INDY Print Edition August 12, 2026

Raleigh | Durham | Chapel Hill August 12, 2026

WaItInG RoOm

BY TORI NEWBY

Durham child care providers are struggling to retain teachers, leaving classrooms empty and families in limbo.

Raleigh | Durham | Chapel Hill Vol. 43 No. 15 | August 12, 2026

Contents News 4

Before she took photos of the moon, astronaut Christina Koch was "famous" for her time in the N.C. School of Science and Math dark room. BY KORIE DEAN

6

An audit of Apex's finances suggests an elected official owed the town money for its services. BY JANE PORTER

8

More than 130 families in Durham are waiting for subsidized child care as providers struggle to recruit and retain teachers. BY TORI NEWBY

12

Duke researchers plan to study Durhamites' diets, health, and access to nutritious food via their wastewater. BY REGAN BUTLER

Culture 14

Durham artist William “Coke” Ariail III has become known for his growing fleet of handbuilt dinghies. BY JUSTIN LAIDLAW

16

Behind You, a new initiative from the Southern Smoke Foundation, aims to make therapy more accessible to North Carolina restaurant workers. Will it reach those who need it most? BY NIKKI MILLER-KA

18

Carrboro Author Elisa Faison talks polyamory, the evolution of domestic fiction, and her debut novel, Skin Contact. BY JESSIEANNE D'AMICO

20 A visit to Cosmic Cantina, a classic Durham hole-in-the-wall, provokes an

existential crisis. BY LENA GELLER

Regulars 3

22

Backtalk

Calendar

26

Puzzles / Classifieds

Cover Yanett Martinez’s classroom at Randy’s Five Star Academy

Coke Ariail’s handmade boat sits outside his apartment in Durham (see story on page 14) PHOTO BY MAT T RAMEY

on Wednesday July 22, 2026. PHOTO BY MATT RAMEY

We Made This Publisher John Hurld

Editorial Editor-in-Chief Sarah Willets Wake County Editor Jane Porter Culture Editor Sarah Edwards

Staff Writers Lena Geller Justin Laidlaw Tori Newby Report For America Corps Reporter Chloe Courtney Bohl Contributors Jasmine Gallup, Desmera Gatewood, Elliott Harrell, Brian Howe, Glenn McDonald, Cy Neff, Andrea Richards, Barry Yeoman, Russ Campbell, Colony Little, Shelbi Polk, Ryan Cocca, Lauren Wingenroth

2 INDYweek.com August 12, 2026

Copy Editor Iza Wojciechowska Editorial Interns Regan Butler, Jessica Tobes

Creative

Advertising Publisher John Hurld Director of Revenue Mathias Marchington

Creative Director Nicole Pajor Moore

Director of Operations Chelsey Koch

Production Design Specialist Ellie Bruno

Sales and Marketing Associate Lauren Boyle

Circulation

Berry Media Group

Membership/ Subscriptions John Hurld Mathias Marchington

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BACKTALK Last month, reporter Chloe Courntey Bohl covered a contentious Cary Town Council meeting in which the council ultimately voted against a proposal that would maintain Amberwood at Lochmere as an affordable housing community. The meeting was fiery, Courtney Bohl wrote, with some residents in attendance living up to “the worst stereotypes of Cary as a wealthy, insular community suspicious of outsiders who are less well off than they are.” Ultimately, town council members seemed to feel that the proposal from the Raleigh Housing Authority to purchase Amberwood at Lochmere, and keep the 340 housing units affordable, felt too rushed. Readers had thoughts.

From reader MARK SHELBURNE: We need to appreciate the true cause of the Cary Town Council’s failure: allowing angry homeowners to effectively veto housing. The solution is not education or persuasion, but using a fundamentally different system. Achieving it will require broad-scale state preemption of local control over residential land use.

From Cary residents BRIAN AND HELEN CAIN, via email: Some of [the] comments quoted in the … article disparaging low/middle income homeowners are extremely offensive and should in no way be viewed as representative of all Lochmere and Lochmere Village homeowners.

My wife and I are not in favor of RHA acquiring Amberwood, primarily due to our belief that Cary alone should hold sole authority over properties within the Cary town boundary.

From Cary resident MARTHA GLASS, via email: … Cary Town Council’s 5 - 2 vote to deny Raleigh’s attempt to purchase the Amberwood apartment complex for use by the Cary-area workforce slaps us in the face—we residents who want to diversify our town into an “All Are Welcome” neighborhood. What an awful mistake for those who wouldn’t listen to their consciences.

From JOAN LACEY, a Lochmere resident, via email: I believe that if Cary town council and the residents of Cary had more time to investigate the RHA proposal instead of having a two week window to decide something that would [affect] our town for 30 years or more then maybe it would have passed. I could not help but feel I was at a car dealership and HAD to make a decision or I would lose the deal. That is no way to go into an agreement of this type. IT MUST BE VETTED FROM ALL SIDES. I am all for affordable housing and I am sure there is a viable solution with a win win. In this situation where RHA did not have the appropriate answers to the town council’s questions tells me they are not prepared for this merger either.

Especially since it would be the FIRST time RHA goes out of the city limits of Raleigh.

And in June, freelancer Jasmine Gallup reported that traditional public schools in Wake County had lost more than $500 million in funding in the past 15 years as families move to charter schools. The executive director of the N.C. Association for Public Charter Schools wrote a response to the piece.

From reader RHONDA DILLINGHAM, via email: In 1996, North Carolina made a bold decision that strengthened public education: it authorized public charter schools to foster innovation, expand opportunity, and give families more options.

WANT TO SEE YOUR NAME IN BOLD?

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Thirty years later, the question is no longer whether charter schools belong in North Carolina’s public education system. Families answered that long ago. The question now is how we continue expanding opportunity for every student.

Recently, the North Carolina Association for Public Charter Schools announced the first recipients of our NC GROW grant. Two schools will receive funding to expand career and technical education, STEM and entrepreneurship while increasing access for educationally disadvantaged students. These investments build a talent pipeline for North Carolina’s economic success and help families find public schools that meet their children’s needs.

The announcement followed INDY Week’s examination of charter school growth in Wake County, which raised important questions about funding, transportation and accountability. Those conversations are worth having, but they should begin with one fundamental truth: more than 160,000 North Carolina students attend a public charter school.

When a student enrolls in a charter school, funding follows that student because the student, not the system, is the purpose of public education. Charter school families are not abandoning public education; they are simply choosing another public school option.

Families choose charter schools for many reasons: STEM, arts integration, and preparation for careers in advanced manufacturing, biotechnology, artificial intelligence and entrepreneurship. These opportunities complement, not compete with, the excellent work happening in traditional public schools.

Like district schools, charter schools vary. Transparency requires that every pub-

backtalk@indyweek.com

lic school be held accountable for academic performance, financial stewardship and responsible governance. For charters, that accountability exists. They are authorized by the North Carolina Charter Schools Review Board and monitored by the Office of Charter Schools. Schools that fail to meet expectations risk corrective action, nonrenewal or closure. Different oversight does not mean absent oversight.

Transportation is another legitimate challenge. If families cannot reliably get children to school, choice exists only on paper. That is why removing transportation barriers is one of our highest legislative priorities. No child’s education should depend on a ZIP code.

The same commitment is built into NC GROW, which helps schools strengthen governance, improve financial oversight, expand community engagement and increase access for underserved students. Access matters as much as innovation.

The financial pressures facing Wake County Public Schools are real; every citizen should want strong district schools. This should never be framed as a choice between one public school model and another. North Carolina needs excellent public schools as well as a continued commitment to innovation.

Thirty years ago, lawmakers recognized that one public school model could not meet every child’s needs. Families continue to prove why that decision was right. Our responsibility now is not to limit opportunity, but to expand it by ensuring every public school has the tools, accountability and support to help every child thrive.

@INDYWeekNC

@indyweek August 12, 2026 INDYweek.com 3

NEWS

Triangle

Moon Shot Before she took photos of the moon on an historic mission, astronaut Christina Koch honed her photography skills in the Triangle.

BY KORIE DEAN korie@theassemblync.com

Koch’s editor at the Technician said she always tried to bring back better photos than she had taken on her last assignment COURTESY OF NC STATE UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

Christina Koch photographs Earth landmarks from the International Space Station in 2019 PHOTO COURTESY OF NASA

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flip through the online archives of N.C. State University’s Technician from the start of the millennium pulls up headlines and scenes you’d expect from a student newspaper. University administrators meeting with student leaders. A new director of the alumni association.

Updates on campus construction projects.

Eagle-eyed readers might spot a familiar name attached to the pages’ photos: Christina Hammock. That’s how she was known before she married and became Christina Koch, the name more closely associated with a history-making NASA career in which she recorded the longest spaceflight by a woman, participated in the first all-female spacewalk, and became the first woman to orbit the moon.

Koch attended N.C. State from 1997 to 2002 and earned undergraduate degrees in physics and electrical engineering, as well as a master’s degree in the latter.

That’s a combination of disciplines that one of Koch’s physics professors described to The Assembly as one of the most difficult at the university, but her studies apparently didn’t prevent her from staying busy outside the classroom. Among 4 INDYweek.com August 12, 2026

other activities, Koch was a member of the sailing club, participated in community service, and took up rock climbing.

She also found time to take more than a dozen photos for the Technician in the early 2000s. Her portfolio runs the gamut. There are multiple action shots of the Wolfpack women’s soccer team.

A two-page spread from the 2000 N.C. State Fair includes four images by Koch, the most of any photographer who contributed to the feature. And slices of campus life abound, like a front-page image of several “Raging Grannies” outside D.H. Hill Library and another of two professors smoking a pipe and “shoot[ing] the shit.”

This year, Koch was credited with taking “Earthset,” an historic image of our planet sinking below the moon’s horizon, as part of the Artemis II space mission in April.

It bears significant similarities to “Earthrise,” the iconic photograph taken on the Apollo 8 mission in 1968. Koch hung the latter on her college dorm room’s wall.

On a NASA podcast in 2019, Koch said she’s “always” considered photography a hobby and that it was among the tasks she was most looking forward to once she reached the International Space Station

that year. She has also spoken of taking a high-speed photography class as a student at the N.C. School of Science and Mathematics, the prestigious residential high school that is part of the UNC System. “I was famous for my time in the dark room there,” she told a group of NCSSM and N.C. State students while she was aboard the Space Station. (She wasn’t available for an interview for this story, per a NASA spokesperson.)

James Curle, who served as the Technician’s photo editor while Koch was on staff, recalled her as a quiet but driven presence. She seemed drawn to the idea of documenting her surroundings, and she was always trying to bring back better images to the newsroom than she did on her previous assignments, Curle said.

“I think that desire for improvement and wanting to capture what she was seeing in the world around her translated into her career with NASA,” Curle said.

Indeed, the girl who grew up near the North Carolina coast loving things that made her “feel small”—the ocean, the night sky—seemingly never stopped pursuing opportunities that would bring her closer to her dream of going to space.

‘The Power of Creativity’ Koch, 47, was born in Michigan but moved to Jacksonville as a child and calls North Carolina home. With parents “from scientific backgrounds” who kept National Geographic and Popular Mechanics around the house, she told The News & Observer in 2016, she took an early interest in exploring the world around her and tinkering with machines and tools in the backyard shed.

Newspaper clips from Koch’s childhood show she excelled academically, earning a spot on the honor roll at her elementary school, St. Francis of Assisi, in third grade.

As a seventh-grader at Hunters Creek Middle School in 1992, she was recognized by Duke University’s Talent Identification Program for her scores on the SAT. The following year, she earned first place at the state’s Southeast Regional Science Fair for a project on “The Common Sense of Geometric Formulas.”

But it wasn’t all books for Koch.

“I was a cheerleader that had to take off from cheerleading camp to go get an academic award at Duke University in middle school,” she recalled in an NC State interview in 2021.

At White Oak High School in Jacksonville, which Koch attended before transferring to NCSSM in Durham, she cheered alongside her friend, Melanie Edwards. NASA included a photo of the pair in their Vikings cheer uniforms in its 2013 announcement of Koch’s astronaut class and in an Instagram video the agency posted shortly before the Artemis II mission.

“Honors classes, cheerleading, she moved through all of it without seeming overwhelmed,” Edwards told The Assembly by email recently. “What I remember most is that her curiosity was never confined to a classroom.”

Koch, though, has said she’s not without doubts. In a recent interview with Oprah Winfrey, she reflected on a sculpture of her that sits at the main entrance to the NCSSM campus in Durham, saying that she worries it is “too perfect of a representation” of her and might discourage students from following their dreams. In a speech she gave at the sculpture’s dedication, Koch said, she “made sure to talk about the person I was in high school and how unsure I was of myself.”

Koch also took an interest in the arts.

In seventh grade, Koch told The Daily News of Jacksonville that band was her favorite class: “The music relaxes you and takes your mind away from school stress.”

(Perhaps that explains why Koch was disappointed when mission control cut off Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club,” played to wake up the Artemis II crew on their fourth flight day, before the chorus.)

Koch was also featured in a 1997 N&O story about how the School of Science and Math encouraged students to foster “their own theories of creativity.” In one class, Koch told the paper, she learned from her teacher to “draw only what you see rather than what you think you see”—a lesson that likely came in handy as she recorded her observations of the moon with paper and pencil after her computer failed in space.

At NCSSM, Koch “realized the power of creativity,” she told students in 2019. She said she also learned how to turn “fear into focus” by staring down the “mountain” of homework that faced her each night— and later applied that lesson to her first spacewalk.

“I really just can’t say enough about the different opportunities that I had that led me to want to live a life to explore,” she said of her NCSSM experience.

Joining the Wolfpack Koch landed at N.C. State because of its strong physics and electrical engineering

Left: A spread about the 2000 N.C. State Fair in the Technician. Bottom: Koch’s photo of a campus study abroad fair made the front page of the Technician COURTESY OF NC STATE UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

programs. She knew she wanted to study both, she told former N.C. State Chancellor Randy Woodson in 2023, because the former catered to her interest in the theories behind the universe and the latter to her love of “tinkering” and applying knowledge to hands-on scenarios.

It helped that the university was in her home state. “I could be at a public university, which is meant to support the people that are local, that are North Carolinians, and that have so much pride in this state,” she told Woodson. “And N.C. State just represented doers.”

She excelled in Raleigh—even with a heavy course load.

If the work weighed on Koch, she didn’t let it show, said Steve Reynolds, Koch’s academic advisor in the physics department who hired her for a summer research project in 1999. “She was just always happy, it seemed like,” he said.

John Blondin, a physics professor who taught Koch in upper-level courses and supervised her on that research project, recalled that Koch signed her homework assignments like a “classic 19-year-old college girl” with her nickname “Tina,” often with a heart drawn as the dot above the i.

Koch was quick to volunteer for one of

the most challenging tasks on the research project, which involved coding, Blondin said. She also made a Tesla coil during her downtime that summer just because she “thought that would be cool,” Reynolds said.

“She was just so energetic,” Reynolds said. “It sort of makes me tired just to think about.”

Blondin and Reynolds learned early in their work with Koch that she wanted to be an astronaut, and both believed she could accomplish the feat despite the long odds.

Reynolds offered a vote of confidence in a recommendation letter he wrote to accompany Koch’s application for an Astronaut Scholarship during her sophomore year.

“Christina Hammock is an exceptional individual in every way. Least interestingly, she has essentially a 4.0 GPA. More telling is her motivation for excellence in school: a lifelong dream to join the space program,” Reynolds wrote. “At N.C. State, her overpowering desire to learn and understand are evident in every class, but she extends her interests beyond the classroom as well, giving evidence of a deep scientific curiosity. … Such quantitative talent is rarely found in as articulate, enthusiastic, and personable an individual as Ms. Hammock.”

But Koch knew it would take more than academic success to become an astronaut; she has described walking away from a class on “How to Be an Astronaut” at Space Camp, which she attended every summer from 1992 to 1996, with a feeling that she didn’t want to live her life “according to a checklist.” Instead, she would live by her passions—and if, in the course of those pursuits, she felt she gained the experiences necessary to contribute to the space program, she would apply.

That outlook took Koch to research stations in Antarctica, Alaska, and American Samoa before she got the call from NASA. At N.C. State, her work for the Technician combined the artful hobbies that she’d discovered growing up with her gift for observing her surroundings. Curle, the former Technician photo editor, said Koch had a knack for finding and documenting “visually interesting” scenes on campus that would often run as standalone photos on the front page.

“It was pretty clear from the jump that she was not just someone who had a casual interest in photography,” he said.

“It was clear that she had an eye for it.”

Curle says he had little, if anything, to do with Koch’s photography skills, which she further honed with 20 hours of specialized photography instruction as part of her Artemis mission training. But as Koch documented the moon this spring, Curle thought about what she learned all those years ago at the Technician and whether that influenced her work now.

Maybe if the other astronauts needed assistance with their image composition, he thought, they could lean on Koch.

“For some folks, these are just pictures,” Curle said. “But I like to think that Christina appreciated the art and the beauty of it as she was making that journey and capturing those images.”

That certainly appears to be the case.

In an April 7 call between Koch’s Artemis II crew and the astronauts aboard the International Space Station, she reflected: “The thing that changed for me looking back at Earth was that I found myself noticing not only the beauty of the Earth, but how much blackness there was around it, and how it just made it even more special.”

“It truly emphasized how alike we are, how the same thing keeps every single person on planet Earth alive,” she said.

“We evolved on the same planet, we have some shared things about how we love and live that are just universal, and the specialness and preciousness of that really is emphasized when you notice how much else there is around it.”

August 12, 2026 INDYweek.com 5

NEWS

Apex

Billing Notice Apex Mayor Jacques Gilbert called an auditor to question her about flags raised regarding unpaid utility bills and P-card spending in her firm’s external audit of the town.

BY JANE PORTER jporter@indyweek.com

Outside Apex Town Hall PHOTO BY MATT RAMEY

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his winter, when town staff were trying to put together a budget for the current fiscal year, Apex was $6 million in the hole in utility balances.

A cyberattack in the summer of 2024 meant that the town had had to reconfigure its billing systems, and customers were receiving combined two- and three-month utility bills, which, along with annual rate increases, caused confusion over higher payments. The town had paused late fee collections and service disconnections, but the situation was becoming untenable: About 15% of customers had forgone paying their bills entirely. The financial stability of Apex’s electric utilities was compromised, and the town’s credit rating was threatened.

“There is concern that if we don’t soon make it clear we do intend to collect on unpaid balances, one could argue we would be in violation of the covenants on some utility bonds we’ve borrowed,” wrote Mayor Pro Tem Terry Mahaffey in a February 26 email to constituents. “Meaning the bondholders could demand immediate payment in full. Which would be ruinous.”

Apex announced it would resume normal billing operations, including collecting late fees and disconnecting utility services for nonpayment, on July 1 of this year. It offered interest-free payment plans to all customers and payment assistance to some.

Meanwhile, an annual audit of the town’s finances made public at the end of May suggests an elected official was one of the utility account holders who at some point had owed the town money and for seemingly long enough—or in an amount high enough—that it came to an outside examiner’s attention.

6 INDYweek.com August 12, 2026

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n June 25, according to public records obtained by the INDY, Apex Town Manager Randy Vosburg wrote an email to Jon Griffin, the town’s finance director, about a phone call from Apex Mayor Jacques Gilbert to one of the town’s external auditors.

“Do you think I need/should reach out to them?” Vosburg wrote. “I am still digesting the nature of his contact. ... Did they say he was seeking clarification or was it more questioning the findings? Was it just on the p-card transactions and wage garnishing comments? Anything else you remember?

Trying to decide if there is any action I need to follow up with, or if I need to discuss anything with council or mayor.”

The town of Apex had, just one month prior, received a clean audit opinion from the firm Cherry Bekaert for the 2025 fiscal year, which covers July 1, 2024, to July 1, 2025.

But the auditors had flagged three issues—known as financial performance indicators of concern—in their report and in the presentation of their findings to the Town Council.

The first point of concern was that the town’s own internal audit was submitted to Cherry Bekaert late. The second was that the town “did not always comply with its policies” on the use and review of procurement cards (or P-cards, essentially credit cards issued to town staff or elected officials). The third point of concern was that the town didn’t comply with a state law mandating that municipalities garnish the wages of elected officials who owed the town money for its services.

The day after the audit presentation to the council, Griffin emailed all council members and the mayor with Cherry Bekaert’s findings. He noted the report was sent to the Local Government Commission (LGC) in the State Treasurer’s Office for review and to the credit rating agencies that

maintain Apex’s bond ratings.

The next morning, Gilbert emailed Vosburg to ask about the process of “presenting questions and challenging possible inaccurate information to the audit firm,” according to public records obtained by the INDY. Citing language from the auditor’s report about the firm’s responsibilities, Gilbert questioned Cherry Bekaert’s process for carrying out the audit, though he wasn’t specific about any concerns.

“Based on the process of how this is done every year, there is a meeting set up with the audit firm with the mayor and questions are presented,” Gilbert wrote. “I don’t recall the process being completed in the same manner as in with previous years. In those years the audit firm would present any questions or concerns to me.”

“I think this is even more important as we paid this firm with an expectation of fair and accurate service,” Gilbert’s email concluded.

While the auditors’ report didn’t specify what town service had gone unpaid by an elected official, emails obtained by the INDY and the town’s written response to the audit point to unpaid utility bills.

According to Griffin’s response to Vosburg’s June 25 email, Gilbert’s phone call to the lead auditor, Lee Ann Watters, occurred on June 23. In his email, Griffin relayed to Vosburg that Watters called to touch base with him about a half hour after speaking with the mayor.

“Lee Ann said he specifically was inquiring about: Concerns about the unpaid utility bill note (questioning why it was presented given the general policy, whether it was appropriate, and I believe questioning what elected officials it applied to),” Griffin wrote on June 30. (Watters did not

respond to an email requesting comment.)

Griffin said the mayor also brought up “concerns about the pcard disclosure (concern that the note/presentation implied wrongdoing/inappropriate activity).”

The mayor also asked about “the lateness of the audit, whether the staff (and public explanations) provided for the completion of it were accurate, and she said she provided the same explanations consistent with what were on the LGC paperwork and discussed at the meeting(s),” Griffin wrote.

Griffin added that the mayor wanted to know specifically what the auditors looked at and questioned how the financial performance indicators of concern were brought to their attention; he said the mayor asked Watters for a document explaining those points, to which Watters responded “that it would be inappropriate for Cherry Bekaert to put anything more in writing than they already had with their official opinion letters,” according to Griffin.

Griffin concluded by stating that Watters directed Gilbert back to the town, since town staff already had to prepare a response document for the LGC. He said he hadn’t heard from her since.

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pex’s P-card policy has come under scrutiny recently, and town staff are currently working on a new policy governing P-card usage that’s expected to go before the Town Council soon. While some town staff members have or had access to P-cards, the INDY reported in October that, out of all the Town Council members, only the mayor had access to a P-card. While the auditors noted that the town did not always comply with its own policies regarding P-card usage, they did not specify who or if any staff member or elected official was misusing a P-card.

Still, an analysis of Gilbert’s P-card purchases since 2024 showed some questionable spending on the mayor’s part, including $375 to a porta-potty company, $343.20 to a local arts and crafts store, $402.14 to a hotel in Wilmington, $598.30 to a Hilton hotel, and hundreds of dollars to local restaurants.

Gilbert, who is paid $22,078 annually as mayor and receives a monthly stipend of $319.58 from the town, defended his P-card purchases by saying the town’s policies were unclear. He has also stated publicly that he never asked for a P-card; instead, one was given to him by the town clerk when he first took office in 2019, he said.

“There is no process. There has never been a process to what they’re talking about,” he told the INDY about Apex’s P-card policy last fall. (Gilbert did not respond to emails from the INDY requesting an interview for this story.)

In a November email to the town clerk, an administrator in Apex’s finance department confirmed that Gilbert’s card was suspended.

It’s also likely that Gilbert is the elected official who owed money to the town during the 2025 fiscal year. While he did not respond to an email from the INDY asking him to confirm, if accurate, that he never owed money to the town for services during his tenure, four of his colleagues did.

Former Town Councilmembers Brett Gantt and Audra Killingsworth and current Councilmembers Mahaffey and Arno Zegerman all confirmed in writing that they never owed money to the town while in office (or during the 2025 fiscal year).

Councilmember Ed Gray was the only other elected official who did not respond to the INDY’s inquiry.

Following the fallout from the cyberattack, Gilbert’s col-

Inside Apex Town Hall PHOTO BY MATT RAMEY

leagues on the council criticized him publicly for spreading misinformation about the town’s billing operations on social media. Gilbert called the billing operations a “crisis” and continued to post about it on social media for months after the town had gotten a handle on the issue by transitioning to a new billing system in July 2025 and replacing outdated water and electric meters.

A third-party review in October 2025 found that most utilities customers in Apex had been underbilled, with $33.46 being the highest amount a customer was overbilled and $12.05 being the average amount customers were overbilled.

Still, the mayor continued to insist the situation was “not yet fully resolved,” and some residents continued not to pay their bills.

“Apex, I’ve received many emails and calls ... regarding utility bills that appear inaccurate, unusually high, and accompanied by advanced due dates,” Gilbert wrote in a Facebook post on March 22. “Upon opening my own bill, I see mine is unusually higher than average as well.”

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n July 22, town staff drafted a response to the independent auditor’s findings. According to North Carolina’s administrative code, a municipality is required to submit a signed response to the LGC when an independent auditor identifies deficiencies in the audit, including any financial performance indicators of concern.

The document, which was shared with the INDY last week, is addressed to the LGC’s secretary, Denise Canada, and distributed to the mayor and council for them to sign. On July 28, Gilbert was the second-to-last member of the council to sign the document. Councilmember Zegerman signed it the next day and it was sent.

In the document, the town lays out its reasons for being late to submit its internal audit, not complying with its P-card usage policy, and not complying with the state statute requiring towns to garnish the wages of elected officials who haven’t paid for town services.

The cybersecurity attack created challenges that delayed access to financial information and hindered finance staff’s ability to prepare and audit financial statements from the previous fiscal year, the town explained. The town transi-

tioned to a new accounting system in January 2025, the document states, requiring data conversions that later required corrections. The town also saw turnover in both its finance director in April 2025 and its assistant finance director in August.

But the town has been “fully restaffed in its accounting and reporting functions,” the document states, and has since dedicated money to support year-end financial reporting.

“The Town is confident that staffing stability and appropriate investments in report writing will improve the timeliness of future annual comprehensive financial reports both to the Town’s citizens and to the Commission,” the document states.

Regarding the P-card usage policy, the town again cited turnover in the finance department and changes to its financial control environment, including a system transition, that impacted its ability to administer P-card transactions.

“As a result, the Town’s Finance Department could not carry out certain written procedures required by policy,” the document states, including suspending P-card privileges for employees or officials who failed to submit timely receipts and monitoring transactions.

“The Town has since tightened restrictions and is more uniformly enforcing the policy and additionally, is preparing a revised policy document that better reflects the Towns’ commitment to internal control and current software,” the document states.

Regarding the utilities nonpayment, the town, in the document, cites its moratorium on applying late fees and disconnections for unpaid balances.

“This policy was applied broadly to all customers,” the document states. “Without penalties in effect, enforced collections were not flagged or applied in the Town’s billing system, leading to the oversight [of the state law].”

The document notes that the finance director is working on developing a procedure to comply with the law.

“As of the date of this letter, there are no amounts of unpaid monies due to the town from its elected officials for town services,” the document notes. W August 12, 2026 INDYweek.com 7

NEWS

Durham

Waiting Room Durham childcare providers are struggling to retain teachers, especially after COVID-era federal grants ran out. Without teachers in classrooms, families are left waiting for a seat.

BY TORI NEWBY tnewby@indyweek.com

Yanett Martinez poses for a portrait at Randy’s Five Star Academy in Durham on July 22, 2026 PHOTO BY MATT RAMEY

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mural of cheerful flowers in the hallway leads toward classrooms filled with toys, puzzles, and cribs for naptime.

Letters spelling “Infants are a hoot” stretch across paper branches and owl cutouts on the wall, and new packages of diapers sit waiting to be used.

But the toys remain in their bins, and the cribs sit empty at naptime. At Randy’s Five Star Academy, a childcare center in Durham, Director Dalphia Murphy is having trouble recruiting and retaining teachers, which means the center can’t enroll up to its capacity. She is seeking an additional six providers in order to reopen four classrooms.

“I’m used to qualified teachers that really love children,” said Murphy, who had 19 teachers on staff before the pandemic and now has seven. “That’s the only thing I know. But what I see now is that no one wants to work.”

Before the pandemic, nearly 80 children attended Randy’s Five Star Academy. But this summer, provider shortages mean only 22 are enrolled, with another 16 having graduated from the pre-K pro8 INDYweek.com August 12, 2026

gram in May. Childcare centers like Randy’s received federal funding during the pandemic to pay teachers, and that money ran out in 2025, contributing to closures in Durham and across the state. As of August 10, 135 families in Durham have been approved for subsidized childcare but are waiting for a seat to open up due to a lack of providers among childcare centers that accept subsidies, said Tonia Gay, who manages the subsidies at the county’s Department of Social Services.

At Randy’s, teachers have felt the impact of turnover firsthand, filling in for classrooms where they can and going without coverage when they’re sick. Most students at the center come from low-income families and receive subsidized tuition. Teachers say the job is a hard but necessary investment in the children’s future.

“Some kids, maybe they don’t get that security at home,” Debbie Timmons, who teaches pre-K at Randy’s, said. “So us teachers, we basically are maybe second parents to these children, giving them the nurture and the guidance.”

A System of Subsidies In Durham, parents can apply for childcare subsidies through one county application, and then a group of local childcare agencies match a child to a center. The subsidies go to a childcare center to discount or eliminate the cost of attendance, depending on the program and a family’s income eligibility.

A combination of local, state, and federal funding supports these subsidies.

Early Head Start and Head Start are federally funded programs for low-income families. They collectively serve ages 0 through 5 for free for qualifying families.

Families who don’t meet the Head Start income threshold can instead qualify for the state’s subsidy program, which can be used at independent childcare centers that accept them. The state mandates that families receiving the subsidies pay 10% of their income to the childcare provider.

The NC Pre-K Program is state funded, and it serves 4-year-olds at no cost to income-eligible families. Durham PreK is a county-funded initiative for all 4-year-olds, with a priority for students who are “at risk,”

meaning they exhibit medical, financial, or academic instability. It is free for families making under 450% of the federal poverty level, and families making above that pay 2% of their monthly income.

Each of these programs partner with childcare centers to offer seats, so one pre-K class may have some seats funded by the state and others by the county, for example.

Overall, there are 2,059 families using some form of child care subsidies in Durham, according to Gay at DSS, making up about one third of the total child care seats for this past school year.

Linda Chappel, who leads efforts to improve childcare equity and access in the Triangle at Early Years, said the funded system is “blended and braided” in order to create as many seats as possible.

Even with this funding model, Durham’s childcare industry is feeling the blow from the elimination of COVID-era grants.

Kate Irish, executive director at the nonprofit Durham’s Partnership for Children, said the COVID-era stabilization grants helped keep childcare centers afloat. As teacher shortages persist in K-12 schools

across the county, independently owned childcare centers find it especially difficult to keep up.

“If you have a teacher turnover and you need to keep that classroom going, you still have to pay,” Irish said. “You still have to make it work. So having those funds was what really enabled them to have any kind of room to breathe.”

Shabaka and Darlene Brannon, two partners who run Kids Corner Academy in central Durham, used the grants to support payroll and overhead costs, receiving about $85,000 quarterly from the federal government. With the funds, they raised their teacher pay that ranged from $13 to $16 per hour before the pandemic to more than $21 per hour, gave their teachers bonuses of up to $500 per paycheck, brought families meals, and once, helped a family who had become homeless live in a hotel for two months.

“Some kids, maybe they don’t get that security at home. So us teachers, we basically are maybe second parents to these children, giving them the nurture and the guidance.”

Debbie Timmons has taught pre-K at Randy’s Five Star Academy for more than a decade PHOTO BY MATT RAMEY

- Debbie Timmons

But once that funding was pulled in 2025, the Brannons did not want to reduce salaries, and they were left scrambling to make up the costs.

“Even the light bill has gone up, the water bill, utilities— everything has just gone high sky,” Darlene said. “Everybody is being punished in a way, but we’re all hurting.”

Kids Corner isn’t the only place that struggled after grants were eliminated; North Carolina lost 367 licensed childcare centers between February 2020 and December 2025, EdNC reported in January, with the net loss increasing after the stabilization grants ran out.

All of the seats in Kids Corner Academy are eligible for subsidies. But for parents who can’t pay 10% of their income, the Brannons front the costs—using their personal money and taking out credit to pay their staff.

Durham parent Tiffany Tayton received subsidies to enroll her son in Kids Corner Academy, but she said she struggled sometimes to pay the $300 per month in fees. While her son was eligible for NC Pre-K, which is free to parents, the school day ends earlier than Tayton gets off work, meaning she had to keep him in private daycare.

Tayton said Darlene has been accommodating during

Randy’s Five Star Academy Director Dalphia Murphy poses for a portrait on July 22, 2026 PHOTO BY MATT RAMEY

August 12, 2026 INDYweek.com 9

Prior to the pandemic, nearly 80 children attended Randy’s Five Star Academy in Durham.

This summer, due to provider shortages, only 22 children are enrolled PHOTO BY MATT RAMEY

months where she’s had to pay the fee late or couldn’t front the money at all.

“It’s not that I don’t want to pay, I just literally don’t have it,” Tayton said. “They waived the fee twice since he’s been there, and I try not to do that because I know they already don’t get paid enough, and then to not pay is like, OK, you’re cutting in on their money even more.”

“Even the light bill has gone up, the water bill, utilities—ever thing has just gone high sky.

Everybody is being punished in a way, but we’re all hurting.”

- Darlene Brannon 10 INDYweek.com August 12, 2026

High Costs, Low Pay The county’s goal is for subsidized preschool programs to serve 75% of 4-year-olds in Durham, Chappel said, but there are currently seats available for 41% of that population. In order to reach its goal, Durham will need to strengthen its childcare workforce.

Each class must follow teacher-to-student ratio requirements set by the state, and without providers, the classes cannot reach capacity. At Randy’s Five Star Academy, an additional pre-K and infant class each need two providers in order to open, and an Early Head Start and Head Start class each need one more provider to fill all of the seats.

Childcare operators and advocates who spoke to the INDY attributed the lack of providers to low salaries and limited benefits.

Murphy pays her newest and least experienced provider $12 per hour, and another who has a degree and has worked in childcare for more than a decade earns $24 per hour.

Murphy said most of her employees decline benefits because they can’t afford to take a piece out of their salaries each month.

But with high operational costs, it’s difficult for childcare centers like Murphy’s to increase teacher pay. The cost of building space, equipment and supplies, food, and strict staff-tochild ratios drive up the costs of attendance, even as providers aim to keep them low for families.

“They deserve to get more money,” Murphy said about her teachers.

Yanett Martinez received a scholarship to obtain a Child Development Associate certificate and mentors other teachers PHOTO BY MATT RAMEY

Providers are eligible for pay raises depending on their credentials and the program they teach. The Durham PreK program requires that every lead teacher must have or be working toward a Birth-through-Kindergarten License and get paid at the Durham Public Schools pay scale. But Chappel said the public school compensation package is still much stronger with better benefits.

Timmons said she spends about five hours per week outside of work preparing for class.

Teachers also administer two meals and a snack each day and conduct health checks for students. She could not recall ever taking a personal day, and she said there are no teachers available to cover for her if she did.

When Murphy interviews potential employees, she finds that they can work in the restaurant industry or another hourly job where they don’t have to do as much preparation or adhere to such strict standards. Murphy said it’s hard to find staff who are passionate about early childhood education. The childcare center has a five-star rating from the state, which it earned for adherence to high standards of care.

Murphy said if she could hire just one additional teacher as a floater, that could help with coverage if teachers had to be out.

“They really need mental health breaks,” Murphy said about her teachers. “I know I do, and I’m the director. But they really need it, because sometimes it’s rough on a person.”

Yannett Martinez, a teacher at Randy’s, said it’s stressful to frequently train new teachers

and deal with the related paperwork only for some teachers to leave after a few weeks.

A study published by the National Institutes of Health in 2024 found that emotional and behavioral problems among preschool children increased during the pandemic. Terry David, executive director at the Durham nonprofit Families and Communities Rising, said that promoting wellness and increasing in-classroom support is just as important as fair pay.

“Since COVID, I’ve seen more children who have challenging behaviors, or children who may need additional support—so making sure there’s support in the classroom for teachers, not just giving them breaks, not just wellness, but in addition to that, providing an environment where psychological safety is present,” David said.

David said he’s seen the childcare workforce destabilize after the pandemic as federal funding for the industry has declined. Because Head Start is federally funded, increases in teacher salaries at the state level have not translated to Head Start programs. Head Start programs across the state had to pause operations during a federal government shutdown in 2025, and earlier that year the Trump administration proposed eliminating funding for the program, prompting several state officials to write a letter to Congress opposing the cuts. The Trump administration is currently planning to strip the program of its standards of care, leaving the rule-making up to states.

With high operational costs and low pay, child care centers struggle to recruit staff, says Randy’s Five Star Academy Director Dalphia Murphy PHOTO BY MATT RAMEY

“Head Start is federally funded, and it’s not a priority of the administration. Some people have left the field because they don’t feel that this field, long-term, may serve their best interest,” David said.

The demand for seats in infant and toddler classrooms is particularly acute, said Jameka Wells, director of programs at Durham’s Partnership for Children. Those classrooms require more teachers per child, meaning the operational cost is higher and there are fewer seats available for every teacher. She said a lack of qualified staff for those classrooms leads to extensive waitlists, leading parents to get creative with childcare and rely on family and neighbors.

When Durham parent Shanika Paylor was pregnant with her second child, she was already asking her older son’s childcare center for a spot in the infant class. But by the time her daughter was ready for daycare, the waitlist was eight to 12 months long. Paylor relied on her family nearby and took advantage of a flexible work schedule to work from home when she needed to. Ultimately, Paylor found a spot for her daughter at a different center, splitting up her children in order to find full coverage.

“When I think about even taking two kids to two separate childcare centers, I’ll take it,” Paylor said. “Maybe that’s parental desperation.”

In centers that do have seats available, there are often even fewer options for families that use child care subsidies. Chappel

said many providers do not accept subsidies because the state reimbursement rate is often lower than the costs of care.

According to Chappel, the average cost of a five-star infant child care seat is $20,332 annually, which makes up nearly a quarter of the median household income in Durham.

Paylor said she applied for subsidies for her daughter and is waiting to hear if she will be eligible. In the meantime, Paylor pays $1,400 per month—and she said she did “a lot of work trying to find that price.”

Investing in the Future To help recruit and retain teachers, Early Years offers scholarships through its TEACH program for early childhood providers to obtain degrees and certificates, and the nonprofit supplements teacher salaries through its WAGE$ program, which offers higher pay for increased levels of education. Murphy encourages all of her staff to seek higher levels of education, and providers’ education levels contribute to the center’s five-star rating.

Martinez, the Early Head Start teacher at Randy’s Five Star Academy, received funding through TEACH to obtain a Child Development Associate certificate and is working toward her bachelor’s degree through an online program at UNC Greensboro.

Martinez said she was the second teacher to graduate from the Early Years apprenticeship program, and she now serves as a mentor to students. But she hears from her mentees that going through a degree program is a lot of work for a job with low pay and limited benefits.

“It’s a lot to learn for somebody new,” Martinez said.

Martinez hopes to soon become a lead teacher in the pre-K class, which comes with higher pay.

Durham is one of few counties in the state that funds its own pre-K program, Chappel said. It launched in 2018 with a goal of providing universal child care for four-year olds. Ninety students enrolled in its inaugural year and it has grown each year since, to nearly 900 seats in DPS classrooms alone for the 2025-26 school year, with additional funding supplementing seats at private centers.

When Paylor’s son aged into pre-K, she said it was “total financial relief.” Paylor’s son entered publicly funded pre-K at the same time Paylor’s daughter began infant care. “We literally thanked our lucky stars,” Paylor said, that she wouldn’t have to pay for childcare for two kids at the same time.

The county’s pre-K program has demonstrated evidence of its success, with more than nine in 10 students achieving or exceeding academic expectations.

But for this upcoming school year, Durham PreK had to cut 34 seats due to

county budget restrictions. Chappel said there also may be cuts to pre-K seats that are partially funded by the county.

“It’s a modest cut based on the overall number of seats in the community, but any cut is unfortunate,” Chappel said.

The county also initiated a project in 2020 to try to increase seat availability for infants and toddlers, and it included plans for a childcare center at the Renegade, an affordable housing complex on Main Street, that opened in 2025. Chappel said more than a dozen child care operators applied to operate in the space, but ultimately the top five candidates could not afford the building costs and market-rate lease. The county is still working to finding a child care operator for the space, she said, but there are no active prospects at this time.

The state budget passed in July allocated $97 million in recurring federal funding to raise subsidy rates across the state, primarily benefitting rural counties. In Durham, childcare experts don’t yet know exactly what that will mean for Durham’s providers, said Wells at Durham’s Partnership for Children.

“The providers have a lot of competing costs for sure, but we’re hoping that that ends up meaning that programs will be able to pay their teachers a little more to try to retain them, because it’s definitely in their best interest, too, to do that,” Wells said.

August 12, 2026 INDYweek.com 11

NEWS

Durham

What Will These Scientists Do with Durham’s Poo? A Duke University lab took wastewater samples across the state to study how diet relates to socioeconomic characteristics.

Now, they want to narrow their scope to Durham neighborhoods and help local advocates improve food access.

BY REGAN BUTLER backtalk@indyweek.com

ILLUSTRATION BY ELLIE BRUNO

W

hat’s in your poop can say a lot about your neck of the woods.

Researchers from Duke University and UNC-Chapel Hill published a study last month on dietary DNA extracted from municipal wastewater across North Carolina communities. From sewage samples, the scientists found they could infer characteristics like economic status, foreign-born population size, seasonal shifts, and coastal proximity by analyzing the genetic material left from what people ate, digested, and flushed.

Now, they want to narrow their scope to the neighborhood level—in Durham.

The team of researchers are part of Edible Atlas, a lab based at Duke and led by associate professor Lawrence David. The lab studies the human diet “not just as a health input, but as a window into culture, economics, and how communities live,” per its website.

“We’re not interested in just telling you how you should eat differently and how you should improve your health,” Edible Atlas senior research analyst Michelle Kirtley told the INDY. “But we’re also interested in giving communities access to their dietary signals in order to give them unique 12 INDYweek.com August 12, 2026

things about their communities to celebrate, whether that’s cultural, seasonal, religious, whatever it might be.”

Studying residents’ health through wastewater isn’t unheard of; during the COVID-19 pandemic, wastewater sampling was commonly used to detect disease spread trends and has also been used in public health research to measure drug use, antibiotic resistance, and hormonal shifts. And researchers and agencies routinely sample wastewater in Durham, Joe Lunne, public information officer for the Department of Water Management, wrote to the INDY. Maintenance staff can pull and refrigerate samples from wastewater plants or might open up a manhole cover to let researchers take their own directly from the sewer main.

But the Edible Atlas scientists developed FoodSeq-FLOW (Food Landscape Observation in Wastewater), a DNA sequencing platform that uniquely “transforms municipal wastewater into a real-time window on population nutrition,” per a recent study conducted by Edible Atlas. FoodSeq-FLOW can survey genetic material from the plants and animals that people eat by analyzing what survives digestion.

The study, titled “Dietary DNA in Municipal Wastewater Reveals Signatures of Wealth, Immigration, and Coastal Proximity,” surveyed 21 North Carolina communities, including Durham and Raleigh, representing about 2.1 billion people (roughly a fifth of the state’s population) through 183 municipal wastewater samples. The study was the focus of a story in The New York Times on the nutrition field’s growing preference for the accessibility and inexpensiveness of wastewater analysis—as opposed to flawed self-reported questionnaires or expensive simulations.

David and his team concluded they could infer socioeconomic characteristics, and potentially food access needs, of regional populations from the dietary DNA that remains in sewage—after it’s flushed, before it’s treated.

They found that hops, a key beer ingredient, was more likely to appear in samples from wealthier areas, tropical fruits and beans showed up in regions with high foreign-born populations, and local seafood was prevalent in coastal areas.

From June to December 2020, the Edible Atlas team sampled four wastewater treatment plants in the Char-

that is being studied. When they first saw David present about Edible Atlas at a community event, Erin Dooley said a “light bulb” went off in her head, and the collaboration began.

“That partnership has just looked like a relationship, trust, communication, and working together to use the data that has been collected to help get in front of a larger audience—and maybe get this thing done,” she said.

BLK South is partnered with the Grant Street Community, part of Durham’s 100year old historically Black Hayti neighborhood, which was decimated when 1960s urban renewal and the construction of the Durham Freeway displaced 4,000 families and 500 businesses. BLK South is advancing the neighborhood’s 15-year vision, which calls for a full-service grocery store.

There’s an estimated $6 million funding gap preventing the addition of a store on the west side of Phase 1 of the Villages of Hayti development along Grant Street, per BLK South. The Dooleys believe the dietary data from this next Edible Atlas study could prove the impact a grocery store has on a neighborhood’s health and hopefully secure funding.

“It takes research and hard data to sometimes convince folks with deep pockets to invest and put money in something that’s meaningful like this,” Erin said. Kendall Dooley also said it would be especially helpful to have that concrete evidence from Edible Atlas as they apply for grants.

Kirtley told the INDY that Edible Atlas began collecting neighborhood samples in October 2025 and started testing them later that year. The team will assess 20 to 24 Durham neighborhoods over the course of the study, with a mix of “low-, medium-, and high median-income” areas. They have not released the names of specific neighborhoods, pending ongoing engagement with residents about what information they would like to make public.

The funding for their Durham project ceases in December, which is around the time researchers aim to compile their findings and publish, Kirtley said. Edible Atlas is also working on producing an online summary dashboard, where the public will be able to access the information in an engaging way.

She also said the Duke lab believes it “ought to benefit the community that helps sustain our work in so many ways.”

This is why they’re looking for funding to support future studies based on which trends the Durham community wants them to track—whether dietary, health conditions, or otherwise. W

h t

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ke up w a W i

lotte-Mecklenburg area, three in Beaufort-Carteret, and one in Greenville-Pitt.

Then, they sampled them again in June 2021. This set was to determine whether their testing method could detect changes over time, including seasonal shifts, and it did; one simple indicator was an uptick in turkey DNA in November and December.

In June 2021, researchers collected onetime samples from 19 wastewater treatment plants in Durham, Raleigh, Charlotte, Winston-Salem, Asheville, Wilmington, Greensboro, Fayetteville, Roanoke Rapids, Wilson, Newport, Marion, Laurinburg, and New Hanover. Researchers also specifically gathered 14 individual, untouched stool samples from Durham residents (also in June 2021) to check if their assessment of food DNA in sewage actually tracks with what people are eating—and it did.

But what will the scientists ultimately do with the poo?

The Edible Atlas team’s first study on North Carolina gathered data from municipal wastewater treatment centers that could represent thousands of people’s waste. Now, the team wants to narrow its focus to different neighborhoods in Durham, hoping it can be used to inform policy and spur food accessibility initiatives. The lab is partnering with community members to learn about what this sort of data can do for them. The hope is that tracking regional nutrition trends will arm food deserts and other resource-deprived areas with the data they need to advocate for improved access to nutritious food.

“The differences that we saw at the wastewater treatment plant level made us wonder: Are there differences that we could also see at the neighborhood level that we might be able to relate to something like food access and health, and start unpacking a little bit about why populations have different access to food and what we could do to help solve that?”

Kirtley said.

But Edible Atlas also understands the concerns that come with surveilling vulnerable populations. They’re hosting an event on August 15 at the Durham County Library, where they’ll explain their Durham-focused project, answer resident questions, and take feedback from community members about what should be done with the data. The team never samples areas with less than 500 people, to preserve anonymity, Kirtley said.

Erin and Kendall Dooley, founders of the Durham nonprofit BLK South, are confident the research can be used for advocacy, particularly to secure a grocery store for Grant Street, one of the areas

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Character Studies

AN INDY SERIES ABOUT FAMILIAR FACES AROUND THE TRIANGLE— AND THE STORIES YOU MAY NOT KNOW ABOUT THEM. Coke Ariail PHOTO BY MATT RAMEY

Coke Ariail poses for a portrait in his handmade boat in Durham PHOTO BY MATT RAMEY

Coke Ariail, Urban Boat Captain In recent years, downtown Durham passersby may have come across William “Coke” Ariail III—artist, craftsman, and film producer—at work on his sailing dinghies.

BY JUSTIN LAIDLAW jlaidlaw@indyweek.com

T

ucked away in a small cove, inside a sea of parking on Ramseur Street in Durham, are a pair of nautical vessels, covered by tarps. The boats are docked next to a two-story brick apartment.

The boats’ captain is Durham native William “Coke” Ariail III, an artist, craftsman, and film producer.

Over the past two years, passersby in the surface parking lot behind Toast and Rubies on Five Points may have caught a glimpse of Ariail working on his most recent ship, a 12-foot SCAMP (Small Craft Advisor Magazine Project) sailing dinghy. A jovial 83-year-old with a scraggly white beard and youthful exuberance, Ariail, who also owns and lives at the apartment, would fit right in on Gilligan’s Island or aboard the Black Pearl.

Sailing dinghies are small recreational boats that have been in use for hundreds of years, typically powered by wind sails or a small motor. Novice sailors find cruising dinghies to be easy to navigate because of their stability.

14 INDYweek.com August 12, 2026

Some more advanced riders engineer their boats for racing competitions. The SCAMP-style dinghy was developed in 2010 by Craig Wagner and Josh Colvin, publishers of the Small Craft Advisor magazine, with the help of New Zealand boat designer John Welsford. At first, only the boat’s designs were available, but now, interested sailors can buy premade kits or fully built boats.

“I saw the SCAMP sailing dinghies online, and I just fell in love with it,” Ariail said. “But I need three boats like I need a hole in the head.”

Ariail first got his sea legs in 1980 after moving from Durham to Virginia near the Chesapeake Bay, where he took a job as a contractor for a telephone company. He rented a small home from the owner of a marina that was about 100 yards from the water, Ariail said, and after seeing a few boats for sale in a car and truck trade magazine, Ariail took the plunge. He bought a Cal 21 recreational keelboat made of fiberglass for $3,000—the first boat in

his fleet—and a “how to sail” instruction manual.

Ariail moved back to Durham in 1983 and bought his apartment during a time when downtown Durham was occupied mostly by day laborers looking to pick up work.

In the decades since Ariail first purchased the Cal 21, he’s owned five boats in total; a 28-foot Southern Cross he called Sweet Dreams that was destroyed in 2011 by Hurricane Irene; a 12-foot “car topper” sailing dinghy that he built and named Katydid after his second wife Kate, whom he married on Sweet Dreams; a Bayfield 25 keelboat that he keeps docked in Oriental called the Pungo Pearl; and now, of course, the Mercat Snug (the name a portmanteau of mermaid and cat), his newly minted 12-foot SCAMP sailboat.

This particular model of SCAMP boats can retail for as high as $20,000, Ariail said, completely built out and furnished. But the plans to design it yourself were only a couple hundred bucks—a drop in the bucket, comparatively. Ariail, who retired in 2011 after working for over a decade as a film producer with the Veterans Affairs office in Washington, D.C., had the time to sink his teeth into a new project.

Serving as Ariail’s first mate throughout the process was his stepson, Charlie Engle, a renowned ultramarathon runner who was featured as one of three adventurists in the 2007 documentary Running the Sahara. Engle, who grew up in Southern Pines and now lives in Durham, suggested the two of them tackle the construction of the Mercat Snug together.

“There’s no way I can refuse this, because normally, even though he’s here, we’d see each other maybe two or three times a year,” Ariail said. After Engle’s son was born in 1993, Ariail built his grandson a cradle in the form of a model sailboat, the only boat he’s built that rocked back and forth by design. “This way, we’d be seeing each other at least two or three times a month.”

What Ariail saved in cost he paid for in time, but spending that quality time with his stepson was well worth the trade-off.

The Mercat Snug is made out of birch marine plywood.

The outside is layered with fiberglass, and two to three coats of epoxy on the inside protect the wood from weathering and abrasions over time. Ariail used the “stitch and glue” technique, which he likens to a surgical procedure, weaving large plastic ties to piece together the plywood and hold it in place before sealing them tight and cutting the excess ties.

Imperfections, he said, are unavoidable.

“It’s the old joke about carpenters: The mark of a good carpenter isn’t how many mistakes he makes but how well he can cover them up,” Ariail said, chuckling as he recalled the errors he’s made along the way. “Man, I can’t tell you the places we went ‘Who measured that?’ … It takes a modicum

Coke Ariail PHOTO BY MATT RAMEY

of skill. But you don’t have to be a furniture-grade craftsman at all.”

Ariail went scouring in his favorite bamboo patch to find the optimal stalk to make his mast. He was familiar with the tensile strength of the material, having grown up near bamboo forests that he would harvest for crafting fishing poles and toy swords as a kid. The Katydid also features a bamboo mast. In 2019, a poem he wrote, “Bamboo Wind,” was brought to life through an interactive art installation at the Fruit with bamboo abound. The bamboo for the Mercat Snug was treated with fiberglass sleeves and epoxy, similar to the rest of the ship, to prevent the wood from expanding and contracting with seasonal temperature changes.

After a few coats of acrylic urethane exterior house paint, and a mermaid figurehead affixed to the bow, the Mercat Snug was completed in a year. She departed on her maiden voyage this past January, with Ariail, Engle, and Durham-based filmmaker D.L. Anderson there to capture the moment on film.

At 83, getting the boat out is more

tedious than before, but the tranquility of the open waters is a siren call Ariail can’t ignore. Floating along the waves, at the mercy of Mother Nature’s mood swings, brings you to be, “in the most real sense, one with your environment,” said Ariail, and offers him the opportunity for deep reflection, with only the soundtrack of the natural world to underscore his thoughts.

“I think people nowadays are uncomfortable with silence,” Ariail said. “You go into somebody’s house and there’s a TV on, if not two of them, and they’re not in the room, they’re not listening, they’re not watching, but they can’t bear silence.

I like being in company, and I like being with people, but I also need a fair amount of silence.”

“On my sailboat, even the big one that’s got a motor, I can’t wait to get out there, get the sails up, get the motor off and all you’ve got is the sound of the birds and the waves,” he continued. “To me, it can be so peaceful to allow your mind to clear itself, and go wherever it wants to, and I love it.

It’s like a form of healing and centering, and of finding an inner peace.” W August 12, 2026 INDYweek.com 15

FOOD & DRINK

Spread Thin A new initiative from the Southern Smoke foundation made its North Carolina launch, last month, with the aim of making therapy more accessible to restaurant workers. Will it reach the back of house?

BY NIKKI MILLER-KA food@indyweek.com

PHOTO BY CAN CEYLAN ON PEXELS

A

ndrew, a front-of-house manager at a small Italian restaurant in Cary, is in therapy—a cost he has to pay out of pocket.

In more than a decade working across the Triangle, from back waiter to bartender and wine distributor, he’s seen it all.

But until recently, he hadn’t heard of Southern Smoke Foundation (SSF) or its program to help hospitality workers access mental healthcare. That program, Behind You, launched in 2020 through the University of Houston and is now expanding to North Carolina.

SSF is a Houston-based nonprofit founded in 2015 by James Beard Award-winning chef Chris Shepherd. Its Emergency Relief Fund has distributed more than $16 million in direct cash grants to food and beverage workers nationwide facing crises like medical emergencies, lost wages, and natural disasters. This year, SSF was named a James Beard Foundation Impact Award honoree.

Andrew—who asked to be identified by first name only, as he still works in the industry—is uninsured and has struggled to afford therapy; his doctor approved a payment plan to help manage the cost.

“Sometimes it’s choosing ‘Do I pay my bills or neglect those things so that I can actually get counseling?’” he said. “[Therapy is] usually toward the bottom of my list of expenses and fiscal responsibilities.”

As of July 1, Andrew and other North 16 INDYweek.com August 12, 2026

Carolinians who work at least 30 hours a week for six months at a food and beverage establishment can apply for up to 20 free counseling sessions through UNC-Chapel Hill’s clinical psychology training clinic.

The statewide program has a small caseload—six to eight active patients, with others cycling in from a waitlist as treatment ends. SSF said it expects it to take about a year to expand beyond that initial capacity.

As of 2021, only 32% of hospitality workers reported having access to employer-sponsored healthcare coverage. According to Census Bureau data cited by the National Restaurant Association in 2023, 81% of restaurant employees have some form of health insurance, though 71% of that coverage is private insurance often held under a spouse or parent’s plan—statistically, nearly half of restaurant workers are 26 and under—and employer-sponsored coverage remains rare across the industry.

Even insured workers may struggle to afford or schedule mental healthcare.

North Carolina’s Behind You launch is funded by a grant SSF provides to UNC-Chapel Hill, supported primarily by the Behind You Classic, a golf tournament hosted by Triangle chef-owners Sam Ratto of Videri Chocolate Factory, Matt Fern of the now-closed (ish) delicatessen, and Adam Cunningham of Longleaf Swine, a Raleigh barbecue restaurant with locations in Chapel Hill and North Raleigh opening

later this year.

Fern and Ratto learned about Behind You through SSF cofounder Shepherd in 2024 and began raising money to bring it to North Carolina. Across two years, the event has raised $75,000.

The Behind You pilot at the University of Houston has facilitated more than 11,000 counseling sessions since 2020, and the program now operates through university partnerships in 13 other states as well as the District of Columbia. The program’s name comes from the kitchen call workers often use to signal they’re close behind a colleague—a warning in a space of sharp tools, hot surfaces, and constant motion.

SSF’s framing extends the phrase: In an industry defined by long shifts and high stress, everyone needs someone behind them.

An Industry Gap There is, of course, an inherent tension baked into the model—the restaurant owners helping fundraise for healthcare are part of an industry in which employee health benefits remain rare.

Cunningham said he has tried to obtain insurance for Longleaf Swine’s mostly Hispanic and Latino kitchen staff but could not make the cost work. The quotes came back with monthly per-employee premiums and

deductibles so high the plans seemed like “insurance in name only.” He said he didn’t feel comfortable bringing that kind of coverage to his staff of more than 50 full-time employees because it might not meaningfully protect them if something did happen.

He pointed to larger restaurant groups, like those run by Raleigh’s Ashley Christensen and Scott Crawford (who has been outspoken about the toll that the industry can take), as examples of operators that do offer benefits. But smaller businesses lack the scale, he said.

Fern, who began therapy for the first time this year after 32 years in the industry, was more direct.

“I don’t want to have to raise money for healthcare,” he said. “But because we have to, we’re going to.”

Long hours, physical strain, financial precarity, and a culture that stigmatizes asking for help can make burnout feel like an ordinary condition of restaurant work.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration has consistently identified accommodations and food services as the industry with the highest rates of illicit drug use and substance use disorders. Nearly 17% of workers in the sector meet the criteria for a substance use disorder, and roughly 19% report illicit drug use in a given month. Fewer than a quarter of food service companies offer Employee Assistance Programs, compared to more

than 97% of large companies nationally.

The impact of that access gap falls unevenly. Latino workers make up roughly 26% of restaurant and food service employees nationally and 43% of restaurant laborers, according to National Restaurant Association data. More than one in five Latino adults report a mental health condition, but in 2021, only 36% receive treatment, compared with 52% of white adults.

Fern sees his own experience as inseparable from the industry.

“I’m a functional alcoholic,” he said, attributing it partly to daily stress requiring a coping mechanism. “And a lot of that I would attribute to the insane amount of stress on a day-to-day basis and how at the end of the day that becomes a coping mechanism. People in our industry who get addicted to cocaine or anything prescription like Adderall, things that kind of feed that adrenaline and excitement, I think we’re all adrenaline junkies at some point.”

Ratto participated in a Behind You pilot through UNC-Chapel Hill in 2025 and received cognitive behavioral therapy.

“It’s not throwaway care,” he said. “It’s literally a person who is training in this modality of how to help people work through things.”

Mo Ray has spent 17 years in the food and beverage industry. She lived for years with a rare cancerous tumor, mistaking its symptoms for fatigue from long service-industry shifts. The tumor was discovered only after she got her first restaurant job with health insurance. Complications from the surgery left her with mobility, hearing, and speech impairments.

“I lived with cancer for years and had no idea because I did not have insurance and could not take care of it,” Ray said. “So many of the symptoms I just chalked up to fatigue and burnout.”

She also witnessed a coworker take their own life at her workplace. Ray said the hotel neither stopped operations nor brought in counselors.

“Everybody had to continue working,” she said. “Not even halting operations.”

Getting the Word Out Caterina Bill, SSF’s chief mission officer, described the North Carolina coalition as “industry leader-based, not chef-based,” with brewers, agriculturalists, and other industry figures involved. North Carolina applicants who had previously applied for the Emergency Relief Fund are now being notified, and organizers are distributing cards with a QR code workers can share without management involvement.

to talk about it.”

Whether workers like Andrew learn about the program before counseling once again falls below rent, groceries, and other bills on the priorities list is the question the program’s North Carolina rollout must now answer.

WHAT TO KNOW: WHAT IT IS Up to 20 free counseling sessions for North Carolina food and beverage workers, delivered through UNC-Chapel Hill’s clinical psychology training clinic.

Restaurant worker Mo Ray poses for a portrait in downtown Raleigh PHOTO BY MATT RAMEY

WHO QUALIFIES Fast-food, quick-service, and chain-restaurant workers can qualify if they meet the program’s requirements, but there isn’t a campaign specifically targeting those employees. An SSF spokesperson instead cited the organization’s ongoing networking and outreach.

Ray had never heard of the effort and said the golf fundraiser reinforces her impression that the organization is closer to owners than hourly workers. “You don’t see poor people doing that,” she said. “That’s a rich man’s game.”

Cunningham acknowledged that outreach remains unfinished. After focusing on raising the money, he said, the organizers are only now asking, “How do we spread the word?”

Awareness is not the only limitation. The design of the care may also determine who can use it.

Jennifer Kirby, director of adult services and training at UNC-CH’s clinical psychology training clinic, oversees the partnership.

Services will launch in English only. SSF said workers needing care in other languages will be referred to low-cost or sliding-scale multilingual community resources, with no announced timeline for adding Spanish-language care through the program.

Andrew, the front-of-house manager in Cary, communicates with back-of-house staff in Spanish. He called the program’s language limitations a “significant exclusion” that leaves out “a large chunk of the back of house in restaurants where often English is not their first language.”

Ray said the limitation is especially significant for immigrant workers facing mounting fear and stress.

“There are people who are losing their lives,” she said. “Especially in this era right now where ICE is doing everything it’s doing, and people are scared, and they’re falling apart, and they need access to so many things, mental health being one of them.”

Doctoral psychology students in their second through fifth years of training and advanced graduate social work students will provide the therapy, under the supervision of licensed faculty clinicians. The trainee-delivered model, which SSF has used since its Behind You pilot launched at the University of Houston in 2020, allows the program to provide free care at scale by partnering with university training clinics where graduate students need supervised clinical hours to graduate.

Ray questioned whether trainee-delivered treatment constituted equal access.

“I understand the importance of it,” she said, comparing the training-clinic model to a teaching hospital, “but are we not worthy of the same sort of professional care and access as someone else?”

After the 20 free sessions, clients may continue at UNC-CH’s sliding-scale clinic at a rate SSF describes as affordable or, in some cases, receive a brief extension of the free care.

Andrew qualifies for the program and affirms that he will apply without hesitation. Until he was interviewed for this story, however, he did not know Behind You existed.

“It’s here to help you,” Cunningham said.

“Don’t be scared to talk about your feelings and personal feelings. Because everyone’s going through it, and no one wants

Workers with at least 30 hours per week and six months in food and beverage, including employees of restaurants, bars, cafés, fastfood and chain restaurants, wineries, breweries, and food-supply operations such as farms. Multiple food and beverage jobs can count toward the hours. Third-party delivery drivers, including DoorDash and Uber Eats workers, are not eligible.

KEY DATES Applications and the waitlist opened July 1, 2026. Sessions begin in September. The partnership starts with a rolling caseload of six to eight clients, with new applicants cycling in from the waitlist as participants complete treatment.

ALSO AVAILABLE STATEWIDE SSF’s Emergency Relief Fund offers direct cash grants averaging $3,700 for expenses including rent, medication, and lost wages.

It is available in all 50 states.

APPLY southernsmoke.org August 12, 2026 INDYweek.com 17

PAGE

ELISA FAISON: SKIN CONTACT

Cardinal Publishing | June 23

An Open Book Talking with Carrboro author Elisa Faison about polyamory, the evolution of domestic fiction, and her buzzy debut novel, Skin Contact.

BY JESSIEANNE D’AMICO arts@indyweek.com

AUTHOR ELISA FAISON PHOTO BY TAMMY JEAN LAMOUREUX

I

deas about partnership seem to be shifting beneath our feet. The language of polyamory and ethical nonmonogamy has entered the mainstream just as renewed appeals to domesticity and tradition have found enormous audiences of their own.

Relationships of all shapes—romantic, familial, platonic—feel simultaneously more open to reinvention and, conversely, tethered to tradition.

Though the plot of Carrboro writer Elisa Faison’s debut novel, Skin Contact, hinges on a couple navigating their newly opened marriage, the book is equally concerned with lineages past and lineages projected—grief; sexuality; motherhood; the identities women inherit, subvert, and outgrow; and what is kept of institutions when tradition is subverted. Skin Contact introduces the question of whether, by opening her marriage, its protagonist will be able to avoid disappearing beneath the roles she’s expected to occupy.

Skin Contact follows Frances and Ben after they decide to open their marriage in the wake of Frances’ mother’s death and her own crisis of self. Its premise is undeniably sexy from the first page. As lovers come and go, friends become confidants and antagonists alike and new relationships throw old assumptions into question, Faison builds an ensemble novel that’s as interested in friendship and family as it is romance.

The result is a book that resists becoming 18 INDYweek.com August 12, 2026

a novel from interconnected stories, The basic words that we use to describe “I wanted to ques- building and writing beyond the clichés surrounding nonmonogamy or polyamory—is it ethical, This conversation has been edit- nonmonogamy, or relationship anarchy— tion our view of polyamory. ed for length and clarity; a longer version is all of these things have changed. Even in the house as a sta- available online. the time of writing they were changing.

And I wanted to include the different perble thing and to INDY Week: The chapter asides spectives and keep it really topical.

Contact are titled things consider how our inlikeSkin We’re in this moment culturally, “A Few Questions and Helpjust said, in which people ful Comments Their Friends Have art forms have to About Adam and Celeste.” The lan- asareyou questioning inherited ideas of marriage and partnership. But around polyamory and nonchange if we change guage also this renewed intermonogamy and open relationships these traditional has evolved so much, at least it there’s est in stability and tradition and, well, the tradwife culture of it that way, and so many peoideas of domestic seems all. Those trends are existing in ple’s assumptions about what those to each other, but also relationships look like have also life and marriage.” changed. As you were writing, how contrast you see their roots and discourse an argument about how people should love and is, instead, an exploration of how they actually do: imperfectly, unexpectedly, and often without the language to explain it themselves.

Faison, a former local bookseller, recently finished a PhD in contemporary American fiction at UNC-Chapel Hill. She brings both researched exploration of the domestic novel and innate curiosity about the changing shape of familial life without ever losing sight of the people at its center. On the heels of the book’s June release, Faison spoke with the INDY about Yesteryear,

did you want to reflect those evolving conversations?

FAISON: I really wanted to consider the changing perspectives. And that was one reason, too, that I wanted to include some of the previous generations. Because I wanted to think about on the long scale: How have perspectives of marriage and monogamy and wifehood and what we owe to our partner, how have those perspectives changed? I think the way that even Frances’ mother and Frances use a term like “marriage” are really different.

Then on the micro, you’re exactly right.

intertwined. Did you feel that tension while you were writing this book?

Thank you so much for asking. Yes, I was thinking about that a lot! When I was writing my PhD, the evolution of domestic fiction and how portrayals of the house were reflected in the portrayals of the women and women’s interiority. There’s a connection always between the woman, the speaker of early novels, to the house itself.

When I was thinking of Skin Contact, you know—I mentioned that I wanted it to be an open form structure; I wanted

to keep it a little bit messy, to feel a little more chaotic. Partially that’s because I wanted to reflect the changing views of domestic life that we have now. So if the novel is the house—with different rooms you can enter but it’s all tied together by the main protagonist—I really just wanted to question our view of the house as a stable thing and to consider how our art forms have to change if we change these traditional ideas of domestic life and marriage.

With something like Yesteryear—which I was obsessed with, to be clear—that novel is dealing with kind of the same idea: what happens when the privacy of the house is just totally blasted and made public. Being an Instagram influencer, a tradwife influencer, is on the same spectrum, kind of, as opening your marriage.

You’re allowing what has been traditionally a really private space and a private relationship—that you sort of “don’t ask, don’t tell” of someone’s marriage—you’re inviting that to really be on display. You’re getting a lot of questions, you’re getting a lot of feedback, and you have to decide what image you want.

I think something like Yesteryear is playing with that by exploding the balance of time and space. And I wanted

to do something similar even though it’s deeply nontraditional. I’m really curious about how domestic fiction is changing right now. And there are a lot of different ways that it’s changing, even as we’re trying to bring the focus back to the home.

Skin Contact seems comfortable leaving room for something ambiguous, and comfortable asking questions instead of answering them definitively. Was certainty something that you wanted to actively resist?

It was. I would say it became something I wanted to actively resist. When I had the initial seed for the novel I was working as a bookseller at Flyleaf Books, and I am also in an open marriage, a polyamorous marriage. I was reading a lot of books and feeling really bothered by the portrayals that I was seeing. They just didn’t feel quite right to me. Most of the things I was reading were either exploring polyamory as a kind of stopgap before you find the right person, or it was connected really clearly with abusive relationships.

It’s either portrayed as something misguided that you try in a relationship before you realize it doesn’t work or before you

grow out of it or what have you. Or it’s written as a tool of abuse in many great books. But none of that felt true to my experience or the experiences of most people I knew. I did have the idea of wanting very specifically to show a polyamorous relationship in a certain light that was a healthier and more positive depiction. But that also was immediately just kind of boring, too neat and tidy! As I was sitting with it and working on it, I was thinking, “In order for it to be this healthy portrayal there have to be fights and confusion and conversations and additional conversations and new feelings that you don’t expect to have.”

Because all of that is part of a healthy relationship. When I wanted to bring in the other perspectives and opinions too, then, it felt equally important to me to treat every one of those other forms of relationships with the same level of care that I was treating Ben and Frances’ open marriage. I have, in the book, as I have in real life, literally no agenda as to what type of relationship anyone wants to be in. I just wanted to treat all of them with care and have every character be a well-rounded character who is sometimes making a bad choice and sometimes making a good choice, no matter what type of relationship they’re in.

You live in the South, in a very progressive pocket in the South here in Carrboro. Were you considering that broader cultural context specifically here, or did you want it to feel more anonymous and universal?

I didn’t consciously, I think, choose one or the other, except for the fact that it is deeply set in Chapel Hill. I’m so happy when some people have realized that Ben is hanging out at Linda’s. So it is very much here. I never wanted to reset it or consciously set it in New York City or somewhere like that.

We did a full cast for the audiobook, and they asked me if there were any regional accents. They did such a good job because the person who narrates the grandmother’s chapter has a Southern accent, and then the person who narrates the mother’s chapters has a very light Southern accent. And then Frances doesn’t have one. So I think it shows how regionalism has changed, but also avoids erasing where it’s set. I want it to feel universal but I also think that it being set in the South doesn’t keep it from being universal because these issues of open marriage, queerness, everything—that’s everywhere.

August 12, 2026 INDYweek.com 19

FOOD & DRINK

An Existential Crisis at Cosmic Cantina

A visit to a Durham hole-in-the-wall prompts a reckoning with memory and change. BY LENA GELLER lgeller@indyweek.com This story is part of a column, Lunch Money, in which staff writer Lena Geller visits restaurants in the Triangle in an attempt to dine out for less than $15.

Cosmic Cantina’s deluxe veggie burrito PHOTO BY LENA GELLER

W

e’re about to head inside when something stops us: a poster of an AI-generated chimichanga. Knobbly and bronze, the log rendered before us is topped with what look like Skittles and puckered open at one end, exposing an unholy cache of nubs.

Tim cocks his head.

“What the hell,” I say.

This is not the first time my friend Tim and I have found ourselves on this square of sidewalk, dallying outside the building that houses Cosmic Cantina, a Durham hole-in-the-wall. Had I not deleted my Snapchat archive last year in a fit of surveillance state paranoia, I could fetch a decade’s trove of selfies of the two of us standing right here: masked and waiting for takeout, baby-faced and up to no good.

The poster is a new cause for pause, though. It definitely belongs to Cosmic—it says so in big letters above the monstrosity.

“Is Cosmos aware of this?” Tim asks.

“Wait, is Cosmos a real person?”

“Yes, the owner. I have his autograph on a napkin.”

I ask Tim if he noticed the poster when he stopped by earlier this week.

A Durham native, he’s lived in Chicago 20 INDYweek.com August 12, 2026

for years but remains locked in Cosmic’s orbit, and when he visits home he invariably stops for a burrito before reaching his parents’ house—doable no matter how late he lands at RDU, as Cosmic stays open until 4 a.m.

“No, I kind of beelined inside,” he says of his recent visit.

We stop gawking and begin the ascent.

Cosmic sits at the top of a heavily graffitied set of stairs, next to a dance studio, and as we climb, I take in the familiar mingled aromas of cilantro and feet.

There’s a rush of cool air when we push the restaurant door open. The lights are off and the ceiling fans are on, and the space is empty except for a family with three kids in matching Duke shirts. Surveying the room, I feel a fondness for how sturdy everything is: the tiled counter, the wooden tables, the menu board hanging from the ceiling.

The menu board. Because I have a usual order, I’m not sure that I’ve ever really looked at it until now. There are burritos and chimichangas, of course, each in three sizes: mini, regular, and giant.

Apparently Cosmic also serves nachos, quesadillas, salads, and tacos. Everything comes with a choice of chicken, steak, roasted veggies, tofu, or vegan chorizo.

You can also let rice and beans stand as the protein, which is the cheapest route and the one I take. I step up to the counter and order what’s called the veggie burrito, which comes with rice, beans, and melty white cheese. All of Cosmic’s burritos are Mission style—oversized and rolled in a steamed flour tortilla, a Mexican American invention by way of San Francisco. I get mine deluxe, which adds guac and sour cream. Tim, who put me onto this order years ago, gets the same, minus the sour cream and the cheese because he’s vegan now.

With an orange soda, tax, and tip, my total is $15.10.

We give the cashier our names and go sit at a picnic table on the patio outside, an open-air platform with brick walls.

Over the top of one wall is a flat rooftop behind a chain link fence.

“Remember when we used to climb on the roof?” Tim says, pointing to where the brick meets the sky. “And then they put the fence up because of us.”

“Was that because of us?” I say. “I guess we were smoking weed up there.”

A noise crackles through the loudspeaker. Tim goes inside to check if our food is ready.

I look around. As many memories as Tim

and I have forged here, I do have Cosmic lore that predates him. In middle school, my friend Cameron and I both lived within walking distance of Ninth Street—the shopping and dining district by Duke East Campus that Cosmic anchors—and, flush with independence but short on cash, we built a circuit around getting as much free stuff as possible: scoring leftover milkshakes from Bryan and Erin, owners of the soda fountain Ox & Rabbit; stuffing our pockets with free sugar cookies at Harris Teeter; and, at Cosmic, buying mini burritos with our allowance money and then asking for water cups we instead filled with soda.

Tim comes back holding two plates.

Dine-in orders come with chips and salsa, and we work through some of those before peeling back the foil on our burritos. When I bite into mine, it’s the same as it always has been: no air pockets; every element spread so evenly that they all turn up in the same mouthful. Divine.

I especially love how thin and soft the tortilla is, how biting into it scratches the same itch as nipping off a hangnail. I share this thought with Tim. “I’m not sure that’s going to draw readers in,” he says.

“I’m more worried that my sentimentali-

LOCAL ARTS, MUSIC, FOOD, ETC.

in your inbox every Friday The Cosmic Cantina stairs PHOTO BY LENA GELLER

ty is going to undermine my ravings about the food,” I say.

Some of my Durham transplant friends don’t think Cosmic is all that great, I tell Tim, which makes me worry that our conviction that it’s the best is warped by life context. It’s like The Odyssey, I tell him— Christopher Nolan’s adaptation, specifically, which I just saw—where, the way the story is told, you might suspect Odysseus of unreliability: Maybe the monsters aren’t real and Odysseus just embellished the whole voyage, dressing up how he lost all his men into something with sea gods and sirens.

“That’s an intensely American interpretation,” Tim says.

“Sure,” I say, looking pointedly at my burrito.

Tim digs a chip into the rice at the open end of his.

“Well, I don’t think anyone can deny the objectivity of Cosmic’s value,” he says.

“True. And the column is ultimately about value,” I say, feeling intensely American.

Tim keeps talking, fully on his soapbox now.

“Cosmic’s ‘giant’ burrito is $13, and it’s the size of my forearm,” he says. “If you get a burrito at Chipotle, it’s the same price and half the size. And it’s bad. None of the flavors combine into one cohesive thing.”

Tim has long enjoyed disdainfully comparing Cosmic to every other burrito he’s ever eaten, up to and including the burrito at Cosmic’s one other location, in Chapel Hill. (“One time I went there and my burrito was grilled,” he told me earlier, curling his lip.)

At our high school, the student newspaper ran a recurring segment called Faceoff, where two writers argued oppo-

site sides of some debate. Tim wrote the Cosmic side of the Faceoff that pitted Cosmic against Chubby’s Tacos, another local Mexican spot. He brings this up right as I’m about to, recalling it as a victory story.

“What do you mean your column ‘beat out’ Chubby’s?” I ask. “It’s not like readers voted on a winner.”

“It’s one of those things where it’s like, someone had to write the other side, but come on,” he says. “Like in public speaking with Mr. Smith, my team had to argue in favor of nuclear weapons.”

In one sense, Cosmic has indeed objectively beat out Chubby’s, which no longer has a Ninth Street location, just spots in Raleigh and South Durham. Ox & Rabbit is gone, too. Harris Teeter doesn’t have the free cookies anymore.

I pick up my mostly empty ramekin of salsa and drink the dregs like a shot, overwhelmed by the passage of time. The stairs leading up to Cosmic used to be painted with an excerpt of a T.S. Eliot poem that’s since been covered over; the messages we etched into the picnic tables as teens have also since been sanded away.

There are still old messages scrawled in Sharpie on the brick walls of the patio, though, and I scan them to see if any of our handiwork has survived. I don’t find anything, but I do see, in one person’s handwriting, “AI isn’t art!”—and underneath, in someone else’s, “It could be tho.”

“Do you think Cosmic could change to a point where it wouldn’t feel as special?”

I ask Tim. “Only to the extent where that’s true for anything,” he says.

“What if they changed the burritos?”

“I mean, yeah,” Tim says. “But that’s like saying ‘What if the sun doesn’t rise tomorrow?’”

the Triangle’s Arts & Culture Newsletter

TO SUBSCRIBE, VISIT indyweek.com/newsletter-signup August 12, 2026 INDYweek.com 21

C U LT U R E C A L E N D A R WED 8/12

THU 8/13

MUSIC

MUSIC

The Sleights with Drat The Luck and The Whorly Birds 8 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.

Allisonwwwonderland presents: THE NEW FLESH, a Goth/Industrial Dance Night 10 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.

SCREEN CatVideoFest 2026 Aug. 7-26, various times. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

The Sound of Music SingAlong 7 p.m. The Rialto, Raleigh.

PAGE Mimi Montgomery: Murder Bites 6:30 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.

LIKE TO PLAN AHEAD?

Jesse Fox, Roxanne Fortney, Sam Thorn 8 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.

Margot Sinclair, Five Door Sedan 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Super Empty and The Genius Party present: Summer Nights, Vol. 2 7:30 p.m. Shadowbox Studio, Durham. we are the dirt, le Lotus, Ajena 7:30 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

SAT 8/15

STAGE Caitlin Peluffo Aug. 13-16, various times.

Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh.

Chris Monds 8 p.m. Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh.

COMMITTED: The Musical Aug. 13-30, various times, The Fruit, Durham.

The Revolutionists Aug. 13-15, 7:30 p.m. Theatre in the Park, Raleigh.

SCREEN Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World Aug. 13-14, 7 p.m. The Rialto, Raleigh.

OUTSOUTH Queer Film Festival Aug. 13-16, various times.

The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

FRI 8/14 MUSIC Jack Trathen Group 7 p.m. Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.

The Jazz Room: A Journey to the Heart of New Orleans 6 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.

John Shain & FJ Ventre 7 p.m. Succotash, Durham.

Lee Johnson, Jodi Jones 6:30 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

Los Tucanes de Tijuana 8 p.m. Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

PJ Morton: The Saturday Night Sunday Morning Tour 8 p.m. Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

Shoaldiggers Album Release Show with Hustle Souls 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

There’s Something About Oakwood, a selection for OUTSOUTH Queer Film Festival, screens at The Carolina Theatre on August 15 and 17.

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE CAROLINA THEATRE

22 INDYweek.com August 12, 2026

MUSIC Shoot To Thrill: All Female Tribute to AC/DC 7 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.

Tenderqueer Single Release Party with Marble Berry Seeds, Chicken Ranch Road Show 8 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.

STAGE Beyond: 10th Anniversary Gala presented by Boys Ballet Summer Intensive 7 p.m. Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

The ComedyWorx Show Fridays at 8 p.m.

ComedyWorx, Raleigh.

The Harry Show Fridays at 10 p.m.

ComedyWorx, Raleigh.

Hush Hush Improv 9 p.m. Mettlesome Theater, Durham.

KING SHIT Tournament Round 2: MeAdMi vs. Newt Work 7 p.m. Mettlesome Theater, Durham.

Nicole Byer: Working Out New Material Aug. 14-16, various times.

Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh.

Barbies vs. Bratz: Y2K Party 10 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

Bop To The Top (18+) 7 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.

Jennifer Curtis, Gabriel Pelli 3 p.m. The ArtsCenter, Carrboro.

John Violinist Live!

8 p.m. Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

Kate McGarry and Keith Ganz 7 p.m. Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.

Mariachazo 8 p.m. Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

Saturdays in Saxapahaw: All Y’all Country All Stars 6 p.m. Haw River Ballroom, Saxapahaw.

Simple Plan: Bigger Than You Think Tour 6:30 p.m. Red Hat Amphitheater, Raleigh.

Sweet Dream, Banff 9 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

Toxic (A Tribute to 2000’s Hard Rock/Metal) and Forever This Way (Tribute to Emo & Pop Punk) 7:30 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.

C U LT U R E C A L E N D A R

FIND OUR COMPLETE COMMUNITY CALENDAR AT INDYWEEK.COM/CALENDAR

TUE 8/18

WED 8/19

THU 8/20

FRI 8/21

STAGE

STAGE

MUSIC

MUSIC

MUSIC

MUSIC

The ComedyWorx Show Matinee Saturdays at 4 p.m.

ComedyWorx, Raleigh.

GIANT ROBOT FIGHT CLUB 7 p.m. Mettlesome Theater, Durham.

Camacho with Late Night Lowlights and Boost 8 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.

August Showdown ft.

Noahh 8 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

Anthony Green: This Tour Won’t Save You 7:30 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.

SCREEN

SCREEN

Connor Lee Quartet featuring Zeb Jewell-Alibhai: A Tribute to Miles & Trane 7 p.m. Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.

Time Traveler: A Film & Conversation with Ronald Mallett 2 p.m. The Cary Theater, Cary.

Film Night @ The ArtsCenter 7 p.m. The ArtsCenter, Carrboro.

Open Screening 7 p.m. Shadowbox Studio, Durham.

PAGE How a Game Lives: Author Talk with Jacob Geller 1 p.m. NCMA, Raleigh.

MUSIC Art of Cool Presents The Frequency Series Featuring Jonathan Butler & Najee with Aaron McCoy 6:30 p.m. Koka Booth Amphitheatre, Cary.

Jack Wilkins/Scott Sawyer Quartet with Grant Osborne and Kobie Watkins 3 p.m. Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.

Kill Bill: The Rapper with Ashtin Larold 8 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.

Masego: Fix Your Face Tour 7 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.

MON 8/17 SUN 8/16

Ella Mai: Do You Still Love Me? Tour 7:30 p.m. Red Hat Amphitheater, Raleigh.

MUSIC Hill View #73, Little Chair, RIBS 7 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

Luke Borchelt 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

PAGE Alissa DeRogatis—How to Find Love in the Cereal Aisle 6:30 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.

Timothy Tyson and Mary D. Williams—Mahalia Jackson, Moving On Up a Little Higher: The Story of an American Civil Rights Pioneer 5:30 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.

Sonidero Cuir: Communal Dancing feat. Salsa / Bachata / Cumbia y mas 7:30 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

STAGE 2026 North Carolina’s Funniest: Semifinal Round Aug. 19-26, various times.

Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh.

Bill Moore and his Secret Admirers, The Carolina Junebugs 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

BEYONSLAY 10:30 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

Durham Central Jazz Workestra 7 p.m. Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.

FattMack 8 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.

Flowerbomb with Ins Kino and Dreamscent 8 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.

Gregg Allman: The Music of My Soul 8 p.m. The Rialto, Raleigh.

THE MONTI StorySLAM : LAW & ORDER 7:30 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.

Happy Landing 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

STAGE

Guardians of the Jukebox (The Greatest 80s Show on Earth) 8 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.

PAGE

Jonnie W 7:30 p.m. Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh.

Jordan Davis 8 p.m. Red Hat Amphitheater, Raleigh.

Catherine Newman: Wreck 6:30 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.

Virginia Eubanks—A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving: Lessons on Love, Care, and Survival 5:30 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.

Songs From The Road Band, Big Fat Gap 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Three Dog Night 8 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

Owen & The Smokes with Dune Blue and Cellar Dwellers 8 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.

Sunday Set with DJ Jarvis 10 p.m. The Durham Hotel, Durham.

August 12, 2026 INDYweek.com 23

C U LT U R E C A L E N D A R SAT 8/22

SUN 8/23

STAGE

MUSIC

The ComedyWorx Show Fridays at 8 p.m.

ComedyWorx, Raleigh.

Adulting: The Diva Edition with Breyona Beats and Gemynii 7 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.

Grief Sucks: A One Man Show By KevOnStage 5 and 8 p.m. Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

El Tri 7 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.

Kristin Key Aug. 22-23, various times.

Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh.

The Harry Show Fridays at 10 p.m.

ComedyWorx, Raleigh.

Hasan Hates Ronny | Ronny Hates Hasan 7 p.m. DPAC, Durham.

Carsen White aka Nurse Stankk Aug. 21-23, various times.

Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh.

SCREEN

GUTTING, Final Knife, F.T.J., Held, Fear Family 6:30 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

Kai Lance Group 7 p.m. Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.

The Mountain Goats 8 p.m. DPAC, Durham.

NCMA Movies at Moore Square—Wicked: For Good 6 p.m. Moore Square, Raleigh.

Pitbull Rave 10 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show 11:55 p.m. The Rialto, Raleigh.

Rhonda Robichaux & Meaux - N’Awlins-infused Blues, Funk, Soul 7 p.m. Succotash, Durham.

LIKE TO PLAN AHEAD?

A Night of Poe 2 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.

A Wild Goose Chase: Puppets and Poetry!

11 a.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

MUSIC

STAGE

SCREEN

Carrboro Indie Night 7 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

GIANT ROBOT FIGHT CLUB 7 p.m. Mettlesome Theater, Durham.

Found Footage Fest: Porcelain VHS Treasures 8 p.m. The Rialto, Raleigh.

Fourth Ward Gospel Extravaganza 4 p.m. Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

Kai & Clyde with Sharm and HVAC Tech 8 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.

Max Allard/Craig Butterfield Duo 3 p.m. Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.

TUE 8/25 MUSIC North Carolina Jazz Repertory Orchestra 7:30 p.m. Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.

PAGE Daniel Schwartz—Clipped Wings: The Story of Horace Williams Airport 5:30 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.

Emily W. King—The Neurodivergent Learner 6:30 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.

SQUEEZE: TRIED, TESTED AND TRIXIES 6 p.m. Koka Booth Amphitheatre, Cary.

Saturdays in Saxapahaw: Road to Cattywompus 6 p.m. Haw River Ballroom, Saxapahaw.

Spice! Dance Party with Lexonloud & Gemynii 10 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.

STAGE The ComedyWorx Show Matinee Saturdays at 4 p.m.

ComedyWorx, Raleigh.

24 INDYweek.com August 12, 2026

Kai & Clyde perform on Sunday, August 23 at Local 506

Margot Sinclair performs at Cat’s Cradle Back Room on August 13

PHOTO COURTESY OF LOCAL 506

PHOTO COURTESY OF CAT’S CRADLE BACK ROOM

PUZZLES CROSSWORD

RELEASE DATE—Sunday, August 9, 2026

Los Angeles Times Sunday Crossword Puzzle

To download a pdf of this puzzle or view its solution, visit indyweek.com/puzzles-page

Edited by Patti Varol

81 Liberty Mutual’s 124 Go out for a bus. while?

82 Hybrid synth 125 Beguile instrument 126 Jaunty neckwear 84 R-rated NASA ACROSS event?

DOWN 1 Some latte 89 Pedal pushers 1 Broad valley orders 90 __ roll 2 “Ethan Frome” 7 Enemy of 92 “What fun!” novelist Wharton ancient Athens 93 Oak trees?

3 Browser storage 13 Alpaca kin 99 Golfer McIlroy 4 In the past 18 “Play slowly,” in 100 Broadcast again 5 Many Christmas music 101 Hurdle for an trees 19 Peanut butter aspiring JD 6 Fancy affair and jelly 7 NNW reversal 21 Keeps occupied 102 Halloween mo.

105 Off-rd. wheels 8 “Play very, very 22 Public square softly,” in music that gets really 106 “Stranger Things” actor 9 Met highlight sticky in the Wolfhard 10 Assessment heat?

11 Lipton division 24 Would rather not 107 Hoppy fave 110 Wireless std.

12 Curved cutting 25 Biblical suffix 112 “Midsommar” tool 26 Sp. address director Aster 13 “Nothing you 27 Quite the 114 Minor flaw say is true!” commotion 116 Glass ceiling14 Tennis do-over 28 Ski lift breaking event? 15 Affectionate 30 Actor Kilmer sign-off 31 Chuckle syllable 121 Musical weakness 16 Change 33 Founded, as a 122 Invertebrate genetically co. found in every 17 Like molecules 36 “Don’t play,” in ocean that cannot music 123 Hackers’ shout form permanent 38 Phi __ Kappa of success bonds 39 One who can only rasp quietly?

44 Title for Judi Dench 46 Fox or ox 47 __ monster 48 Spot in a store with toys, water bowls, and leashes?

51 Castlebreaching explosive 53 Sandbox visitor 54 Rapper Dr. __ 55 Matar paneer vegetables 57 Cause friction 60 Cookie whose website has recipes for cheesecake and empanadas 62 Derby-sporting Addams 64 Ancient hulled wheat 66 Old Jutland resident 67 “Fiddlesticks” 68 Warning before a particularly scary monster flick?

71 Lysol target 72 Chemist Mendeleev who created the periodic table 74 Castle trenches 75 Hit the slopes 76 Blackthorn berry 77 Beyoncé’s “I Am... __ Fierce” 78 In the mail 79 Blunder

“A+ IN FILM STUDIES” BY JOE DEENEY

8/9/26

CLASSY@INDYWEEK.COM INDY CLASSIFIEDS

20 Nickname for Louis Armstrong 21 “There isn’t anything else!?”

23 Lettuce or cabbage 29 Neutral shades 32 Web design code 34 Warty amphibian 35 Paul of “The Batman” 37 Piercing tool 38 Tight squeezes 40 Listen to 41 Fix badly?

42 Texting tech 43 Put a name to 44 Natural history museum display 45 “M*A*S*H” star?

48 Not on the same page 49 Savanna antelope 50 Glam gala 51 Trails 52 Intro to many a newsreel 55 Calligraphy tools

56 Some city trains 91 From Cairo or 58 As a departure Cape Town from the norm 93 Makes with skill 59 Snare 94 Medium for 61 Without any deep-frying planning 95 California city 63 More familynear Santa Ana friendly 96 Grams 64 Walks or runs 97 Young 65 Where some hippopotamus get tired 98 Capital west of quickly?

Montreal 66 Movement while 103 Brief asking “How do appearance I look?”

104 Hair texture, 69 Junior e.g.

70 Rubber106 Dust jacket part stamped 108 Ramona, per 73 Like a daisy Beezus 78 Shiny fabric 109 Voting against 80 Sultry growl 111 Short-horned 83 Boston bighorns University 113 Some athlete Tripadvisor rec84 Trivial objection ommendations 85 Product of 115 Buzzer? incomplete 117 “Told you!” combustion 118 Washington’s 86 Ship stabilizer Sea-__ Airport 87 Noted times 119 Minecraft 88 “Um, think material again” 120 Battle of Helm’s 90 Showy carp Deep combatant

©2026 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

ANSWER TO TODAY’S PUZZLE

August 12, 2026 INDYweek.com 25

CL ASSIFIED EMPLOYMENT Director of Product Innovation Director of Product Innovation at SMRT Systems, Inc., 1017 Main Campus Dr., Ste 1600, Raleigh, NC 27606. Lead initiatives to streamline software development operations and data processing pipeline. Requires a Master’s Degree in Engineering Management, Industrial Engineering, or Management Information Systems; and 2 years experience in AI Model Development and Deployment. Experience must include: Talent acquisition and development with a key role in mentoring software developers and project managers in the Generative Artificial

Graphic Designer Graphic Designer (Apex, NC): Dsgn product imagery, banners, & mktg materials for co’s websites, online store, social media. Dvlp print & digital materials for business showcases & online advtg. Align brand efforts & coord w/ mktg team. Reqd: Bach’s in Graphic Dsgn or Art Dsgn, 12-month exp in dsgn visual content & social media promotion. Proficient in Adobe Photoshop, CorelDRAW, Flash. Salary: $42765/ yr. Mail resume to iPearl INC, 2025 Production Dr., Apex, NC 27539.

Intelligence-Computer Vision (“AI-CV”) domain;

www.regulatorbookshop.com

720 Ninth Street, Durham, NC 27705 10-6 Daily

leading sprint planning, backlog grooming, and iterative product development; building industryspecific deep learning models to deploy AI systems at scale; and leading migration from on-premise to edge deployment. Requires international travel up to 25% per year. Send resumes to Moli Shah, moli.s@smrtsystems.com.

SUDOKU

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.

Software Engineer II Software Engineer II, F/T at Truist Bank (Raleigh,

IT Professionals Ent. Lvl to Sr Lvl. SW Engnrs, SW Devs. & SW Apps Engnrs are needed for our Durham, NC office. Must be willing to travel to client or co. locations at unanticipated sites w/in the United States for short-term or long-term assignments to support system setup & rltd activities. Pls send resume, Cvr Ltr., & Sal. Req. to PROSQUIRE LLC at 5102 Durham Chapel Hill Blvd, Ste. 214, Durham, NC, 27707.

NC) Customize coding, s/ware integration, perform analysis, & configure solutions, using tools that are pertinent/reqd for the area to which the person is assigned. Work independently on most phases of applications systems analysis & prgmg activities.

Responsible for dvlpmt & dvlpg robust unit testing & supporting integration & functional testing for

IT Professionals Ent. Lvl to Sen. Lvl UX Designers are needed for our Durham, NC office. May req. traveling.

Pls send resume, Cvr Ltr., & Sal. Req. to Accrue Select Inc., 4819 Emperor Blvd, Ste. 400, Durham, NC, 27703.

technically complex solutions. Must have Bach’s deg in Comp Sci, Comp Engg, or rltd tech’l field.

Must have 4 yrs of exp in s/ware engg positions or IT consulting positions performing/utilizing the following: applying in-depth knowl in info systems & ability to identify, apply, & implmt IT best practices; understanding of key business processes

Driver Seek driver /transport from Durham-Chapel Hill-Raleigh area to Boston to deliver 2 pieces of baby furniture that fits in any car/van by mid-September. Contact jeanobar@duke.edu for details and costs.

& competitive strategies related to the IT function; planning & managing projects & solving complex problems by applying best practices; providing direction & mentoring less exp’d teammates; & utilizing exp w/: Java, JavaScript, Python, Jenkins, GitLab, Selenium, Appium, SQL, MySQL, Oracle, Postman, & SOAP UI. Apply online (https://careers.truist.com/) or email resume to recruitment@truist.com (Ref Job# R0117451).

Structural Engineer

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!

Assitant Project Manager Development & Construction Insight, LLC in Cary, NC seeks an Assistant Project Manager responsible for the day-to-day mgmt of multi-building commercial facilities, office & healthcare developments, & tenant fit-up projects. Remote work; Travel 15% to various job sites & client offices in NC & surrounding states. Reqs: BS+3yrs or MS+1yr exp.; To apply, visit: https://dcinsightllc.com/careers/

Structural Engineer Career Level at Jacobs Engineering Group, Inc, Cary, NC: engineering drawings for structures. Hybrid schedule. 10% domestic travel.

Salary: $120,640 - $141,500/yr. Apply at https:/ careers.jacobs.com/. Req 42311.

26 INDYweek.com August 12, 2026

INDY CLASSIFIEDS CLASSY@INDYWEEK.COM

CL ASSIFIED EMPLOYMENT

Quantitative Analytics and Model Development Analyst Senior

Sr. Business System Analyst First Citizens Bank seeks Sr Biz Syst Anlst in Raleigh, NC lead analytic efforts, deliver strategic insight, & act as tech pro for biz systms w/in Bank. Reqs: BS in CIS, CS, or rel + 6yrs or MS in CIS, CS or rel +3yrs. Remote role.

Base pay gen b/w $156,000 to $195,565/yr.

For more info & to apply, go to

The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. seeks a

https://jobs.firstcitizens.com/jobs & ref Job #2026-34911

statistical models for retail and lending product

Quantitative Analytics and Model Development Analyst Senior within PNC’s Anti-Money Laundering Analytics & Modeling team in Raleigh, NC. Specific duties include: (1) work collaboratively with team members across the organization to perform data analyses, data mining, experimental design, and optimization to improve and develop coverage; (2) identify opportunities to improve

Sr. Fin. Business Partner SAS Institute Inc. seeks a Sr Fin. Bus. Partner in Cary, NC to provide fin. plan, reporting, analysis & strategic dec. spprt to drive biz G&P. Reqs: BS in Acct., Fin. or rel + 8yrs. Remote role per SAS’ Flexible Work Program. For full reqs & to apply visit sas.com/careers & reference Job #2026-42328.

strategies and processes through adept data-based analyses; (3) design and implement initiatives utilizing segmentation strategies based on customer behavior and transactional profile analysis; (4) provide analytics for transaction monitoring decisioning and optimization to mitigate losses; (5) deliver presentations with empirically tested recommendations and insights to business partners and management team; (6) design, evaluate and

Lead SW Engineer First Citizens Bank seeks Lead SW Eng in Raleigh, NC to be responsible for all phases of data processing system projects. Reqs: BS in InfoSys, IT, CS, or rel + 8yrs. Remote role in NJ or NC 24/7 on-call rotation bi-weekly. Base pay gen b/w $183,013 to $225,522/yr. For more info & to apply, go to

validate statistical models to identify different types

https://jobs.firstcitizens.com/jobs & ref Job #2026-34896

Statistics, Mathematics or Finance plus 1 year of

of customer behaviors; (7) handle, manipulate and analyze large datasets involving billions of customer transaction records using Big Data tools; (8) assist in model documentation; and (9) establish and maintain performance tracking to ensure that strategies are performing as expected. Master’s degree in Economics, Applied Economics, Engineering,

LAST PRINT ISSUE’S CROSSWORD SOLUTION

experience in advanced quantitative analyses, model

Sr. Business System Analyst First Citizens Bank seeks a Sr Bus. Sys. Anlyst in Raleigh, NC. Lead analytic efforts for business systems w/in the Bank. Reqs: BS in Fin., BA or rel + 6yrs or MS in Fin., BA or rel + 4yrs. Remote role hired in NC. Base pay gen b/w $160,020 to $193,983 /yr. For more info & to apply, go to

development and monitoring for large organizations

https://jobs.firstcitizens.com/jobs & ref Job # 2026-34887

query tools including SQL, Python, Hadoop and

(>10,000 employees) in or for the financial services industry is required. Must have experience with: (1) managing, processing and analyzing large-scale datasets (multiple gigabytes of data); (2) using statistical analysis techniques including logistic regression, time series analysis, machine learning algorithms, and hypothesis testing; (3) utilizing data Spark to manipulate, analyze and interpret data; (4)

Sr. Substation Protection Engineer Siemens Industry, Inc. seeks a Sr. Substation Protection Engineer in Wendell, NC. Design, impl & maintain protective relay sys & associated equip for power sys. Requires Bachelor in Elec Eng, Electron Eng, Comp Sci Eng or rel fld & 4 yrs rel exp. 75% dom travel required. Hybrid work permitted. To apply, visit

executing complex queries to clean and extract usable

https://jobs.siemens.com/en_US/externaljobs/

a.m.-5:00 p.m. Interested individuals apply online at

JobDetail/512218

www.pnc.com using keyword R229271. PNC provides

information from large data sets of numerical and textual data; (5) designing rich data visualizations to communicate complex ideas to customers or company leaders; and (6) programmatically extracting data from a database and an API and transforming the data into presentable form including either a ROC curve, map, or Tableau visualization. 40 hours/week, 8:00

equal employment opportunity to qualified persons regardless of race, color, sex, religion, national origin, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, veteran status, or other categories protected by law.

CLASSY@INDYWEEK.COM INDY CLASSIFIEDS

August 12, 2026 INDYweek.com 27

INDY’S BEST OF THE TRIANGLE IS HAPPENING NOW! Winning INDY's "Best of the Triangle" Readers’ Poll has been a coveted honor for the past 25 years.

The contest is organized in rounds throughout the year by region: Orange & Chatham Counties, Durham County, then Wake County. At the end of the year, the winners of each region go head-to-head to claim the title of “Best of the Best of the Triangle”.

Best of Wake County voting closes August 26 ARTS

BUSINESSES

FOOD & DRINKS

HEALTH

PEOPLE & MISC.

Find this year's winners for Best of Durham, Best of Orange & Chatham Counties, plus winners archives, and so much more at:

INDYWEEK.COM/INDY-BEST-OF-THE-TRIANGLE

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