunchy bread that the restaurant imports directly from New Orleans.
Sorry, Imbibe! In an attempt to avoid another such mishap, I did some prep work ahead of this week’s venture to Filipino Express, a Filipino restaurant tucked inside an Asian grocery store in Raleigh.
Filipino Express doesn’t have a menu listed online, so I made a list of dishes people frequently name in Yelp reviews—lumpia, pancit, adobo, and kare-kare—and researched them. I also listened to an episode of The Splendid Table about Filipino food and learned about the variety of influences on the cuisine through colonization—Spanish, Chinese, Mexican, and American—and watched a few cooking tutorials, including one on adobo, the national dish of the Philippines.
Adobo involves marinating meat or vegetables in vinegar and salt, a method that helped various food items survive the muggy Philippine climate before refrigeration existed. Adobo reflects layers of history: The Spanish named it (adobo means “marinade”), though its cooking method
predated their arrival. Chinese traders later introduced soy sauce, which Filipinos came to incorporate alongside or instead of salt in the marinade.
The Capital Boulevard strip mall that houses Filipino Express is its own cultural crossroads—there’s a Dominican restaurant and barbershop, a Kung Fu academy, and a nightclub, as well as Oriental Store & Gifts, the store where Filipino Express operates.
A passerby wouldn’t know there’s a restaurant inside except for the smells of garlic and vinegar coming through the vents.
I wander through the grocery aisles first.
I’m delighted at how much purple stuff there is (my favorite color): acai Hi-Chews, ube and taro mochi, salted duck eggs dyed dark fuchsia.
In the back of the store, Filipino Express is bright and clean, with wooden tables and chairs and coolers stocked with dozens of different drinks—aloe vera juice, green tea, canned coffee. Behind a sneeze guard, metal trays hold a buffet of various dishes.
From all the reviews I’d read, I know to ask for the lunch combo, which comes with rice and two dishes. Something else I’d come across in my research was that Filipino Express is turo turo style, which means
“point point.” You’re supposed to just point at what you want instead of ordering by name. So when a woman mixing a giant vat of purple liquid asks me for my order, I point to the pancit canton, a stir-fried noodle dish. Before I can indicate a second item, the woman starts laughing and asks, “What else do you want—adobo?”
I’m not sure if she’s making a recommendation or if she’s just guessing that this is what I want because of how she’s profiled me, but either way, I feel very seen: before coming here, I jotted down my planned order in my notes app—“lunch combo with pancit and adobo.”
There are chicken and pork options for the adobo. I get pork.
Other menu options include kare-kare and dinuguan, which are stews made from various beef and pork organs and entrails, as well as fresh and fried lumpia (spring rolls), pinakbet (stewed vegetables), bulalo (beef shank soup), and crispy pata (deepfried pig knuckles). The vat of purple liquid is for halo-halo, a dessert made with coconut milk and ube jam.
No prices are listed anywhere. The combo ends up costing $12, plus 99¢ tax. I put $2.40 in the tip jar, bringing my total to $15.39.
I notice a little station with napkins, sauces (sriracha and patis, or fish sauce), and two signs that say “take one!”—one for free kids’ tickets to a circus, and one for free pocket Bibles. All the circus tickets are gone, but there are plenty of pocket Bibles, so I take one and flip through it while I wait. A few minutes later, the cashier beckons and hands me a Styrofoam box of food.
The pancit canton tastes vaguely familiar—it takes me back to eating Cup Noodles in the cafeteria at Carolina Friends School summer camp. It mixes cabbage, celery, and carrot with two types of noodles: thick wheat flour noodles and translucent rice noodles. The noodles are impossibly plump, imbued with so much broth that it feels like they might pop like a water balloon when I touch them with my fork.
The adobo is harder to pin down than the pancit—I recognize hints of flavors, but they merge into something new to me. The vinegar cuts through the melty pork fat, and the sauce the pork is swimming in delivers equal hits of sweetness and acid.
Both dishes have the sort of addictive mouthwatering tang where you just keep eating and eating without thinking about it. I scrape the Styrofoam clean. W
The lunch combo at Filipino Express PHOTO BY LENA GELLER
Stranger Than Fiction
In Durham writer Nathan Dixon’s sharp debut Radical Red, William F. Buckley’s legacy meets body horror.
BY SARAH EDWARDS sedwards@indyweek.com
Growing up in Cary during the nineties, Nathan Dixon often rode around in his grandfather’s Cadillac. The same radio show was usually switched on.
“I don’t think I even knew who Rush Limbaugh was, until years down the road,” says Dixon. “He was just this voice, embodied.”
That type of voice—crude, angry, dogmatic—is likewise embodied in the short story “Consubstantial,” midway through Radical Red, Dixon’s debut collection and the winner of the 13th annual BOA Short Fiction Prize. In the story, a (fictional) popular conservative talk radioman pops pills, rails at young people, leers at young people, and gradually begins to lose his grip on both reality and his bodily autonomy. And while Limbaugh’s brain is not one I’ve ever particularly wanted to be inside, “Consubstantial” and its adjoining stories are smart, funny, and well-wrought.
So goes Radical Red, a collection of eight loosely interlinked stories that feature farright figureheads—religious leaders, politicians, eager college Republicans—who find the inherent contradictions of their ideology collapsing in on them.
“I’m very interested in these things,” says Dixon, “because I think they’re bad.”
We’re having coffee at Redstart Takeaway in North Durham. Dixon, who has a thick mustache and equally thick drawl, received his MA in English Literature from North Carolina Central University and his PhD in English literature and creative writing from the University of Georgia; these days, he’s back in Durham with family, teaching at NC Central.
In a publishing era where having Instagram is basically as important as being literate, he doesn’t have social media,
preferring postcards to Twitter threads— which may contribute to why his book has received relatively little attention. That’s too bad, because Radical Red is a sharp and timely read. Magical realism meets social realism: Think Denis Johnson reporting from a pronatalism conference, or Samanta Schweblin tangling with Project 2025. When I first took Radical Red out of its mail packaging, though, I didn’t think I’d like it. The title is heavy-handed, as are the bulky epigraphs that precede most stories, featuring quotes from the likes of Nixon, Trump, and Thomas Jefferson. Writing a book this thematically dense seemed risky, if not outright didactic.
The deeper I got into the book, however, the happier I felt to be away from the familiar landscape of most contemporary short stories—unhappy dinner parties; existential poolside conversations; people with expendable incomes having affairs.
Beyond that, the writing is also just very good: Whole worlds are conveyed in Dixon’s short, staccato sentences. Here’s the wistfully lecherous radioman in “Consubstantial” watching women in the park: “The jogging ladies moved to the slow vibrations of the world. Rebounding and rubbery. Something he might gobble up. He felt the heartbeat of America.” In “Spring Belle,” the next story, things get equally singsongy, uncomfortable, and surreal. Past and present, daughters and dolls, violence and purity culture all smash together in one woman’s extremely disturbing day of running errands. “Blonde curls, pink blossoms,” the narrator intones, dressing her daughters for the day. “Compliant now. Pliant. She lifted their arms and dressed them, talking to herself. A martyr like her mother.”
All of the stories in Radical Red were written before the 2016 election. “Consubstantial” is the first story Dixon wrote, in 2013, back when the rise of the Tea Party movement was still fresh; “Unidentified Black Male,” the first story featured in the collection, was written shortly thereafter.
As Dixon revised and wrote more stories throughout President Obama’s second term, he wondered if the country was experiencing some kind of “hopeful curve”: maybe the reactionary elements of the stories would be outdated by the time they were published.
“The crazy thing is I was trying to get these out so fast because I thought they would become irrelevant,” says Dixon.
Of course, those themes didn’t become dated. And to the extent that anyone is angered by American injustices—corporate greed, racial injustice, mass incarceration, ICE, environmental degradation, the oligarchy—Dixon’s characters appear to be just as fired up about what they say is a less free America. They believe that the term “culture war” is literal and that they are soldiers on the front lines.
“It’s the 1770s all over again,” a young woman in the third story, “Tricky Dick,” fires off at her “liberal professor”—a refrain that comes up more than once. “We want revolution, not reform.”
This is one of the things Radical Red does quite well. Although there is absurd humor
in the book—take the zealous protagonist in “Tricky Dick,” the president of her college’s Students for Life Coalition, whose inflamed pimple gradually metastasizes, taking over her life—by and large, it takes the right wing seriously. That is wholly appropriate because, seven months into President Trump’s second term, we are living in a very serious moment. The images coming out of the administration—Elon Musk wielding a chainsaw on stage, Kristi Noem ghoulishly posing in front of a Venezuelan jail cell crammed with deported men—may be absurd, but they’re also our shared reality.
“The stories are surreal,” Dixon says, “but [they’re] no more cartoonish than the absurdity of what we hear on the news every day.”
To that end, the last story in the book, “Conquistador,” is about a white man who goes out drinking and wakes up in the body of a Mexican neighbor. It’s a Freaky Friday premise that could easily be cheesy but in the upside-down world of Radical Red—a hair off from our own, no more—it makes perfect sense for things to end this way, as this story does, one character facing down the barrel of his own gun, frantically reciting a monologue about American exceptionalism: “This was it. He had imagined it a thousand times. Home invasion. Bank robbery. Terrorists at the shopping mall,” the narrator tells himself. “It’s the 1770s all over again.” W
Nate Dixon poses for a portrait at his office at North Carolina Central University PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS
Ways of Haunting
A gripping new podcast series by Elizabeth Woodman revisits an old local mystery—about Crook’s Corner, a cold case, and Rachel Crook, the unconventional figure at the heart of it all.
BY SARAH EDWARDS sedwards@indyweek.com
In the summer of 1951, a gallon of gas cost around 19¢, a gallon of milk 83¢, and the United States was celebrating its demisemiseptcentennial. In Chapel Hill, 71-year-old Rachel Crook was approaching the end of her PhD in economics at North Carolina’s flagship university. By that September, she would be dead. That summer was colder than normal, per historical accounts, though that doesn’t mean all that much for a North Carolina August. In the evenings, Crook liked to take out a chair to the porch to relax with her cat and watch passersby—a well-earned rest for a septuagenarian who worked by day as a fishmonger at the 610 West Franklin Street shop she’d opened on the border of Chapel Hill’s Northside neighborhood. A former chicken house that she’d renovated into a shop where she
also lived, Crook’s Corner had an “unusual but misleading name,” a 1949 article in the Chapel Hill Weekly quipped, forebodingly.
The shop porch was Rachel Crook’s last stop, the night of August 29, 1951, before her body was discovered the next day in rural Orange County. The scene was bad: Her face was battered beyond recognition and she appeared to have been raped. Flesh under her fingernails suggested a struggle.
The questions around Crook’s death, still an open cold case, are the subject of a gripping new podcast series, Who Killed Rachel Crook?, produced by Hillsborough publisher and editor Elizabeth Woodman. The four-part series is a special edition of Woodman’s podcast, 27 Views, which she has been producing since 2002.
“Everybody knew that something terrible had happened to this woman,” says Woodman, “but the details of her life, the fact that she owned Crook’s … the fact that she was a graduate student—that all kind of got lost in the noise.” Woodman has operated a small press, Eno Publishers, since 2009. When she lost her distributor in 2019, she decided to start recording material for her podcast series with the North Carolina writers—Randall Kenan, John Jeremiah Sullivan, Jill McCorkle, and many others—she’d worked with over the years.
“I thought, you know, I’ve been a print editor,” Woodman says. “I’m going to learn this. I bet I can do it.”
One of the writers Woodman had worked with was the novelist Daphne Athas, whose memoir, Chapel Hill in Plain Sight, Woodman published in 2010. In 2022, several years into producing 27 Views, Woodman’s friend Bill Massengale Sr., an Orange County attorney, suggested that she revisit Athas’s book, which contained an account of Crook’s murder.
“You have to do something,” Woodman remembers Massengale saying, “about Daphne’s story about Rachel Crook.” In a way, it’s surprising that the true crime genre hasn’t reached the Crook case before now. The eventual trial, once the Orange County sheriff’s department charged a suspect with murder, has all the hallmarks of a case ripe for reexamination: an overeager sheriff; a silver-tongued defense team; a compromised jury; a rushed deliberation. And then there’s the victim. Rachel Crook makes for an
Elizabeth Woodman, podcast producer of 27 Views, poses for a portrait at Fair Weather Studio at her home in Hillsborough. PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS
almost absurdly compelling protagonist. In photos, she bears a slight resemblance to the writer Shirley Jackson: horn-rimmed glasses, a heavyset frame, a keen, knowing expression.
The daughter of an aged Confederate brigadier general, Crook was orphaned and raised by grandparents who invested in her education. After securing bachelor’s and master’s degrees, she moved to Chapel Hill in the early 1930s to pursue a late-in-life dissertation, financing her degree by working odd jobs.
She gardened, wrote for local papers, and sold fish and pecans. She babysat local children, including the children of famed playwright Paul Green. She opened the first coin-operated laundromat in Chapel Hill. Waggishly scrappy, she lived for several years in a child’s playhouse— dimensions seven feet by seven feet—paying $1.50 rent to the eight-year-old child to whom the playhouse belonged. She never married.
“I don’t mind being a character,” Crook told a Chapel Hill Weekly reporter in a profile the newspaper wrote on her, two years before her murder.
According to Woodman, Crook had a wide social circle that seemed to have accepted her, quirks and all. The night of August 29, she had an appointment with a seamstress friend.
“I think that Chapel Hill was a safe place for her,” Woodman says. “A place where, as an unmarried, entrepreneurial woman— kind of an enigma, even in Chapel Hill—they could accept her.”
When Crook failed to show up for the appointment, her friend ventured over to West Franklin Street to look for her. Crook’s Corner was empty, save for the cat. The
chair the fishmonger normally brought out to the porch was still sitting outside.
In 1982, three decades after Crook’s murder, the building got new tenants: Gene Hamer and Bill Neal. It had churned through several life cycles—taxi stand, bait and tackle shop, pool hall—before Hamer and Neal took it over, carrying the name on from its prior occupant, a pigs-and-ribs joint owned by a town council member who’d kept the name in Crook’s honor.
Hamer and Neal put Crook’s Corner on the map. The pair had chosen a “down-at-
“I think that Chapel Hill was a safe place for her. A place where, as an unmarried, entrepreneurial woman— kind of an enigma, even in Chapel Hill—they could accept her.”
and
series
and
the-heels establishment with a rather unsavory reputation in a section then called ‘No Man’s Land,’” as a 1985 New York Times review of the restaurant ascertained, for their seasonal Southern joint.
It suited them just fine: Soon, Hamer and Neal (and later chef Bill Smith) transformed Southern household ingredients—honeysuckle, condensed milk, fish muddle—into legendary dishes: shrimp and grits, boned quail, honeysuckle sorbet, Atlantic Beach pie. Crook’s was the “Tigris and Euphrates of Southern food,” as the novelist Daniel Wallace wrote in a remembrance when the restaurant shut down, after nearly 30 years.
Wallace isn’t the only one with strong feelings about Crook’s: Over the years, it’s taken on a transcendent, near-mythical dimension, drawing in townies and professors, UNC-Chapel Hill students and parents on families’ weekend. Neal was a prolific reader, weaving quotes by Eudora Welty and Carson McCullers into his cookbooks, lending Crook’s a literary quality that was only heightened by the Southern Gothic veneer of Rachel Crook’s life and death.
For some people, the spot stayed haunted. Woodman says that Athas, who had
Newspaper archives about the 1951 murder of Rachel Crook, sit on Elizabeth Woodman’s desk during a portrait session on Wednesday, June 11, 2025, in Hillsborough. Woodman, the 27 Views podcast producer
writer, produced a four-episode
about Crook
the circumstances of her murder case, which is still open.
PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS
known Crook when she was alive, categorically refused to go to the restaurant.
“Our friend [the writer] Randall Kenan loved oysters,” Woodman remembers. “I used to go to Crook’s and eat oysters, and [Daphne] wouldn’t go. She just could not bring herself to go to Crook’s Corner.”
Athas, who died in 2020 at 96, shared certain biographical elements with Crook: unmarried, unconventional, a Chapel Hill academic who “seemed to live her life exactly as she chose,” as a Lit Hub remembrance of the novelist put it.
Athas’s view of Rachel Crook in her memoir, in a chapter entitled “Chapel Hill Murders,” is not particularly gracious (a whole paragraph is devoted to describing Crook’s varicose veins), but it is probably the most detailed account of what happened. Over the years, primary sources died and coverage dropped off—a cold case lost to time.
Or it would’ve been, had it not been for an overstuffed file, passed from county judge to county judge, that Woodman’s friend Bill Massengale Sr. pointed her toward. The file became the architecture of the podcast.
“I know where there’s an archive,” Woodman recalls Massengale telling her. “Lonnie Coleman, the retired judge in Hillsborough, has a big folder, a big thing of clippings and lawyers’ notes that were given to him by Bonner Sawyer.”
Sawyer was the defendant’s attorney in the murder trial back in 1951, back when there was a case against a suspect that seemed like a slam dunk. The suspect’s name was Hobart Lee. He had no previous known connection to Rachel Crook.
Hobart Lee, 33, a doughy-faced local construction worker, was initially brought in for questioning when his truck matched the description of one that two boys, frog
gigging the night of the murder, reported having seen tearing down N.C. 86, a woman screaming inside. Lee was charged, though the case rested largely on circumstantial evidence: matching tire marks and heel prints, scratches on his face, a night he admitted he was “blackout drunk” and couldn’t recall, and a disproven alibi.
I won’t spoil the particulars of the case, which unfolds expertly across the podcast’s four episodes, with local literati reading parts in Woodman’s excellent script. You can listen and decide for yourself whether or not the case against Lee—who was, his mother assured reporters, harmless, save his proclivity to “mess” with chickens—is fair, but either way, the podcast sketches out a compelling portrait of a botched trial.
From the get-go, it was a circus. Local newspapers wrote the trial up fervently, reporting that 200–300 people crammed into the small Hillsborough courthouse to watch proceedings.
“[Lee] was facing the death penalty and was reported to have been in ‘chipper spirits,’” Woodman told me. “Spectators [were] packing picnic lunches and mugging for the camera.”
All potential Chapel Hill jurors were dismissed—locals that likely would have been more used to a woman like Rachel Crook—leaving a rural jury of 11 men and one woman (who happened to be married
Left: Bill Smith, retired head chef of Crook’s Corner, in his home in 2019 PHOTO BY ALEX BOERNER
Above: Crook’s Corner in 2021 PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA
An archival newspaper clipping about Hobart Lee, a suspect in Rachel Crook’s murder trial PHOTO COURTESY OF ELIZABETH WOODMAN
to one of the other jurors, anyway) to evaluate the likeliness of whether Lee, a good old boy who had previously dodged two previous sexual assault accusations, might have drunkenly preyed upon an old woman continuously identified in the media as a “spinster.”
About that Shirley Jackson allusion: In some ways, Crook also bears a resemblance to Jackson’s fictional female characters. Often, they are outsiders; often, they live brutal lives in a world built for men. Jackson’s women often face off with a menacing town chorus or their own inner demons. In this way, Crook differs: she seemed to have persuaded Chapel Hill to accept her, remaining cogent and confident to the end. She didn’t mind being a character—these were her own words— and had made it to her seventies on her own terms, before her life was senselessly taken. Was it Lee? The jury didn’t think so.
The case also seemed to have stuck with Bonner Sawyer, the prosecutor, who eventually passed down his files to Lonnie Coleman, a younger lawyer who shared his office.
“He was winding down his business,” Coleman says, explaining how he came to receive the archives, upon Sawyer’s death in 1972. “I have all his files.”
I’d left a message at Coleman’s law firm, though I didn’t totally expect a call back— Coleman is now 88 and retired. Less than half an hour later, though, he rings me: “I thought maybe you were some poor soul that hadn’t heard that I was almost deaf and wanted some legal advice.”
More interesting than the file, Coleman tells me, was a conversation he had decades ago with Bill Murdoch, the prosecuting attorney. Murdoch said Hobart Lee had asked him to come into the jail after his arrest, seemingly on the verge of a confession.
“Hobart Lee is very broken and very nervous, and his chin was quivering. And Mr. Murdoch said to him, ‘Did you want to make a statement to me about this?’” Coleman recounts. When Lee replied yes, “Bill Murdoch said, ‘Well, Hobart, I’m the prosecutor. I will be prosecuting you. So I’m going to send the sheriff in here.’”
Alas, Coleman continues, the sheriff—“old-fashioned” and famously friendly, as police dealing with men of Lee’s demographic tend to be—calmed Lee down enough that something shifted: “Hobart leaves the moment of weakness. The moment of wanting to bare his soul passes.”
These days, if you drive past Crook’s, you’d be forgiven for thinking the restaurant is still open. Its automatic lights still switch on at night. The famed fiber-
glass pig still stands guard, casting a small, loin-shaped shadow over Franklin Street. And if you peer through the bamboo mass into the patio, you’ll spot diner-style chairs flipped over onto tables, as if a shift has just ended.
The restaurant announced its closure in June 2021. Shannon Healy, the owner of Durham restaurant Alley 26 and then part of the Crook’s Corner ownership group, told me at the time that he was “very heartbroken” and that COVID-19 had exacerbated the restaurant’s financial difficulties. An outpouring followed. Over the years, rumors have intermittently circulated about a possible second act.
Getting to the bottom of those rumors proved harder than I’d bargained for: 610 West Franklin Street, it turns out, never belonged to Gene Hamer or Bill Neal. Crook’s niece, Rachel McLain, had inherited the property after her aunt’s murder and insisted on keeping it in the family. When she died in 2017, at age 98, the building was purchased by Kinston businessman Cameron McRae with Healy and Gary Crunkleton, the owner of the
eponymous Triangle whiskey bars, as the creative team.
Healy told the INDY that he is no longer involved in the restaurant’s ownership. Neither is Crunkleton. Efforts to get in touch with McRae—who, among other ventures, owns a minor league baseball team, the Down East Bird Dawgs, as well as 50 Bojangles locations across the Southeast—largely fell flat. A call to the business manager listed on the building’s ownership LLC was met with a brusque “Take me off your list.” After leaving several messages with McRae’s office, a spare statement arrived in my inbox: “We are having discussions with all parties involved on our future plans.”
But while I wasn’t able to determine the exact status of the historic building, I did reach others in its orbit. In late June, I met up with former Crook’s chef Bill Smith, who retired from the restaurant in 2019, right around the time it changed hands.
He arrived at Orange County Social Club late and flustered because of “a cash machine thing,” he explained—withdrawing money to pitch in for one of his former
kitchen staff, whose mother is sick in Guatemala. Does he still keep in touch with employees, all these years later? “They’re my best friends,” he says.
Of the Rachel Crook murder, his knowledge is cursory: “It was in the verbal history of the place,” he says. “As Crook’s became more famous as a food destination, it lent to the aura.”
He doesn’t think Rachel Crook haunted the place, exactly—“that sounds like she was about to spring out of the bathroom”— but, if there was a ghost, “there was more than one.”
Bill Neal died in 1991 at age 41, a victim of AIDS. Randall Kenan, Woodman’s friend and maybe one of the restaurant’s more devout fans, died at age 57 in 2020. Who Killed Rachel Crook? is dedicated to Bill Massengale Sr., Woodman’s friend,. He died in 2022, just weeks after suggesting the podcast topic.
As Smith and I chat, bartender Billy Buckley—by my count, the fifth Bill in this story—allows that he, too, worked at Crook’s for half of the ’90s and some of the 2010s.
“It’s hard for me to think about Crook’s without being sad,” he says, handing Smith a PBR. “It was such a big part of my life—I met my wife there—and it could still be open.”
Another patron, on his way out the door, stops to shake Smith’s hand: It’s Matt Neal, Bill Neal’s son, who opened and ran Neal’s Deli for many years, carrying on his father’s culinary legacy in another corner of Carrboro. On cue, another patron sitting at the bar leans over to tell Smith that, at a birthday party the night before, someone served Smith’s famed Atlantic Beach pie.
I’d wanted to dig into the podcast in part out of lingering curiosity about Crook’s Corner. Like its namesake, it has a history that feels unresolved and a bit haunted. Maybe those two things are the same, though. Creaks and cold spots and lights that go on and off—that’s the one kind of haunting. But the ways that things repeat themselves, carrying on in rumors and stories, loans and cast irons, feels like another kind of haunting, something mutual and sacred—not entirely happy and not entirely sad, either. I also have to believe any kind of documentary practice—a legal file, a book on Chapel Hill history, a podcast— is partially done in debt to the dead.
“It was kind of an amazing thing to start reading through the clippings and realize that there was so much to her,” says Woodman, reflecting on Rachel Crook. “I grew to feel very protective of her, you know. I wanted to reach back in history and correct things.” W
Archival newspaper photo of Rachel Crook PHOTO COURTESY OF ELIZABETH WOODMAN
ƒes Character
BY JUSTIN LAIDLAW jlaidlaw@indyweek.com
EAN INDY SERIES ABOUT FAMILIAR FACES AROUND THE TRIANGLE— AND THE STORIES YOU MAY NOT KNOW ABOUT THEM.
Life in the Bike Lane
A decade ago, Eross Guadalupe had never owned a bike. Now he’s a fixture in Durham’s cycling community, known for leading some of the Bull City’s most popular rides—and helping others get started on two wheels.
ross Guadalupe was first on the scene for the June 26 Ride Around Durham (RAD), a “no-drop” (no one gets left behind) group ride that meets every Thursday evening at Duke Chapel. He pulled up on his Kona Rove ST, the “Subaru of bikes,” as he calls it.
Guadalupe’s bike is dark metallic green—green is his favorite color—with thick Panaracer GravelKing tires and racks on top of both wheels. A Pokémon collector, he keeps a card of Scyther, a Bug-type monster (also green), in the spokes of his front wheel for added flair. Guadalupe bought the bike from Oak City Cycling in 2019. He says it’s great for on- or off-road cycling (on the streets of Durham, can you tell the difference?). It’s easy to add attachments like a rack or an extra bike seat, which Guadalupe uses to connect a baby seat for his one-year-old son, Zoren.
“I try to make it a point to take him with me. Because I pick him up from daycare, one of his first words was ‘bike.’
We take routes around the Ellerbee Creek trail and pass by the dino and he always waves. It’s so adorable. I’m trying to instill that passion early on. We got him a Strider bike, but he’s barely able to walk and not trip over himself, so we’ll wait a little bit.”
Arriving first to a group ride isn’t uncommon for Guadalupe, even when he isn’t being interviewed by the local paper. Often leading some of the most popular group rides in Durham like RAD and the Ponysaurus “Pony” Ride, Guadalupe is a fixture in the cycling community and the community writ large. His Visayan-heritage arm sleeve tattoo and trademark Durham-flag-inspired bike jersey are unmistakable. But a decade ago, he had never owned a bike. It wasn’t until he moved to Durham from Long Island in 2014 that he decided commuting by bike to his job (then at Duke) would be simpler and healthier. So he Frankensteined a bike using parts from the Durham Bike Co-Op.
“It was like 20 bucks to buy the bike, and then maybe $30 to help get it built up with the folks at the bike co-op,” says Guadalupe, who works in the health-care field. “So it really was a good launching point for me into the bike community.”
As he became more familiar with the mechanics, he invested in better bikes. Friends he met in the bike community showed him the ropes: what bikes to get, how to maintain them, and what routes to take on his commutes.
“When I first started here, I got lost a lot, but it was kind of fun. I would try to bike in different directions and have no idea where it goes, then I just use Google Maps to find my way back. It helped me get through the arteries and veins of the city, and get to the heart of the city from wherever that might be.”
Some of the folks from the co-op had a group called the Adventure Club of Bull City (ACBC). Guadalupe credits them as the originators of the Pony Ride. As folks from the group moved away, ride leadership needed a successor. An organizer who was moving suggested Guadalupe, who had helped marshal the ride once or twice.
“I was like, OK, I guess if no one else is, I’ll take on the mantle and keep it going,” he says.
Each year, Guadalupe typically leads a ride around his birthday. This year, on June 10, he celebrated a little differently—with Erin Karcher, owner of Arcana, leading a Pride Month ride. He was happy to be a “sweeper” at the back of the group, supporting stragglers or folks that ran into mechanical issues.
“We did have a few flats and stuff, so it was kinda needed, but I’m glad I was able to bail people out,” Guadalupe says. “Erin really wanted to do it. She had a cool route where we got to see all these Pauli Murray murals and some iconic Durham queer spaces.”
Biking is a community where Guadalupe has forged countless friendships.
“I really wanted to do that for other people. So when I find a new shortcut, or a new bike boulevard, or new bike lanes like on Miami Boulevard, I want to take people there because it’s good for folks to know how to get around safely.”
Now he’s looking to pay it forward.
“Honestly, just hearing people say that they’ve never been this way around Durham and that it was a really cool route—that keeps me motivated to keep helping with the ride-leading and route-planning because it means I’m contributing to the community. If people are more comfortable biking around here, I’ve done what I set out to do.” W
Eross Guadalupe and his bike PHOTO BY JUSTIN LAIDLAW
. FLIGHT DECK NC
9521 Lumley Rd, Morrisville | instagram.com/flightdecknc
Pinballs in Play
Morrisville bar Flight Deck NC has become home to a vibrant community of competitive pinball players.
BY EVA FLOWE arts@indyweek.com
When you enter Flight Deck NC in Morrisville, you may assume each patron is there solely for the love of airplanes and craft beer, unaware of the rows of pinball machines right around the corner.
But the bar, which opened in November, is home to the newly minted Triangle Pinball Collective. More recently, it expanded farther into the building to host around 15 pinball machines.
The game room space of Triangle Pinball Collective is windowless, lit by the neon glow of pinball machines and Triangle Pinball Collective signage. The games are set up in a few smaller rooms down a narrow hallway, giving an almost speakeasy-like ambience.
Standing in front of a machine, you can hear music and chatter from the bar in the other room and airplanes preparing to land at nearby RDU International Airport flying overhead. But pinball players often play without talking, and it can be seen as poor etiquette to speak to them before the game is up.
On June 13, the collective held its second formal event, the inaugural run of a new King Kong–themed machine. The tournament drew 49 participants, which may be the largest pinball tournament ever in the Triangle, or at least in recent years, according to organizers.
A Facebook group called Triangle Pinball Players has been around for 10 years or so, organizing tournaments at local arcades
like Boxcar, according to Ovid Dillard, a longtime pinball lover and Triangle Pinball Collective organizer. To him, the collective is a continuation.
Many of the pinball machines in Flight Deck’s game room are brought here from personal collections, including Dillard’s.
“I think it’s a combination of mechanical play, the artwork, like the friendships you pull with people,” Dillard says. “There’s nothing quite like it.”
Jesse Marion, the owner of Flight Deck NC, says he had wanted to expand back into the other rooms in the building but had no idea what to put there until Jerrod Lankford, a member of the collective who owns several machines, started showing up for a beer.
“Probably the third time he was here, I showed him around the space, and was like, ‘I don’t know what to do with this.’ He was like, ‘Have you ever thought about pinball?’” Marion says. I was like, ‘I have, but I’ve heard with some of the companies the machines aren’t great, and they’re not always maintained really well, and they’re expensive to fix.’ And he’s like, ‘Well, let me tell you about my pinball collective.’”
Pinball machines are both expensive and rather finicky, and require a fair amount of upkeep to be up to snuff for tournaments sanctioned by the International Flipper Pinball Association (IFPA)—sanctioned tournaments. Several of the players in the Trian-
gle Pinball Collective say they have been frustrated in the past with pinball machine repair speed at other pinball locales.
“Every other place that has pinball in the area, those machines are supplied by a company,” says Kat Lake, a Twitch streamer who sometimes streams pinball games. “I don’t think they take care of the machines …. They just put them in places and make sure that they’re working. And they don’t really follow the community or anything, they’re not really a part of it. And so this place was opened almost in spite of them, and wanting a place that we had access to the machines.”
The IFPA sanctions competitive pinball tournaments, both open division and women’s, and keeps rankings of competitive pinball players. There are plenty of competitive players in the Triangle, including Samantha Bacon, ranked 11th in the international women’s league.
Bacon says not even the best pinball players in the world can make a living off playing, so if a player is in the top 250 open ranks or top 100 women’s ranks, they are automatically considered professional pinballers.
Despite her high rank, Bacon says much of the appeal of pinball is social.
“It used to be like, if I got knocked out immediately I’d just be really upset for the rest of the trip,” Bacon says. “But at this point, I know enough people that it doesn’t
matter where in the country, or to some extent, even the world, like I can show up anywhere and know somebody, and I’m looking forward to hanging out with them again.”
Competitive pinball is divided between open and women’s tournaments, but there are also groups for women and nonbinary people who play at any skill level. There is a chapter of Belles and Chimes, the international women’s pinball group, in the Triangle for “women, femmes and thems” looking to get into pinball.
“It [pinball] is very male dominated,” says Kennan Staelin, a member of Belles and Chimes. “That is why it is important to have those female chapters, and that is very inclusive, so it’s not just if you are a woman—like you are gay, them, women, queer, questioning—like we’re very open. It’s just a safer space. It’s a little bit less intense.”
Lake says she thinks pinball in the Triangle can be unusually challenging.
“The machines here are set up very difficult, and it’s because the level of player is really high. It’s interesting,” Lake says. “So when they [Triangle pinball players] leave the area and go play elsewhere, it’s like, ‘Oh, wow, hold on, I’m much better than I thought it was.’” W
The collective will host a costume party to launch their newest game, Evil Dead, on July 19 at 3 p.m.
A game room at Flight Deck NC in Morrisville, home of the Triangle Pinball Collective. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE TRIANGLE PINBALL COLLECTIVE
C U LT U R E C A L E N D A R
WED
7/9
MUSIC
Al Strong & Friends Jazz Night 11 p.m. Boatman Spirits Co., Raleigh.
Gumhead, Charlie Paso, My Body With Blood, Ethan Baechtold Trio 8 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.
Jessie Reyez: Paid in Memories Tour 7 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.
STAGE
ADF: Miguel Gutierrez Jul. 9-11, 7:30 p.m. Rubenstein Arts Center, Durham.
THUR
7/10
MUSIC
Frank Meadows 7:30 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.
Rebecca Porter with Colin Cutler and Audrey Smith 8 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.
Sonder 7 p.m. Kingfisher, Durham.
Summer Jazz Jam with Butler Knowles 7 p.m. Missy Lane’s Assembly Room, Durham.
STAGE
KING ME: An All Drag King Show 10 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.
Raleigh Fringe Festival Jul. 10-13, various times. Theatre Raleigh Arts Center, Raleigh.
FRI 7/11
MUSIC
Ali Forrest, Anne Malin, Emily June 7 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.
Broadway Rave: A Musical Theater Dance Party 8 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.
Chris Brydge Trio 7:30 p.m. Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.
High + Tight: A Lifetime of Soul, Funk, and Disco Fridays at 8 p.m. Wolfe & Porter, Raleigh.
Leftover Salmon and The Infamous Stringdusters 7 p.m. Koka Booth Amphitheatre, Cary.
Neon Hearts: A Night of EDM Anthems 9 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.
Pink Skull Garden with SWAE, Sound System Seven, and DIT 8 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.
Rebecca Porter with Charles Latham 6:30 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.
Shakey Graves: And The War Came - 10th Anniversary Tour 7 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.
White Denim 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.
SCREEN
Movie Night: Shrek 6 p.m. Downtown Cary Park, Cary.
PAGE
‘Chime In’ Poetry Open Mic 7 p.m. Lanza’s Cafe, Carrboro.
SAT 7/12
MUSIC
Beer Garden Concert Series: Cosmic Superheroes
5 p.m. The Glass Jug Beer Lab RTP, Durham.
Bring Out Yer Dead: Grateful Dead Tribute 8 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.
The Catalinas 8 p.m. Koka Booth Amphitheatre, Cary.
Curtis McPhatter Group 7:30 p.m. Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.
DEBÍ TIRAR MÁS FIESTAS
9 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.
Evil Weiner with Rejection Packet 8 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.
Janna Badalian 7 p.m. Succotash, Durham.
Lil Darkie: These Shows Exist 6 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.
SONAM Post-Tour Concert Benefiting Iglesia Emanuel Food Pantry 4 p.m. First Presbyterian Church, Durham.
Summer Concerts in the Park: Husbandos & Counterclockwise String Band 6 p.m. Duke Park, Durham.
Sun’s Out Buns Out: Queer Dance Party 10 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.
Turtle Smash: Live Band Emo Night 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.
Tyler, The Creator 7:30 p.m. Lenovo Center, Raleigh.
Queer Cabaret @ Dance Party 6 p.m. Speakeasy, Carrboro.
STAGE
ADF: Footprints Jul. 12-13, various times. Reynolds Industries Theater, Durham.
Cold Brew Comedy Showcase at Lanza’s Cafe 7 p.m. Lanza’s Cafe, Carrboro.
Discover Dance: DISHOOM 7 p.m. Downtown Cary Park, Cary.
W. Kamau Bell: Who’s With Me? 7 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.
SUN
7/13
MUSIC
Bluegrass Jam 4 p.m. Bond Brothers Eastside, Cary.
Bronco with Uga Buga, Greenhead, and Doomsday Profit 8 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.
Lifeguard with Autobahn 7 p.m. Kings, Raleigh.
Mol Sullivan, Realistic Weather, Nicole Tester 7 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.
Robin’s Egg Tour: Iron & Wine and I’m With Her 6:30 p.m. Koka Booth Amphitheatre, Cary.
Samantha Crain 7 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.
SCREEN
Healing Justice + 60 Minutes Watch Party 6:30 p.m. Durham Bottling Co., Durham.
PAGE
Flyleaf Books Second Sunday Poetry Series 2:30 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.
MON 7/14
MUSIC
Fuzz & The Phantoms with Porcelain Parrot and Ghostii 8 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.
MSPAINT, Draag, Pat and the Pissers 8 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.
STAGE
Cosmic Chuckles: StandUp Comedy New Material Nights Mondays at 7 p.m. Flying Saucer Draught Emporium, Raleigh.
Samantha Crain performs at the Cat’s Cradle Back Room on Sunday, July 13. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE VENUE.
Rebecca Porter performs at Rubies on Five Points on Friday, July 11. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE VENUE
Curtis McPhatter Group performs at Sharp 9 Gallery on Saturday, July 12. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE VENUE
CULTURE CALENDAR
TUES
7/15
MUSIC
Barrelhouse Blues: A Jook Joint Revue 7 p.m. Missy Lane’s Assembly Room, Durham.
GHOST 8 p.m. Lenovo Center, Raleigh.
Open Mic with a Band Tuesdays at 4:30 p.m. Slim’s Downtown, Raleigh.
Orchid Mantis, Bedroom Division 8 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.
The Warning: Keep Me Fed World Tour 7 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.
STAGE
Les Misérables Jul. 15-20, various times. DPAC, Durham.
WED
7/16
MUSIC
Elite 808: A Blends with Friends Production 8 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.
The Head and the Heart: Aperture Tour 6:30 p.m. Red Hat Amphitheater, Raleigh.
STAGE
ADF: Alonzo King LINES Ballet Jul. 16-17, 7:30 p.m. Reynolds Industries Theater, Durham.
Women Who Love Women Open Mic Comedy Hour 8 p.m. Club ERA, Durham.
SCREEN
Full Frame Summer Road Show: Story & Pictures By 5:30 p.m. Durham County Library, Durham.
THUR 7/17
MUSIC
Al Strong Presents: Jazz on the Roof 7 p.m. The Durham Hotel, Durham.
Barenaked Ladies: Last Summer on Earth Tour 6:30 p.m. Red Hat Amphitheater, Raleigh.
briZB, Grace Lucia, Liam Martin 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.
Counting Crows: The Complete Sweets! Tour
7:30 p.m. Red Hat Amphitheater, Raleigh.
Owen Fitzgerald Presents Ensign 1999: A Live Rock Novel 6:30 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.
Summer Jazz Jam with Butler Knowles 7 p.m. Missy Lane’s Assembly Room, Durham.
The Ultimate Doors: The Premier Tribute to Jim Morrison and The Doors 8 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.
STAGE
Nate Bargatze Jul. 17-18, 7 p.m. Lenovo Center, Raleigh.
FRI 7/18
MUSIC
Femme Friday: Third Friday Dance Parties! 9:30 p.m. The Velvet Hippo, Durham.
High + Tight: A Lifetime of Soul, Funk, and Disco Fridays at 8 p.m. Wolfe & Porter, Raleigh.
Kata with Nikias, Joey Zen, and Fine$$e Tha Phantom 8 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.
Lovell Bradford Quartet 7:30 p.m. Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.
Marshall Sidbury 6:30 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.
Paint Work Record Release Show 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.
The Rush Experience 8 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.
The Wallflowers 8 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.
STAGE
Applause! Cary Youth Theatre Presents The Tempest Jul. 18-20, various times. Cary Arts Center, Cary.
Paul and Ian’s One-Man Show: They’re Back! 7:30 p.m. Shadowbox Studio, Durham.
SAT 7/19
MUSIC
Angela Bingham Quartet 7:30 p.m. Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.
Deep Sea Diver: Billboard Heart Tour 8 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.
Emo Night Karaoke: Live Band 7 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.
Husbandos 6:30 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.
Saturday Night Dance Party! 9:30 p.m. The Velvet Hippo, Durham.
Tripping Daisy with Jumprope 8 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.
STAGE
ADF: Limón Dance Company 7:30 p.m. Page Auditorium, Durham.
Hot Bucket Comedy Night 7 p.m. Common Market, Durham.
Slasher Summer: A Drag and Burlesque Tribute to the music of Ice Nine Kills 8 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.
PAGE
Children’s Storytime with Sue Soltis! 11 a.m. Golden Fig Books, Carrboro
SUN 7/20
MUSIC
Bluegrass Jam Sundays at 4 p.m. Bond Brothers Eastside, Cary.
Hive Hoedown: The Ultimate Beyonce-Inspired Fan Experience 4 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.
Johnny Dowd with Severed Fingers 8 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.
Live Music with Ed Kincade 12 p.m. Lanza’s Cafe, Carrboro.
Natalie Jane Hill, Alli Blois and the Seeping Hearts, Sluice (solo) 7 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.
MON 7/21
MUSIC
Dead Hour Noise 7:30 p.m. Rubies on Five
Points, Durham.
STAGE
Cosmic Chuckles: StandUp Comedy New Material Nights Mondays at 7 p.m. Flying Saucer Draught Emporium, Raleigh.
TUES 7/22
MUSIC
Barrelhouse Blues: A Jook Joint Revue 7 p.m. Missy Lane’s Assembly Room, Durham.
Bear Ghost with Spaceman Bob 7 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.
Diggy Graves: Crash My Funeral Tour 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.
D Jean-Baptiste, Chaepter, Applefield 8 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.
Open Mic with a Band Tuesdays at 4:30 p.m. Slim’s Downtown, Raleigh.
Rose City Band 8 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.
STAGE
ADF: makegroup Jul. 22-26, various times. ADF’s Samuel H. Scripps Studios, Durham.
A Good Time: StandUp Comedy 8 p.m. Bond Brothers Eastside, Cary.
PAGE
Libby Hubscher: Heart Marks the Spot 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.
Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet performs at Reynolds Industries Theater on July 16 and 17. PHOTO COURTESY OF AMERICAN DANCE FESTIVAL
CROSSWORD
Los Angeles Times Sunday Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Patti Varol
SU | DO | KU
© 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.
Consulting/Principal
Consulting/Principal sought by focus on creation relevance
dramatically find answers of Bachelor’s Computer Information offered or rltd reports to but may telecommute US. Interested
ResumesICT@RELX.com.
Senior
C L A S S I F I E D S
EMPLOYMENT
Consulting/Principal Software Engineer
Consulting/Principal Software Engineer
sought by LexisNexis USA in Raleigh, NC to focus on creation of next-generation search relevance techniques/strategies for LexisNexis, dramatically improving how users search & find answers to legal questions. Minimum of Bachelor’s degree or foreign equivalent in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Technology, or rltd + 7 yrs exp in job offered or rltd occupations required. Employee reports to LexisNexis USA office in Raleigh, NC but may telecommute from any location within US. Interested candidates should send resume to ResumesICT@RELX.com. Ref job code: R96304.
Senior Project Analyst
Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings (LabCorp) in Durham, NC seeks a Senior Project Analyst responsible for leading and managing IT & product projects from initiation to completion, ensuring delivery on time, within budget, & meeting requirements. Hybrid schedule. Reqs BS+7yrs exp. or MS+5yrs exp.; To apply, send resume to: Labcorphold@labcorp.com; Ref #250623.
EMPLOYMENT
Senior Scientist
Senior Scientist - Duties are developing PBPK models using GastroPlus, SimCYP, WinNonlin & Phoenix NLME to predict absorption potential & dose regimen optimization including analyzing & interpreting clinical studies; developing & validating PBPK models & simulations for FIH dose, DDI and PK predictions; & preparing formal manuscripts & reports of analysis methodologies & results. Position requires a Master’s degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences or related field and 1 yr exp in job duties as stated. Position is managed out of Research Triangle Park, NC but allows individual to live anywhere in the U.S. & allows for the option to work from a home office. Position requires 5% travel to various unanticipated locations throughout the U.S. Send resume to Simulations Plus, Inc. by email to Lindsay Luke at lindsay.luke@simulations-plus.com. Reference PBPK in response.
Software Engineer II
Software Engineer II, F/T at Truist Bank (Multiple Openings) (Raleigh, NC) Deliver technically complex solutions. Perform system integration support for all project work. 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, IT, or related tech’l field. Must have 4 yrs of exp in s/ware engg or IT consulting positions performing/utilizing the following: analyzing, dsgng, prep’g functional & tech’l specs, dsgng & dvlpg applications based on user reqmts; dvlpg CI/CD pipelines; & utilizing exp w/: Java, JSP, JavaScript, JDBC, Webservices, Angular, Spring, SpringBoot, Spring Batch, Maven, Gradle, Pivotal Cloud Foundry, Oracle, MySql, Junit, Eclipse, STS, Intelij, & Jenkins. Must have at least 2 yrs of exp w/: Amazon Web Services, incl EC2, Simple DB, S3, Elastic Load Balancing, SQS, AWS Identity & access mgmt, AWS Cloud Watch, Terraform, Cloud Front, & Redshift. Position may be eligible to work hybrid/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. Apply online (https://careers.truist.com/) or email resume to: Paige.Whitesell@Truist.com (Ref Job# R0103622).
