June 25, 2025
Tree lights, public art, more outdoor dining: Raleigh has big plans to revitalize Fayetteville Street, the city's premier corridor.
Raleigh | Durham | Chapel Hill
Raleigh W Durham W Chapel Hill
6 The Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association quietly voted to dissolve earlier this year. BY LENA GELLER
7 Back in 1792, Raleigh's Fayetteville Street was a site for celebrations. Now the city is trying to give the downtown corridor new life. BY JANE PORTER
9 The Wake County Housing Authority owed landlords $1.9 million in unpaid rent. BY CHLOE COURTNEY BOHL
10 A new court filing claims a fired Raleigh police officer conducted illegal searches. BY JANE PORTER
14 Bruce Bair walked 300 miles from Durham to Washington, D.C., in the name of democracy. BY CHASE PELLEGRINI DE PAUR CULTURE
15 In Raleigh, Little Blue Bakehouse gives startup businesses a place to call home. BY ELLIOTT HARRELL
16 Lunch Money: A trip to Big Bob's City Grill in Hillsborough. BY LENA GELLER
17 A new independent bookstore in South Durham offers used and new books alongside a literary-themed coffee menu. BY DANEEN KHAN
18 "It's always nice when an album comes out so other people have the chance to find themselves in the lyrics," says Watchhouse's Emily Frantz of the band's new album, Rituals BY NICK MCGREGOR
Publisher
John Hurld
Editorial
Editor-in-Chief
Sarah Willets
Raleigh
Editor
Jane Porter
Culture Editor
Sarah Edwards
Staff Writers
Lena Geller
Justin Laidlaw
Chase Pellegrini de Paur
Report For America Corps Reporter
Chloe Courtney Bohl
Contributors
Mariana Fabian, Jasmine Gallup, Desmera Gatewood, Tasso Hartzog, Elliott Harrell, Brian Howe, Jordan Lawrence, Elim Lee, Glenn McDonald, Nick McGregor, Gabi Mendick, Cy Neff, Andrea Richards, Barry Yeoman
Copy Editor
Iza Wojciechowska
Editorial Interns
Eva Flowe, Daneen Khan
Creative
Creative Director
Nicole Pajor Moore
Staff Photographer Angelica Edwards
Advertising
Publisher
John Hurld
Director of Revenue
Mathias Marchington
Director of Operations
Chelsey Koch
Account Representative
Jessica Schell
sales@indyweek.com
919-666-7229
support@indyweek.com
To reach INDY staff directly: tips@indyweek.com
Andrew McCook, owner of The Blue Ox Bakery, torches marshmallows at Little Blue Bakehouse in Raleigh. The Little Blue Bakehouse serves coffee, baked and sweet goods from multiple bakers who share the same building. (see story, p. 15).
PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS
B A C K TA L K
In a new series, Ask INDY, we invited readers to submit their questions about Durham Public Schools (DPS) for Chase Pellegrini de Paur to answer. Chase’s write-up is published online and on page 4 of this edition. One reader shared her thoughts on how we characterized reader-submitted questions about the school lottery process in that article:
From reader SAMIRA WELLEMEYER by email:
Regarding the DPS questions, I want to challenge the third bullet point about “how to get your child into the best possible school.” This framing is what makes families treat school lotteries like life or death situations and they flee to charters if they don’t get what they perceive to be “best.” It also frames school choice as an individual choice that families make with the best interest of THEIR CHILD at the forefront.
Instead, you should be asking “What can we do to make all DPS schools as successful as possible?” or “What can we do to help DPS provide services to ALL children in the district?”
Public schools are a public good; the purpose is not to serve individual families, but the entire community. Your phrasing of the question perpetuates the view that public school is a service that is meant to cater to their specific needs over the good of the general community—a sentiment commonly voiced by the most privileged members of our community. So, it’s not surprising that the comments you received on Reddit and in your sur-
vey reflect that view—but the INDY should be thoughtful and provocative enough to challenge that framing instead of accepting it as a fact.
For the most part, families who view DPS from this perspective will be wellserved by at least one of the schools in their region. But because they have been conditioned to expect “the best school” they hang their hopes on whatever school they think that is (likely an opinion influenced by word of mouth reviews from families in their social circles, not informed opinions about the schools or careful consideration of what services/offerings their child would actually benefit from) and if they do not get the lottery placement they think they deserve, they flee to charters and don’t look back. I would say good riddance, but the truth is that DPS would be better off if they stayed, not just from a financial perspective but also because they are obviously invested in their kids’ education and if they used that energy to invest in DPS, the system would better serve all families, like the public good it’s meant to be.
TL;DR: Do better, INDY. Don’t just regurgitate school choice talking points.
What Happened to Raleigh’s $207M Transportation Bond?
BY CHLOE COURTNEY BOHL chloe@indyweek.com
Last week, we invited you to send questions about Wake County transportation—something everyone loves to complain about, often for good reason. We got a handful of questions about the Triangle’s confusing amalgamation of transit agencies—GoTriangle, GoRaleigh, GoDurham, etc.—which share a graphic designer but not a staff or leadership teamBut that’s a conundrum for later, because today’s Ask INDY submission, from Reddit user PLANE_HIGHLIGHT_867, is:
Where has all of the money from the transit bonds gone?
Raleigh voters have approved four transportation bond referenda in the last 20 years, and other Wake County municipalities, including Cary and Apex, also passed recent transportation bonds. For the sake of your attention spans, I’ll focus on Raleigh’s whopping $206.7 million bond from 2017 because it’s the most recent, most expensive and impacts the most people.
The bond referendum was popular, passing with more than 70 percent support. The money, raised through a tax increase of $1.29 per $100 in property value, was supposed to be spent in two buckets: about 30 percent for broad “programs” like sidewalk improvements, bike lanes, street landscaping, and partnerships with the NC Department of Transportation, and 70 percent for specific “projects” around the city.
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.
Most of them involved widening streets and adding sidewalks—which is important, but not particularly thrilling.
Eight years after the bond passed, most of the 16 proposed projects still aren’t finished. Some have barely started.
Of the projects described in the original bond proposal, three are complete (price tag = approximately $35 million), one was canceled due to insufficient funding, three have been deferred indefinitely for the same reason, and eight are languishing in the design, bidding, or construction phase. At a work session in March, the Raleigh City Council questioned staff about why so many of these projects still haven’t materialized. TL;DR: the City of Raleigh bit off more than it could chew.
Once the bond passed, the city tried to start every single project simultaneously, which slowed all of them down. By the time some of the later projects were through the time-consuming design and community engagement phases, inflation had driven them over budget. Hence the cancellations, deferments, and foot-dragging. Case in point: the Six Forks street-widening project (stalled until the city purchases 96 private properties) was originally supposed to cost about $30 million. Today, the estimate is closer to $94 million. Yikes.
When voters pass a bond of any kind, they’re entrusting their local government to take their tax dollars and execute specific projects within a reasonable time frame. It’s obviously disappointing that the City of Raleigh hasn’t completed many of the transportation projects promised in 2017. Back in March, staff told the council that if they had to do it all over again, they’d propose a smaller bond with fewer projects they could deliver faster. It seems like they’ve learned some valuable lessons and would be able to do a better job next time—that is, if voters approve another transportation bond.
How Much Money is
Diverted from DPS to Charter Schools?
BY CHASE PELLEGRINI DE PAUR chase@indyweek.com
Wow, thanks for all of your Durham Public Schools (DPS) questions. And thanks for asking us instead of some shitty AI chatbot. We promise we are real people who spend a lot of time sitting through municipal meetings so that you don’t have to.
In the 60+ submissions via Reddit and our survey, you were most interested in:
• The impact of charter schools on DPS funding
• The plan for DPS facilities, including sites like Old Northern and the soon-to-be old Durham School of the Arts
• School lotteries/the Growing Together redistricting plan/how to get your child into the best possible school
• The shortage of after-school care service and what the district is doing to address it
Any of these topics (and many that we didn’t list) could be the subject of a 3,000word investigation, and we’ll continue looking into your DPS questions for future stories. We’ll look at charter school funding here, because it’s particularly relevant on the heels of budget season.
Reddit user LADYKNIGHT33 asked:
How much funding is diverted from public base schools to public charter or magnet schools annually? How does this affect budgets for children at base schools?
Short answer: In the Durham County budget, taxpayers are set to pay about
$221 million into the DPS operating budget, and about $47.5 million of that total will go directly to charter schools.
Long answer: North Carolina forces local districts to give an equal amount of per-pupil local funding to charter schools, which, while publicly funded, operate outside of their local school districts. Durham County has about 31,000 students in DPS and about 7,700 in charter schools. The numbers are a bit screwy depending on what exactly you’re including, but basically that means that charter schools get about 20 percent of any money that the county gives to DPS. Durham is home to 16 charter schools and 57 district schools.
Supporters of charter schools say that such schools give families more options, while critics say they lack oversight and divert funding from the public education that the state is mandated to provide to its youth. I’ll avoid characterizing the local impact of charter schools except to say that, well, $47.5 million is going to charter schools instead of helping DPS deal with ballooning bills, teacher demands for better pay, and a stock of aging buildings.
If you’re interested in the origins and growth of charter schools in North Carolina, I’d suggest that you check out the May charter schools report from Public Schools First NC and EdNC’s “Guide to Charter Schools in North Carolina”. W
A new Ask INDY topic is posted weekly. Send us your questions at indyweek.com/ask-indy or ask@indyweek.com.
A Pitch for Raleigh
For the future of the sport, Major League Baseball should not only bring a new team to Raleigh— it should move its research and development to the Triangle too.
BY WALT BARRON backtalk@indyweek.com
With the Carolina Hurricanes’ season over, its top brass will now turn its attention not just to offseason roster moves but also to another sport altogether: baseball.
Owner Tom Dundon and his team continue to talk about helping Raleigh land one of two coveted Major League Baseball (MLB) expansion teams, even though it’s seen as a dark horse against competitors Austin, Nashville, and Charlotte. It appears the current focus is on table stakes, like drumming up corporate support and identifying a potential stadium location. But pulling the upset might require sweetening the pot.
So why not think big?
What if Raleigh could show MLB decision-makers—mainly outgoing commissioner Rob Manfred—that it’s the perfect home not just for the next franchise but also for the future of the sport itself?
One of the biggest knocks on baseball is its stubborn refusal to change, even when
it’s painfully obvious it needs to. Manfred knew this when he took over in 2015. He’s made innovation a priority, boosting investment in research and development (R&D) and introducing new rules and technology like the pitch clock, larger bases, and ball and strike challenges (which could start as early as the 2026 season). MLB attendance and viewership saw an uptick last year, but football has clearly displaced baseball as America’s pastime. To regain popularity, MLB needs to take some big swings.
As part of its pitch for a new MLB team, Raleigh could throw some serious fuel on the fire with a bold proposal: move the R&D team to North Carolina and reshape it not just for MLB but for baseball itself. Call it a think tank, an incubator, a laboratory, or an R&D center. The name is less important than its mission: to conceive, research, and test new ideas for the continued growth and health of baseball. This includes any and all new ideas related to rules, technology, equipment, training, rehab, marketing, management, and more—all of which would benefit the players, owners, employees, and perhaps most importantly, the fans.
Moving this function out of MLB headquarters would detach it from the daily pressures of running a league and give it the space to experiment. This group must be focused on what will help grow the sport long term, not just what might boost the business of Major League Baseball in the short term. What’s good for baseball will be good for professional baseball.
If you’re going to relocate an R&D department, it should be to a place that lives and breathes both innovation and baseball. Let’s start with the latter. As locals know and outsiders may not, Raleigh is part of the Research Triangle. This larger area offers far more in the world of sports
than any individual city or township within, including generations of passion for basketball, soccer, hockey, and other sports.
But its baseball bona fides are underappreciated and unmatched compared to those of the other competing markets. There are top-shelf youth and travel ball leagues. There are perennially highly ranked collegiate programs at NC State University, UNC-Chapel Hill, and Duke University. There’s the coveted summer Coastal Plain League. USA Baseball is based in Cary, and Baseball America is based in Durham. We all know and love the Durham Bulls, but it’s also worth noting that North Carolina has more minor league teams per capita than any other state, many of which are within a short drive of Raleigh. MLB could stand to learn a thing or two from how minor league teams creatively engage and entertain fans without breaking their bank accounts.
This depth and breadth would allow MLB to test ideas thoroughly and responsibly, gathering input from all involved, fans included. Travel ball teams could beta test a new helmet or catcher’s gear. College umpires could beta test new technology for reviewing balls and strikes. Minor league teams could test the “Golden At-Bat” rule. The bad ideas would fall to the cutting-room floor. The ones that show promise get finetuned until they make it to the big leagues. In terms of innovation, the Research Triangle is overflowing with talent and expertise. It’s in the name, after all. Within a 30-mile radius there are experts in a variety of fields MLB could tap into: professors, students, and administrators at high-
ly ranked colleges and universities; doctors and trainers within the robust health-care community; programmers and data analysts at high-tech companies like Lenovo, SAS, SMT, Epic Games, and Red Hat (you see where this is going).
I think MLB knows it needs a more compelling vision for the future of its sport. I know Manfred will need big ideas to burnish his reputation among fans before he moves on. Expansion will be his swan song, and an idea like this could help shape his legacy.
The idea of forming such a diverse coalition may sound pie-in-the-sky, but if there’s one place that can pull it off, it’s the Triangle. Yes, we have our local college rivalries, but there’s also a lot of collective pride for this area as a whole. Smart, talented people move here from all over the country and world, not because they have to but because they want to. This MLB push is an opportunity to use that to our advantage, along with our already incredibly strong foundation in baseball and innovation.
Landing an MLB team here will require not just an owner’s financial means but also the entire community’s passion and wherewithal. It’s a shared responsibility and opportunity.
The Triangle is ready. Whaddaya say, Mr. Dundon? Let’s play ball.
Walt Barron is a local writer and strategic communications professional who has helped lead marketing and advertising strategy for brands like Mizuno USA, Marucci Sports, and ESPN. He writes human interest stories about sports on his Substack, “Sportingly Yours.”
ILLUSTRATION BY NICOLE PAJOR MOORE
Walt Barron COURTESY OF THE SUBJECT
Durham
Troubled Waters
The Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association, which oversees nearly 500 acres of protected land in Durham, is undergoing restructuring after voting to dissolve in January.
BY LENA GELLER lgeller@indyweek.com
The future of the Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association (ECWA)—and the nearly 500 acres of protected lands it owns and manages—is up in the air after a vote to dissolve the environmental nonprofit.
ECWA’s board voted to dissolve in January after significant staff and leadership turnover and declining organizational capacity, board president Shannon Arata told the INDY. ECWA has not issued any public statement about the vote.
“It’s a series of events that happened over a number of years,” Arata says. “It’s no one person’s fault. There’s no finger-pointing at all. It’s just, small nonprofits with big dreams and turnover. It happens. But unfortunately, it happened in a way that put ECWA as a very small nonprofit in a bad place that we’re working through.”
The organization is now undergoing restructuring. There could be a “smaller ECWA” in the future, Arata says. The organization still owns all its properties, which include five public nature preserves, four private parcels, and one conservation easement. If at any point ECWA has to let go of its properties, they would go to a comparable 501(c)(3) or a city or county organization. Arata emphasizes that dissolution will not mean ECWA’s preserves will be sold to developers.
“That’s not at all the case,” Arata says.
“It’s not allowed under the law, nor is it something the board would ever approve.”
Arata says the board has convened a “community advisory group of past ECWA supporters and past board members and is also working with some other 501(c)(3) partners” to figure out next steps.
“Where this goes we don’t know exactly yet, but a lot of good has come out of the process and a lot of needed organizational work,” Arata says.
ECWA was founded in 1999, initially protecting just six acres of land along Ellerbe Creek. Over 25 years, the organization expanded its conservation efforts while running programs centered on water quality restoration, invasive species management, and community education. It also engaged in advocacy work, including successfully pushing the Durham City Council in 2023 to permanently protect 215 acres of city land as a nature preserve for a great blue heron rookery.
Community members began noticing signs of trouble several months ago when ECWA’s headquarters at 904 Broad Street was listed for rent. Some also noticed changes in the Beaver Queen Pageant: this year marked the first time since 2005 that the quirky fundraiser—which just held its 21st iteration earlier this month at Duke Park—operated independently of ECWA,
with the Beaver Lodge forming its own nonprofit and directing proceeds to Keep Durham Beautiful instead of ECWA.
For nearly two decades, ECWA and the pageant had been natural partners. The pageant, a campy affair where contestants don beaver costumes and compete with punny aliases like “Clint Eatswood,” was born from environmental activism. It originally started to celebrate a successful effort to stop the state Department of Transportation from removing a beaver dam near East Club Boulevard. That wetland habitat would later become ECWA’s Beaver Marsh preserve.
ECWA typically handled operational tasks for the pageant: looping in volunteers, securing city permits, managing the website, processing donations, booking vendors. But by last year, ECWA no longer had the capacity to manage those logistics, according to Greg Palmer, who helps organize the pageant.
“They were down to maybe two or three employees,” Palmer says of ECWA. “The people that had worked on it for probably eight to 10 years, the people that were so familiar with it, [were gone], and the people that were in were completely new.”
In February 2022, ECWA’s website listed 11 staff members and 16 board members. By August 2024, the organization had dwindled to just two staff positions—executive director
Nicole Llinás, who came on in late 2023, and director of operations Phil Seib—and eight board members, only two of whom remained from the 2022 board. As recently as September 2024, ECWA was still attempting to hire a land conservation manager.
Tax records show ECWA’s revenue peaked at over $3 million in 2011 due to a major grant and has since averaged around $500,000 annually, though fluctuating considerably year to year. In its most recent tax filing, the organization reported $5.7 million in assets, with a revenue of $967,000—higher than usual—largely from grants and individual contributions, and expenses of $868,000, mostly costs like installing rain gardens, maintaining parks, and doing community engagement.
Arata says the board plans to release a broader public statement about the future of ECWA soon.
“The good and bad part about this timeline is that things are changing very rapidly, so we want to get our communication right,” Arata says.
“The mission will live on, no matter what happens with ECWA,” she adds. “The board is positive about all of the work that’s going on, and we’re happy with all the good that’s coming out of it. When decisions are made, we’ll let you know, but it’s going to be a process.” W
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY NICOLE PAJOR MOORE
Street Escape
The public is invited to weigh in on some proposed aesthetic changes and new opportunities to activate Fayetteville Street, Raleigh’s premier corridor.
BY JANE PORTER jporter@indyweek.com
At sunset, the trunks and limbs of 88 trees along each side of Fayetteville Street are lit up with hundreds of tiny lights, from Memorial Auditorium down to the state capitol.
The initiative, launched last week and sponsored by the Downtown Raleigh Alliance (DRA) and Duke Energy, is designed to enhance the aesthetic appeal and vibrancy of what local leaders would like to be commonly known as “North Carolina’s Main Street.”
But the lights aren’t the only changes that are coming. The City of Raleigh, in partnership with DRA and designers from the firms McAdams and SWA, is planning a redesign of the entire corridor “from building face to building face,” according to Dave Toms, a landscape architect with McAdams, who spoke at an open house at the City of Raleigh Museum Monday evening.
These changes could include adding more seating and outdoor dining options, preserving and enhancing the street’s majestic oak trees, making improvements for pedestrians, adding more lighting and public art, and updating or eliminating existing structures, such as benches, newsstands, and planters.
“We want Fayetteville Street alive, bustling, morning, evening, afternoon, every day of the year,” said Toms. “To do that, everyone who steps onto that street needs to feel
safe. They need to be welcomed. They need to feel comfortable. And they need to say, ‘Wow.’ It needs to be memorable. They need to think it’s an incredible place to be and be glad to have the opportunity to be here.”
The streetscape plan got under way at the beginning of the year after the DRA identified “reactivation strategies” for Fayetteville Street as a priority in its Downtown Raleigh Economic Development Strategy five-year plan that the nonprofit published last summer. In addition to the streetscape redesign, its recommendations included redesigning City Plaza, improving the customer experience, celebrating the Black business district, adding family-friendly programming, installing more housing, and capitalizing on connections to the convention center and Red Hat Amphitheater.
“The core of downtown centered around Fayetteville Street is disconnected from investments in other districts downtown and lacks some of the color and vibrancy of these newer districts,” the report states. “To thrive, the core needs a compelling vision that prioritizes street activity, improves connections to nearby assets and attracts a variety of different people—not just office workers.”
While designers have already drafted a few ideas for what the refresh could look like, a public engagement campaign to get community feedback—including an online survey—continues through the summer and into
the fall. The designers will make final recommendations and design standards to the city council in the fall, with the goal of the council adopting the plan in early winter 2026. The budget for the project, according to the city’s website, is $500,000.
The designers are proposing two different streetscape design concepts (which you can view in the online survey, or see images on page 8) that the public will have to choose between (or decide if they want to incorporate elements of both).
The first, “Procession and Celebration,” emphasizes Fayetteville Street’s history as a ceremonial street dating back to its 1792 origins as surveyed and platted by William Christmas. Matthew Biesecker, a landscape architect with SWA, said his team kept coming back to old photos of Raleigh and Fayetteville Street as a place where celebrations happen.
“We felt these images were very captivating,” he said. “We want to still create this kind of richness in terms of experience in this new design as well.”
The second concept, “Exalting the Oaks,” makes the trees along Fayetteville Street the central and unifying design concept.
“You can find inspiration from a tree in a silhouette, its leaf shape,” Biesecker said. “[If] you cut through a tree, you
Eighty-eight trees along Fayetteville Street in Raleigh are lit up with hundreds of tiny lights on June 18, 2025. PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS
look at the rings, we think that it’s a really interesting way to perceive an oak tree, because the rings represent time. And we think that that representation of time throughout history, since the 1792 plan, is a really interesting design idea to play around with.”
To that end, the designers are looking at rings and circular designs that they could include, for the tree planters, for example, or for paving bands at different intersections or a shade structure or water feature.
Biesecker said the final plan will aim to make Fayetteville Street more lively with fresh aesthetics by subtracting, adding, and refreshing existing elements.
“The current aesthetic is a little traditional,” he said. “It’s [about] creating a public realm that has vitality. We want to make a street that is alive …. We also want to celebrate Raleigh. I love the culture and the history of the state, and we really think that if there’s anywhere to celebrate the history of Raleigh and North Carolina, this is the place.”
The designers have identified several current conditions on Fayetteville Street and ways that they could be improved through a streetscape redesign. These include:
• Widening the space for dining and retail directly outside of businesses
• Improving tree grates and pavement wear and tear around the oak trees lining the street, and potentially adding circular planters around the trees that provide seating
• Reducing the 5-to-11-foot buffer between the curb and planters that is, in Biesecker’s words, “a lot of real estate being given to people exiting their cars”
• Reclaiming that space to potentially liven up inactive commercial facades for outdoor dining, outdoor amenities, or outdoor retail sales
• Redesigning intersections and crossings along Fayetteville Street with special paving or bumped-out paving to reduce the width of the street at intersections
The city is hosting several “ask a planner” events this month, and residents will have several more opportunities to weigh in with city staffers before a final design plan goes to the city council for approval.
“If you love [the plan], let us know. If you hate it, let us know, we’re fine either way,” Biesecker told the crowd on Monday. “We want to hear what you like, what you don’t like, and maybe most important, what our blind spots have been.”
Wake County
In Arrears
Wake County landlords are owed $1.9 million in late rent from the Wake Housing Authority and other agencies.
BY CHLOE COURTNEY BOHL chloe@indyweek.com
N
ancy Powell and her daughter rent a house in Wendell with help from a housing assistance voucher. Each month, Powell pays her share of the rent directly to her landlord, and the Wake County Housing Authority (WCHA) is supposed to pay the other part.
The agency began making late payments last November, according to emails between Powell and her landlord that INDY viewed.The delays grew longer each month: the WCHA’s share of December’s rent didn’t arrive until January 9, and then January’s rent didn’t come until February 21. By April 7, when the landlord still hadn’t received March’s or April’s payments from the WCHA, he informed Powell— who was up-to-date on her own payments—that he might have to terminate her lease.
“I’ve been attempting to communicate with Wake Hous-
ing for some time now regarding issues with their payments for you, and they have been continually dodging me and ignoring me,” the landlord wrote to Powell.
“You’re a good tenant, and we don’t want you to have to move out, but if we can’t get any resolution on this, we are going to have to terminate the lease and ask you to vacate the property by the end of the month,” he continued.
Powell says she called and visited the WCHA repeatedly but they either ignored her or claimed not to know the answers to her questions. She says one former staff member at the agency even hung up on her landlord mid-conversation. In May, Powell says her landlord asked her to leave the apartment by the end of June.
“He doesn’t trust [the WCHA] anymore because of how inappropriately they handled the situation,” Powell says.
ILLUSTRATION BY NICOLE PAJOR MOORE
“It’s been hard for my daughter,” she adds. “She was crying, like, ‘I’m tired of moving every year.’ And it’s very stressful and expensive. If you’re on a housing voucher, you can’t exactly afford to move.”
Powell and her landlord are not the only ones who’ve had trouble getting rental payments and answers from the WCHA, the federally-funded agency in charge of managing Wake County’s public housing and distributing housing assistance vouchers. In his May report to the WCHA’s board, interim director Michael Best wrote that the WCHA owes about $1.9 million in unpaid rent to landlords around the county.
Landlords owed rent
Meeting minutes from the WCHA’s May board meeting detail Best’s report and list a series of guests who took turns raising concerns about the agency’s operations.
The first speaker, a representative from the regional property management firm Fitch Irick Corporation, complained that the WCHA owed them rent money.
The second speaker, a private landlord, was experiencing the same problem.
The third, Wake County commissioner Safiyah Jackson, “expressed her concern regarding the crisis at the housing authority,” according to the minutes, and asked how she and the county could help course-correct.
INDY asked Best about the overdue payments and “crisis.” He explained that after he was hired in April, he learned that the Housing Author-
Wake Housing continues on page 11
‘A Pattern of Dishonest Conduct’
A court filing alleges that a fired Raleigh PD officer conducted illegal searches.
BY JANE PORTER jporter@indyweek.com
AWake County woman is asking the local district court not to use evidence and testimony from a former Raleigh police officer against her on charges of driving while impaired, misdemeanor child abuse, and failing to stop at a red light.
Dominique Jeffreys was arrested and charged on September 13, 2024. The arresting officer, Kyle Epps, was fired from the department in April following an internal investigation, the details of which were not released. Additionally, the motion to suppress, filed earlier this month, states, “Upon information and belief, hundreds of cases in which Epps was the charging officer” have been voluntarily dismissed. Wake County District Attorney Lor-
rin Freeman told the INDY that “dozens” is an appropriate description of how many cases involving Epps her office has dismissed.
“Because we have reviewed these on a case by case basis to identify public safety concerns and how the Brady information applies to the case, we have not kept a count on the total number but it does not exceed 100,” Freeman wrote in an email to the INDY
This comes as Freeman dropped more than 200 cases involving two state troopers in response to their actions following a crash that killed 31-year-old Tyrone Mason. In a report on her decision not to charge the troopers, Freeman criticized the Raleigh Police Department (RPD) for its
handling of the crash investigation.
The motion accuses Epps of malfeasance in Jeffreys’s case and three others.
RPD said in a request for comment that it was not authorized to provide information besides Epps’s hiring and separation date, but noted that no criminal charges have been filed against Epps.
The motion states that Epps said he pulled Jeffreys over after he observed her turning left at an intersection with a red light on North Arendell Avenue in Zebulon. Jeffreys had her child with her in the car, and in his arrest report, Epps claims Jeffreys was “slow to stop” and “swerving in the roadway,” leading him to believe Jeffreys was driving while impaired.
Epps claims Jeffreys “was very talkative, [and] had an odor of marijuana coming from her breath.” He claims Jeffreys told him she had recently smoked marijuana with her brother and was on her way to drop off her daughter at her mother’s house nearby.
Epps then asked Jeffreys to walk to the rear of her car and claims she “stumbled over her own feet.” He asked her to rate herself on a sobriety scale from zero to 10, and Jeffreys rated herself a two. Epps asked Jeffreys if she had medical issues or injuries that would prevent her from completing a field sobriety test. Jeffreys told him she had cancer that caused problems with her legs.
Epps then conducted four different sobriety tests, including the Walk and Turn and One-Leg Stand tests, observing
ILLUSTRATION BY NICOLE PAJOR MOORE
various clues that led him to arrest Jeffreys. In the motion, Charles Gray, Jeffreys’s attorney, argues that Epps lacked “reasonable articulable suspicion” to initiate the traffic stop. While Epps’s arrest report claims that Jeffreys “turned left when approaching an intersection with steady red light,” his dashboard camera, which captured a view where the lights are clearly visible, show that Jeffreys, “at worst, entered the intersection contemporaneously with the traffic light turning from yellow to red.”
The motion states that Epps “has a pattern of dishonest conduct,” citing his April 5 termination from RPD as well as a district court judge’s order that RPD must turn over “findings and recommendations” from its Internal Affairs Unit (IAU) investigation detailing some of Epps’s “malfeasance.”
Attached to Jeffreys’s motion is an RPD exhibit that describes three instances of malfeasance.
In July 2024, according to the IAU report,
responded that he had a concealed handgun permit and had a gun on him. Epps asked all the men in the car for ID, then asked them all to get out of the car. He frisked all of the men and searched the vehicle for weapons.
Epps admitted in his IAU interview that it was an illegal search, the report states.
Then, at 12:40 a.m., according to the IAU report, Epps and the downtown district officers approached another vehicle and asked the occupants if they were coming to or leaving Glenwood South. A passenger said they were leaving, and Epps asked the passenger if there were any firearms in the vehicle. The passenger repeated that they were leaving.
Epps told the passenger that the question was simple. The passenger responded that he didn’t have to answer. Epps said he was asking for the officers’ safety, and the passenger told him there were no firearms in the vehicle. Epps told the passenger he saw a bag in the vehicle. The passenger told
“The State’s decision to dismiss … cases involving Mr. Epps certainly suggests that they themselves have apprehensions regarding his credibility.”
Epps stopped a vehicle for spinning its tires. Epps’s body-worn-camera footage shows him reviewing an online general statute regulating street stunts, and the audio records him saying “Or other dangerous motor vehicle activity ... so [I] think we have that all day.”
But Epps admits on camera and in the IAU interview that the tire spinning didn’t cause smoke, the standard under which to make an arrest under the stunts statute. Epps erroneously charged the driver for causing “burnout,” the IAU report states, and seized their vehicle.
“The seizure of the vehicle was unlawful and violated the 4th Amendment right of the driver,” the IAU report states.
Two further instances of malfeasance occurred on the evening of November 10, just 16 minutes apart, according to the IAU report.
At 12:24 a.m., Epps and officers with the department’s downtown district Hospitality Unit approached a parked car. Epps and the others advised the car’s occupants not to leave valuables in the vehicle and told them where they could pay for parking.
Epps then asked the men if there were any firearms in the vehicle, to which one
ity had recently experienced a large amount of staff turnover, which led to emails from landlords and tenants going unanswered and complaints going unresolved.
Best says he learned that the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which oversees the housing voucher program for low-income renters, had assessed the WCHA’s operations, determined the agency was “troubled” in HUD parlance, and prescribed a “recovery plan.”
“It’s a very complex situation,” Best says. “Bottom line, we have to take each individual case and try to work through it in order to get some resolution.”
Epps he did not have permission to search his belongings.
“What I’m going to do is frisk,” Epps said, according to the report.
“An officer must have reasonable suspicion that subject is armed and reasonable suspicion that the subject is dangerous to conduct lawful frisk,” the report continues.
“No articulable reasonable suspicion was noted on [the body-cam footage] to suggest that the passenger was armed, and no articulable reasonable suspicion was observed to indicate that the passenger was dangerous.”
Epps admitted in the IAU interview that the passenger was “polite and cooperative”; still, he frisked the passenger and searched his vehicle but found no weapons or contraband.
“The detention, frisk and search violated the 4th Amendment rights of the occupants of the vehicle,” the report concludes.
“That the State’s decision to dismiss ... cases involving Mr. Epps certainly suggests that they themselves have apprehensions regarding his credibility,” the filing states.
“As such, the State lacks the requisite reasonable articulable suspicion to support the above-referenced charges.” W
According to Best, the WCHA inherited most of its current problems. In addition to managing some 300 units of public housing and distributing about 540 housing vouchers each year, the agency is responsible for low-income renters who move to Wake County from other jurisdictions and bring their housing assistance vouchers with them, or live in Wake County but have a voucher from a statewide housing authority. (This is the case for Powell—her voucher comes from the North Carolina Commission of Indian Affairs.) The “initial” housing authority is supposed to pay the WCHA for those voucher recipients’ housing assistance, which the WCHA is supposed to pass along to their new landlords. But Best said the WCHA is owed $1.9 million by 114 different public housing authorities around the country. How did the WCHA allow that balance to climb so high?
According to Best, before he arrived, the agency failed to submit updated HUD paperwork for 260 voucher households who moved to Wake County from other jurisdictions. Without that paperwork, the “initial” housing authorities didn’t know whether or how much money to send to the WCHA.
Best says the WCHA has cleared the paperwork backlog for all but 54 of those 260 households and is working to finish the rest. He adds that even without updated paperwork, HUD instructs initial housing authorities to continue paying tenants’ rent.
Best and his staff are currently in the process of contacting each of the 114 public housing authorities individually to ask them to pay. He describes a laborious process of back-and-forth messages, conference calls, and exchanges of paperwork to settle each balance. He adds that a handful of housing authorities, including Durham’s and New York City’s, owe the majority of the $1.9 million.
“It’s going to take a little time,” Best
says. “But bottom line, we’re on top of it.” In response to a request for comment, the Durham Housing Authority declined to say how much they owe the WCHA, but indicated that payments are owed both ways.
“We have been in contact with the Wake County Housing Authority, as recent [sic] as last week regarding the outstanding payments as well as the payments that they owe us,” a spokesperson wrote in an email to INDY
“We have the adequate staffing”
Even if the out-of-town housing authorities are to blame for some of the unpaid rent, it’s not entirely clear why it’s taken the WCHA so long to start trying to collect the money. One reason seems to be the high turnover at the agency: Best says most of his staff have only been at the WCHA a few months longer than he has and that there was “a big turnover” after the pandemic.
In response to INDY’s inquiry about reasons for the turnover he says, “I don’t even know, because nobody’s really here to even ask that question.”
The WCHA has hired four new staff members since Best arrived, he says. They now only have one “crucial vacancy” to fill and are actively interviewing candidates for that role. The WCHA website lists 14 current employees.
“We have the adequate staffing to aggressively address the issues at hand,” Best says.
As for the total number of unpaid rent cases the WCHA is handling right now, he couldn’t say for certain.
“I’m working 15 or 20 directly,” Best says. “These are ones that landlords have sent over emails, and we’re researching to find out the status of their payments … but I realize there’s more.”
Best also declined to provide a timeline for when all of the past-due rent will be paid because of the inter-agency coordination involved.
HUD and Wake County have both taken notice of the WCHA’s challenges.
HUD’s “recovery plan” includes a series of internal evaluations and reforms, Best says.
Although the WCHA is an independent agency, the Wake County Board of Commissioners appoints its board. A Wake County spokesperson told INDY, “We are aware of the concerns that renters and landlords have voiced regarding timely payment, and we’re willing to support the Housing Authority as they work to address these challenges.” W Wake
Walk the Walk
Inspired by his 10 grandkids, Bruce Bair is walking to Washington, D.C., with letters from others like him concerned about democracy and the future of America.
BY CHASE PELLEGRINI DE PAUR chase@indyweek.com
Bruce Bair, 73, was just a few miles outside of Charlottesville, Virginia, when I called him up on a recent Tuesday.
“Is now a good time to talk?” I asked. “Well, I’m just walking,” he said happily.
Bair was about a week into his roughly 300-mile trek from Durham to Washington, D.C., to deliver dozens of letters to North Carolina’s congressional representatives. From Charlottesville, he still had over a week of walking more than 100 remaining miles.
Bair is a grandpa and a veteran. He told me that he’d hoped to be able to sit down with Senator Thom Tillis but that he might only be able to score a meeting with his chief of staff. Ted Budd, the state’s other senator, didn’t respond at all. (Since chatting with Bair, he’s made it to D.C. and did in fact meet with Tillis’s chief of staff.)
This spring, we’ve interviewed a woman who spends her afternoons alone on a street corner with protest signs, a musician who wrote a semi-satirical album of political action songs, and locals who attended recent “No Kings” protests. They’re all seeing an America they’re not proud of (see: brutal immigration enforcement, the gutting of the federal workforce, and the neverending First Family grift) and they’re trying to do something about it. All of them, including Bair, hope that they can inspire others to take some action, no matter how small.
We asked Bair about his journey and destination as he hoofed his way toward the nation’s capital.
INDY: Why the walk?
BAIR: I’m a veteran of the 25th Infantry and other units. And we fought. There was no peaceful resolution back when I was in the army. We shot people.
One of my daughters accused me one day
of always thinking of the violent way first, and that made me think about myself— what kind of an impression am I giving to my grandkids? So I started studying nonviolent resistance, and, of course, the three big guys are Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Nelson Mandela. This is what they did, they walked, they gathered followers. So I gathered letters.
My deal is to show resistance to these political philosophies that are hurting our country and will hurt my grandchildren and hurt people like you.
Tell me about a typical day of walking.
Sore feet, sore back. I get up at six a.m., and I walk until I put in between 14 and 20 miles, depending on what the plan is for the day.
Today I’m staying in a hotel in some little, tiny town that happens to have a Holiday Inn Express. Yesterday I walked until I got to the house of the people who were sponsoring me in Charlottesville. It’s 300 miles total and I got 15 days, so I gotta make 20 miles a day.
Has anything, besides maybe the sore feet, surprised you about the walk so far?
How wonderful most people really are. Since June 2, I’ve had probably 15 or 20 people stop to ask if I was OK, do I need money, could they give me a lift, could they give me food. You know, that kind of stuff is just what makes me ignore my sore feet.
And how can people help?
Well, they can call their representatives. Go to Fivecalls.org. They should call their state reps, they should call their county council
members, and they should call their people in Congress.
You can also do phone banking, you can do postcards. Those are all very, very safe things. You can do them inside your house, inside your car. You don’t have to get out on the street.
But I think if you’re old like me, you know, we should be the front line. If somebody’s gonna get cracked on the head it should be us. These young people should be behind us, and they should be doing these other things. We should stand up. They should get out on the bridges, on the street corners, and they should express their views, and they’ll be surprised at how many people will agree with them, because people on both sides are agreed: You should have a place to live, you should have food to eat. You should have health care, you should have an education, you should make a contribution to this country through your work and raising a family.
And nobody on either side disagrees with that except the politicians who want money.
There’s a lot to be upset about, locally and nationally. Were there any specific developments that pushed you into something as big as this walk?
I have 10 grandchildren. And I hadn’t done anything except vote and write letters to the editor.
And I told my wife that if we don’t do something now, there’ll be nothing to do something about, that this whole country
would be run by corporations, and corporations will be able to turn you into diesel fuel if they don’t think you’re useful.
Have you spoken to your grandchildren on the walk? What are you hearing from them?
They’re teenagers and in their early twenties, and they’re very, very supportive. I make little videos and I get little hearts and flowers and thumbs-ups from them.
What are the letters you’re carrying?
I set up an email, DemocracysChoir@gmail. com, and said, “Send me a letter for Tillis, Budd, [U.S. Representative Valerie] Foushee, whoever you want to deliver to, and I’ll take it in my backpack.” So I printed them out and put them in plastic bags. I think there’s about 50 of them right now, there may be a few left that I’ve got to print.
What do you hope people who see you walking, or hear about your walk, take away from it?
That they do something. That they can’t be idle. They have to do something. The least little thing combines with everything else. My goal is to get people to say “Yeah I could do this little thing,” and then do it. Once they’ve done that, when the next little thing comes up, they’re going to say, “Yeah, I’m going to do that,” and it will build. We need 12 or 15 million people with that kind of attitude. W
Bruce Bair walked 300 miles from Durham to Washington, D.C. to deliver letters to elected representatives. PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE SUBJECT
The Little Blue Bakehouse That Could
Shop owners Allison and Carl Vick give startup bakers in Raleigh a place to call home.
BY ELLIOTT HARRELL arts@indyweek.com
I
’ve been tasked with finding the perfect pink cookie by my four-year-old daughter. I warned her that bakeries don’t always have pink cookies, but standing in front of the long counter, I’m suddenly stumped by all of the options. Suddenly, it’s not a question of whether I’ll find a pink cookie but how I will be able to narrow the options down.
There’s a hot pink macaron with Fruity Pebbles as sprinkles on top. A cookie decorated with pink icing that has strawberry jam on the inside. And I spot a bright pink doughnut out of the corner of my eye.
They all look delicious, and they’re all from different bakers with memberships at Little Blue Bakehouse, a charming bakery adjacent to the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema theater in Southeast Raleigh.
Little Blue Bakehouse owners Allison and Carl Vick opened the bakery nearly three years ago when Allison, who runs the macaron business Little Blue Macaron, began
to outgrow the Raleigh commercial kitchen that she worked out of. That space, she says, housed around 100 different businesses.
“It’s chaotic,” she says. “We were just doing whatever we could to get bigger, but there’s only so much you can grow in those spaces.”
Frustrated, the couple began looking for retail space, only to find out that the roughly 1,000 square feet that they’d need for a macaron and coffee business would be a large financial burden that they didn’t think they’d be able to swing.
“We would have had to make, like, 15,000 macarons a week,” Carl says of what it would have taken to make things work.
But even before all this, the Vicks had kicked around the idea of a business like Little Blue Bakehouse, in which they’d put up the up-front investment to build out the space but would share it with other bakers. After talking with their potential landlord, they decided to go for it, committing to a
space just over 3,000 square feet.
Here, there is room for Allison’s macarons as well as for four other bakers. A picture window in the front gives customers a view into the 2,000-square-foot commercial kitchen, and there’s a bakery and coffee shop in the front.
This isn’t just a commercial kitchen. It’s a space for bakers to both work and sell products out of. They each have a case up front to sell their sweet treats, access to the kitchen 24/7, and mentorship from Allison and Carl. The bakers pay a monthly membership fee and a small commission on each sale but get to skip out on the stress of finding enough capital to open a shop on their own.
“You’re looking at 150–200 [thousand dollars], even if it’s a preexisting restaurant or café, in terms of startup fees and outfitting and stuff, so it’s really, really expensive and a very significant financial risk [opening your own retail store],” Allison notes. This is one of the challenges that small businesses face when trying to figure out how to scale.
She also points out that it’s often more expensive to rent a smaller space versus a large one, one of the issues the Vicks encountered before deciding to open the larger space. The membership fees help pay some of the lease and help offset some of the Vicks’ financial risk.
It’s a mutually beneficial situation, the Vicks say, pointing out that the business model was what made it possible to open a space in the first place and helps them stay open.
“The idea is that these businesses can kind of use [the space] as a stepping stone
in between figuring out, like, being a home baker or being a baker in a commercial kitchen and doing pop-ups all the time to pivoting to having a retail space but not having to invest fully in a brick-and-mortar right off the bat,” Allison says.
“We can help create more small businesses and more opportunities for small businesses,” she continues, “but also it’s more likely that our business will survive because we have a diverse type of product.”
On any given day, there are about 60 different types of baked goods available across all of the display cases, which means it’s likely that every customer can find something that they like.
Right now, you’ll find Allison’s macarons, croissants and doughnuts from The Blue Ox Bakery, mini cheesecakes from Gryffin Bakeshop, a range of gluten-free treats from Sweet Nothings Bakery and Café, and cookies and more from Yellow Garden Bake Shop. Sprinkled in among the bakers’ specialty items, you’ll find a range of brownies, bars, cupcakes, and other cheat-worthy finds.
It’s possible that you’ll find too many things that you want, like I did. After waffling, I went for the pink macaron and cookie—and a brownie for good measure—supporting three different bakers in the process. All three were a hit, especially the cookie with strawberry jam in the middle, which tasted like a Pop-Tart.
“In this space, you can support up to five small businesses at one time with your dollar,” Carl reminds me. “It makes a big difference.” W
Bakers prepare various baked goods at Little Blue Bakehouse in Raleigh PHOTOS BY ANGELICA EDWARDS
Macarons from Little Blue Macaron are displayed at the Little Blue Bakehouse in Raleigh PHOTOS BY ANGELICA EDWARDS
FOOD & DRINK
Truth in Advertising
A satisfying cheeseburger combo at Big Bob’s City Grill in the heart of Hillsborough.
BY LENA GELLER lgeller@indyweek.com
IThis 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.
hadn’t planned on visiting Big Bob’s City Grill for this week’s column. I had my sights set on another restaurant. A last-minute Google search, however, revealed some unsettling sanitation information about this other restaurant—a low score paired with details about a non-functioning freezer—that sent me pivoting toward Big Bob’s, a Hillsborough establishment I found while searching online listings.
Housed in a brick building with matching brick-red shingles, Big Bob’s sits just off Highway 70 across the street from a laundromat and catty-corner from a taqueria. The restaurant’s website described it as being “in the heart of Hillsborough,” which typically signals a downtown location. That’s not quite the case here, though it could still qualify as the heart—just not the geographic one.
I’m disoriented upon arrival: in the parking lot, cars are parked every which way, and the restaurant’s storefront is swathed with black netting with vertical slits cut to create several different entrances. I’m trying to figure out which slit to walk through when a woman climbing out of her car takes pity on me: “It’s the middle one, baby,” she says. Inside the restaurant, it’s immediately reassuring to spot not only an acceptable sanitation score (94.0) but also a colorful, third-grade-classroom-esque sign that reads “Spread Kindness Not Germs.”
Big Bob’s has an old school vibe: the floor is checkered, the tables are covered in thick blue vinyl tablecloths, butter yellow chairs are bolted to the ground, and the menu is written on a whiteboard behind the register. It shows
evidence of recent price adjustments—smudges of old numbers lurk beneath the new—but most everything still falls within my budget.
À la carte lunch options include a teriyaki chicken sandwich for $10, a bologna sandwich for $5, and a mushroom burger for $9, among other handhelds. The lunch combos, ranging from $10 to $13, offer the best value: a main (pork chops, Philly cheesesteak, cheeseburger, fish sandwich) plus fries and a drink.
The line is long, but there’s plenty to look at while waiting. On the wall, an oil painting depicts a slice of cake beneath a glass cloche; by the register, slices of lemon bundt cake sit in clear plastic clamshells. Beside them, a collection of business cards forms a small shrine to local services: one advertises a bail bondsman named “The Rock”; another promotes a paint and design company called Integrity Coatings. (All the Integrity Coatings cards are stuck together, which feels authentic.)
As I turn my attention toward a TV overhead, where Judge Mablean is presiding over a marital dispute, a man standing in front of me asks where I got my earrings. “I thrifted them,” I say. He gives me an “et tu, Brute?” sort of look but a few minutes later tells me he hopes to see me around.
I finally reach the front of the line and greet the cashier, a man wearing an orange and blue plaid button-down and a newsboy cap. I’d planned to ask him two questions—“Who is Big Bob?” and “I’m really hungry, what should I get?”— but the pace of service doesn’t invite chitchat. I order the
cheeseburger combo for $11.99. The cashier hands me a cup of crushed ice and gestures to a row of large drink dispensers: sweet tea, unsweet tea, lemonade, water, and something red that’s probably punch. Then he scribbles “CB” on a guest check pad and rings me up for $13.98. I’d calculated something closer to $12.80 with tax, so there must be a credit card surcharge.Tips are cash-only. I make a mental note to grab some coins from my car before I leave. I fill my cup with sweet tea and find a seat. Seven minutes later, the cashier nods at me. I approach the register, and he opens a Styrofoam container for inspection. The gesture feels as ceremonial as an upside-down Blizzard demonstration at Dairy Queen. I give him a thumbs up.
Back at my table, which is stocked with paper towels, ketchup, mustard, and Texas Pete, I stare down the most ambitious burger I’ve ever encountered. The size of the patty makes the American cheese on top look like a postage stamp. The onion and tomato slices, too, appear comically undersized.
It’s a solid burger—nothing that’ll send you into a trance, but nothing to fault either. The crinkle-cut fries, dusted with red seasoning and light as clouds inside, steal the show. I retrieve $2.40 in quarters and dimes from my car and dump them in the tip jar, bringing my total to $16.38. It’s the most I’ve spent on a Lunch Money meal so far. Then again, this is the most substantial meal I’ve gotten.
Big surcharge. Big portions. At Big Bob’s, the name is truth in advertising. W
The lunch combo at Big Bob’s City Grill PHOTO BY LENA GELLER
Balancing the Books
Daughters Coffee & Books, a new independent bookstore in South Durham, offers new and used books alongside a literary-themed cafe menu.
BY DANEEN KHAN arts@indyweek.com
There are a number of cafés and bookstores in Durham. Many cater their spaces to certain audiences—teenagers picking up fantasy novels and frappés, young professionals typing away as they stir iced lattes, older readers sipping hot tea over lengthy memoirs.
Daughters Coffee & Books doesn’t forget about the toddlers.
Toward the back of the new South Durham café is a children’s corner stocked with used picture books, building blocks, and even a toy espresso machine for kids to mimic the baristas working across from them.
The concept ties closely with the shop’s name; owner Nicole Grinnell chose “Daughters” because of her close relationship with her mother and sister. Both Grinnell and her sister have their own daughters.
“My idea was if there’s a safe little corner for them to either read or have a little toy that they can play with while Mom enjoys a cup of coffee, even for five or 10 minutes— that could be the best five or 10 minutes of her day,” Grinnell says.
It’s not just the children’s nook creating a family-friendly environment. It’s also the colorful titles on the shelves, the handwritten menu on the wall, and the floral illustrations drawn by Grinnell’s friend, artist Adina Stephens, stretching across the shop’s front windows. Whether you’re five years old or 50, Daughters welcomes you.
Grinnell, who opened the café in April, says she hasn’t followed a traditional path. She never graduated college and felt stagnated working “jobs that didn’t feel like careers.” But through it all, she always had her books.
A collective space for local readers
Grinnell has “never been unhappy in a bookstore.” So when she sat down to really think about what she wanted to do with her life, she decided to open her own.
Daughters is located in Greenwood Commons near Parkwood in the space formerly held by Bull City Brewhouse. While Grinnell’s original vision for the space was focused entirely on books, she decided to embrace a café concept after seeing that the location already had a bar built in.
Although there are several bookstores in downtown Durham, the closest available to Parkwood residents is the Barnes & Noble at Southpoint Mall.
“As far as an independent bookstore, we’re the only one for miles,” the store’s bookseller, Frances Gasior, says. “I think that we’re catering directly to the neighborhood.”
Gasior keeps various perspectives, audiences, and ages—especially children—in mind as they add to the shop’s collection.
“For Pride we found some really cute glossaries of terms so that younger queer people can maybe put some language to their feelings, to their unknowns. And then for Juneteenth, we tried to focus on Black excellence,” says Gasior.
Grinnell says Daughters currently sells about 2,000 items, of which Gasior estimates at least 60 percent are used (or “preloved,” as the sign labeling the shelf reads). If shoppers can’t find a book, the shop will place an order for them with a 10 percent discount off the retail price.
Grinnell collaborates with her staff to
add to the store’s inventory. Her team also works to craft the café’s menu, which is sourced from Carrboro Coffee Roasters and Ninth Street Bakery.
Along with standard coffee shop fare, Daughters offers a variety of specialty drinks. While some, like its “Cinnamon Bun Bookstore Brew,” are always available, the shop also offers a literary-themed seasonal menu.
This spring, that included a “Daughter of the Forest” brown sugar and rosemary cold brew with vanilla cold foam and “The Love Hypothesis” raspberry and vanilla iced matcha latte. Grinnell says the café is currently preparing to launch its summer specials.
Although Daughters is relatively new to the area, Grinnell hopes to cultivate it into a collective space for local readers. The café hosted its first big event, a book signing with Raleigh-based author Annie McQuaid, on June 1.
“Something that I wasn’t expecting when we announced that we were opening
and after we opened was how many local authors there were who were looking for a place to sell their books, a place to market them, [and] a place to meet with people in the community,” Grinnell says. “So that has been a big need in the community that we have been looking to help fill.”
As Daughters builds its presence in South Durham, Grinnell says future events will include a “coffee and conversation” session with a group of local writers and other authors collaborating with the shop to raise support for local nonprofit work.
Grinnell knows that if readers want a coffee and a book, they can make the drive to Southpoint or downtown. But she also knows that locally accessible, independent businesses like hers bring something special to their communities.
“This is all of our livelihoods and it needs to succeed,” she says. “There’s just another personal care that you get from coming to an independent store like ours.” W
Above: Daughters Coffee & Books opened in Greenwood Commons in April. Left: Nicole Grinnell, the owner of Daughters Coffee & Books. PHOTOS BY ANGELICA EDWARDS
WATCHHOUSE: RITUALS
Tiptoe Tiger Music / Thirty Tigers | May 30
Practice Makes Progress
On Watchhouse’s new album, Emily Frantz and Andrew Marlin lean into Rituals and expand their creative palette.
BY NICK MCGREGOR arts@indyweek.com
There’s a moment on Rituals, Watchhouse’s new full-length record, when the Chapel Hill band slips out of its comfortable modern folk lane and into a darker gear. An instrumental breakdown closes “Endless Highway (Pt. 1)” and segues seamlessly into “Sway/Endless Highway (Pt. 2).”
Emily Frantz’s mournful fiddle and gentle harmonies lock in with bandmate Andrew Marlin’s warm tenor guitar and trademark high-pitched voice: “So go find your kinship in all kinds / Be free in how you move / When the earth calls back she’s absolute / Her loving arms wait for you.”
It’s vintage Watchhouse: serene instrumentation and intimate songwriting combining into a rootsy, modern take on bluegrass and Americana. But the married duo, who adopted the Watchhouse moniker in 2021 after operating as Mandolin Orange for the previous decade, say that the surface-level warmth of Rituals belies the album’s spirit of experimentation and boundary-pushing creativity.
“Recording this album, it really felt like the only way to finish was to push through,” Frantz tells the INDY during a recent afternoon Zoom call. “We’re glad the sound comes across as warm and cozy, even if the process didn’t feel that way to us.”
“I wanted to reach for a new sound with this record,” Marlin adds. “But I couldn’t describe it very well to Emily and the guys in the band, so I struggled some early on.”
Marlin cites jazz icons like John Coltrane and Gil Evans—particularly the latter’s 1964 deep cut The Individualism of Gil Evans—as inspirations for embedding rhythm and drive into Watchhouse’s new material. He also credits Rituals producer Ryan Gustafson for urging him to strive for that goal. “When the sessions were challenging, Ryan was like, ‘If you can hear it in
your head, let’s figure out how to get there.’
While the instrumentation on Rituals expands outward into electronic territory, the lyrics remain focused on interior feeling. Lines like “I can’t help running from all of the things we share / I feel you reaching out, it’s nice to know you care” from “Firelight”—a rare lead vocal from Frantz—strike a rare balance between intensely personal and purposefully universal.
“In the Sun” is grounded in the refrain “I’m dreaming of a life with you in the sun / And I hope our time together has only just begun,” while “Glistening” is downright tactile: “I love it when we talk like this / Red velvet in our eyes / It’s the only time we seem to understand.”
Frantz says that these intimate lyrics aren’t always easy to release into the world, especially for a couple whose personal and professional lives have always been so intertwined.
“Andrew writes such personal, specific songs that sometimes it makes us feel vulnerable to put ourselves out in the world,” she admits. “But it’s always nice when an album comes out so other people have the chance to find themselves in the lyrics.”
One experience that probably resonates with nearly everyone is highlighted on “Rituals”: “I wish I remembered all my neighbors’ names / Someday I’ll knock on every door / Instead I sit here wondering at the passersby / And why no one drops in anymore unannounced.” Mulling on this loss of a golden communitarian age, Marlin drops the aching kicker: “It’s why I sing lonesome songs.”
“When I was a kid, our families just wandered down the road to our neighbors’ all the time,” Marlin says. “You just checked to see whether their car was in the driveway and showed up. That doesn’t happen as much anymore.”
Snippets of darkness seep in around other edges of Rituals. Shadows “find a way to make a fist” on the title track, while on “False Harbors,” “the calls of a friend make waves in the blood.” Meanwhile, the grief that punctuated Mandolin Orange’s final album, 2019’s Tides of a Teardrop, is subtly referenced on “Glistening”: “Across these icy plains of what it means to lose / Is the world on fire or at home in the sun?”
Yet Watchhouse carries on. Nearly 15 years into their career, the Chapel Hill duo still slip-slide seamlessly between sing-along lightness (“All Around You”) and bluegrass jams (“Patterns”). Confidence and self-assurance abound, especially with Frantz and Marlin’s embrace of eclectic instrumentation. Marlin cites the challenge of playing electric tenor guitar on nine of Rituals’ 11 songs, wrestling with the instrument’s drop octave tuning to reach new heights of sonic excellence. Meanwhile, Frantz raves about the
life-changing purchase of a vintage instrument, the year before sessions started.
“Playing that beautiful old fiddle changed my approach,” she says. “It just felt different during recording, and when I listened back to the fiddle and violin parts, they sounded really good. That made me feel more confident.”
Beyond that, bouzouki, harmonium, mellotron, pump organ, and mandola pepper the album’s liner notes. Frantz and Marlin both sing the praises of contributions from band members Josh Oliver, Clint Mullican, Jamie Dick, Nat Smith, Matt Smith, and Gustafson. Rounding out the local lineup is Alli Rogers, who engineered Rituals at Sylvan Esso’s local studio, Betty’s; D. James Goodwin mixed and mastered it back in Marlin’s home state of Virginia.
The album’s heartfelt examination of family, identity, and growth might be best personified on the cover, however. A papercut design by Durham artist Zoe van Buren
Andrew Marlin and Emily Frantz of Watchhouse
PHOTO BY JILLIAN CLARK
features coffeepots, mixing bowls, and linens drying on a clothesline—the perfect frame for the album’s reflection of domestic life and artistic evolution.
“It’s always hard to visually represent a collection of songs,” Frantz says. “But Zoe’s design has very specific details that are really important to us.”
In her day job, van Buren serves as North Carolina’s state folklorist, and her work documenting fiber arts and knitting resonated with Frantz and Marlin’s growing interest in the rituals that bridge their family life at home with two children and their sold-out run of summer tour dates ahead.
“Rituals for us look different at home and on the road,” Marlin says. “At home, we’re a little more grounded with a set schedule. On the road, we’re a little more excited, a little more on the go, and a little more anxious. It can be hard to find those quiet moments when you’re racing to get on stage.”
One of the most exciting moments ahead comes on July 11, when Watchhouse supports fellow Tar Heels The Avett Brothers at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado. (Though no Triangle shows are currently on their itinerary, Frantz and Marlin promise a big 2025 announcement soon.)
“When Mandolin Orange was just starting out, we saw The Avett Brothers as an
inspiration for what we could accomplish,” Frantz says. “They were making their own records, booking their own tours, and signing with a major label but staying true to themselves. It’s been an honor getting to know them.”
Marlin adds, “For me, I remember a friend in like 2007 raving about The Avett Brothers. I was still into Pearl Jam and Nirvana and those kinds of bands. I hadn’t grown up with the tradition of Americana and bluegrass, or even grown up with those instruments. So when I heard them play, I was like, ‘Oh, you can make traditional music sound like that.’”
Now, Watchhouse is one of those bands on par with the Avetts—revered by fans, admired by fellow artists, and leading the charge for thoughtful and successful North Carolina artistry. When asked whether Rituals provided the opportunity to overcome the dreaded sophomore slump that faces a band’s second album, Frantz and Marlin both laugh.
“Honestly, we think of it as our eighth album,” Frantz says, pointing back to the discography that includes Mandolin Orange’s work. “But now that Rituals is out in the world and people can react to it, it does feel like our identity as Watchhouse is fully coming through.” W
CULTURE CALENDAR
WED 6/25
MUSIC
Jesse Beaman: This Will Destroy You 7 p.m. Kings, Raleigh.
Insect Ark & Forn, Wailin Storms, Tooth 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.
STAGE
ADF: Anna Sperber June 25-26, various times. Rubenstein Arts Center, Durham.
The Color Purple June 6-29, various times. Raleigh Little Theatre, Raleigh.
Parade the Musical June 13-29, North Raleigh Arts and Creative Theatre, Raleigh.
PAGE
Loretta J. Ross: How to Start Making Change with Those You’d Rather Cancel 6 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.
SCREEN
C. Thomas Howell with Screening of The Outsiders 6 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.
Theatre in the Park presents: Hamlet June 19-29, various times. Pullen Park, Raleigh.
THUR 6/26
MUSIC
BANGZZ, Bass Battery, Oblations 7:30 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.
FRI 6/27
MUSIC
Can’t Feel My Face: 2010s Dance Party 8 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham. The Carolina Cutups 6:30 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.
Gregory Santa Croce, Science Fiction 7:30 p.m. Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham. Honey Magpie, Sarah Clanton 7 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.
Pride Dance Party 8 p.m.
The Pinhook, Durham.
SunSets Evening Rooftop
DJ Sets! 6 p.m. The Velvet Hippo, Durham.
Tom Merrigan’s Hot Raccoons, Ricky Garni 8 p.m. Shadowbox Studio, Durham.
High + Tight: A Lifetime of Soul, Funk, and Disco Fridays at 8 p.m. Wolfe & Porter, Raleigh.
STAGE
ADF: Ballet Hispánico June 27-29, various times. Page Auditorium, Durham.
SAT 6/28
MUSIC
ADF: Latin Dance Party 9 p.m. The Fruit, Durham.
CaryLIVE! with Dustbowl Revival 7:30 p.m. Downtown Cary Park, Cary.
Colloboh, Erik “Rodent” Cheslak 7 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.
Kelsey Waldon, Olivia Ellen Lloyd 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.
Lois Deloatch and Friends 7:30 p.m. Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.
The Onyx Club Boys 7 p.m. Succotash, Durham.
PURO PRIDE PARI w/ DRAG + DJ’s + PARI 10 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.
Renaissance Disko: Prideful Class with DJ VSPRTN & DJ Webbie 10 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.
Shrek Rave 8:30 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.
Saturday Night Dance Party 9:30 p.m. The Velvet Hippo, Durham.
Summerfest: From Classical to Broadway 8 p.m. Koka Booth Amphitheatre, Cary.
TR In Concert: Drew Gehling 7:30 p.m. Theatre Raleigh Arts Center, Raleigh.
SUN 6/29
MUSIC
Bluegrass Jam Sundays at 4 p.m. Bond Brothers Eastside, Cary.
J. Hoard 5 p.m. Missy Lane’s Assembly Room, Durham.
Squelch, Manic Third Planet, Three Eighths 7 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.
SCREEN
Pride, The Movie 7 p.m. Raleigh United Mutual Aid Hub, Raleigh.
MON 6/30
MUSIC
Gumbo Melange 7 p.m. Missy Lane’s Assembly Room, Durham.
TUES 7/1
MUSIC
Open Mic with a Band at Slim’s Tuesdays at 9 p.m. Slim’s, Raleigh.
Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.
STAGE
ADF: Forces of Nature Dance Theatre Jul. 1-2, various times. Reynolds Industries Theater, Raleigh.
WED 7/2
MUSIC
mc chris, Swell Rell, D&D Sluggers 7 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.
THUR 7/3
MUSIC
BUKISOUND: Tribute to Marco Antonio Solís + sets by DJ Juanito Colombia 9 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.
Megayacht & Dynamite Brothers 7 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.
Moontype + Le Weekend + DUNUMS 8 p.m. Shadowbox Studio, Durham.
Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol plays the Cat’s Cradle Back Room on Tuesday, July 1. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE VENUE.
Squelch headlines The Pinhook on Sunday, June 29. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE VENUE.
The American Dance Festival brings its Ballet Hispánico to Duke’s Page Auditorium from June 27 to 29. PHOTO COURTESY OF ADF.
LIKE TO PLAN AHEAD? CULTURE
CALENDAR
Music Trivia Bingo Thursdays with Stormie Daie 8 p.m. The Velvet Hippo, Durham.
STAGE
ADF: Luke Murphy’s Attic Projects Jul. 3-6, various times, Rubenstein Arts Center, Durham.
PAGE
Silent Book Club 6:30 p.m. DSSOLVR, Durham.
FRI 7/4
MUSIC
Celebrating the Life of Sherman Tate: The Blazers, Parthenon Huxley, Lee Gildersleeve, Ron Taylor, Ken Yow and more 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.
First Friday Latin Nights 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.
SAT 7/5
MUSIC
GOOD KID, M.A.A.D
PARTY: A Kendrick, Doechii, and SZA Night 8:30 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.
Horizontal Hold, Maple Stave, Three Body Problem
8 p.m. Shadowbox Studio, Durham.
R&B Live 9 p.m. Missy Lane’s Assembly Room, Durham.
Saturday Night Dance Party at The Velvet Hippo! 9:30 p.m. The Velvet Hippo, Durham.
Thalia Zedek Band, Quattracenta 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.
FOURTH OF JULY
EVENTS
SUN 7/6
MUSIC
Bluegrass Jam Sundays at 4 p.m. Bond Brothers Eastside, Cary.
Juliana Finch Trio 7 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.
MON 7/7
MUSIC
Ernest Turner Trio 7 p.m. Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.
TUES 7/8
MUSIC
Music Bingo 7 p.m. Ponysaurus Brewing Co., Raleigh.
Open Mic with a Band at Slim’s Tuesdays at 9 p.m. Slim’s, Raleigh.
Ouija Macc, Sinitzer 6 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.
THUR 7/3
July 3rd Celebration
4 p.m. Downtown Cary Park, Cary.
FRI 7/4
4th of July BBQ Party
11 a.m. Durham Central Park, Durham.
July 4th Bash in the Beer Garden
11 a.m. The Glass Jug Beer Lab, RTP.
Fourth of July Grill Out in the Garden
1 p.m. Ponysaurus Brewing Company, Durham.
Sun’s Out, Buns Out: July 4th on the Roof
4 p.m. The Durham Hotel, Durham.
Chapel Hill
July 4th Celebration
7 p.m. Southern Community Park, Chapel Hill.
CROSSWORD
Los Angeles Times Sunday Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Patti Varol
FUSION” BY CHRISTINA
IVERSON
© Puzzles by Pappocom
Cybersecurity
Siemens Medical Professional best practices
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.
Difficulty level: MEDIUM If you’re stumped, find the answer keys for these puzzles and archives of previous puzzles (and their solutions) at indyweek.com/puzzles-page or
“Children of,” in temple names
Reqs: Bach
Sci, Cybersecurity Approx 15% Hybrid work careers.siemens-healthineers.com R-22334.
Electronic Electronic research, design, equipment. Engineering, related. CV (Cary, NC)
Expert Software
Expert Software Inc., Raleigh, Raleigh HQ.
test & doc
Bach in CS/ equiv. Req yrs: OOP;
& C#; 5 yrs:
Rest API, WCF, AD FS; Angular; TypeScrpt; Srvc-Now; Frmwrk. Wk Apply: res ref #113327. SU | DO | KU
for a link. Best of luck, and have fun!
C L A S S I F I E D S
EMPLOYMENT
Cybersecurity Professional
Siemens Medical Solutions – Cybersecurity Professional in Cary, North Carolina. Recommend best practices for implementing cybersecurity. Reqs: Bach deg or foreign equiv in Elec Eng, Comp Sci, Cybersecurity or rel fld & 8 yrs of rel exp. Approx 15% domestic & internat’l travel. Hybrid work permitted. To apply, go to careers.siemens-healthineers.com + search R-22334.
Electronic Engineer
Electronic Engineer: Electrical engineering research, design, development for medical equipment. BS degree in Electrical/Electronics Engineering, Electrical & Computer Engineering related. CV to kevin.shi@cellex.com; Cellex, Inc. (Cary, NC)
Expert Software Engineer
Expert Software Engineer, Altera Digital Health Inc., Raleigh, NC. May teleco in US & rept to Raleigh HQ. Perf exprt lvl specifictn, design, code, test & doc in hlthcare SW dev & maint. Req Bach in CS/ CE/ Electrcl / Electrnc Engg / rel / equiv. Req 7 yrs hlthcare SW engg exp to incl 6 yrs: OOP; ASP .NET MVC, ASP .NET MVC CORE & C#; 5 yrs: .Net Frmwrk & .Net Core Frmwrk; Rest API, WCF, Queue & SOAP Srvcs; RDB; 4 yrs: AD FS; Angular; HTML/CSS; Javascpt, Jquery & TypeScrpt; Nunit Test; 3 yrs: Cloud Tech (Azure); Srvc-Now; 2 yrs: Vers Ctrl (GIT & TFS); Entity Frmwrk. Wk M - F, 8a-5p, aft hrs as needed. Apply: res to: resumes@alterahealth.com & ref #113327.
EMPLOYMENT
Product Owner
Product Owner, F/T at Truist Bank (Raleigh, NC) Partner w/ product managers to deliver branddefining product & service exps. Responsible for executing the strategy for area of resp based on client & company needs, which can include client exp, back office processes or systemic processes outside client journey. Lead delivery team’s priorities in PI planning, sprint planning, & other agile ceremonies. Must have Bach’s deg in Comp Sci, Technology, or related tech’l field plus have 4 yrs of exp in IT positions w/ in the banking, fin’l services, or digital space performing the following: leading delivery teams’ priorities in PI planning, sprint planning, & other agile ceremonies; aligned to larger exp platform priorities & vision; clearly articulating product strategy to delivery team(s); delivering new exps by working directly w/ delivery, exp dsgn, business, & operations partners to dsgn new products & improvements to existing capabilities; authoring & maintaining the team’s backlog of user stories & serve as a subject matter expert on features, user stories, & product capabilities; performing triage on critical issues & communicating consistently & clearly w/ all concerned parties; serving as key resource to dvlpmt team to answer questions, provide clarifications, & conduct & coord business validation; updating leadership on the epic & feature delivery schedule, incl dependencies impacting deliverables, along w/ recommended solutions; partnering w/ solution architects & other tech’l leads to ensure their solutions effectively address prgm priorities while balancing client exp & tech’l integrity; facilitating sprint planning w/ stakeholder groups to drive alignment & visibility for which features will be built when, & to ensure overall adherence to the product roadmap & enterprise strategic themes; facilitating sprint demos & providing final acceptance for completed user stories in sprint demos; ensuring that the story meets acceptance criteria & otherwise meets its definition of done; coord’g the creation of release-specific business docs, incl support model definitions, go/no-go approvals, internal release notes, & release-related living docs; performing risk mgmt, ensuring all PML processes & procedures were followed, supporting security, risk, audit, & more, & ensuring action items & deadlines were met. In the alternative, employer will accept Master’s in tech’l field + 2 yrs of exp in IT positions w/in the banking, fin’l services, or digital space performing/ utilizing the aforementioned. Work background must have incl use of: salesforce.com DefaultStore, salesforce.com SoftwareStore, salesforce.com; Visio, Excel, Word, PowerPoint. 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# R0103389)
