People Power
Raleigh Durham Chapel Hill
VOL. 42 NO. 10
6 “Childcare is the backbone of our economy and community, but it’s cracking under pressure." BY CHLOE COURTNEY BOHL
8 The Bull Ride will cart you around downtown Durham for free. BY JUSTIN LAIDLAW
11 The new chair of the Wake County Democratic Party plans to win every municipal race this fall. BY CHLOE COURTNEY BOHL
14 On May Day, democracy, and the need for independent journalism. WORDS BY SARAH WILLETS, PHOTOS BY ANGELICA EDWARDS
CULTURE
18 Lunch Money: A visit to Shanghai. BY LENA GELLER
20 Adventurous flavors make for delectable frozen desserts at Elaka Treats. BY GABI MENDICK
22 A 1960s-era Raleigh shopping center sees a revival, as a wave of new businesses move in, collaborate, and buckle down in an uncertain economy. BY LENA GELLER
24 In debut film Growing Pains, Triangle resident Marian Fabian sketches out her experience growing up queer in a North Carolina Hispanic household. BY JANE PORTER
events, from top to bottom:
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on Saturday, May 17.
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COVER Thousands of community members march from Halifax Mall toward Bicentennial Plaza to protest the Trump administration, billionaires, and to promote additional labor protections on May Day on Thursday, May 1, 2025, in Raleigh. PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS
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The Rialto
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE RIALTO. Lucius performs at Cat's Cradle
17. PHOTO COURTESY OF CAT'S CRADLE. Upchuck performs at Kings on Monday, May 19.
PHOTO COURTESY OF KINGS. (See calendar for more, p. 25)
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Have a HEART
Funding for crisis response teams like Durham’s HEART program is at risk. The ACLU of North Carolina’s executive director calls on Congress to protect those grants and fund care, not criminalization.
BY CHANTAL STEVENS backtalk@indyweek.com
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such programs, allowing police to focus on serious crime while ensuring people in crisis receive the care they need. By more than a three-to-one margin, 80 percent of voters say that we need to address homelessness as a resource issue, focusing on improving access to affordable housing, mental health, and addiction services.
National data echoes what we see in North Carolina: voters want solutions that address the root causes of harm. A vast majority, 85 percent, say access to mental health care and addiction treatment improves public safety. And two-thirds of voters say we must reduce incarceration and instead prioritize rehabilitation, housing, jobs, and community care.
To keep it free, we’re asking you to become a member of our Press Club and make a contribution to keeping our doors open and our keyboards clacking. Join the 1,300+ Triangle residents who want to keep the INDY around for 40 more years. Valerie since Robert Republicans engaged peomore to to put squander trying babies criminalize my make I am women influall my to me.
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ast week, I joined ACLU leaders from across the country in Washington, D.C., to call on Congress to protect programs that keep our communities safe by passing bills like the Mental Health Justice Act, which would authorize grants to fund crisis response teams staffed by trained mental health professionals—not police.
Unfortunately, that safety is at risk as the Trump administration continues slashing millions in funding for federal grant programs and is pressuring Congress to cut billions from the federal budget. As a result of these cuts, evidence-based programs that reduce violence, help people find housing, and provide addiction treatment and mental health care are all under threat.
Here in North Carolina, we have already seen what’s possible when we invest in safety the right way by addressing the root causes of public safety issues. Durham’s Holistic Empathetic Assistance Response Team (HEART) is a proven model of what happens when we fund care and not criminalization. Since its official launch in 2022, HEART has responded to over 26,000 emergency calls with four distinct response units: Crisis Call Diversion, Community Response Teams, Care Navigation, and Co-Response. Each unit focuses on keeping community members safer by connecting them with the appropriate care through rapid, compassionate, and informed approaches. These programs save lives. They prevent trauma and reduce unnecessary arrests and hospitalizations by connecting people to the long-term support they need. But programs like HEART don’t just happen. They require investment and sustained funding. This year, Durham’s Community Safe-
ty Department is requesting a $4 million increase in city funding to expand HEART’s reach, hire more staff, extend its services to 24/7, and meet more of the 911 calls that qualify for its response. As it stands, HEART teams are only able to respond to just over half of those eligible calls, leaving nearly 20,000 unanswered last year due to staffing limitations. The need is urgent, and the solution is clear. As Durham’s city council prepares to vote on its 2025–26 budget this June, we also urge them to follow the evidence.
Investing in HEART is investing in the kind of safety that uplifts, rather than harms, our communities.
Law enforcement officials, by their own admission, are not mental health professionals. Thus, relying on them as the default responders to individuals in mental health crises can be problematic. As we have seen across the country, when people in urgent need of help are met with force, that can lead to criminalization, incarceration, and even death. We must expand programs like HEART. A recent ACLU YouGov survey found the majority (65 percent) of North Carolina voters support
This is why the ACLU-NC will continue to push for both federal and local investment in the expansion of these programs. Our communities are safest when our needs are met, when mental health resources are expanded, and when response teams are trained to deal with a variety of crises through a lens of justice and rehabilitation. W
Stevens is the executive director of ACLU of North Carolina.
The INDY is free to everyone who wants to read it in Durham, Raleigh, and the rest of the Triangle — because we at the INDY believe a well-informed community is vital to building a better society, and news should be accessible to all, not just those who can a ord it.
Chantal
Chantal Stevens, executive director of ACLU of NC. PHOTO COURTESY OF ACLU OF NC
Cracking Under Pressure
A childcare center in Raleigh already lost funding for English language tutoring for its staff; its director worries that cuts to food assistance and childcare vouchers are also on the horizon.
BY CHLOE COURTNEY BOHL chloe@indyweek.com
Little Makers Academy, a childcare center in Raleigh that primarily serves low-income families, is already beginning to feel the impact of federal funding cuts. Its teachers lost access to a federally funded English language tutoring program in March, and now, ongoing funding for food assistance and childcare vouchers is up in the air. With potential cuts on the horizon, Little Makers director Krys Remaley says people need to understand that “childcare is not a luxury, it’s an infrastructure.”
“It’s a whole domino effect,” she says. “If people don’t have a place to take their kids, they can’t go to work.”
Little Makers emanates cheeriness before you’ve even stepped inside. Plastic sunflowers and rainbow-colored pinwheels flank the doorway. A bright blue awning offers shade, and a yard sign announces in several languages, “You are our neighbors.”
The childcare center’s interior is equally charming, with little kids’ artwork covering practically every vertical surface.
Inside one classroom, lead teacher Mariela and her assistant Loubna are taking care of the one-and-under set, who are beginning to scoot, crawl, and clap. Down the hall, Pat, who’s been working in childcare for more than 40 years, is teaching the pre-kindergarten class to read and write their ABCs. Outside, in a fenced-off play area, lead teacher Kayla and her assistant Mia are overseeing a group of curious one- and two-year-olds as they explore the play equipment and the fascinating array of twigs and leaves on the ground.
Little Makers employs nine full-time teachers, five substitutes, and five administrators to take care of between 70 and 80 kids aged five and under. Many of the kids are enrolled full-time—the childcare center is like their second home. They eat breakfast, lunch, and a snack here every weekday. They’re bonded with their teachers and their classmates. Three-quarters of them attend at a free or reduced rate thanks to a state- and federally funded childcare voucher program.
Little Makers goes out of its way to hire a diverse, multilingual staff that reflects the community it serves, Remaley explains. Some of the teachers were learning English through a tutoring program funded by a federal grant from the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, but that grant was recently canceled and the tutor was laid off.
“We think it’s very important for children to get diversity at school,” Remaley says, adding that the school employs teachers from countries across the world, including Afghanistan, Morocco, Peru, the Congo, Honduras, and El Salvador.
Some of the staff who lost access to the tutoring program have found alternatives. Sara, the facility care specialist at Little Makers, whose first language is Spanish, just started taking online English classes at Wake Tech. But she had to reduce her work hours from full- to part-time to accommodate the change. Nillab, a substitute teacher whose first language is Dari, hasn’t found an alternative to the English tutoring program that works for her.
Losing access to the tutoring program will directly impact teachers’ professional development. In order for them to get promotions and raises, they need to complete trainings and certifications that North Carolina offers only in English.
“We have teacher assistants that have been with us a long time; they show great potential. We’d love to make them lead teachers, but on paper, we can’t,” Remaley says.
The Trump administration’s immigration policies worry Remaley too, since many of Little Makers’ staff and students are immigrants.
“I go to bed every night scared, if ICE were to come, what would we do?” she says.
Little Makers also receives about $4,000 a month through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) to pay for food. The program hasn’t been impacted by federal cuts so far, but in March, the USDA eliminated a different $1 billion program that helped schools and childcare centers pay for food.
Loubna Sahli, a teacher at Little Makers Academy since 2018, changes a diaper on Monday, April 28, 2025, in Raleigh.
PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS
“Lots of times, the only food a child gets [in a day] is at our center,” Remaley says. If Little Makers loses funding to purchase food, “rates of hungry families will go up.”
The future of the childcare vouchers Little Makers relies on to serve low-income families is also tenuous. There’s a waitlist for the vouchers in Wake County right now, Remaley says, and North Carolina isn’t issuing any new ones.
“When it comes time to enroll new students, it’s going to be a little difficult for the low-income families, because they’re not going to be able to get a voucher if they don’t already have one,” she says.
Little Makers’ sticker prices range from $847 to $1,356 per child per month, depending on the child’s age. That’s lower than most other options in Raleigh, according to Remaley. But it’s still inaccessible for low-income families without help from the voucher program.
“A lot of people think that kids going to day care is a privilege,” says Kayla, one of the lead teachers. “I think that every child deserves to go to school no matter what age, and they should be treated fairly
and equally.”
“We as educators can be underrated,” adds JaMeka Johnson, the assistant director at Little Makers. “Especially when we’re trying to diversify the learning perspective for the children. At the end of the day, when things that are being offered are [then] being taken away, everybody loses.”
Remaley has been vocal about the importance of early childhood care as potential cuts loom. On May 12, she and her staff participated in the nationwide Day Without Child Care. Instead of opening Little Makers, they went to the state legislature to speak with lawmakers about the need for better childcare funding.
Last month, Remaley addressed the Raleigh City Council during a public comment session to raise awareness.
“Childcare is the backbone of our economy and community, but it’s cracking under pressure,” she said. W
This story is part of an INDY series on the impacts of federal funding cuts on the lives of Triangle residents. Read additional coverage at indyweek.com.
Above: Children play on the playground at Little Makers Academy.
Right: The Little Makers Academy on Monday, April 28, 2025, in Raleigh.
PHOTOS BY ANGELICA EDWARDS
Wake County
“I Plan to Win All of Them”
Talking with Wesley Knott, chair of the Wake County Democratic Party.
BY CHLOE COURTNEY BOHL chloe@indyweek.com
Wesley Knott grew up in rural Mississippi, in what he describes as a “conservative evangelical bubble.” He credits his “liberal indoctrination” to his college years at Ole Miss. Right after graduation, he married his now wife and they moved to the Triangle to take jobs in finance and accounting. That’s when he got involved in local politics, serving as a precinct captain and then area coordinator for the Wake County Democratic Party.
In 2022, at 25 years old, Knott decided to run for office. He lived in NC House District 66, which had just been redrawn. He threw his hat in the ring and quickly realized he would be running in a Democratic primary against a sitting state senator, Sarah Crawford.
He lost to Crawford by fewer than 150 votes.
“That wasn’t on my bingo card,” Knott laughs. But the experience motivated him to get more involved in the
county Democratic Party. He served as deputy organizing director and executive director. Then last month, he was elected chair.
Knott takes over following the emotional roller coaster that was the 2024 general election season and the just-concluded battle to get Allison Riggs’s state supreme court election victory certified. He knows that, a little more than 100 days into the second Trump administration, many Democratic voters are feeling some combination of consternation, fear, and hopelessness.
He’s betting that all those feelings will work in the Democrats’ favor come November, when several Wake County towns have their next elections. And he’s determined to knock on as many doors and talk to as many voters as humanly possible in the lead-up to those races.
Knott also intends to pay himself a stipend as chair—
something the Wake Democrats haven’t done before—so that he can do the job full-time. The county party currently has two other employees—an organizing director and an operations director—in addition to its small army of volunteers. For the time being, they aren’t filling the executive director position.
INDY talked with Knott about the Wake County Democratic Party’s plans for 2025, the future of its nonpartisan endorsements, and the conversations he’s having with voters right now.
INDY: Wake County has municipal elections coming up later this year and then midterms in 2026. What’s your game plan for the next year or so?
We have 34 municipal elections this fall, and I plan to win all of them. The strategic plan we are drafting literally is “Win every municipal race this fall.”
In 2023, we saw that voters who we had conversations with at their door turned out at a higher rate—more than 300 percent higher—than people we did not talk to. And our capacity to do that work has increased quite a bit. In 2020, we had about 900 conversations with voters at their doors, but granted, it was a pandemic. In 2022 we had about 1,900 conversations with voters at their doors. And in 2024, we had more than 45,000 of those conversations. So the shift in our capacity to be on the ground talking to voters has been extraordinary. With that energy, heading into an election where turnout averages 15 percent in some of these municipal elections, we have a real opportunity to flip every remaining town council and commission and to sweep seats across the county.
Wesley Knott PHOTO COURTESY OF THE SUBJECT
Tell me more about your organizing and voter turnout strategies. Wake County is huge, and I imagine wrangling thousands of volunteers and keeping them engaged post–general election is a heavy lift.
In the past decade since I’ve been around, the county party has been focused on our official party structure and party business first, and then organizing—actually getting out and talking to voters—was somewhere down the list. I’m trying to shift the organization to think we are organizers first. We’ve got party business that is important, but it’s a week out of the year. Every other day, we are engaging in our communities to have conversations with voters. Candidates are going to raise millions of dollars, they’re going to run ads on TV and radio, fill our mailboxes up, put up signs and billboards, and they’re going to get their message out. But we are the only people that are listening to the voter and what they have to say, and we are the only people that can take it beyond that 30-second ad in a conversation at the door or over the phone
Post–2024 general election, we all saw that map depicting the “red shift” of counties across the country voting for Trump at higher rates than in 2020. Wake’s red shift was small, about one percentage point, but it was there. What do you make of that, and what other indicators are you looking at to gauge how well Democrats are connecting with voters in Wake County?
I want to err on the side of owning that we aren’t doing enough, aren’t connecting with voters. I don’t want to just write things off and say, “Well, that was because of inflation or this factor or that factor.”
I think [it’s important to answer the question], “Can we prioritize a tough, competitive race and be successful in North Carolina?” Allison Riggs winning her seat—and she did win her seat—is a testament to yes, we can do that, even in the face of the national shift to the right. As far as indicators go, I focus more on, are our vol-
unteers engaged? Are we getting out in the community and talking to voters? What are they reporting back? And is there energy around pushing back against what’s happening under the Trump administration? When I see 1,000-person protests happening every single week for the past couple of months, and I’m looking at our voter contact data, I’m seeing that our people are energized. That’s what empowers us to win elections.
How are you prioritizing outreach to the Democratic base, versus people who don’t vote as consistently, versus unaffiliated and independent voters, versus specific demographic groups that the Democrats didn’t do so well with last election?
We pull our targets for organizing using a pretty data-based approach. In partnership with the [Democratic National Committee], we get modeling for who is likely to turn out and who’s likely to vote for Democrats if they do, and we go talk to that entire universe of voters. We tend not to dig into demographics and historical trends.
But on the flip side, when we see clear trend lines— the Latino community becoming more conservative, Black voters staying at home at higher rates than in the past, young voters, especially young men, drifting to the right— those are red flags that say we have more work to do in our community.
We focus on getting out the vote in the 60-day window between Labor Day and Election Day, and we spend the rest of the year getting ready to do that as effectively as we can. I tend to think that if somebody is unlikely to vote, I want to talk to them as close as possible to when they can actually go vote. So I view that Labor Day–to–Election Day period as the gold standard. If we can double our conversations there, it’s worth spending the rest of the year building towards that.
That’s exactly the model we have at Wake Dems. We spend the rest of the year organizing in our communities. We’re going to be hosting community forums. If we have specific regions in Wake County that we lost support from demographic groups, I want to circle up with community leaders.
This is challenging, because most voters are just trying to live their lives. They’re busy, and they’re not paying nearly as close attention to politics day-to-day as we are. And so when housing becomes unaffordable in their neighborhood, they can be really quick to say, “That’s the city council’s fault” or the Wake Board of Commissioners’ fault.
Often the honest answer is that our municipalities have their hands tied by this gerrymandered Republican General Assembly. They won’t let us raise wages. In Raleigh, we can’t set a minimum wage. People probably don’t understand that we are prohibited from more progressive tax structures. [State-level Republicans] are trying to ban us from having our own diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives at the local level. And so we try to explain that there is a group of Republicans who have drawn themselves into permanent power and who are disconnected from our communities. We try to point to that and say we are limited in what we can do.
But also, we have to do a better job. There’s a national narrative about what it means to be a Democrat, especially in large cities, that we have to push back on. If we want people to be safe in their communities, let’s make sure they know that that’s what we’re fighting for. If we want people to be able to live where they work, let’s make sure that they know that we share those values.
Will the Wake Democrats continue making endorsements in nonpartisan municipal races where multiple Democrats are running for the same seat?
I don’t want to get ahead of the entire executive council, because we deliberate and make decisions about endorsements as a group, but I don’t expect that we will shy away from that.
I know that it can be controversial at times. Some of that blame gets misplaced on us. The problem starts when more Democrats run for office than there are seats available. We are limited in our ability to elect Democrats who share our values when that happens.
What does canvassing look like right now? Do people answer the door?
It’s certainly a tough environment. But people are actually longing to talk about what’s happening and to have somebody say, “What you are experiencing, those fears and concerns and worries, those are real. We share them. Here’s how you can take action and make a difference.” You can tell when people are craving an opportunity for that versus when you’re trying to pull them along.
When you encounter voters who are skeptical of or unhappy with their Democratic elected officials, particularly the local ones, how do those conversations go?
If there are more Democrats than seats, we could list all of them, I guess, and just tell people who the Democrats are. But that would guarantee that we split tickets, which is counterproductive to the mission.
So yeah, we make decisions that are sometimes controversial, but the result is that we turned out the most votes for a Wake Forest commissioner in the history of the municipality in 2023, we flipped the commission, and they passed a nondiscrimination ordinance. So we went from three municipalities that hadn’t [passed one] down to two. We’re going to finish that work in Holly Springs and Fuquay-Varina this fall and make sure that no matter who you are, where you come from, who you love, or how much you’re worth, you can feel loved and welcomed and accepted in your community.
Our vision for Wake County is that when people say, “Hey, what’s it like to live there?” we can just say, “Wake County is a great place to live, work, and raise a family,” and we won’t have to qualify it with “As long as you don’t live in blank.’” W
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Wesley Knott PHOTO COURTESY OF THE SUBJECT
People Power
Whether by protesting, calling elected officials, or doing your part to support independent journalism, you can take action at a time when we cannot afford to be complacent.
WORDS BY SARAH WILLETS
PHOTOS BY ANGELICA EDWARDS backtalk@indyweek.com
Earlier this month, thousands of people marched shoulder-to-shoulder through downtown Raleigh on May Day, or International Workers’ Day. Ieisha Franceis, a healthcare worker from Durham and a member of the Union of Southern Service Workers, was one of them.
“This year is a lot di erent, because we’re up against a whole lot,” Franceis said. “We’ve had government o cials that we didn’t like. This government is something totally di erent. This is demonic. So we have to organize like we’ve never organized in our lives.”
INDY writer Chloe Courtney Bohl and photographer Angelica Edwards found protesters were marching for a variety of reasons: Mass deportations, the termination of international students’ visas, reproductive rights, the gutting of federal agencies.
We at the INDY have been working hard to cover how all of this is a ecting our community. We’ve written about federal aid workers in the Triangle who have lost their jobs doing literally life-saving work abroad. We’ve brought you breaking news
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about e orts to erase Pauli Murray’s legacy. We’ve covered how cuts to the Department of Education are hitting local teachers and district budgets. We’ve reported on what elected o cials are, and aren’t, doing in response to the president’s agenda.
Things are pretty overwhelming right now. A lot of us are looking for ways to push back, or simply feel less hopeless—whether that’s by joining protests, shopping local, or calling your elected o cials.
One easy thing you can do right now to make a concrete di erence is to support the INDY
With democracy under attack, independent, fearless journalism is more pressing than ever. By joining the Press Club, you support access to accurate information and important stories for you and your neighbors. You support a local, community paper instead of billionaires. And with just $8 a month (or more!), you can take action at a time when we cannot a ord to be complacent.
-Sarah
Willets, Editor in Chief, INDY
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FOOD & DRINK
Shanghai’s Open Doors
A lunch visit to Durham’s oldest operating Chinese restaurant.
BY LENA GELLER lgeller@indyweek.com
This story is part of a new bi-weekly column, Lunch Money, where staff writer Lena Geller visits restaurants in the Triangle in an attempt to dine out for less than $15.
When I step into Shanghai, Durham’s oldest operating Chinese restaurant, the hostess beckons me toward her stand. “See that booth?” she asks. “Go, and I will follow.”
I head to the booth she’s pointing at, tucked in a back corner next to a bookshelf stocked with wine bottles and silk foliage, and slide in. I’m cocooned beneath a redand-gold ceiling adorned with ornate dragon medallions.
Shanghai has been holding court in a strip mall on Hillsborough Road, nestled between a Cricket Wireless and a Five Below, since the late 1980s. With no win-
dows in the dining area, time feels suspended, like I’ve entered a pocket dimension where the outside world ceases to exist.
At half past noon on a Friday, the restaurant is half full. Three men engage in conversation at one table. Duke students occupy another. A couple at the booth next to mine is chatting animatedly in Spanish. Several solo diners occupy booths throughout the space, poking at their phones with one hand while eating noodles and stir-fried veggies with the other.
The hostess is a whirlwind of efficiency, dropping items at several tables before materializing at mine. When she sets down my menu, the table wobbles slightly. She frowns.
“Is the table moving or is it just me?” She places her palms on the surface and presses down hard. The table jolts. With a raised finger signaling me to wait, she disappears, returning seconds later with a tiny black square that she slides under one leg.
“One, two, three,” she counts and presses down once more. “Still moving?”
I shake my head no, and she whisks away.
Another server brings over hot tea, and I check out the menu. I came here because of the lunch special. It’s remarkably budget
friendly at $9.50, including an entrée, rice, and your choice of a pork egg roll or soup (hot and sour, wonton, or egg drop). I ate at Shanghai a lot growing up in Durham, but it was usually takeout, and my parents always handled the ordering, selecting multiple dishes for our family to share. As an adult facing my own menu in the actual restaurant, there’s something almost transgressive about selecting just one dish for myself.
There are more than 20 entrée options: beef with green peppers, new tze chicken, moo goo gai pan, and so on. Needing a strategy, I remember reading in an old News & Observer review of the restaurant that the chef specializes in Cantonese cuisine, so I ask the server which of the lunch entrées are Cantonese. Just the Cantonese chicken, he says. I order it with wonton soup and fried rice.
The soup arrives with a bowl of those addictive, crunchy wonton strips. It tastes like childhood.
When the main course follows, I’m confronted with what appears to be enough food for two people. The chicken is fried golden-brown and sliced into thick pieces, blanketed in a jellylike sauce. Beneath and around the chicken is a garden’s worth of
vegetables: snap peas, zucchini, cauliflower, onion, summer squash, broccoli, mushrooms, and carrots. The vegetables tucked under the chicken stay piping hot throughout the meal. When I bite into the chicken, it offers a loud, theatrical crunch that would be spelled with five Rs in a comic book. The fried rice isn’t revelatory but provides a welcome salty complement to the main attraction.
As I snap some photos, the hostess returns, offering to hold my plate at a slant for better lighting. In this windowless space, her impromptu food photography assistance feels both amusing and oddly touching.
When the check arrives with a fortune cookie, I’m pleased to see my total comes to just $10.25 with tax. I add a 20 percent tip, bringing my grand total to $12.30—well under budget, unlike in my previous column, where my tip-option panic pushed me over.
With that out of the way, I crack open the fortune cookie: “Doors will open for you in many areas of your life.”
If one of those doors leads to a gem like Shanghai, I’ll consider myself fortunate indeed. W
The lunch special at Shanghai. PHOTO BY LENA GELLER
A cup of tea at Shanghai.
PHOTO BY LENA GELLER
Beyond Borders
At Elaka Treats, Shafna Shamsuddin draws on global flavors and an intuitive approach to make her unique frozen treats.
BY GABI MENDICK arts@indyweek.com
“Culture and flavors transcend borders,” says Shafna Shamsuddin. It’s an ethos that has guided Shamsuddin in her frozen desserts business, Elaka Treats, since founding it in 2019.
The term “frozen dessert” encompasses a general range of cold, refreshing sweet treats—ice cream, sorbet, frozen yogurt, gelato. The U.S. Department of Agriculture website gets more granular with ice cream, specifying that it must “contain not less than 20 percent total milk solids, consisting of not less than 10 percent milkfat.” Some Elaka Treats products qualify as ice cream, but due to the nontraditional ingredients Shamsuddin also incorporates into her recipes, others don’t.
She’s adopted a simpler term: “frozen desserts.”
Though each Elaka Treats recipe contains a unique base, the process of creating each flavor is the same. Each mix gets churned, and, similar to gelato, less air is incorporat-
ed than in ice cream, creating a noticeably denser product. Elaka Treats began operations at the Piedmont Food Processing Center in Hillsborough in 2019, and Shamsuddin got her start selling the product at Triangle farmers’ markets. She’s since moved production to Greensboro, focusing on wholesale.
In her time selling between the Triangle and Triad, Shamsuddin says she’s picked up on certain distinctions between audiences. In the Triad, customers “lean a little more towards flavors that are familiar,” whereas in the Triangle, customers tend to be more open to new experiences, she says, perhaps thinking: “I want to experiment. Let’s see what this really weird-sounding flavor is.”
Still, once Greensboro customers try zanier flavors like zucchini orange blossom, pineapple hibiscus, or green apple cumin, they’re usually won over. “It’s just a matter of convincing them,” Shamsuddin says.
The culinary entrepreneur is still developing innovative new ways to market her product, in addition to wholesale operations. Earlier this year, she launched one such concept, Elaka Pods, at the ArtsCenter in Carrboro.
Shamsuddin describes the contraption as an ice-cream vending machine—a small self-service merchandiser freezer containing a medley of pints, ice-cream sandwiches, and single-serving frozen treats, accompanied by an iPad and card reader. A portion of sales goes to a scholarship fund for The ArtsCenter’s after-school programming.
“I’ve been having this idea for a very long time,” Shamsuddin says of her partnership with The ArtsCenter, “but it’s not every day that somebody is willing to let you use them as guinea pigs.”
An intuitive touch
Shamsuddin immigrated to the United States from the United Arab Emirates in 2001 for college, receiving her degree in psychology and earth science. She planned to pursue more degrees, but due to personal circumstances, those dreams fell by the wayside.
“I took a break and truly became a housewife, which I have
An Elaka Treats product PHOTO COURTESY OF SHAFNA SHAMSUDDIN
An ElakaPod at the ArtsCenter in Carrboro PHOTO COURTESY OF SHAFNA SHAMSUDDIN
“All of a sudden, it hit me, instead of making the whole delicacy, which is a labor of love, I thought, ‘Why don’t I just create an ice-cream version of it?’”
to say was probably the most intense thing I did,” says Shamsuddin, noting that the experience was isolating: “Loneliness settled in.”
During this time, she began slowly building the company groundwork.
“One day I was homesick and lonely, and craving a plantain dish that’s steamed plantain stuffed with fillings like coconut, cardamom, and cashew, and we deep-fry it,” she says of one flavor. “It’s a delicacy that just melts in your mouth when you bite into it. We have it at teatime, and teatime is a big deal in Asian culture, in the Middle East, as well as in India, where family members just get together to sit and chat, and have tea and snacks.”
“I was just missing that whole experience and the delicacy itself,” Shamsuddin says. “All of a sudden, it hit me, instead of making the whole delicacy, which is a labor of love, I thought, ‘Why don’t I just create an ice-cream version of it?’ That way it’s always there in the freezer.”
Shamsuddin credits her parents for nurturing her approach to making food, and says that her technical, intuitive approach to cooking comes from her mother, while she has inherited creativity and curiosity from her father, who passed away a few years ago.
“My mom, the way she operates in a kitchen, it’s amazing,” she explains. “She’s able to understand her ingredients, her process, her setup, everything on a very logical
and on a very molecular level.”
“[My father] was a foodie, even before becoming a foodie was a thing,” Shamsuddin continues. “It wasn’t common when I was a kid for people to go out and eat every week to try new things, new flavors, new cuisines. People tend to only stick with what they’re familiar with. Whereas my dad was always experimental.”
Shamsuddin’s unique background and upbringing are at the heart of her approach to food and business. You can find Elaka Treats at The ArtsCenter, as well as at the Durham Co-op Market and Vimala’s Curryblossom Cafe, among other local businesses.
Several years ago, as a new Elaka Treats customer, I responded to a feedback form for a new flavor that Shamsuddin had sent out to customers. The flavor, Sulaimani Sorbet, is inspired by Sulaimani tea, popular in the Malabar region of Kerala, and is made of Black tea sorbet, lemon, and cardamom. I said it tasted familiar and nostalgic, a bit like an Arnold Palmer.
That flavor is still on the menu, and that unifying element of bewitching flavors that transcend food forms and borders, holds true with Elaka products today.
“I don’t believe,” she says, “that an ethnic food is so different from some other ethnic food in such a way that both of those ethnicities cannot relate to one another.” W
Shamsuddin scoops an Elaka frozen treat at an event . PHOTO BY NINOSHKA VEGA PHOTOGRAPHY
Mala Pata’s burnt orange, with a clear border where the two meet. (“There’s no one cutting through our kitchen with a tray of chicken,” Morrison clarifies.)
This arrangement emerged from the food hall experiences of Mala Pata’s partners, who, between the four of them, operate Ex-Voto, Patty Boy, and Locals Seafood at Durham Food Hall. (Locals also previously had a stall at Transfer Co. Food Hall in Raleigh.)
At the Durham Food Hall, where the INDY reported in 2023 on extensive operational and management issues, “there were some things that weren’t really thought through, with so many people working in shared spaces,” Salamanca says. The lessons from those experiences informed how Mala Pata approached its current collaboration.
The arrangement affords efficiencies that not only lower day-to-day costs, like dishwasher labor, but provide built-in flexibility in case of emergency.
Mala Pata’s menu is centered around masa and agave, and its owners put a lot of thought into representing that in the main dining room: there are custom corn-husk lamps from Colombia and a massive branch salvaged from a 30-year-old agave plant. But they also designed with contingency plans in mind. If disaster strikes, Peyote, the tiny seven-seat mezcal bar tucked into a breezeway beside the restaurant, can function as a compact headquarters for takeout service.
“It’s our solution if we ever have another pandemic,” Salamanca says. “It’s a smaller footprint. We can push as much food as we can, and it can be done by very little staff.”
Fiction Kitchen’s move from downtown was similarly strategic.
“The space we were in had a couple of restrictions for trying to make a pandemic work,” Morrison says: no outdoor seating, and takeout was difficult because of street logistics.
The pandemic transformed their business
model overnight.
“We went from never doing takeout to now, takeout is still 30 percent of our business,” Morrison says. “There was no way for us to say, ‘OK, we’re not doing takeout anymore.’”
The specter of COVID looms large. Even the name “Mala Pata,” which translates roughly to “bad luck,” acknowledges how the partners came together through adversity. (The story behind “Peyote” is more fun: during a brainstorming session to come up with a name for the bar, someone suggested that taking the hallucinogenic cactus might help with creative inspiration, and the name stuck. “We just talked about it! We didn’t do it!” Salamanca insists.)
At the other end of Gateway Plaza, Union Special keeps emergency supplies at the ready. The bakery had barely finished its first six months in business when the world shut down. During those early days, owner Andrew Ullom created a makeshift takeout window for selling baked goods and loaves of bread.
“I still have it. I’ll never get rid of it,” he says, of the takeout window. “It’s across the street in a storage unit. If something hits tomorrow, I still have a takeout window.”
Ullom was previously a co-owner of the comfort food restaurant Fine Folk, which occupied the space next to Union Special before closing in 2023. He also had a downtown expansion of Union Special that closed the next year.
“There is some trauma that we all carry,” he says. “If this goes down the tubes, then what do we do? If business slows down, how do we get people to actually come here?”
Ullom’s approach to future-proofing Union Special involves expanding the bakery’s wholesale operations: he’s securing a new production facility, partnering with a major food distributor to get his bread into markets throughout the Southeast, and placing products at RDU.
Escazú’s move to Gateway Plaza comes with a significant menu expansion. They’ll begin offering scooped ice cream, a product they’ve made for years but only sold in pints. The owners don’t use the exact term “pandemic proofing” but acknowledge they’re diversifying their business to be more resilient.
“The idea of having two different seasonal products makes the business stronger,” Young says, noting that chocolate sells best in the winter and ice cream in the summer. “And ice cream is not as cacao dependent, so we’ll have two different main ingredients as opposed to one.”
Young and Centeno have also designated part of the new Escazú space for packaging and shipping, if at any point they have to
go back to contactless service.
“At this point, it’s very clear that there is absolutely no normal,” Young says. “Everything is different. We need to put ourselves in a position to weather what’s going on currently and hopefully be stronger.”
Speaking Up
As small businesses gird themselves for hypothetical crises, they’re also facing immediate challenges.
Morrison says Fiction Kitchen might seem like it would be unaffected by international trade issues given its focus on local produce, but that’s not the case.
“My brother and my mom and dad were like, ‘Oh, the tariffs aren’t going to impact you, since you buy from local farmers,’” Morrison says. “And I’m like, ‘Well, we have chemicals, we have compostable stock, and even some of our soy products—while we grow the soybeans here in North Carolina, they get shipped overseas to be in production.’”
Meanwhile, Ullom is expecting a bill of $10,000 to $15,000 for an industrial bread-making machine he purchased in October that can produce 2,000 rolls per hour—equipment vital for the expanding wholesale busines. While the bakery’s identity celebrates American manufacturing—Union Special is named after America’s oldest industrial sewing machine company—the specific piece of equipment Ullom needs cannot be sourced domestically.
“That equipment does not exist in the United States,” he says. “It just is not made here.” Ullom, who upon opening Union Special in 2019 painted the bakery window with a John Lewis quote—“Democracy is not a state. It is an act.”—says he had expected that he would be able to take it down by now. Instead, he plans to update the quote to something explicitly supportive of worker organizing.
Morrison also says Fiction Kitchen is “trying to be more vocal in the political climate right now.”
In the past, Morrison says, “we never came out and said that we were a queerowned space. But now I’m very intentionally hiring LGBTQ+ people, anybody that needs to be supported, who feels different in this environment. We will fight what we feel like is this administration’s pursuit to damage individual rights.”
In an uncertain landscape, businesses at Gateway Plaza are seeking strength through proximity.
“We all work together to fix small problems and large problems,” Ullom says. “Everybody here operates under the thought that rising tides raise all ships.” W
Top: A quiote decorates the interior of Mala Pata. PHOTO BY MATT RAMEY Bottom: Restaurants in Gatewood Plaza. PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS
S
C R E E N
A Friendship Feature
GROWING PAINS Premiere
Saturday, May 18, 6:45 p.m. | The Rialto Theater, Raleigh
In Triangle resident Mariana Fabian’s debut film as a writer, a coming-of-age story meets women-led storytelling.
BY JANE PORTER jporter@indyweek.com
As an undergraduate at NC State University in 2021, Mariana Fabian published an opinion piece in the Technician, the student newspaper, critiquing the dialogue of the young people in the Amazon Prime series The Wilds That piece would lead to Fabian working as a co-writer and associate producer on a full-length independent feature film, Growing Pains, that premieres at the Rialto Theater in Raleigh this month.
“The writing process was very rewarding and gratifying,” says Fabian, a former INDY intern who goes by Mari. “I had had some screenwriting experience [in college] when I took a screenwriting class, but I’d never had this opportunity in front of me where it was like, ‘Oh, I can write a story about my life if I want to.’”
Growing Pains follows childhood best friends Nat and Zoe as they navigate the transition from middle school to high school and slowly drift apart. The characters are loosely based on the respective experiences that Fabian and Catherine Argyrople, the film’s writer, director, and producer, had while growing up in North Carolina and Massachusetts.
Argyrople was living in Boston and in the early stages of coming up with a concept for Growing Pains when she reached out to Fabian with a cold email.
“I knew I wanted to tell an authentic story about teen girls or young women going through really diverse life experiences, but in the same town, and I was looking for a writing partner,” Argyrople explains. She says Fabian’s piece on The Wilds hit on “exactly what I was looking for in terms of what I was researching with female-centered storytelling and writing … and an authentic lens.”
The film, set in New England, draws on the life experiences of both women, Argyrople as a childhood cancer survivor and Fabian, who grew up queer in a Hispanic household. It takes inspiration from women-centered coming-of-age films such as Ladybird, Pariah, Booksmart, and for Fabian, The Miseducation of Cameron Post and The Watermelon Woman, Cheryl Dunye’s 1996 romantic comedy-drama about a young, Black lesbian who wants to make a film about Fae Richards, a 1930s actress known for portraying “mammy” roles.
“After I watched The Watermelon Woman in my Queer Cinema class, I knew writing lesbian and female centered stories was for me,” Fabian says.
The character Nat draws on Fabian’s background, and Fabian says that in working on the script, it was important to her to represent a Hispanic family accurately.
“All of the cast members that are in Nat’s family are Hispanic, and they speak Spanish,” Fabian says. “Throughout these scenes where Nat is talking with her family, [talking] about her identity—there are these really sweet moments where they’re making food together—there are subtitles, which is just something I was committed to from the beginning. And, thankfully, Catherine and I were able to make it work.”
Argyrople, a graduate of Northeastern University, launched a production company, Catalyze Her, and built a team to make Growing Pains. The film, shot in Boston over 21 days in the summer of 2022, was financed through crowdfunding. The cast—including its lead actors Deanna Tarraza, who plays Nat, and Molly Morneweck, who portrays Zoe—all came from the Boston area. The 110-person team included a 25-person crew and dozens of extras.
“It’s a pretty large-scale indie film, even though it was like a microbudget feature,” Argyrople says.
The film wrapped post-production in the fall of 2023 and premiered at the Chelsea Film Festival in New York City and the Boston International Film Festival last year. It has won acclaim from critics and received the prestigious ReFrame Stamp from the Sundance Institute and Women in Film for gender-balanced hiring.
Having women both in front of and behind the camera is critical to Catalyze Her’s mission.
“We were really cognizant of telling this female-centered story,” Argyrople says.
For all the work they did together, Fabian and Argyrople never met one another in person until the Boston premiere last April. They’ll reunite in Raleigh at the film’s premiere at the Rialto on May 18, where, following the film, they’ll participate in a panel with representatives from the local LGBT community, including Kori Hennessey from the LGBT Center of Raleigh, Amanda Cottrill from Wake Forest Pride, and Holly Atkins, the founder of Hope for Teens, which hosts the Triangle’s annual Queer Prom.
Argyrople is currently working on her second feature film, The Ocean Calls Me, a coming-of-age surfing drama set in Florida in the 1970s. She says she plans to continue to make films and work through her production company.
“It’s definitely a challenging time to be an independent filmmaker, but I’m so grateful I get to tell stories for a living. It’s such a joy,” Argyrople says.
Fabian, who is finishing up a graduate degree at UNC-Chapel Hill in library science, says she is still figuring out what’s next, whether that’s a career as a librarian or archivist, or something else entirely.
But she says she plans to keep writing, creating, and telling stories that bring hope to others.
“Having hope, radical empathy, in this moment is very important … and that intersects exactly with what our film is trying to do,” Fabian says. “So, post the premiere, I hope to keep bringing that kind of joy to whatever kind of field I end up in.” W
Growing Pains premieres at the Rialto on May 18 at
Still from Growing Pains. IMAGE COURTESY OF CATALYZE HER.
MUSIC
The Bones of J.R. Jones w/ Ruen Brothers 7 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.
Hollywood Undead 6 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.
The Rattletraps w/ Johnny Sunrise 8 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.
TV Smith’s The Adverts w/ Scarecrow 7:00 p.m. Kings, Raleigh.
Waxahatchee 7:30 p.m. DPAC, Durham.
PAGE
Carl Hiaasen: Fever Beach
7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.
THUR 5/15
MUSIC
Bimbe Cultural Arts Cypher 7 p.m. CCB Plaza, Durham.
bodie – Murder My Ego Tour w/ Grace Binion 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.
TRSH w/ doan, Summerbruise & Dear Maryanne 6:30 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.
SCREEN
Movie Loft presents “Venus in Furs” 8 p.m. Shadowbox Studio, Durham.
PAGE
An American Girl Anthology, with Marcie Cohen Ferris 5:30 Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.
FRI 5/16
MUSIC
Andrew Duhon 7 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.
Arm’s Length, Prince Daddy & The Hyena, Riley!, Bike Routes 7 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.
Charles Latham & the Borrowed Band w/ Jack the Radio, Taxicab Preacher
8 p.m. The Kraken, Chapel Hill.
Chloe Moriondo, Sex Week 8 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.
DJ Professor X: Groove Theory 101 10 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.
GoldFord 7 p.m. Haw River Ballroom, Saxapahaw.
Hammer 9 p.m. The Fruit, Durham.
Jake Richter Quartet 7:30 p.m. Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.
Jimbo Mathus & The Creatures of the Southern Wild, The Crimestoppers 6:30 p.m. Carrboro Town Commons, Carrboro.
Kaki King 8 p.m. The Rialto, Raleigh.
Mozart Requiem with the North Carolina Symphony May 16-17, 8 p.m. Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.
Nightrain (Guns N Roses Tribute) W/ Sun Moon Stars (Tribute To Black Sabbath) 8 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.
PineCone Down Home Concert: Della Mae with Laurie Lewis and Alice Gerrard 7:30 p.m. Fletcher Opera Theater at Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.
Private Cathedral & Lalitree Darnielle 8 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.
The String Cheese Incident with special guests The Wood Brothers 6 p.m. Red Hat Amphitheater, Raleigh.
Travis Tritt 8 p.m. DPAC, Durham.
STAGE
The Rocky Horror Picture Show Fridays at 11:55 p.m. The Rialto, Raleigh.
PAGE
Mary Alice Monroe: Where the Rivers Merge 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.
SAT 5/17
MUSIC
55th Annual Bimbe Cultural Arts Festival 1 p.m. Rock Quarry Park, Durham.
Ali Stroker 7:30 p.m. Theatre Raleigh Arts Center, Raleigh.
Beer Garden Concert Series: “Mayhem Rocks” with Rose Galaxy Band 5 p.m. The Glass Jug Beer Lab RTP, Durham.
Brett Dennen & River Whyless 7 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.
Concert Singers Presents - The Sea, the Sky, the Abyss: Alzheimer’s Stories 7:30 p.m. Westwood Baptist Church, Cary.
Durand Bernarr Presents: You Gon’ Grow, Too! Tour 7 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.
Get The Led Out 8 p.m. DPAC, Durham.
Into The Vault: A Crazy Hype Dance Party 10 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.
Joe Pug 8 p.m. The Rialto, Raleigh.
Kool & The Gang Hall of Fame Celebration 7:30 p.m. Koka Booth Amphitheatre, Cary.
Logan Halstead x Willy Tea Taylor 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.
Lucius, Victoria Canal 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.
The Jake Richter Quartet performs at Sharp 9 Gallery on Friday, May 16. PHOTO COURTESY OF SHARP 9 GALLERY
C U LT U R E C A L E N D A R
Oak City Voices present “Songs in Due Season” 5 p.m. Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Raleigh, Raleigh.
Perpetual Groove, Yarn 8:30 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.
Scott Sawyer Trio 7:30 p.m. Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.
Syrn, Liam James, Ian Stewart: Somatic Selections 9 p.m. The Fruit, Durham.
Tea Cup Gin--Vintage Jazz, Bouncin’ Blues 7 p.m. Succotash Durham, Durham.
Tiki Fest Returns 4 p.m. Wolfe & Porter, Raleigh.
STAGE
Comedy Show: Tony Deyo with Paul Snyder 8 p.m. The Cary Theater, Cary.
Durham Ballet Theatre presents Cinderella 2 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.
Got Your Back: An Evening to Benefit The EhlersDanlos Society! 7:30 p.m. Walltown Children’s Theatre, Durham.
Punk & Drag: Heroes & Villains 9 p.m. the Pinhook, Durham.
Shakespeare In The Parks: OTHELLO May 17-18, various times. Fred Fletcher Park, Raleigh.
Teddy Swims: I’ve Tried Everything But Therapy Tour 8 p.m. Red Hat Amphitheater, Raleigh.
Vault Theatre Presents: Red Riding Hood 10 a.m. Vault Theatre Studios, Durham.
PAGE
2025 Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet Series: Central Region Reading 5 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.
SUN 5/18
MUSIC
Bluegrass Jam 4 p.m. Bond Brothers Eastside, Cary.
Drook, Charlie Paso, Entrez Vous 8 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.
Live Music with Ed Kincade 12 p.m. Lanza’s Cafe, Carrboro.
School Of Rock Wake Forest 10:30 a.m. The Pinhook, Durham.
The Sunday Set: Spring Flow with DJ Uymami 2 p.m. The Durham Exchange, Durham.
Triangle Jewish Chorale 3 p.m. Jewish for Good, Durham.
Trivium + Bullet For My Valentine: The Poisoned Ascendancy Tour 2025 6 p.m. Red Hat Amphitheater, Raleigh.
STAGE
Jim Jeffries 7 p.m. DPAC, Durham.
Maria Bamford 7 p.m. Carolina Theatre, Durham.
SCREEN
Growing Pains Movie Premiere 6 p.m. The Rialto, Raleigh.
PAGE
Flyleaf Second Sunday Poetry Series: Adrian Rice and Han VanderHart 2:30 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.
MON 5/19
MUSIC
Elka Bong + Irman + CAMBRIA + Michael Thomas Jackson + cenOte Upchuck w/ GEEKED and Austin Royale 7 p.m. Kings, Raleigh.
SCREEN
No Other Land 7 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.
TUES 5/20
MUSIC
BYOV w/ Jaffar 6 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.
Fly Me Out 8 p.m. the Pinhook, Durham.
Sanguisugabogg with 200 Stab Wounds / Gridiron / Mutilatred 7 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.
Melissa Carper, Todd Day Wait 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.
Open Mic with a Band at Slim’s All day. Slim’s Downtown, Raleigh.
STAGE Back to the Future: The Musical May 20-25, various times. DPAC, Durham.
PAGE
Daniel Wallace: Beneath the Moon and Long Dead Stars 6 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.
Nell Joslin: Measure of Devotion 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.
C U LT U R E C A L E N D A R
WED 5/21
MUSIC
Amyl and The Sniffers: Cartoon Darkness Tour
7 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.
Blends With Friends (Open Decks) 8 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.
Holy Fawn, Wish Queen 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.
The Wedding Present ‘Bizarro’ 35th anniversary tour w/ The Tubs 7 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.
Young Medicine, Waking April 8 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.
STAGE
Orbit Mixer 7 p.m. The Fruit, Durham.
The WLW Wednesday Open Mic Comedy Hour 8 p.m. Club ERA, Durham.
PAGE
Tennessee Hill: Girls with Long Shadows 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.
THUR 5/22
MUSIC
Crank Stallion / The Back Pocket 8 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.
Jared Benjamin 7:30 p.m. The Cary Theater, Cary.
LIVE@Lake Raleigh: Boulevards 6 p.m. Lake Raleigh, Raleigh.
Pet Symmetry, PONY, Jimmy Montague 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.
Tre. Charles 6:30 p.m. The Hippo Wine Bar & Shop, Raleigh
World Goth Day 9 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.
STAGE
Whitelisted May 22-Jun. 1, various times. Mettlesome Theater, Durham.
PAGE
Annie Hartnett: The Road to Tender Hearts 5:30 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.
Kevin Wilson: Run for the Hills 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.
Silent Book Club 6 p.m. Letters Community Bookshop, Durham.
FRI 5/23
MUSIC
Annie DiRusso w/ Squirrel Flower 7 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.
Barstool Rodeo – A Tribute To Widespread Panic 8:30 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.
Chalet 6:30 p.m. THE PORTAL, Raleigh
Freight Train Blues Concert Series: Charly Lowry, Thomas Rhyant Jr. 6:30 p.m. Carrboro Town Commons, Carrboro.
High + Tight: A Lifetime of Soul, Funk, and Disco 8 p.m. Wolfe & Porter, Raleigh.
Juan Alamo and Marimjazzia 7:30 p.m. Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.
The Mayflies, With Love 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.
Rauw Alejandro 8 p.m. Lenovo Center, Raleigh.
Slackjaw w/ Parris Bridge 7 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.
STAGE
2025 Kidswrite Festival! May 23-24, various times. Burning Coal Theatre Company, Raleigh.
Beer Garden May Comedy Showcase 8 p.m. The Glass Jug Beer Lab RTP, Durham.
INCESSANT HUM: Music/ Theater Hybrid Event 7:30 p.m. Durham Arts Council, Durham.
SCREEN
Movie Night at Downtown Cary Park: Moana 2 4 p.m. Peck & Plume, Cary.
Breaking Away 8 p.m. The Cary Theater, Cary.
Boygirl Rising performs at The Pinhook on Saturday, May 24. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE PINHOOK
SAT 5/24
MUSIC
Amos Hoffman Quartet 7:30 p.m. Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.
Back Outside: Dance Party 10 p.m. Club ERA, Durham.
Boygirl Rising, Rent Strike, Helga Pataki, Dirty Harry 6:30 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.
Carrboro Bluegrass Festival 2 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Yard, Carrboro.
Corinne Bailey Rae 8 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.
Grapevine Groove: A Motown-Inspired Night of 60s, 70s & 80s R&B, Funk & Soul 8 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.
Minorcan + Dreamroot 8 p.m. Shadowbox Studio, Durham.
Soda Water Sea 6 p.m. The Fruit, Durham.
Summerfest Opening Night: Rhapsody in Blue 8 p.m. Koka Booth Amphitheatre, Cary.
Sunflower Bean, Gift 8 p.m. Kings, Raleigh.
“Time Out Of Mind”: An Evening Of Bob Dylan 8 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.
STAGE
Black Box Dance Theatre: Echoes & Innovations
An Evening of Company Repertory 7 p.m. Kenan Recital Hall, William Peace University, Raleigh.
A Good Time: Stand-up Comedy Showcase at Local 919 7 p.m. Local 919 Craft Beer + Fine Wine, Raleigh.
Yesenia Moises: Sounds Like Joy 10:30 a.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.
COMMUNITY
Darkness RISING: Live Black Arts & Mental Health Block Party 2 p.m. Moore Square, Raleigh.
Taste of Soul NC 3 p.m. Durham Central Park, Durham.
SUN 5/25
MUSIC
Bluegrass Jam 4 p.m. Bond Brothers Eastside, Cary.
Live Jazz with Joseph Silvers 11 a.m. Lanza’s Cafe, Carrboro.
nothing,nowhere. w/ sace6 7 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.
Riff Raff, Mac Delin, TPMG 8 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.
Triangle Wind Ensemble Presents An American Celebration: Heroes & Villains 7 p.m. Koka Booth Amphitheatre, Cary.
TR Sings...Disney 7 p.m. Theatre Raleigh Arts Center, Raleigh.
STAGE
Black Box Dance Theatre: PATRIOT’S Path: The Theseus Legacy 3 p.m. Kenan Recital Hall, William Peace University, Raleigh.
SCREEN
Open Screening 7 p.m. Shadowbox Studio, Durham.
TUES 5/27
Open Mic with a Band at Slim’s All day. Slim’s Downtown, Raleigh.
PAGE
Michael Connelly: Nightshade 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.
Molly Worthen: Spellbound 5:30 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.
MUSIC
Riff Raff performs at Lincoln Theatre on Sunday, May 25. PHOTO COURTESY OF LINCOLN THEATRE
CROSSWORD
Los Angeles Times Sunday Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Patti Varol
SU | DO | KU
Difficulty level: HARD
There is really only one rule to Sudoku: Fill in the game board so that the numbers 1 through 9 occur exactly once in each row, column, and 3x3 box. The numbers can appear in any order and diagonals are not considered. Your initial game board will consist of several numbers that are already placed. Those numbers cannot be changed. Your goal is to fill in the empty squares following the simple rule above.
If you’re stumped, find the answer keys for these puzzles and archives of previous puzzles (and their solutions) at indyweek.com/puzzles-page or scan this QR code for a link. Best of luck, and have fun!
C L A S S I F I E D S
EMPLOYMENT
Commercial Project Manager
Commercial Project Manager sought by 8MSolar LLC for Raleigh, NC. Reqs Bach’s deg or foreign equiv in Engg field. Req 2 yrs of project/operations mgmt exp, incl leading process improvement, utilization of Lean tools, & efficient leadership of team to meet project goals. Credentials: Project Mgmt Professional or Certified Supply Chain Professional; NABCEP. Mail resumes to: Ali Buttar, 5112 Departure Dr., Raleigh, NC 27616. No calls. EOE.
Field Service Engineer II
Field Service Engineer II, Holly Springs, NC. Extensive domestic travel required (up to 75%). Mail resume to S. Martelock, BWT Pharma and Biotech, Inc., 417-5 South Street, Marlborough, MA 01752
Lead
Infrastructure Engineer
Lead Infrastructure Engineer, F/T at Truist Bank (Raleigh, NC) Perform problem tracking, diagnosis & root-cause analysis, replication, troubleshooting, & resolution for complex issues. Typically lead moderately complex projects & participates in larger, more complex initiatives. May have people mgmt responsibilities for a small team. Must have Bach’s deg in Comp Sci, Comp Engg or related tech’l field. Must have 5 yrs of progressive exp in dvlpmt or application support positions performing/utilizing the following: in-depth knowl in info systems & ability to identify, apply, & implmt best practices; understanding of key business processes & competitive strategies related to the IT function; administering multiple CICS Production, Dvlpmt & Test environments; & demonstrating proficiency in: IBM Mainframe, COBOL, JCL,VSAM, DB2, Changeman, ESP, REXX, CICS System Prgmr, CICSPLEX, CPSM, CICS Explorer, WUI, Omegamon, IPCS, FileAid, CICS Web Services, CICS APIs, TCP/IP sockets, & CAFC. Position may be eligible to work in a hybrid remote model & is based out of & reports to Truist offices in Raleigh, NC. Applicants must be able to work onsite at Truist offices in Raleigh, NC at least 4 days/wk. Apply online (https://careers.truist.com/) or email resume to: Paige.Whitesell@Truist.com (Ref Job# R0102321)
Senior Java Software Engineer
Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings (Labcorp) in Durham, NC seeks a Senior Java Software Engineer to develop, support & maintain software systems; develop through modern Agile development methodologies intuitive. Reqs BS+5yrs exp.; To apply, send resume to: Labcorphold@labcorp.com; Ref #250430.
EMPLOYMENT
Sr. AI Developer
Sr. AI Developer (Multi Opnings), IQVIA Inc., Durham, NC. May teleco frm anywh in US. Dsgn, dev & maint scalable & efficnt apps in clin trial space w/ IQVIA’s tech stack. M-F, 7a - 4p EST. Salary Rnge: $164,486 - $215,000/yr. Reqs mast/bach in CS/ML/Stat/Engg/Phys/Math/ rel/equiv. Reqs w/ mast 3 yrs, w/ bach 5 yrs SW dev/SW engg exp incl (w/ mast 3 yrs, w/ bach 5 yrs): API dsgn & dev; use Python; 3 yrs (w/ mast / bach): BE dev exp w/ Python; use Git & GitHub wrkflws; use RDBs (PostgreSQL); write & optim SQL queries; mentor jr devs & lead tech init; 2 yrs: dev in microsrvcs arch; use IaC & provsn & mng cloud res w/ Terraform; 1 yr: wrk w/ cloud srvcs & apps hosted in AWS; wrk w/ clin trial LC, pre & post-award. Reqs <10% US trvl. Apply: resume to: usrecruitment@iqvia.com & ref#116247.
Sr. Software Developer
SAS Institute Inc. seeks Sr. Software Developer in Cary, NC to develop cloud-native apps across Risk, Finance & Retail domains based on multiple SAS platform versions. Reqs: BS in Comp Sci, Comp Eng, or rel + 8 yrs exp. May work remotely pursuant to SAS’ Flexible Work Prgm. For full reqs & to apply visit www.sas.com/careers & ref Job # 2025-39414.
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