Queen City Nerve - September 21, 2022

PUBLISHER JUSTIN LAFRANCOIS jlafrancois@qcnerve.com

DIGITAL EDITOR KARIE SIMMONS ksimmons@qcnerve.com

AD SALES EXECUTIVE

RENN WILSON rwilson@qcnerve.com

EDITOR IN CHIEF RYAN PITKIN rpitkin@qcnerve.com

STAFF WRITER PAT MORAN pmoran@qcnerve.com

TABLE OF CONTENTS

NEWS & OPINION

5 Gems in the Rough by Ryan Pitkin (7/31/19)

Carolinas’ first recovery school pulls kids from path of addiction

7 UPDATE: Growth and Excellence by Ryan Pitkin

Emerald School continues to expand its services in east Charlotte

8 UPDATE: Hitting Milestones by Karie Simmons

Isabella Santos Foundation marks 15 years

9 UPDATE: Representation Matters by Ryan Pitkin

Carolina Migrant Network to merge with Comunidad Colectiva, expand services

ARTS & CULTURE

10 A Kindred Spirit by Pat Moran (2/26/20)

Georgie Nakima connects people, places and plants

13 UPDATE: In the Public Eye by Pat Moran

Celebrated muralist Georgie Nakima expands her palette

14 UPDATE: A Laughing Stock by Dezanii Lewis

Brian O’Neil returns to the stage

16 Lifeline: Ten Cool Things To Do in Two Weeks

MUSIC

18 Pulling no Punches by Ryan Pitkin (5/23/19)

ReeCee Raps builds budding career, stomps out domestic violence

20 UPDATE: ReeCee Does It by Ryan Pitkin

ReeCee Raps shifts her focus and her sound but not her work ethic

21 UPDATE: On the Grindhaus by Pat Moran

Charlotte producer Jason Jet takes artists under his wing

22 Soundwave

FOOD & DRINK

24 Watch It Grow by Ryan Pitkin (4/10/19)

Bernard Singleton continues cultivating Bennu Gardens with new moringa project

26 UPDATE: Here to Stay by Ryan Pitkin

Bernard Singleton expands mission to support Black farmers at Nebedaye Farms

28 Viva Lang Van by Pat Moran (7/1/20)

East Charlotte staple sees community step up in time of struggle

30 UPDATE: Still Standing by Rayne Antrim

Lang Van back on stable ground after pandemic struggles

LIFESTYLE

34 Puzzles

36 Aerin It Out by Aerin Spruill

37 Horoscope

38 Savage Love

Thanks to our contributors: Emily Stepp, Grant Baldwin, Aerin Spruill, Rayne Antrim, Dezanii Lewis, Jonathan Cooper, Nicole Driscoll, Mark Bellis, Andre Ampear, Jim Greenhill, and Dan Savage.

STILL HERE

It’s a matter of passion

In an Editor’s Note that we published in our second paper ever on Dec. 19, 2018, I wrote about the experience of putting out our first one two weeks previously.

“I’ve never experienced a day quite like Dec. 5, which was our first print day two weeks ago. It seemed like everything that could have gone wrong did. New computers bought just weeks previously began to crash under the strain of everything that’s needed to put a paper out. Indentations mysteriously

disappeared from each page, leaving square blocks of text. Entire rounds of copy edits apparently never got saved, leading to as cringeworthy a paper as I’ve ever been involved with in terms of typos and the like.

“Despite all that, we got a paper out that I was proud of — albeit six hours past our print deadline,” I wrote.

I titled that Editor’s Note “What a Difference a Year Makes,” and now as we approach four years

since that time, I’m blown away by how quickly the 100th issue is upon us. What the hell just happened?

All that stress that came with Dec. 5, 2018 is still a photographic memory to me, as if it happened just a week or two ago, and all the production and print days that have come since — including the one that I’m in the middle of as I type this — all sort of meld into one.

That’s why I’m grateful for the process I’ve just been through with my team in putting together this 100th Issue, the largest non-Best in the Nest issue we’ve put out yet.

To put this together, we’ve gone through our entire cache of articles and revisited the subjects of some of our favorite stories — favorites because they were the most impactful, favorites because they were the most important, or favorites because they were just some cool damn people doing cool damn things.

I was thankful for the chance to reconnect with Bernard Singleton, about whom I’ve now

written three articles. Visiting his Nebedaye Farms site today, it’s a wonder to think of my visit to the humble site where he launched Bennu Gardens in the parking lot of the abandoned Savona Mill in 2019. Or to remember that, before then, after he lost his son and moved to Charlotte, he and his daughter were relegated to living in a storage unit on North Davidson Street.

Even as Singleton moved onto the 11-acre Nebedaye Farms site, owned by the Carolina Farm Trust, in 2019, his struggles weren’t over. He was the victim of racism from backwards neighbors, one of whom was even arrested on charges of ethnic intimidation.

And still Singleton pushed on, in some ways motivated by the hate to keep going, but mostly driven by the knowledge that what he’s doing is important.

And that’s what Singleton shares in common with the subjects of all of the stories included in our 100th Issue: the determination to keep things moving, fueled by passion and the belief that what they’re doing matters.

I recently had the privilege to speak to an Entrepreneurial Journalism class at Queens University, led by Charlotte Ledger’s Cristina Bolling, and during my visit one of the students asked me a matter-of-fact question after hearing me talk about the financial struggles of co-owning a media company.

Despite our growth as a company, my business partner Justin and I don’t pay ourselves salaries just yet, and both of us keep part-time jobs on the side to help supplement our income, which can be incredibly tiring and not exactly how I pictured life at 36 years old. Yet we stay true to our mission, which means putting the money we are making back into the business so as to continue the growth we’ve seen in our first four years.

“So why are you still doing it?” the student asked, incredulously.

We’re still doing this because we think the stories we’re telling are important, and that local, independently owned media is important. There aren’t many of those outlets left in this city, after all.

Alt weeklies have closed around the country and many in the media landscape have written them off as unsustainable, but we have found that not to be true, it just takes innovation, dedication and patience.

And so, as Bernard Singleton told me during my recent trip out to his farm, “We ain’t going anywhere.”

GEMS IN THE ROUGH

Carolinas’ first recovery school pulls kids from path of addiction

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED JULY 31, 2019

“Every now and then a city will have this experience — it all sort of feels like an epidemic or a tidal wave come through your city — that can get the city’s attention,” Sasha McLean says in the 2016 documentary Generation Found. “Unfortunately that normally looks like a lot of young people dying, and all of the sudden the community kind of wakes up. Instead of ignoring the problem, we really start looking at it, and it’s painful to see.”

McLean is explaining the experience she and city leaders in Houston went through that led to her cofounding Archway Academy, one of eight recovery schools in Texas that serve students struggling with substance use disorder.

In the Carolinas, it appears the community is still sleeping. Despite the fact that overdose numbers among youth continue to rise in both states — there were 759 reported drug overdoses among people younger than 25 years old between May 1, 2017, and April 30, 2018 in Mecklenburg County alone — neither North nor South Carolina is home to a recovery school.

At a ribbon cutting for the new Emerald School of Excellence in east Charlotte on August 17, Mary Ferreri will change that.

A former health and fitness teacher and coach in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, Ferreri became burnt out by what she saw every day among students. At Butler High School, she led the school’s D.R.E.A.M. Team, a group of student athletes that commit to being drug-, alcohol-, tobacco- and violence-free, and while that experience inspired her, she couldn’t turn away from the rampant drug use that other students boasted about.

“I just really started to see how big the problem was, how things were getting covered up, and

nobody was talking about it,” Ferreri said. “I was sending kids to the nurse that I knew [were high], because I pride myself on knowing my kids, and I’m like, ‘I’m sorry, you’re just not right today. What’s going on?’ And then they’d joke with me months later because they didn’t get caught but they told

me they were on so many pills.”

In 2016, Ferreri had been meeting regularly with a small group of concerned parents and teachers to discuss the substance abuse issues they knew to be plaguing their schools. They eventually began to get disgruntled with the lack of action.

“We had many conversations there, getting to know some parents that had lost their kids, and we were kind of frustrated,” Ferreri recalled. “We were invited constantly to all these conference roundtable discussions of coalition meetings about what should we do and whatever. We were just like, ‘We’ve been talking about the same things for months. Nobody’s doing anything. So what can we do?’”

That’s when a trailer for Generation Found came across one of Ferreri’s social media feeds. The trailer was so powerful that she set up a screening at a local theater without having seen the film in its entirety.

She cried through the whole film. She knew before she walked out of the theater what her new mission would be: open a recovery school in Charlotte.

A silent epidemic

According to the National Center on Addiction

and Substance Abuse, nine out of 10 adults struggling with substance abuse started using before the age of 18.

Some in the recovery community have complained for decades about the lack of intensive treatment services for youth in the Charlotte area, and although those options have increased in recent years, attention is now shifting to what options those young people have when they leave treatment.

According to a study by the Peabody Journal of Education, nearly 70% of students who attend recovery and then return to their school relapse in less than six months.

When Betsy Ragone learned that her son Michael was smoking marijuana at age 13, she checked him into the now-closed Amethyst substance abuse treatment center. Ragone said many of her friends and fellow parents told her she was overreacting.

“It scared me, and I put him in an outpatient rehab treatment and people laughed at me,” she said. “They said, ‘Well, it’s just pot,’ and I said, ‘No, he’s 13 years old.’”

After leaving Amethyst, Michael went back to the same school he attended and the same friends

he had always hung out with. On the outside, he was a normal kid, active on the wrestling and football teams. But he and his friends were regularly abusing pain pills like Vicodin and Xanax.

Once he graduated high school, Michael quickly moved out from under Betsy’s roof and things worsened. Though he admitted his Xanax use to her, she didn’t know that he had become addicted to heroin following a knee surgery around the age of 19.

He secretly struggled with his heroin addiction for more than a decade before admitting it to his mother in late 2015. She was blindsided. Three months later, in January 2016, he died of a heroin overdose.

In June 2016, Betsy launched Michael’s Voice, an advocacy and support organization for families who have lost loved ones to addiction.

She has also served on boards for the Emerald School, helping Ferreri with documents and filings.

While Betsy admits that there are no guarantees with substance use disorder, she knows that if Michael had options like Emerald School when he left Amethyst, there is a better chance that he could still be alive today.

“The statistics around kids going back to the same people, places or things are horrific,” Ragone said. “They go back to the place where they got their drugs or they were trying to be part of a peer group where this is the cool thing. That stuff’s around in our high schools, the districts where we live … and they don’t want to own it, that it’s a big deal. It’s a problem. So parents will have a choice with Mary’s school, and it’s going to save lives, period.”

The first recovery schools opened in the late 1970s and mid ’80s, though the concept didn’t become popular until the 2000s. In 2001, there were only five recovery schools in the United States. Today there are more than 40. Studies put the relapse rate for students who go into recovery schools at around 30% compared to the 70% rate faced by students returning to their original schools.

A solution in Charlotte

Emerald School, like many recovery schools, will serve students between the ages of 13-20. The school will use Edgenuity, a customizable online curriculum for students ranging from 6th through 12th grade. Located in a side building at Memorial United Methodist Church on Central Avenue, the school will open its doors for the first day of the

2019-20 school year on Aug. 26 with a small first class — Ferreri expects between five and 10 students to enroll. She’ll host an open house at the school on Aug. 24 that’s open to the public.

The school serves students with at least 30 days of sobriety and will run on a foundation of three principles: faith, fellowship and fitness. As with many 12-step programs, the “faith” factor is not rooted in any specific religion, but in the belief in something bigger and more powerful than one’s self, Ferreri said.

Fellowship refers to peer-led recovery support, which will be the school’s top priority. The first hour of each school day will be dedicated to recovery support, which consists of students simply getting together and discussing what they’ve been going through, celebrating each other’s victories and helping each other through struggles.

After that, things will function much like a normal school, with a block schedule that covers math, science, arts, social studies, English and the like. As the student population grows, Ferreri plans to separate students between upperclassmen and lowerclassmen, but in the meantime, the online curriculum will allow everyone to learn together at their respective levels.

Covering the fitness aspect of the school’s foundation, the school day will be broken up by workouts and “movement breaks,” during which students will have the freedom to take part in whatever physical activity they are comfortable with. Ferreri was inspired by her experience as a student athlete and years as a health and fitness teacher, but also by a book titled Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, which taught her about the effects of exercise on mental wellness.

The book put into perspective Ferreri’s childhood experience with depression and eating disorders.

As a public school teacher, she had become jaded by the tendency for school systems to cut physical education when funds got low.

“There were a lot of things that just were not making sense, like we don’t need less P.E., we need more P.E.,” she said. “It’s so important for [students] to have some ownership for that component, because otherwise we’re pushing people away from being physically active, but that is a huge component to our mental and overall wellness.”

Emerald is a private school, and though Ferreri plans to pursue grants, the first year will be funded exclusively through private donors and tuition. The annual price to serve one student at a private school is more than double that of a public school

student ($8-10,000 compared to $20-24,000, respectively) and Emerald School students will have a $1,000-a-month tuition during the first year.

Ferreri hopes to lessen that in the years to come by offering scholarships. In an ideal future she will have enough funding to offer full scholarships to all of her students, but her short-term goal is to have income-based tuition, with one-third of her students paying full, one-third paying half and onethird paying low-to-no tuition.

Though Ferreri has faced criticism for making Emerald School a private school, she insists that it was the only way to get the school off the ground successfully while also allowing the school to serve students from across the Carolinas. While recovery schools have been popping up across the country, a quick glance at a map of existing schools shows a disparity in the southeast. Ridgecrest Academy in Nashville, Tennessee, and River Oak Center in Jacksonville, Florida, are the only members of the Association of Recovery Schools in the region.

Ferreri, who grew up in New York, said that in her experience, the stigma around substance abuse is stronger in the South than other parts of the country.

Pushing back

When we met at Emerald School in June, Ferreri was visibly affected by her experience since leaving CMS and diving headfirst into the recovery community. Multiple times she paused, then prefaced a statement by saying, “I hate to say this, but it’s true,” before continuing her fulmination against the apathy she’s seen in response to substance abuse among local youth.

“I think that sometimes, we don’t know what to do,” she said. “I think that the crisis is so much bigger than people want to admit it is and how many people are affected. This is to me a complete dedication of your entire life to this work, and I think people are afraid of doing that, committing their whole life, and that’s what it takes to save somebody and to keep them through constant recovery support services.”

In the local recovery community, Ferreri has found a family willing to fight alongside her. Her passion is exceeded only by people like Donald McDonald, a Raleigh-based recovery activist who serves on Emerald School’s board of directors.

At a recent fundraiser luncheon for the school at Ballantyne Hotel, McDonald gave a passionate speech that lasted more than 30 minutes, flipping from humor to a more serious tone. As he wrapped his speech, he yelled into the microphone in

frustration at those he felt were still holding back the conversation around treatment for substance use disorder.

“I want you to leave here today and not engage in the conversations: ‘Is addiction an illness or a choice?’ Shut up, flat earther! Not today, Satan! No. We’re beyond that conversation!,” he exclaimed. “Smash the stigma surrounding the illness, end the discrimination against our people, our families. Rally around common sense treatments and support services. This is ground zero for an epidemic of compassion and hope.”

Ragone also hopes that Emerald School can be the beginning of a new awakening around substance abuse and young people. When I asked why she thought North Carolina didn’t yet have a recovery school, Ragone said leaders throughout the state have been keeping their “heads in the sand” when it comes to youth substance abuse.

“Two words: stigma and shame,” she answered me, “and [Ferreri is] busting the ceiling. It’s stigma and shame and not wanting to own that this is a major problem that we could put money into on the preventative side, not just try to fix what’s broken after it’s too late and they’re majorly addicted and the course of their life is dismal. [Emerald School] changes that trajectory.”

Ferreri’s fight is an overwhelming one. She latches on to each story of perseverance, because she knows she can’t save everyone. As much as she’s accomplished by simply opening Emerald School, there’s always the feeling that so many others will fall through the cracks. It’s both the highs and the lows that drive Ferreri on her life’s quest to reach as many people as she can, but she needs more help than she’s currently getting.

“I hate to say this, but the way we operate in our society is X amount of people need to die before real change happens,” she said, echoing McLean’s sentiments in Generation Found. “I think that we’re actually at a point now in North Carolina where enough people are pissed off that too many people have died. What makes me so mad is that it takes X amount of people dying first before we provide resources, instead of learning. If you look at other states, they suffered what we’re heading towards, and this is what they’ve done to fix it, so why on Earth wouldn’t we do it sooner?”

You have to start somewhere, though, and for Ferreri, that starting point comes on Aug. 26 when a small group of kids walks through her doors into a school founded on principles of acceptance, patience and hope.

GROWTH AND EXCELLENCE

Emerald School continues to expand its services in east Charlotte

When I first visited the Emerald School of Excellence in summer 2019, founder Mary Ferreri was puttering around the hallways of the building, located on the campus of Memorial United Methodist Church on Central Avenue, doing some last minute cleaning in the lead-up to a ribbon-cutting event she had planned for the following week.

There was a nervous energy in Ferreri, who was preparing to jump into the great unknown with Emerald School, a “recovery school” for teens who are struggling with substance abuse issues. Emerald School would be the first recovery school opened in the Carolinas, and at the time of my visit a month before its opening, Ferrari was expecting between five and 10 kids to enroll. During that first year, she taught two kids as part of Emerald School’s inaugural class. She was the only teacher at the school that year.

Upon my return visit in September 2022, it was clear that Ferreri’s vision was panning out, as the school is now serving nearly 30 students and she has a full staff of teachers to carry out in-person learning as opposed to the online curriculum she began with in 2019.

In the first three years of its existence, Emerald School of Excellence has graduated 11 students who have gone on to community colleges, fouryear universities or working full-time. Ferreri now oversees a staff of 15 people, nine of which are fulltime.

Since the school’s 2019 launch, a wide range of donors have allowed Ferreri to offer scholarships to students who can’t afford to attend the private school. She currently offers financial assistance that covers between 25%-35% of each student’s tuition.

This year, the growth in staff has allowed Ferreri

to step back from her role as a teacher to be out in the community advocating for recovery schools and raising funds.

“My goal as part of getting out in the community … is to continue asking how I can build that scholarship base so that we can continue to say, ‘I’m not turning any families away because of financial strain.’ We know quality care is so expensive.”

Emerald School’s policy states that students must be working on their recovery outside of the school through some sort of 12-step program or the like, though working one-on-one with a counselor is an option as well.

Most recently, the school has expanded whom it accepts as students, focusing not only on substance abuse but also teens who are struggling with mental health, a change inspired by a similar policy transition at Archway Recovery School in Houston, Texas, which has served as a model for Emerald School.

“That was their approach and, while we’re just making sure we address the needs of youth, period, we’re understanding that [mental health and addiction issues] go hand-in-hand, so if I have certain requirements and expectations of someone who’s struggling with substance use, those can absolutely carry over and make tons of sense for someone with mental health struggles.”

Ferreri has cultivated a familial atmosphere among staff and students at the school, which was readily apparent during my visit, the result of which is a strong focus on peer support, which helps when a student is struggling to stay sober or with their mental health.

“This is a special place where, if you’re willing to work the principles of recovery, just as a person, you’ll thrive here,” she said. “But if your ego is in the way, if you’re not willing to have personal growth, this place will almost crumble you. That goes for everybody walking in this door, staff or student.”

The growth that Ferreri is most proud of at Emerald is not measurable by numbers. Her vision of success at Emerald School is a constantly evolving one.

“The growth within myself and my team has come from understanding what success will actually take or look like in a space like this, because it’s so different and it’s shaking up so many things that I believe in my core,” Ferreri told me.

“As much as I preach and want for these kids to understand what I believe to be helpful, it has been equally helpful for me [to evolve] and I think required; if I didn’t have to be very uncomfortable, have to keep learning, have to be open and honest constantly, then I don’t think that we’d be where we are today.”

HITTING MILESTONES

Isabella Santos Foundation marks 15 years

In a personal essay published in Queen City Nerve in 2019, Erin Santos reflected on the seven years that had gone by since her daughter, Isabella, passed away from neuroblastoma, a rare cancer affecting the sympathetic nervous system.

“We can never fully recover from the journey she took us on, the last breath she took in front of me or the lessons she taught us,” Santos wrote. “We are thankful that we were a part of the ride she allowed us to be witness to in the 7 years we had with her and promise to take her with us for the next 7 years to come and beyond. We are going to be okay.”

Her words aimed to remind other families who’ve lost children to pediatric cancer that it’s okay to move forward without forgetting.

As founder of the Isabella Santos Foundation (ISF), Santos has been vocal about the grief cycle she’s experienced and how her nonprofit has evolved not only since Isabella’s diagnosis but since her death as well.

June 2022 marked 10 years since Isabella passed away and October will mark 15 years since ISF was formed.

This summer also marked a new chapter for Erin Santos, who recently wed Blair Primis, known in many circles around Charlotte for his role in supporting local media as the former senior vice president of marketing and talent management at OrthoCarolina. The couple went on their honeymoon in early September.

Since its founding in 2007, ISF has raised $9 million and donated just over $6 million toward its mission of improving treatments for rare pediatric cancer, expanding research and supporting families.

The organization has funded a dozen clinical research trials, supported six national institutions, built a state-of-the-art treatment facility, and brought one of the nation’s top oncologists to Charlotte to head the Isabella Santos Foundation Rare & Solid Tumor Program at Atrium Health Levine Children’s Hospital.

And to think, as Erin Santos likes to say, it all started with a girl.

Isabella’s life began without any cause for concern — her first two years were filled with

memories and milestones just like every other child — but by the age of 2, she began to complain of frequent back and stomach pain.

After months of misdiagnoses, an MRI revealed a tumor in her abdomen and that the disease had spread to her bone marrow. She was diagnosed with stage 4 neuroblastoma and immediately began chemotherapy.

Isabella spent the next five years fighting, undergoing five relapses, each time her chances of survival reducing drastically. On June 28, 2012, she succumbed to the cancer at 7 years old.

The Isabella Santos Foundation was founded shortly after her diagnosis and originally aimed to help pay the Santos family’s mounting medical bills and fund the constant flights to New York City and Philadelphia in search of effective treatments. Within about a year and a half, ISF transitioned into a charity that helps fund collaborative pediatric cancer research both locally and nationally.

In 2020, the foundation sharpened its mission even further to focus on fulfilling Isabella’s three wishes: to beat cancer, grow hair, and live her dreams.

Funds donated to the Beat Cancer program go to Levine Children’s Hospital to help build the ISF Rare & Solid Tumor Program. The program opened in July 2020 with the arrival of world-renowned cancer researcher Dr. Giselle Sholler. Since then, solidtumor patient volume has doubled and patients are traveling to Charlotte from more than 20 countries for care.

The Grow Hair program gives to national institutions supporting clinical trials. The goal is to provide safer and more effective cancer treatment options for those fighting.

Through the Live My Dreams giving program, ISF partners with organizations such as OneBlood, The Ronald McDonald House of Charlotte and Make-AWish Foundation to help support families impacted by childhood cancer.

Erin Santos is a staunch advocate for improving Charlotte’s pediatric cancer treatment options following her own experience navigating the region’s healthcare system.

In a 2016 interview with Creative Loafing, Santos admitted she had to take her home city “out of the equation” when it came to getting the best care for Isabella. She hoped ISF’s efforts would one day allow more families to stay in Charlotte for care.

“Wherever the best treatment is is where your child should be,” Santos said. “We need to make it to where that is Charlotte, and that’s what we’re trying to do.”

Toward the end of her fight against cancer, Isabella received a special therapy called MIBG that added 10 more months to her life, including another Christmas and another birthday.

At the time, Isabella had to leave Charlotte for

her MIBG treatment, which can only be delivered in a lead-lined hospital room that keeps the therapy’s radioactivity in check. Today, this cutting-edge treatment is available at Levine Children’s thanks to funds raised by ISF, and is one of the only MIBG treatment rooms in the region.

ISF may have started with Isabella, but today it is her legacy.

It’s Erin Santos’ dream that her daughter’s fight with cancer will change the outcome for other children through funds raised in her memory. So far, that dream is becoming a reality.

Representation Matters

Carolina Migrant Network to merge with Comunidad Colectiva, expand services

On Aug. 5, organizers with the Latin American Coalition (LAC) held a press conference at their east Charlotte office to discuss the unprecedented number of immigrants who have arrived in Charlotte in recent months.

In a post that day, LAC stated that, beginning in early 2022, the nonprofit began seeing an increase in families coming to Charlotte from detention facilities in Texas. Between May and August, the Latin American Coalition attended to 1,430 people, 531 of them children, according to the organization. Many of those families arrived with no money and no shelter, only the clothes they were wearing on their backs, the post read.

Many of them also arrived with immigration court dates and no representation, and that’s where the Carolina Migrant Network comes in.

We last caught up with Carolina Migrant Network co-founders Stefania Arteaga and Becca O’Neill on a January 2021 episode of our Nooze Hounds podcast, just as they celebrated the oneyear anniversary of the organization, which provides free legal representation in immigration bond proceedings to individuals detained by ICE.

Now, as the stakes increase, the Carolina Migrant Network is announcing a new merger that will take effect on Oct. 3, joining with Comunidad Colectiva, a local advocacy organization that was created in 2016 in response to the anti-immigrant rhetoric of that year’s presidential election and the xenophobic policies of the Trump administration.

Having been involved with both organizations since their respective launches, Arteaga will be able to move into a full-time role with the newly expanded Carolina Migrant Network beginning Oct. 3 thanks to a grant from the Four Freedoms Fund.

She said her goal is to merge the missions of the two organizations, allowing Carolina Migrant Network to have access to Comunidad Colectiva’s comparatively larger discretionary fund so as to offer more legal representation while also becoming more involved in advocacy and activism efforts.

Arteaga estimated that Carolina Migrant Network provided legal services to more than 100

clients last year, and because most of those clients are the primary breadwinners for their families, the impact goes much further than them.

“There’s a huge need and we’re the only organization that currently focuses on the population that is detained, that is low-income, people who already cannot even afford an attorney and would otherwise not be able to fight their cases,” Arteaga said.

Many of Carolina Migrant Network’s clients get tied up in the immigration court system for years, including one such man whom CMN helped finally settle a case for in early September. He was originally arrested by ICE in 2020, a week before the first COVID lockdowns. Carolina Migrant Network was able to get a cancellation of removal for the man, so he is no longer at risk of deportation.

His case, however, was relatively quick, as some cases can take as long as 10 years, leaving entire families in limbo.

As of Oct. 3, Arteaga will begin a planning phase for the rebranding of Carolina Migrant Network, which will likely begin its rollout in early 2023.

“The legal component part for now, we’re going to keep it the same, but I think the organizing piece that we’re trying to include and where we’re creating a space for people to take control of their situation by speaking out if they choose to — that is what we’re hoping to do with this merger is create a narrative change around the issue.”

It’s the same narrative that O’Neill and Arteaga discussed on our podcast, they just plan to use their organization as a platform for folks caught up in the system to get a little louder about it now.

“At the end of the day, everyone deserves a fighting chance regardless of their socioeconomic status,” Arteaga said. “So I think that’s what we’re trying to get out there; if we want to make Charlotte home for folks then we have to have the resources and create the space for them to thrive, and that includes expanding legal resources.”

A KINDRED SPIRIT

Georgie Nakima connects people, places and plants

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 26, 2020

It’s not always about choosing one side of the brain or the other. The two can go hand-in-hand, as can be seen in the work of local muralist Georgie Nakima.

“I like to tell people that art is a science and science is an art,” Georgie Nakima says. The Charlotte-based artist and community organizer has drawn on her science background in creating colorful public art that can be seen throughout Charlotte, from the west side to NoDa, paintings that seamlessly fuse wildlife and the natural world with spiraling geometric shapes.

For Nakima there is scant difference between the organic and the mathematic.

“Things that we think [of as] different worlds are actually parallel and there’s a line between them,” Nakima maintains. That line is math, she explains, a divine code which humans did not invent. “We discovered it. It’s the underlying force of how we exist. It’s an invisible line of how we’re connected.”

Nakima extends that line of connection to encompass community and history with Kindred, her multidisciplinary public art project located in west Charlotte’s Biddleville neighborhood at Mechanics and Farmers Bank, Charlotte’s first minority-owned financial institution.

“[The project] brings artwork outside of art districts and directly into the communities that can truly use it,” Nakima explains.

Funded by the Knight Foundation through the Celebrate Charlotte Arts Grant, Kindred kicked off on Martin Luther King Jr. Day with a workshop featuring collages by local artist CHD:WCK!, at which he led a free immersive community experience.

At the core of the series is the concept of connecting, Nakima stresses. Being part of the Charlotte art community for many years, she kept encountering the barriers that divided and isolated

creators. Far too frequently, artists worked in silos, off doing their own thing.

“That’s really what started Kindred,” she says. “It is the first step in coming together and seeing our beauty and how dynamic we are.”

The January workshop also showcased an informal lecture by Johnathan Shepard about the evolution of the educational system in Charlotte’s Historic West End. West Charlotte had been home to many black schools and educators, Nakima says, but that changed when the color barrier was crossed.

While integration ushered in resources, it also inadvertently undermined the unifying force behind black communities. Communities that once focused on teaching and nurturing their own began to splinter.

“We were learning about the resources of the West End and its legacy and how it’s changed,” Nakima says about the workshop, “and we were creating art around it.”

Befitting the location and topic covered by the inaugural event, history is an important part of Kindred. The workshop series is designed to pool local creatives under one umbrella, Nakima says, then connect those artists with historic AfricanAmerican communities to draw a through line from each neighborhood’s past to its future.

The next Kindred event takes place at Johnson C. Smith University’s Arts Factory, a renovated building on West Trade Street less than half a mile from Mechanics and Farmers Bank. It will feature historian Maarifa Kweli’s lecture on the AfricanAmerican Diaspora and a face mask demonstration guided by artist Micaila Ayo Thomas.

It all happens for free on Feb. 29 [2020], or Leap Day, which thrills Nakima’s inner math nerd.

“I thought it’s just a fun day because it’s rarely the 29th [of February],” she says laughing.

Further workshops under the Kindred banner will culminate in a community festival in April that will incorporate visual arts and dance workshops.

That same month, Kindred will present a workshop geared toward a subject dear to Nakima’s heart: gardening and plant life.

Pursuing a degree in biology from WinstonSalem State University, where she also minored in chemistry, Nakima immediately grasped how biology was entwined with chemistry, and how mathematical constructs were ensconced in the

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plant world. She’s no stranger to fractals and sacred geometry. Not only does she understand the Fibonacci spiral, a logarithmic pattern found everywhere in nature and derived from a mathematical sequence where each number is the sum of the two numbers that precede it, she professes to love it.

The science of plants and gardening is inextricably entwined with Nakima’s art, and her work has extended beyond conceptual gardens to real ones. Last July, she worked with children from the Rams Fitness Academy summer camp to create two murals at the Simon’s Green Acre community garden at the Enterprise Center in Winston-Salem.

Reinforcing the garden connection are Nakima’s murals, which have appeared across Charlotte under the moniker Garden of Journey. The title is a kind of brand, Nakima explains. Since she didn’t want her professional website to be bannered with just her first and last name, she devised a thought piece, a name that would explain what her work entailed.

Hence Garden of Journey. For the journey part, Nakima says she had broken out of society’s successdriven rat race and decided that her life was a journey.

“The garden part represents how diverse the ecosystem can be if we nourish it,” she explains. “When you think about it, Garden of Journey is pretty much a short poem.”

Given her affinity for gardens, plants and nature, Nakima is also a proponent of conservation and environmentalism, causes and concerns that appear in her artwork in the guise of wildlife like wolves, tigers and other big cats.

We live in a world in which we’re disconnected from nature and the consequences of our choices, she maintains. For example, we make trips to the grocery store unconcerned with the debilitating effects factory farming has on our land, livestock and water.

“We need to get back to indigenous processes,” Nakima asserts, “falling back in love with our land to nourish ourselves and our communities.”

With that thesis, she dovetails back to the lessons of history, coming full circle like the graceful curve of the Fibonacci spiral. The Historic West End boasts a rich agricultural history, she says. “It was mainly farmland, which is ironic because now it’s a food desert.”

She hopes that one consequence of the Kindred events will be that people will patronize local businesses, including the nearby Rosa Parks Farmers

Market, and begin thinking more about what they’re supporting with their money.

Nakima’s own history has been a spiral dance with art ever since she was old enough to pick up a crayon. She started off with realistic paintings and drawings, but her fascination with biology, chemistry and calculus exerted a subconscious pull.

“When you think about the sciences, you’re always learning of the micro-layers that create existence,” she says.

Those layers started appearing in her work almost unbidden, as if she started creating ecosystems not entirely rooted in realism without consciously deciding to do so.

Afrofuturism, the art and literature movement that incorporates elements of black history and culture into science fiction, also contributed to her aesthetic. Nakima says she responds to the movement’s focus on resilience and the power to make positive change. That makes Afrofuturism more rooted in reality, she maintains, because everyone can relate to overcoming challenges.

“You can even say Afrofuturism is in the present because it’s trending,” she says “It’s popping up a lot because people are ready for positive change.”

Collaboration has also exerted an influence on Nakima’s artistic development. In 2018 she teamed with two other black women artists, Sloane Siobhan

and Janelle Dunlap, to create Manifest Future, an Afrofuturist mural at the site of the Rosa Parks Farmers Market at 1600 West Trade Street in west Charlotte.

The artists rallied neighborhood residents to come together at weekly painting parties where they could create, connect and foster a sense of community.

Perhaps her most high-profile piece is a mural she created last fall on the McCrorey YMCA basketball court, the result of a partnership with the NBA and Xbox during All-Star Weekend.

Both projects served as forerunners for the Historic West End awareness campaign and openhearted community building encompassed by Kindred. For her part, Nakima hopes to see more collaboration taking root in Charlotte’s art scene.

“Obviously, we can all do our own things, but I think it’s good to come outside of yourself and connect with other people,” she says.

Nakima sees the communal process as humbling and grounding, a chance for artists to broaden the scope of their focus beyond self and their own creations. With Charlotte’s explosive growth in recent years, she feels that artists should ramp up their collaborative efforts so that the city’s creative culture can grow.

At least, creatives should recognize that

collaboration will create more opportunities for artist.

“There’s not a lot of room for us to be competitive and tear each other down,” she insists. “I’d rather use my energy to uplift people.”

Building community, breaking down barriers and inspiring neighbors are all on the docket for the Kindred workshops to come; recognizing Charlotte’s black development corridor as an important part of telling a people’s story, Nakima says, but also asking what that means for the people that are already there.

The flip side of this positivity is the pressure exerted by gentrification and displacement, she maintains, both of which cast a shadow over the Historic West End. That’s why she believes it’s important to include the existing West End community in the art spaces created by Kindred.

Nakima sees the process as creative storytelling, sharing a tale that demands to be heard.

“The purpose is to let people know why this corridor is important,” she says. “The idea is that art can unite a community and usher in empathetic spaces where neighbors can feel okay and be recognized.”

IN THE PUBLIC EYE

Celebrated muralist Georgie Nakima expands her palette

By 2020, muralist Georgie Nakima had created an impactful presence in Charlotte with colorful public art, which seamlessly fuses representations of Black women with the natural world and spiraling geometric shapes.

Nakima’s work was set to branch out with Kindred, a community-focused public installation in west Charlotte that joined Nakima’s mural work with workshops and art experiences where the public was invited to contribute. Queen City Nerve wrote about the project in late February 2020, then the COVID pandemic ground the process to a halt.

While Nakima’s community installation was placed on pause, she personally continued to work along other tracks and take on new challenges, including sculpture, digital images and museum projects.

“I’m normally working on installations before an area even opens,” she explains. “I was still able to continue on my projects and stay busy.”

The often-solitary life of an artist, however, did not dissuade her from finding connection.

“Twenty-twenty was the year our eyes opened to what was around us,” Nakima says. “We realized how integrated our lives truly were. We understood how important the arts were.”

Despite a worldwide slow down, Nakima’s 2021 was marked by hustle and bustle — and a professional profile expanding beyond the Carolinas. She contributed her mural Alchemy at BLKOUT Walls Mural Festival in Detroit. A subsequent project took her to Rhode Island, resulting in “Salt Water,” a massive 4,000-square-foot mural depicting and balancing two Black Women.

“[‘Salt Water’] is a reflection of the times,” Nakima says. “It represents feminine energy, sisterhood and a bond of closeness.”

That year also marked the appearance of Nakima’s first venture into three-dimensional art, a sculpture called “Mwanzo,” a Swahili word that means new beginnings. The interactive piece, which suggests a diamond-shaped multi-hued chair, is a permanent installation at Charlotte’s East Town Market at the corner of North Sharon Amity and Milton roads.

Next, Nakima was invited to present an exhibit in The Discover District in Dallas, Texas. She assembled close to 20 pieces and called the collection “To the Constellations of Ancestors That Live in Our Bones, Thank You.” The exhibit was also mounted at Charlotte’s Mint Museum in Uptown. There museum-goers could marvel at Nakima’s cache of murals, kaleidoscopic shards of color that serve as immersive metaphors for her perspective on art and life.

Coinciding with the Constellation exhibit in Texas, Nakima says she was invited to contribute to Black Future Makers, an Afrofuturism-themed campaign for Black History Month 2022. For the digital project, Nakima worked with photos of 32 forward-facing Black luminaries, artists, creators, and shakers including herself, that were honored by the campaign. Nakima then integrated the portraits into a background. It was her first foray into the digital world.

“It was definitively a big exercise to stretch my eye,” she says. “I considered myself very analog, but I think it’s important to break out of molds that we hold for ourselves, and to continue learning.”

Currently, Nakima is returning to Kindred, the public interactive art installation that was put on pause in 2020. The revived project culminates with a multidisciplinary festival called “Come as You Are” at Atrium Health on Beatties Ford Road on Oct. 22.

Nakima’s most high-profile current piece, however, is a mural entitled Earth Keeper that she created for the Harvey B. Gantt Center for AfricanAmerican Arts + Culture.

The circular portrait of a mysterious yet powerful Black woman flanked by geometric shapes sits above the museum’s grand lobby.

“This is [the Gantt’s] first permanent mural installation,” Nakima says.

She hopes it will be the first of many, a further dissolving of the unnecessary barrier between street art and curated art.

“I think museums like the Mint and the Gantt are realizing that it’s important to involve what’s happening around them, and right now Charlotte is

electrified by murals and public art.”

As Nakima’s visibility increases, she promises to increase the visibility of Black women in her work.

“I want there to be a relatability, where people can see and understand themselves because they feel represented,” Nakima offers.

She vows to be a visual translator of our times

while finding new ways to present her vision.

“My work is always going to change, but my why is going to remain the same,” Nakima says.

A LAUGHING STOCK

Brian O’Neil returns to the stage

When we last spoke with Brian O’Neil in October 2019, he had recently launched a new comedy show, Revolt Comedy, which he hosted, featuring a rotating cast of amateur comedians.

We spoke about the momentum in the Charlotte comedy scene and Queen City Poly, a relationship podcast he was hosting about polyamory and ethical monogamy.

In the years since our last conversation, the pandemic altered much about our way of life. Restaurants transitioned to outdoor venues, concerts were held outdoors if they could be held at all, and many businesses closed completely. O’Neil, of course, was not exempt from these changes.

Options to perform comedy virtually were on the table, but they left much to be desired, O’Neil said. Virtual platforms created a lag between the jokes and the laughs.

“I really hate those shows,” he laughed. “Because it’s very difficult to do stand-up and have to kind of wait three seconds to hear if someone laughs.”

If no one laughed, O’Neil couldn’t be sure if it was because of the delay or because the joke hadn’t landed. Because he couldn’t perform traditionally, O’Neil decided to focus on writing instead.

He no longer hosts Revolt Comedy or any of his podcasts. In place of the monthly Revolt show, he started a new one in June 2021 called Stand-Up NoDa, a bi-monthly comedy show at Heist Brewery. The new show is more of a traditional stand-up event than Revolt was in that there is a structure, with an opener and a feature act.

“That [Revolt Comedy] experience launched me into survival mode and motivated me to start a show that was more traditional,” he said.

Much like the rest of us, O’Neil has gone through a lot of changes, but there is one thing that has remained the same: his passion for the Charlotte comedy scene.

Around the country, things are starting to pick back up again. Venues are opening back up and larger group settings are possible now. Many of the venues and events that shut down during the years of the pandemic have returned. There’s a semblance

of normalcy even if we aren’t quite there yet. O’Neil believes this to be indicative of things to come.

“We were on the upswing before COVID,” he said, referring to the local comedy scene. “And once [COVID] happened we lost a lot of clubs and they never really recovered. But I think it’s picking back up.”

Charlotte still only has one dedicated comedy club, The Comedy Zone, but that hasn’t stopped O’Neil and other artists from making a way where they can. Like O’Neil, other comics produce their own shows all across the city and state.

Many of these artists weren’t part of the comedic scene previously, which he believes is important in the story of the scene’s return. Newer comedians get inspired by the veteran comedians and decide to try their luck.

“And that’s only been within the last six months or so,” he said. “I think we’ve seen, just, a big boom since the pandemic. It’s a win for Charlotte.”

Public events can still be precarious at times, however. This opens the doors for other avenues like TikTok or YouTube. Over the past few years, there has been a rise in successful TikTok stars trying their luck with stand-up. This is tricky, as TikTok and YouTube are vastly different mediums than stand-up comedy.

Ultimately, O’Neil believes they help more than they hurt, as comedy that goes viral online can drive attendance to public shows.

“I think anybody going out to see stand-up is a good thing,” he said.

You won’t find him on TikTok or YouTube any time soon, though. “There is nothing I hate more than the thought of going on camera,” he said. “I’m starting to become more comfortable with the idea but if I could get a solid writing gig and then just tour during stand-up, I would be a happy comic.”

Aside from the pandemic, O’Neil said he’s been navigating experiences with “cancel culture,” a phenomenon that’s either a plague on America or a myth created by those who want to dodge accountability, depending on whom you ask.

For O’Neil, the pushback against some of his content has been relatively minor.

“Sometimes I’ll have jokes online that don’t go over well,” he said. “I’ve been blocked by a few people.”

He doesn’t let negative reactions deter him and said he would never consider censoring himself, but he does hope his message about the therapeutic effects of comedy can get across to folks who think that making light of a bad situation is an affront to anyone who has dealt with that respective topic.

Cultivating a dark sense of humor, he regularly

ridicules his own mental-health issues and said his best jokes come from his deepest insecurities.

“If it exists in the world then it’s not off the table,” he said of topics he’s willing to joke about.

Moving forward, O’Neil said his pandemic respite may have been the best thing for him, and while the future seems uncertain, O’Neil remains optimistic. He’s in this game for the long haul.

“I don’t ever plan on quitting,” he said.

THE HEAVY HEAVY

Despite their moniker, The Heavy Heavy plays with a light and confident touch. The Brighton, U.K., retro rock-inspired five-piece has laid siege to the American market with a national TV debut on CBS Saturday Morning and a memorable performance for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. With their single “Miles and Miles,” the band conjures the ebullient whiplash snap and spirit of melodic late ’60s/early ’70s rock with whirligig keyboards, the greatest country-twinged guitar riff since The Rolling Stones’ “Happy” and soaring harmonies that summon the laid-back swagger of Bare Trees–era Fleetwood Mac.

More: $20; Sept. 21, 9 p.m.; Recover Brands, 1518 Bryant St.; theheavyheavy.com

NATURE MORTE OPENING RECEPTION

The still life, a genre previously synonymous with 16th and 17th century Old Masters, has been imbued with contemporary resonance by Londonbased American multimedia artist Michael Petry. Petry’s book Nature Morte: Contemporary Artists Reinvigorate the Still Life Tradition inspires the exhibit of the same name, which brings together poignant, provocative re-imaginings of the traditional still life by more than 180 international contemporary artists. Both the book and the exhibition serve as memento mori — a reminder of the timeless themes of life, death and the irrevocable passing of time. The exhibit runs through Nov. 3 More: Free; Sept. 21, 5:30 p.m.; Rowe Galleries, UNC-Charlotte 9119 University Road; coaa.charlotte. edu

CROSSROADS CINEMA: ‘COMING TO AMERICA’

Considered a classic today, Coming to America was met with critical shrugs of indifference upon its release in 1988. Directed by John Landis after his scattershot Amazon Women on the Moon, Coming to America established star Eddie Murphy as a credible leading man. The fish-out-of-water plot, in which African prince Murphy travels to America to find the woman of his dreams, may be hackneyed, but who cares? It’s there to support Murphy and costar Arsenio Hall, in various guises and disguises, engaging in inspired bits of comic interplay.

More: Free; Sept. 22, 8 p.m.; Ford Building, Camp North End, 1774 Statesville Ave.; camp.nc

THE ORANGE CONSTANT, DEAF ANDREWS, THE WRIGHT AVENUE

Five-piece Charlotte band Deaf Andrews draws on funk, blues, classic rock and indie, but the overriding throughline is pop that’s light yet grounded, sophisticated but not sour. Jangling single “Yellow Sands” harnesses a percussive prog-rock gallop to a bright and direct tune with underlying grit. “Calm and Collected” is a slice of sunny alt funk with a percolating bassline. Georgia-based The Orange Constant tills an Americana-tinged rock garden with 1970s AOR trimmings. Greensboro’s Wright Avenue fits everything from psych rock to Appalachian strings into supple grooves.

More: $10-$14; Sept. 24, 8 p.m.; Visulite Theatre, 1615 Elizabeth Ave.; visulite.com

KING PRINCESS

Born Mikaela Straus, King Princess is a former musical prodigy and current pop upstart. Her debut single “1950” is a soulful paean to gay love that also namechecks gay thriller writer Patricia Highsmith (The Talented Mr. Ripley). After releasing the unabashedly catchy single “Pussy is God,” Straus delivered an urbane follow up LP Hold on Baby, which features increasingly flexible vocals over punchy indie rock that recalls The Strokes. Straus’s latest video spotlights Hold on Baby track “Let Us Die,” dedicated to late Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins, who played on the song.

More: $32 and up; Sept. 28, 8 p.m.; The Fillmore, 820 Hamilton St.; livenation.com

‘EVIL DEAD: THE MUSICAL’

As hero Ash tears into zombie hordes with his trusty chainsaw, you may remember the title of a movie that is not one of Sam Raimi’s slapstick gore Evil Dead films: “There will be blood.” Staged outdoors in MoRA’s haunted woods, ATC’s sanguinary Evil Dead extravaganza features a designated splatter zone that puts you in the middle of the arterial spray. (Free poncho included with admission.) The show’s book and lyrics by George Reinblatt embrace the campy elements already present in Raimi’s masterpieces. The first night of the production is “pay what you can” night. Sadly, it was announced shortly before this issue went to print that this run of Evil Dead will be the last production from Actor’s Theatre of Charlotte before they shut down for good.

More: Sept. 29–Oct. 30; The Barn at MoRA, N. 8300 Monroe Road; atcharlotte.org

BROOKLYN, CHARLOTTE, NC

Courtesy of Blumenthal Arts 9/29-10/8

BROOKLYN: THE COLLECTIVE MEMORY

Amid the shock of the new in Charlotte’s Second Ward, we tread respectfully among ghosts. Brooklyn, a tightly knit self-sustainable city within a city, was eviscerated and demolished in the 1960s and 70s in the name of so-called urban renewal. The awareness of what we lost in the gutting of a once vibrant Black community informs the Collective Memory project, which commemorates and celebrates Brooklyn. The interactive experience immerses us in the history of the once flourishing neighborhood through life-size portraits, archival books and documented videos of former residents sharing their stories.

More: $5; Sept. 29–Oct. 8; Studio 229, 229 S. Brevard St.; blumenthalarts.org

FRI 9/30

LITTLE JESUS, DIVINO NINO, PIERI

An evening of alt-Latin music features reinvention poster child Divino Niño. In 2019 the Chicago-viaBogotá band was playing English-sung mid-tempo rock songs based on practice room jams. While on tour they jettisoned their alt-pop template to embrace a rhythmic path that led to their breakthrough LP Last Spa on Earth. Enfolding reggaeton, electropop and trap, the group forges a dynamic Spanish-language soundscape that addresses the release and catharsis that comes from confronting your darkest moments.

Mexico City indie combo Little Jesus and Brooklynbased Mexican rapper Pieri round out the bill.

More: $19.30; Sept. 30, 9:30 p.m.; Snug Harbor, 1228 Gordon St.; snugrock.com

SATSAT

ONGOING 9/29 - 10/8 10/1 10/1

LUMINARIUM PHOTO WALK WITH THE LIGHT FACTORY

This community workshop is a photo walk/ collaboration with The Light Factory, Charlotte’s top photography institution for 50 years and counting. Hosted by Carey J. King, this walk gives photographers the chance to develop new skills and get help along the way. What makes it different from other photo walks is its phantasmagoric setting. Shutterbugs are encouraged to capture models in eccentric costumes inside a vibrant luminarium. There will be multiple models to choose from, and the walk is open to photographers of all levels and ages. Any image-making devices, including phones, are welcome.

More: $20; Oct. 1, 9:30 a.m.; Ballantyne’s Backyard, 11611 N. Community House Road; blumenthalarts.org

I AM QUEEN CHARLOTTE

Poet playwright and storyteller Hannah Hassan is a story collector as well. This last talent came to fruition as a book project titled I Am Queen Charlotte, developed by Hassan’s storytelling duo Epoch Tribe. The book, which collects the intimate and intricate tales of 50 Black women from Charlotte, has evolved into a stage play which ran as part of Queen Charlotte Week last March. Mixing dance, music and performance, the show returns in 2022 with a nod to the city’s namesake, Queen Charlotte, who some historians posit was a Black or mixed-race woman.

More: $19.50 and up; Oct. 1, 8 p.m.; Knight Theater, 430 S. Tryon St.; blumenthalarts.org

It took five years for Shauna Respass to fully realize she needed to get out.

Respass had been living in an abusive relationship in Kansas City, Missouri, from the time she was 19 years old until she was nearing 24, then one day she made a decision that would not only free her up to pursue her music career, but most likely saved her life.

“It took for me to realize that he would probably kill me and end up killing himself or something, not even meaning to do it necessarily,” says Respass. “So I had to really realize: Do I want to hold on to the hope of us being together or my life? And I just had to choose my life.”

One day in February 2018, Respass left home like she was going to work, but instead drove to Charlotte, where her family had moved in 2015. She brought two outfits and her dog, leaving everything else behind.

By March of that year, she was writing music again, then began performing as ReeCee Raps, or ReeCee for short. By the end of the year, she had earned the Queen City Award for Best Female Hip Hop Artist. She’s nominated for a Carolina Music Award in 2019.

Before May ends, ReeCee Raps will perform at Speed Street in Uptown, the Carefree Black Girl Cookout in north Charlotte, the Vegan Soul-Full Fest at Heist Brewery & Barrel Arts near Camp North End, The Vaudeville Show at Snug Harbor in Plaza Midwood and host a new bi-monthly open mic with her live band at the new Burgerim in University City. We caught up with Respass during a respite between her busy schedule of shows — a schedule she says she keeps full to make up for those lost years in Kansas City.

Queen City Nerve: How did you become interested in making music?

ReeCee Raps: I started out very young, like 4 years old, performing. My granddad had a group called The Unspeakables. We went around Pittsburgh, I was the youngest member, we had all types of shows. I used to lip sync oldies and Patti LaBelle songs and Alvin and the Chipmunks, up until

when I left Pittsburgh when I was about 12 or 13.

After that I used to want to sing, and then I went through puberty and I was like, “I lost my singing voice, I can’t sing no more!” I wrote poetry on and off, but I didn’t start rapping until I was maybe about 18 in college. I used to play around and freestyle, and then I was like, “Let me actually write stuff down.” So I started a YouTube channel when I was about 19. I would just rap lil’ verses, I wouldn’t actually write songs.

I met my ex maybe like four months after I started rapping, and then he was a rapper too, so he didn’t want me rapping because he was a rapper. So I took down my YouTube channel, I made all my videos private and everything, I didn’t do anything for four years. I wrote probably two songs over that four years. I didn’t know I still had the ability to write because it was so new, and then I kind of just dropped off of it for four years. Once I exited the relationship, I wrote like 13 songs in a couple months. I was venting through my music.

What was that finally convinced you to leave?

For me, a lot of the reason why I stayed was

because I thought it would get better and I didn’t have an experience of being an adult on my own. I moved straight from my parents house in with my ex, so I really didn’t know what the world was like at all. I didn’t know what it would be like, I was scared. That was my identity — my relationship — and it wasn’t bad all the time, so you think it gets better, but it keeps happening. Really it took for me to realize that he would probably kill me and end up killing himself or something, not even meaning to do it necessarily, so I had to really realize: Do I want to hold on to the hope of us being together or my life? And I just had to choose my life.

How would you describe your style now?

I make feel-good music, and it’s very original. You don’t hear nothing like it, because even though I listen to all this different music, I really look within. It’s just me and the beat and whatever I’m inspired to write, I’ll write it. Really a lot of it is inspired by experience. I’m really venting. I’m not trying to talk to people a lot about what I may be going through.

I was in an abusive relationship, but I didn’t say anything to anybody. Everybody thought we were a power couple. My music is very raw.

MUSIC FEATURE

From smoking songs to relationships, you can hear those experiential themes in your music. How do you go about that writing process?

I like to write to beats. The beat really usually comes first, and then I just form whatever mood the beat my come with, I just kind of run with it. Whatever the beat inspires me to write, it will be from experience, usually something that I recently went through or something like that.

So you’re not the type to let it marinate in your mind for a while?

No, I really be venting. I enjoy it. It really gives me purpose, where I felt like I didn’t have talent before. I used to be jealous of my siblings just because they knew what they wanted to do, but it was just me stifling myself from what I always knew I had from the beginning. You let society hold you back from what you really want to do because you look at statistics, you look at averages, but you’re really not average.

Not a lot of local rappers play with a live band like you do. How did that come about?

The reason I made the band, we did a RAW Charlotte show at The Fillmore back in February and I assembled a band just because I was like, “I perform every day already and I gotta sell these tickets.” I’m like, “How am I going to sell something to people when they’re like, ‘We just seen you yesterday.’” So this isn’t just me, I want to sell an experience, give you a reason to come out, put on an actual show.

Once I started playing with the band, I realized this is a-whole-nother level. It’s going to set me so far apart. And some people don’t even have the music to vibe with a band, but they elevated my music so much, so it is very important for me to have my band out whenever it’s worth it for them. I’m hosting an open mic starting on May 31st in University at Burger IM, every other Friday, and the band’s going to be there and I’m giving other people the experience to play with a band for the first time. A lot of these people have never played with a band. Not everybody really has that experience to do that, and I didn’t really know how to go about it either, but it all fell into place.

You mentioned that you’re out performing damn near every day. Have you always had that hustle?

What it really was is that I performed for the first time in my adult life at Red @ 28th (in University City) for their open mic Wednesday. Once I did that, I felt like I wasted so much time, because I started rapping like five years ago, so I was like, “I have to make up for lost time. If I can lose count of how many performances I’ve done, I’ll be a more experienced performer quicker,” and so within like three to four months I had performed over 100 times in Charlotte and Atlanta, and that’s how people knew who I was in such a little bit of time.

It was just a drive, I forgot how much I really loved it from when I was a child. I thought that was just a childish thing, but it really wasn’t, that was instilled in me. I’ve always been a performer, but I was letting the world stop me from being who I wanted to be, and I let my relationship. I was shot down so many times; everything I wanted to do I was shot down, and I didn’t understand why I was living life that way.

You’ve dove in head-first since then. How has Charlotte’s scene embraced you?

I love it. Charlotte shows a lot of love, they really have embraced me. I won the Q.C. Award last year and I hadn’t even been doing it for a full year. There’s a lot of talent in Charlotte, and I see the growth, I see where Charlotte can be, and that’s why I want to be a part of it, and that’s why this open mic is very important to me because I want to see more spots like the Red @ 28th on Wednesdays, I want to see more stuff like that. Some of the scenes are not really my scenes, but I was willing to go to any type of scene to get my name out there.

Charlotte is a small market but it’s huge at the same time and it’s growing constantly, so there’s a lot of people that know me, there’s a lot of people that don’t. I just feel like there’s a lot of talent out here and Charlotte, in the next five years, is really gonna be really dope. You can really get your hand in right now and be a pillar in Charlotte if you make the right moves.

You’re not only performing at the Soulfull Vegan Fest on Sunday, you’re listed as a speaker addressing domestic violence. Is that something you want to do more of as you build your rap career?

Me and my friend [Dandrea Kennedy] with the Rap Plug, we’re collaborating to do some Stop the Violence events incorporating violence on the streets with domestic violence, so I’m going to be looking for sponsors who want to help out with the nonprofit that we want to do. I know multiple

REECEE RAPS IN 2019

people I’ve helped out of this situation personally, and I know if I spoke about it more and really advocated for it, we could go around to the high schools and colleges and really get people at that age where they can see the signs and talk about the beginning, middle and end.

A lot of it is insecurities within ourselves as people, to even allow ourselves to be treated that way. A lot of people have been through it and we

don’t talk about it. I don’t feel like the statistics are right where they say one in three, I think it’s closer to two in three people have been through that, so I feel like we need to talk about it more and a lot of people are ashamed, and it’s nothing to be ashamed about.

ReeCee Does It

When I catch up with Shauna Respass, aka ReeCee Raps, for a Sunday afternoon phone call, her voice is in and out. It’s not due to bad reception, it’s her literal voice, strained as the result of backto-back shows in Durham and Charlotte over the weekend.

It’s all in a week’s work for ReeCee Raps.

“I think what has gotten me more respect than my talent a lot of times is my work ethic,” she tells me before referring back to our Q&A in 2019. “I haven’t really stopped since I spoke with y’all last. I haven’t stopped. I stay moving, I stay doing shows, and everything comes in time.”

But don’t get it twisted: as driven as she is, ReeCee Raps is talented too, and she doesn’t shy away from that either.

It doesn’t sound conceited when she tells me later, “I really feel like everything I do is great.”

She should feel that way, because it’s never never far from mind that life wasn’t always so great. Respass moved to Charlotte in 2018 after fleeing from an abusive relationship.

Now as the rapper and singer continues to grow her name, she wants to use that spotlight as a leader in the domestic violence field, educating folks on how to spot the red flags while helping survivors escape dangerous situations.

October will mark one year since she launched DOAP Events, through which she curates hip-hop shows and open mics.

And while past DOAP events have benefited Heal Charlotte to fund the work that organization does with survivors of domestic violence, in the organization’s second year she hopes to host events that focus fully on domestic violence awareness and education.

“I do want to bring it to colleges and high schools, where I can curate a whole thing with the beginning, middle, and end of the domestic violence relationship situations, like the aftermath, because it’s easier to continue being in that situation

than it is to get out a lot of times,” Respass told me.

In 2018, Respass made a tough decision that she believes saved her life, leaving her home in Kansas City, Missouri, and driving to Charlotte, where her family had moved in 2015.

She brought two outfits and her dog, leaving everything else behind.

“I’m just really excited about giving back,” she continued, “because I know that if I would have known the signs before going into that, I probably would have never even got into that situation.”

Even as she plans to step back a bit to focus on domestic violence work, that doesn’t mean she’s putting her music career on the back burner.

ReeCee Raps has gained momentum in Charlotte and elsewhere over the past three years, performing around the state and in northeastern locales from New York to Maine.

Over the summer she received a Creative Fellowship grant from the Arts & Science Council, which went to recording and rolling out her upcoming album, Queen of Hearts. On the project, ReeCee focuses more on her singing than her rapping, a big change for her, but her emcee days are not behind her.

On Jan. 1 she will drop a new mixtape of raps over beats by the late J Dilla.

“It’s very introspective, it’s very close to my heart, so I’m really excited about doing that for the people that really love old-school hip-hop styles, boom-bap styles,” she explains.

The mixtape will be available for free download on her website, followed by the release of Queen of Hearts shortly after on all streaming platforms.

And with that, she’ll ensure that 2023 will be another big year for ReeCee Raps, and the only sure bet after that is this: she won’t be slowing down anytime soon.

ReeCee Raps shifts her focus and her sound but not her work ethic

ON THE GRINDHAUS

Charlotte producer Jason Jet takes artists under his wing

Back in 2010, soulful R&B artist Jason Jet released his debut album Love Boulevard. The collection’s title tune tethered Afrofuturism’s digital pulse to smooth pop and the organic heartbeat of gospel, and in the process, Jet invented the nu soul genre.

No one has credited him with this, of course. When Queen City Nerve tells Jet we think he’s the father of nu soul, he simply chuckles good-naturedly. Today the inspired songwriter, in-demand producer and GrindHaus studio owner is focused on his role as educator and mentor for Charlotte’s young musicians.

On Sept. 24, Jet is teaming with his close friend and Season 12 American Idol alumni Will White to launch A Night with Iconic Youth, an event at the Visual Arts and Performing Arts Center in Uptown

Charlotte.

“We’re coming together to celebrate these kids and their families,” Jet says.

The kids in question have gone through the 36-year-old musical polymath’s Young Icons program, a summer camp series he launched in 2017 to mentor Charlotte youth and teach them how to create music and write songs. Although it’s curated by educational nonprofit Young Icons, the event at VAPA will be a primarily invitation-only celebration for the summer camp graduates and their families, Jet says. He’s even rented out a limo to drop them off for a red-carpet walk.

“It will be a great immersive musical experience,” Jet says. Speakers like Mecklenburg County Commissioner Mark Jerrell are scheduled to attend and guest star Nige Hood will MC the event. Songs

that the campers wrote and recorded in Young Icons camp will be showcased as well.

After years of hard work, success came to Jet after the release of Love Boulevard. He opened for R&B legend Anthony Hamilton at the Fillmore Charlotte, garnered Best New R&B artist at the Carolina Music Awards, and moved to New York to pursue his career. In New York, Jet met Charlotte native White, who was working in the city’s fashion scene as well as pursuing music.

Flash forward to 2017, when Jet launched Young Icons in Charlotte. He recruited White, also recently relocated to Charlotte, as a camp coach. White then became a partner as the camp moved into its first year. Jet characterizes the first two years of summer camps as a series of beta tests to see how well the program would work. At first, Jet and White offered the camp to middle-class kids, some of whom Jet knew through his side gig as a music tutor. After going dormant for two years due to the COVID pandemic, Young Icons came back last year as a newly formed nonprofit catering to the city’s underserved children.

“We’re providing platforms for kids that would not normally get this [training],” Jet says “We want to just shower them with love. This is larger than music. This is an experience that we’re giving kids to

really own their creative gifts and talents.”

In the meantime, Jet opened GrindHaus Studios in December 2020. Inspired by co-working spaces, GrindHaus rents studio space to musicians at reasonable rates. In addition, Jet has recorded artists like Fantasia, R&B crooner Dexter Jordan and Anthony Hamilton at the facility. (Jet has spent much of the past year touring with Hamilton, as a front-of-house sound engineer)

A year later, Jet expanded the successful studio to a 7,000-square-foot space at VAPA where GrindHaus could host events. Jet, however, has decided to leave the studio’s space at VAPA so he can turn more of his attention to what he calls “the mothership,” the original GrindHaus location on Latrobe Drive. He’s also begun work on some new solo material.

“I’ve already started shooting some music videos, 2023 is going to be a big roll out.” In the meantime, Jet puts the finishing touches on A Night with Iconic Youth, an event he deems necessary.

“There are not too many programs that [show] appreciation for young talent,” Jet says. “A lot of [the children] know they’re valued with Young Icons, and that we see their greatness. That’s the biggest takeaway. That’s the why behind it all.”

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

Mom Jeans w/ Free Throw, Just Friends, Small Crush (Amos’ Southend)

COUNTRY/FOLK/AMERICANA

Jackie Bristow w/ Rick Price (Evening Muse)

Ross Adams w/ Jason Moss & The Hosses (Snug Harbor)

HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B

Sueco (Neighborhood Theatre)

$uicideboy$ (PNC Music Pavilion)

Mary J. Blige (Spectrum Center)

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 22

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

Matt Maeson (The Underground)

Dial Drive w/ Louzy, Oh! You Pretty Things, Jackson Fig (The Milestone)

JAZZ/BLUES

The Jason Marsalis Quartet (Middle C Jazz)

The Soul Rebels w/ Big Freedia (Neighborhood Theatre)

SINGER-SONGWRITER/ACOUSTIC

Carolina Songwriters in the Round feat. Tracy Simpson (Petra’s)

POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ

Sirsy w/ Mink’s Miracle Medicine (Evening Muse)

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

The Lenny Federal Band (Comet Grill)

Seismic Sutra w/ Rugg, Sutra, Caffeine Daydream (The Milestone)

Forrest Isn’t Dead w/ Tayls with Jordyn Zaino (Petra’s)

Are You In? (Incubus tribute) w/ Sugar (System of a Down tribute) (Amos’ Southend)

JAZZ/BLUES

September in the Park (Earth, Wind & Fire tribute) (Middle C Jazz)

HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B

Mercury Carter’s Birthday Concert feat. Nia J (Evening Muse)

SINGER-SONGWRITER/ACOUSTIC

Nate Randall (Heist Brewery & Barrel Arts)

POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ

Gryffin (CMCU Amphitheatre)

Hotspot (Heist Brewery - NoDa)

Sexbruise? w/ Minka (Visulite Theatre)

CLASSICAL/INSTRUMENTAL

Takénobu w/ Anders Johanson (Evening Muse)

COUNTRY/FOLK/AMERICANA

Cam (Neighborhood Theatre)

PERFORMATIVE

Rocky Horror Music Show (Heist Brewery & Barrel Arts)

FUNK/JAM BANDS

Eternally Grateful (Grateful Dead tribute) (Primal Brewery)

LATIN/WORLD/REGGAE

Monsoon w/ The Pinkerton Raid (Snug Harbor)

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

Four Year Strong w/ Microwave, save face (Amos’Southend)

Mega Mango w/ CYAN (Evening Muse)

Movements (The Underground)

Summoner’s Circle w/ Paezor, Hylic, Angel Massacre (The Milestone)

Whistler w/ Creature Comfort, Siege Hardee (Petra’s)

The Orange Constant w/ Deaf Andrews, The Wright Avenue (Visulite Theatre)

JAZZ/BLUES

Platinum on the Sax (Heist Brewery & Barrel Arts) COUNTRY/FOLK/AMERICANA

Chase McDaniel (Coyote Joe’s)

Zac Brown Band (PNC Music Pavilion)

FUNK/JAM BANDS

Nibiru (Heist Brewery & Barrel Arts)

POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ

Partial Nerdity Cosplay Ball (SERJ)

Deep Fried Disco (Snug Harbor)

URLTV’s Summer Madness 12 (World Nightclub)

SINGER-SONGWRITER/ACOUSTIC

Claiborne Williams (Primal Brewery) LATIN/WORLD/REGGAE

Buena Vista Legacy Band (Middle C Jazz)

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 25

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

The Silverwoods Band (Comet Grill)

The Ries Brothers w/ Honey Hounds (Evening Muse)

One OK Rock (The Underground)

David Gibson (Heist Brewery & Barrel Arts)

Teens in Trouble w/ Wolvesx4, The Bleeps, Neptune Flyer (The Milestone)

Wilderado w/ Husbands (Neighborhood Theatre)

HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B

Gospel Sunday Tribute to Whitney Houston feat. Kelsey D. (Middle C Jazz)

POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ

Minty Fresh World Music Party (Mint MuseumUptown)

SINGER-SONGWRITER/ACOUSTIC

Tosco Music Pary International (Knight Theater)

Elora Dash (Primal Brewery)

OPEN MIC

Find Your Muse Open Mic feat. Wayne Willingham (Evening Muse)

LATIN/WORLD/REGGAE

Celtic Session w/ Alan Davis & Friends (Tommy’s Pub)

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 26

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

Deserta (Heist Brewery & Barrel Arts)

Shinedown (PNC Music Pavilion)

JAZZ/BLUES

The Bill Hanna Legacy Jazz Session (Petra’s)

Patt Mostle Jazz Session (Tommy’s Pub)

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

The Molotov Ball feat. Danny Blu, Tzafu, Solemn Shapes (The Milestone)

Original Jazz Night Featuring: DJAM Collective (Visulite Theatre)

Koch-Marshall Trio (Neighborhood Theatre)

POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ

Lost Cargo: Tiki Social Party (Petra’s)

SINGER-SONGWRITER/ACOUSTIC

Influences & Originals feat. Douglass Thompson, Rob McHale, Paul Lover (Tommy’s Pub)

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

Back To Yours w/ The Thing With Feathers with Jonah Ward (Evening Muse)

Cycles (Neighborhood Theatre)

HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B

East Rich (Evening Muse)

Tiwa Savage (World Nightclub)

SINGER-SONGWRITER/ACOUSTIC

Fall Fest feat. Story Charlemagne, Matt Walsh, Crystal Fountains (Primal Brewery)

Josiah Johnson w/ Landon Elliott (Evening Muse)

POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ

Lady Alma (Booth Playhouse)

Monolink (The Underground)

So We Heard You Like Dubstep: Halloween Edition (SERJ)

COLLABORATIVE/EXPERIMENTAL

Your Neighborhood Orchestra: Lost in Space (Booth Playhouse)

LATIN/WORLD/REGGAE

VS Guitar Duo & Friends (Stage Door Theater)

FUNK/JAM BANDS

PYLETRIBE (Smokey Joe’s Cafe & Bar)

POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ

King Princess (The Fillmore)

Ashlyn Uribe w/ Indigo Jo, Kadey Ballard (Snug Harbor)

LATIN/WORLD/REGGAE

Arturo O’Farill and the Afro-Latin Jazz Ensemble (Knight Theater)

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 29

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

Cosmic Reaper w/ Abysall Frost, Doomsday Profit, Holyroller (The Milestone)

Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers w/ Zac Wilkerson (Neighborhood Theatre)

Rebekah Todd w/ Taylor Winchester (Petra’s)

Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol w/ Hellfire Choir, Dumpster Service Van Jam (Tommy’s Pub)

COUNTRY/FOLK/AMERICANA

The Wood Brothers (Knight Theater)

Kat Jam feat. Carly Pearce, Matt Stell, Kameron

Marlowe, Jackson Dean (Coyote Joe’s)

The Bones of J.R. Jones (Evening Muse)

JAZZ/BLUES

Yellowjackets (Middle C Jazz)

LATIN/WORLD/REGGAE

VS Guitar Duo & Friends (Stage Door Theater)

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 30

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

Terrance Simien and the Zydeco Experience w/ Rosie Ledet (Stage Door Theater)

Highly Suspect (The Fillmore)

Keith Serpa (Heist Brewery & Barrel Arts)

The Holy Ghost Tabernacle Choir w/ Sins of Godless Men, Raatma, Rotting in Dirt (The Milestone)

Sometime in February w/ GILT, Newgrounds Death Rugby, ICH (Petra’s)

Little Jesus w/ Divino Nino, Pieri (Snug Harbor)

Salty Dog w/ Deep Water, Medicine Crow, Chris Tharp (Tommy’s Pub)

The Menders w/ GoGo Pilot, The Penitentials (Visulite Theatre)

Ride the Lightning (Metallica tribute) (Amos’ Southend)

Slippery When We JAZZ/BLUES

Lori Williams (Middle C Jazz)

POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ

Ivan & Alyosha w/ Evan Bartels (Neighborhood Theatre)

COUNTRY/FOLK/AMERICANA

Ian Munsik (Coyote Joe’s)

SINGER-SONGWRITER/ACOUSTIC Matt Bush (Primal Brewery)

LATIN/WORLD/REGGAE

VS Guitar Duo & Friends (Stage Door Theater)

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 1 ROCK/PUNK/METAL

COIN (The Fillmore)

Blackwater Drowning w/ Detest the Throne, Black River rebels, Spiral Fracture (The Milestone)

Vista KIcks (Neighborhood Theatre)

Slumberer w/ Wreath, Sam Abyl (Petra’s)

Captured! By Robots w/ Telepathetics, Spite House (Snug Harbor)

Jeremy’s 10 (Pearl Jam tribute) (Amos’ Southend)

Same As It Ever Was (Talking Heads tribute) (Visulite Theatre)

JAZZ/BLUES

Brian Simpson (Middle C Jazz)

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 2

HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B

Monica w/ Tevin Campbell, Tamar Braxton (Spectrum Center)

COUNTRY/FOLK/AMERICANA

Chris Canterbury (Evening Muse)

JAZZ/BLUES

CLT Blues Society: Blues Competition (Neighborhood Theatre)

MONDAY, OCTOBER 3

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

Barns Courtney (The Underground)

Rundown Kreeps w/ Troubleshoot, XBound, Jackson Fig (The Milestone)

POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ

Release the Pressure (Crown Station)

Peach Pit (The Fillmore)

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 4

ROCK/PUNK/METAL

Gentleman’s Crow w/ Tongues of Fire, Hellfire Choir, Dead Senate (The Milestone)

The Melvins w/ We Are The Asteroid (Visulute Theatre)

Alice in Chains w/ Breaking Benjamin, Bush (PNC Music Pavilion)

LATIN/WORLD/REGGAE

Dave East (The Underground)

VISIT QCNERVE.COM FOR THE FULL SOUNDWAVE LISTING.

WATCH IT GROW

Bernard Singleton continues cultivating Bennu Gardens with new moringa project

As Bernard Singleton stood in his garden in the parking lot of Savona Mill in west Charlotte on one of the first days of spring, he looked around at the growth happening all around him.

Plants that would eventually become onions, cabbages, spring peas and cauliflower peaked through the dirt in one bed, built by neighborhood kids who were court-ordered to help Singleton with his garden — though many of them stayed well after their community service was over. In another bed, oregano, parsley and sage began to sprout. A few feet over, empty vines awaited the annual return of blackberries. Blueberries and raspberries would soon appear on the nearby bushes.

Later, the conversation turned to a different type of growth that’s been happening all around Singleton and the properties where he runs Bennu Gardens, an urban gardening project he launched in 2014 and has since expanded into three locations. Just over the fence from Savona Mill, Blue Blaze Brewing has been in operation since 2016. Enderly Coffee Co. opened last year just a short walk down the street.

Singleton isn’t upset about either business showing up in his neighborhood, but he knows what they signify: gentrification.

“You know when you get a brewery and coffee shop, it’s over,” Singleton said, laughing at my question about the ongoing change.

Savona Mill itself — once a paper mill that served as the beating heart of the Seversville neighborhood — may currently look abandoned, but it will eventually be renovated into a mixed-use district consisting of retail, office and residential space.

But Singleton isn’t interested in playing the victim or giving in to displacement. He sees the coming change as another opportunity to adapt.

“We know the community is changing, but we’re working to educate people to be a part of

the change,” Singleton said. “If you can become a stakeholder in the community, you can be part of the change. Change is not always a bad thing. There’s not a level playing field, we all don’t get the same opportunities, but if you be creative and utilize some of those niches, we’ve been able to survive, and as this project developed, what we brought to the project, we will be here when this is developed.”

Over the last year, Singleton has been focused on developing Bennu Gardens’ new 11-acre

Nebedaye Farms in Indian Trail, a property he leases from the Carolina Farm Trust. There he plans to build a processing plant and other infrastructure to help create jobs and turn Bennu Gardens into a profitable business by harvesting moringa, a superfood grown in Africa and Asia that Singleton has been learning to grow successfully in Charlotte over the last two years.

The Nebedaye Farms Moringa Project is just the latest example of Singleton’s resilience and adaptability in the face of tragedy, displacement and unforeseen change.

Singleton launched Bennu Gardens as a nonprofit four years after the unexpected passing of his son, Caesar Singleton. Caesar had already been enrolled in college, developing programs for at-risk youth and working on projects about how to grow food on Mars when he passed away at 15 years old.

According to Bernard, Caesar died of a freak accident called “dry drowning,” which was more than likely a delayed drowning, in which water gets into a person’s lungs but does not affect them until hours or even days later.

Bernard told a story about how his son had

suddenly become very interested in meeting his ancestors before his passing. He took Caesar to the cemetery, which his family refers to as “the garden of our ancestors.”

“He went and introduced himself to everyone in the cemetery and he was like, ‘Dad, this is where I want to be,’ and two weeks later his ass was there,” Bernard said. “He just thought the power of his ancestors was so intriguing and so great that he laid down and he didn’t wake up.”

Bernard, whose family hails from Senegal, does not view his son’s passing as a death but as a transition.

“It’s almost like it was a spiritual calling, like in Africa,” Bernard said. “He comes here to start something and he’s only destined to be here for a short time. He was way ahead of his time. He knew physics, mathematics and science and growing and life. He was a powerful being. He’s even a more powerful ancestor right now, truly helping us out.”

Bernard learned everything he knew about gardening from Caesar, and said it was his son that eventually guided him to start Bennu Gardens. But it didn’t happen overnight.

After moving to Charlotte in 2011 with his daughter, Singleton struggled to find a home. After one potential apartment fell through, the two turned a unit at NoDa Storage into a studio apartment and lived there until they were able to find more appropriate housing. They eventually found themselves on the West End, where Singleton began to spread his knowledge of urban gardening. He started with two raised beds at the Carole Hoefner Center in Uptown, planted with seeds Singleton purchased with food stamps.

Later, Greg Jarrell at the Queen City Family Tree offered him a lot to use on Tuckaseegee Road in west Charlotte, which eventually led to acquiring a larger garden a few blocks down at Tuckaseegee and Glenwood Drive, which Singleton still runs along with the Savona Mill location.

Singleton and his team of volunteers plant year-round as the weather permits, and during the spring and summer host farmers markets for the community to pick food for themselves free of charge.

For Singleton, Bennu helps push back against the myth of food deserts, which he sees as a false narrative based on victimhood.

“We’re trying to use a different approach to food insecurity; we teach food sovereignty. You can grow anywhere. We never live in a food desert. We live in food forests if we learn how to grow food. You can grow food anywhere,” Singleton said, motioning to the mill parking lot he was standing in. “This was concrete and weeds. Does it look like concrete and weeds anymore? No. We create food forests. We don’t worry about the negative. We look at ways of seeing how we can turn it into a positive.”

Now Singleton has his eyes on growing an actual forest of moringa. The African-Asian plant known for its healing properties and countless culinary uses is usually farmed in more tropical climates. Singleton researched and experimented with moringa in Charlotte for two years. Last year, he was able to grow 25-foot-long moringa trees in just five months at his Savona location. He plans to make it the centerpiece of Nebedaye Farms.

Singleton, who has funded Bennu Gardens himself for five years, hopes moringa will be a turning point for the project.

“The thing about the Moringa Project is it’s a high-value, in-demand crop and it grew out of the west side of Charlotte,” Singleton said. “We’ve been able to grow here and create an industry around it

at two levels; born, bred, researched and created from people in the community. It’s a multi-milliondollar-a-year business, so we plan to do very well with it this year. But this is a grassroots operation that came out of a so-called food desert.”

Moringa serves a larger purpose than sustenance and potential profit, as Singleton has learned. With its roots in countries that are homelands to countless Charlotte-area immigrants, moringa has brought a newfound diversity to Bennu Gardens markets.

“It’s such a powerful plant, how it brings so many cultures and people together. That’s one of the most important and most beautiful things out of it. That’s something that you don’t see where we live on Tuckaseegee; you don’t have this diverse population coming to the so-called ‘hood to shop,” Singleton said, laughing. “People come and they haven’t seen their country for years, they get all emotional. Just with that one crop alone, it tells such a story, diversity-wise, economic empowermentwise, health and wellness-wise.”

Bennu Gardens’ dedication to health and wellness doesn’t stop at with food. While Singleton will be focused on building up Nebedaye Farms in the coming year, a young partner of his named Brandon Ruiz will be implementing his own project at Bennu’s Tuckaseegee Road garden: an herbal pharmacy aimed at helping community members treat and prevent maladies through alternative, natural medicine.

Ruiz, now 21, became interested in gardening through one of his teachers at Mallard Creek High School who grew wheatgrass in the classroom. He began growing his own food, which eventually led him to herbalism.

While Singleton works on the farm in Indian Trail, Ruiz will be cultivating an Afro-Caribbean garden on Tuckaseegee Road that includes traditional plants from those regions and some from Latin America, with a focus on plants that offer herbal remedies.

For Ruiz, you can’t talk about urban gardening and health and wellness without including herbal medicine and alternative healthcare.

“I think that there’s a very fine line, if any, between providing preventative healthcare and having knowledge of how to do more of an acute sort of thing,” Ruiz said, “like you have food and vegetables but in the situation of, ‘Oh I have a cough, I have a fever, a cold,’ you can learn about treating those specifically.’”

Ruiz said he hopes Singleton’s work with moringa, which is known both for its culinary and medicinal properties, will help bridge the gap between diet and healthcare.

“To see the connection with how food and urban gardening has been for such a while, I think that the connection to herbal medicine is inevitable,” he said. “Moringa is literally that. It’s medicine, it’s used for specific medicinal remedies, and it’s food as well, it’s providing sustenance for people. So to be able to do what I’m doing and and educate alongside him is really special. I’m really excited for all the different stuff that’s going on and is going to happen.”

Singleton can also rest easy knowing that his Savona Mill location will be in the capable hands of Chantel Johnson, founder and owner of local health and wellness self-sufficiency organization Off Grid In Color, while he works on Nebedaye Farms.

The future plans for Savona Mill are still far off, but Singleton isn’t going to let them sneak up on him. He’s currently in talks with Argos Real Estate Advisors, which owns the Savona Mill property and gave him the original space in the parking lot he uses now, about leasing out a separate building with offices, classrooms and garden space for an educational concept partnership between Singleton and Scott Harris of Viva Raw.

Those plans are still in the preliminary stages,

so in the meantime Singleton is focused on building up Nebedaye Farms. When we last spoke, Singleton had spent the day in discussions with companies interested in packaging and marketing his moringa products once the farm gets moving.

The namesake of Bennu Gardens, the Egyptian Bennu Bird, is a symbol of resurrection, renewal and rebirth, all themes that Singleton wanted to reinforce in the West End. Considering he launched Bennu Gardens with food stamps and never asked for a dime back, the potential to bring serious money back to his community would seem like a happy surprise, although one would be hard pressed to surprise Singleton.

“From where we came from and getting it to that point, and to bring as many people as we can along with us, that’s important,” Singleton said. “We’ve got a very good team of dedicated workers, and we just do it. Money wasn’t what was driving us, but if that’s what came out of it, nothing’s ever wrong with that.”

You know what that’s called? Growth.

HERE TO STAY

Bernard Singleton expands mission to support Black farmers at Nebedaye Farms

From a parking lot in west Charlotte’s Savona Mill to an 11-acre farm in Indian Trail, Bernard Singleton has come a long way in just three years.

He credits the spiritual power of his ancestors, and one in particular — his late son, Caesar Singleton, who passed away tragically in 2010 at just 15 years old.

“All of the ancestors are powerful, but he is the most powerful,” Singleton told me during a recent visit to his farm, where he was preparing for a Sept. 18 dinner on the farm hosted by Chef Awo, co-founder of Eh’vivi Ghanian Cuisine. The dinner would use ingredients grown on Bernard’s farm and cooked by Chef Awo, who runs Eh’vivi, a Concordbased catering business.

Singleton regularly hosts dinners like this one as he reaches harvesting season; they are how he carries out his mission to educate Americans on the roots of African food and the ancestral culinary arts that were brought here by enslaved Africans hundreds of years ago.

Having originally launched Nebedaye Farms on land owned by the Carolina Farm Trust in Indian Trail with the intention of exclusively growing moringa, Singleton has expanded in recent years, adding more than 30 plants that are native to Africa but able to grow in our climate.

Those include Carolina gold rice and indigo, two of the largest cash crops grown by enslaved people in Singleton’s hometown of Charleston, South Carolina.

“We host dinners around these crops to introduce it to a lot of people who are not familiar with it and not aware that it actually can grow here,” Singleton told me. “We are practicing a lot of the arts of our ancestors and paying homage to them in their sacrifice when they went through here. That’s why the rice is important and the indigo is important.

“A lot of those skills were lost or not kept up, but what we’re doing is bringing those skills back to honor the ancestors,” he continued. “And it’s great for economic empowerment for the community

because you’re working on a lot of rare niche crops. So things have been going very well.”

Singleton is currently working with chefs who will be participating in the second annual Bayhaven Food & Wine Festival, a Black food event launched by Leah & Louise owners Greg and Subrina Collier in 2021 in a push for economic empowerment and community development through the hospitality industry.

He has invited a number of chefs like Greg Collier, who has been a regular visitor to Nebedaye Farms since its opening, to visit and discuss possible uses for the crops he grows during the festival, scheduled for Oct. 19-23 at Camp North End.

“We work with them when they get here to introduce a lot of things to them, and hopefully they would incorporate at least one dish that they’re culturally connected to,” he explained. “We’re trying to maintain being culturally connected to the food and eating for our DNA. Everybody has ancestors, but we’re honoring ours in ways they haven’t been elevated and honored, especially with the botanical legacy that they left here.”

Following the festival, Singleton hopes to spread his knowledge beyond the Charlotte area.

Over the last year, Singleton has also been communicating with farmers and chefs in Senegal, where his ancestors once lived, as well as Ghana, Mali, Sierra Leone, and Spain.

Now he hopes to put what he’s learned to use in helping other Southern Black farmers through an organization called Jubilee Justice.

Restorative justice in farming

According to Jubilee Justice, a Louisiana-based organization with a mission to “heal and transform the wounds suffered by the people and the land through reparative genealogy and regenerative agriculture,” nearly 30,000 acres of Black-owned farmland is lost annually.

Singleton believes ancestral farming is a way to make Black farmers whole again, spiritually and financially.

“A lot of farmers have been walking away from farming because they couldn’t make it profitable,” he said, “but if you grow ancestral crops, there’s a definite market for it, too, and you’re more culturally connected to it, and there’s not much competition. So we brought enough different things here that people from all cultures benefit from.”

Immigrants from a wide range of Asian and African countries visit Nebedaye Farms regularly, as they have trouble finding some of the crops that he grows elsewhere.

The malunggay plant, for example, is known to different parts of the world under various names including the horseradish tree, drumstick tree, and dool in some regions. It has many uses both culinarily and medicinally.

“A lot of the Hindu populations, Indian population, southern India, they visit here because a lot of crops are similar between Africa, Asia, and India … A lot of the foods are in common because they had trade between those countries long before we got here [to America]. So a lot of those same people, when they come and they see the malunggay, they get emotional … They haven’t seen these things since they left their country. So it’s important to them to even see someone from the outskirts actually growing these things, bringing a lot of the cultures together.”

And it’s not just food that Singleton is using to empower Black farmers, he’s recently been growing indigo to turn into dyes and pigments for paints, cosmetics and other uses.

On a more hyper-local level, Singleton’s relationships with his neighbors have been improving.

In August 2020, Queen City Nerve reported on the arrest of one of Singleton’s neighbors for “ethnic intimidation,” a hate crime, following a confrontation between the two men.

During my recent visit, Singleton refused to comment

on what came of the case, only stating that “it had a good ending” and he didn’t want to stir any bad blood back up now that it’s resolved.

He’s begun making inroads with other neighbors, ones who were in no way involved with the incident and have recently been visiting the farm to learn more about what’s going on at Nebedaye Farms.

As reported by Queen City Nerve in 2020, Singleton and Black visitors have experienced multiple incidents of racism from passersby since Nebedaye opened, so he can sometimes be skeptical when he’s approached, as was the case when

members of the Mint Hill Historical Society recently paid him a visit.

“I’m sitting here one day, there’s a little caravan of white people rolling up, and I’m like, ‘Okay, what now?’” he said, laughing. “But no, they actually came because they heard about what we were doing here and came to find out. They’ve been hearing about how we’re doing things the traditional way, the ancestral way, and they were interested if we can

come present it.”

Singleton will present some of what he’s learned from his practice of growing ancestral crops at the Mint Hill Historical Society’s Oct. 15 meeting.

For Singleton, it’s reason to believe that Nebedaye Farms has staying power — but he didn’t need anyone’s approval to know that already.

“After what we’ve been through in the past two years, I guess they all realized we ain’t going nowhere,” Singleton said, trailed by his trademark laugh.

VIVA LANG VAN

East Charlotte staple sees community step up in time of struggle

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED JULY 8, 2020

“I love my customers,” says Dan Nguyen, owner of Lang Van Vietnamese restaurant in east Charlotte. “They are family to me.”

Nguyen’s English may still be a bit choppy, but her meaning and emotion is fluent. Her eyes well with tears of pride and joy as she shows me a vase filled with pastel flowers that her customer and friend Tiffany sent her. An uncluttered and colorful mix of sunflowers and roses, the floral arrangement complements the setting inside Lang Van, the cozy and unpretentious eatery that Nguyen has owned since 2009.

Upon entering the utilitarian rectangular building near the intersection of Shamrock and Eastway drives, visitors are confronted by a surprising and fanciful bamboo curtain. This tikibar-like concession to exotic Southeast Asia aside, the rest of the dining room is pretty basic. Framed awards recognizing Lang Van as the best restaurant in Charlotte going back several years line the plain white walls. Small tables and diner-style booths sport table cloths emblazoned with multi-hued maps of Vietnam, a reminder of Nguyen’s homeland.

But today the booths are empty and chairs are stacked on the tables. Although Lang Van is allowed 50% occupancy under the extended Safer-at-Home phase of North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper’s three-phased plan to open up the economy while stemming the spread of COVID-19, Nguyen has chosen not to have indoor seating at her establishment.

“COVID is bad. I care for my customers a lot. I care for my family,” the 48-year-old restaurateur says, explaining her decision against implementing indoor seating. “I want them to be healthy.”

Of the nine people on staff at the restaurant, several are family, including Nguyen, her husband Tuyen Tran who cooks in the kitchen, and their

two children Alice and Henry Tran. Over the years, Nguyen’s sister, cousins, and nieces have also worked at Lang Van, and some still do. But the business has paid dearly for Nguyen’s determination to keep her family and customers safe. For three months the restaurant has been operating as take-out only, and bills have been piling up. It was particularly rough early in the shutdown.

“One week we had no customers, [but] I tell my husband … [we’ll be] open every day, busy or not busy, we’ll be open,” Nguyen says. “We lost a lot of money for three months, but I don’t care. We work hard.”

Despite the restaurant’s dire financial straits, Nguyen insisted on paying her staff their full

wages. Take-out business picked up a little as word spread that Lang Van was still open, but as the days lengthened into summer, money continued to dwindle.

The Charlotte community gets behind Lang Van

Gradually the unthinkable dawned on everyone lucky enough to have discovered the tucked-away gem of east Charlotte’s dining scene: The city’s oldest and best Vietnamese restaurant could soon disappear.

“I heard tonight that one of the most iconic restaurants in Charlotte is struggling through these hard times,” reads a June 18 Instagram post about Lang Van from Made To Last Tattoo owner Chris Stuart. “I’ve been eating here for over 20yrs and this woman I would consider family…I’ve always said she and the entire staff deserves an award for hospitality, so let’s show them some appreciation and support for their many years serving us.”

Rapidly, Nguyen’s love for her customers was reciprocated. Stuart’s post was shared by the Plaza Midwood Facebook group. On June 19, Neighborhood Theatre amplified the message on their Facebook page: ”Another staple on the east side is in danger of going under. This joint is some of the best Vietnamese in town… Y’all drop by and show em some love and get a great meal.”

The call was picked up by the online neighborhood app Nextdoor Plaza Midwood.

“Lang Van is struggling,” Rose Hamid posted on Nextdoor. “If you love Lang Van as much as I do, plan to order from them.”

“I drove by today around 1:00 p.m. and was surprised to see an empty parking lot,” wrote Porter Merrill. “Please support them if you can.”

“We heard the same thing … and got takeout last night,” Megan Fuller posted. “I almost cried when I got to see the owner and employees. They truly treat everyone like family!”

Many more people shared stories of wonderful meals and acts of kindness by restaurant staff.

The recovery process

“Save Lang Van Vietnamese Restaurant,” reads the title of the GoFundMe page launched by Carly Valigura West on behalf of Tuyen Tran.

“I have no affiliation with the restaurant besides being a dedicated patron and fan for over 20 years,” West wrote on the page. “The owner, Dan, always greets us with that huge grin of hers, tells us what to order, and I just can’t imagine not being able to enjoy the best Vietnamese cuisine outside of Vietnam ever again.”

In less than 24 hours the campaign raised $30,000. As of July 6, the total stands at $57,687 raised from 822 donors. That was enough to not only

catch up on bills, but allow Dan and the team to take the week off for Independence Day, a much-needed break and a tradition of sorts for the restaurant staff.

On June 20, West posted an update on the page.

“We just got back from seeing Dan and everyone at Lang Van,” West wrote. “Dan cried, I cried, it was fantastic. She is just over the top thrilled and in awe of everyone’s generosity. There was a line out the door to get take-out and I couldn’t have been more thrilled to watch people ordering take-out and forcing her to take their very generous donations.”

In Lang Van’s dining room in east Charlotte, Nguyen remembers learning about the fundraiser and its success.

“My customer comes in and shows me…” She stops talking and mimes, indicating that they showed Nguyen the GoFundMe page on their phone. “They say, ‘You see it?’ Then I’m so happy.”

Donations have come from other sources too. Nguyen says that people have come in with cash donations of $50, $100, $200 and more. One customer comes in from Lake Norman with a weekly donation of $100. Another came in three times, bringing $150 each time.

Nguyen recalls a customer named Cindy who came in for take-out on a weekday and was disappointed to see the restaurant empty. She left and returned one hour later with $1,000 in cash.

“After that a lot of people came in,” Nguyen continues. “The last week, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, it was crazy — so many orders to go.”

There seems to be no end in sight for the city’s generosity toward Nguyen, her family and their beloved restaurant. As Queen City Nerve takes photos of Nguyen, a man steps up, says hello to her and then presses a stack of $20 bills into her hands. After posing for a picture with Nguyen, the man waves goodbye, refusing to give us his name as he leaves.

“People are very kind to me, Nguyen offers. “Can you tell them I am so happy?”

Coming to America

Running a restaurant has been a challenge, but even before Nguyen started working at Lang Van, life was not easy. “Before I leave my country, I was poor,” she says. Nguyen was born September 4, 1974 in Tuy Hoa, in what was then South Vietnam as the 14-year long Vietnam War drew to a close, .

“She didn’t have any parents [and] she didn’t have any education,” said Henry Tran, translating

Nguyen’s Vietnamese in a November 2017 oral history interview that Nguyen and her two children did with Southern Foodways Alliance. Nguyen was in her early 20s when she met and married Tran, but the couple didn’t stay together long. Tran left to find work in America, leaving Nguyen behind for five years. Once Tran was settled, he brought her back with him to Charlotte in 1999.

“I came here to America,” Nguyen says. “I am so lucky.”

But life was hard for the 26-year-old newcomer to the U.S. Nguyen and her husband stayed with friends and acquaintances from Vietnam, at one point living out of their car for three months. Then one day, with only five dollars in her pocket, Nguyen stepped through Lang Van’s door into the bamboo festooned foyer.

“She saw that the place [and] the customers were really friendly,” said Alice Tran translating her mother’s words in the 2017 interview. “She wanted to help the customers and make them happier. So that’s why she applied for the job.”

Lang Van’s owner No Duong took Nguyen under her wing. After working in Asian restaurants in Charlotte since the early 1980s, Duong’s family opened Lang Van in 1990. The name translates to Land of the Tattooed Men and comes from a myth-shrouded third-century BCE kingdom that is believed to be the forerunner of Vietnam.

No Duong’s brother, Cuong Duong, subsequently opened another Vietnamese restaurant, Ben Thanh, named for an open-air market in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) that has been in operation since the 19th century.

At Lang Van, Nguyen worked diligently, learned the ropes and rose steadily through the ranks. By 2004, she was part owner of the restaurant. In 2009, when No Duong moved to California to be with family, Nguyen took full ownership of Lang Van.

“One of the owners couldn’t work here anymore, but they loved the customers” Alice said in 2017, translating her mother’s words. “They made my mom promise to make the customers happy. Mom promised, so now she’s working [hard] to honor her words.”

Good morning, Vietnam

With her newfound influx of funds, Nguyen has paid her bills, but she’s also paying it forward. She’s recently given each member of her staff $1,000. On the day Queen City Nerve visits the restaurant, three employees cheerfully display envelopes filled with $500 each that Nguyen had given them that day. Nguyen is relieved just to pay rent.

“I usually keep this to myself, but today I tell you,” she confides. Through April and May, the restaurant was able to pay it’s $4,700 per month rent in full, but in June, Nguyen fell short. Luckily, she has a great relationship with her landlord which she’s been developing since No Duong owned the spot.

So when she called to say she was short for June, the landlord told her anything she could pay was fine, Nguyen recalls. She paid $3,300 and will deliver the remaining balance shortly.

As for the rest of the money, it has finally given Nguyen a chance to take a little time off. She usually works from 9 a.m. to 1 a.m., but recently, she found some precious moments to spend with a customer named Alison. She’s a cancer patient, Nguyen says haltingly.

“She’s only 34 years old. Usually I don’t go anywhere but here. The last month it was not busy and I got the time. I come home with her. I would sit with her every week.” Nguyen pauses as her eyes fill with tears. “She passed away two weeks ago.”

This poignant vignette illustrates why Lang Van is so essential to so many people in Charlotte.

Yes, it is an exceptional restaurant, many say the best in the city. And on one level perhaps Charlotteans have fought for Lang Van because they were damned if they were going to see another institution like the Manor Theatre or Carpe Diem disappear.

“It’s an icon, and Dan Nguyen is an ambassador for the city,” says Central Piedmont Community College English instructor Amy Bagwell. When CPCC presents its spring literary festival Sensoria,

Bagwell and her colleagues take the visiting writers to Lang Van each year because they want the literary luminaries to experience the finest restaurant Charlotte has to offer, Bagwell maintains. Amy Bloom, Tracy K. Smith, Ben Marcus, Chris Abani, Carolyn Forché, Richard Blanco, and Li-Young Lee, for whom Dan kept her doors open late, have all been to the Southeast Asian eatery on Shamrock and loved it.

That still doesn’t explain the emotional attachment people have for the 30-year-old family owned restaurant. Perhaps Nguyen’s embrace of her customers as a kind of extended family is a potent force in unsettling times. More than a restaurant, Lang Van is an accepting homespun hub for a city that may be growing too quickly for the connective tissue of community to catch up.

It’s only fitting that the Queen City’s quintessential eatery may well be a joint started by refugees welcomed to America after fleeing war and poverty in their homeland. It means there may be hope for other refugees currently incarcerated at our borders, if only we as a country can turn to our better angels.

“I love America,” Nguyen maintains. “Before I came here, I had no money, no education, nothing. I slept in my car for three months. Now I have a little bit.”

Once again, Nguyen’s eyes grow misty.

“Everybody in the world I love. I wish them well. No more sickness. No more troubles. We’ll be okay.”

STILL STANDING

Lang Van back on stable ground after pandemic struggles

The quaint, faded green restaurant glows with an open sign on, and clear glass doors with mask mandated posters taken off. Chairs patiently sit waiting for customers to fill them as tables stand strong to allow space for families and individuals alike to eat good food with good company.

As I walk into Lang Van Vietnamese restaurant in east Charlotte, I get a familiar feeling. I am met with a warm greeting from the owner, Dan Nyguen.

Nguyen is short in stature. Light and thin, with radiant skin and a glowing smile. Her hair sits back into a low ponytail with loose pieces of hair framing her face. She graciously offers me a Vietnamese coffee with a soft grin. I accept as I sink into the green-cushioned booth. The hour is dead; the quietness emphasizes the bamboo curtains and glass bottles that line the booths of Lang Van,

the Vietnamese restaurant that Nugyen has owned and operated since 2009. Employees approach the table with water and appetizers without hesitation. Hospitality is a priority here.

Over 30 small-businesses in Charlotte closed during COVID. Lang Van was looking at a similar fate in the summer of 2020, when Queen City Nerve wrote about community efforts to fundraise for the east Charlotte staple. The business felt the same economic distress as other small restaurants across the country after being forced to close their dine-in areas due to COVID restrictions.

Known for their hospitable staff, delectable dishes, and an owner with incredible memory, Lang Van is one of Charlotte’s gems. In efforts to save the beloved restaurant, Lang Van’s customers and neighbors raised more than $63,000 — $33,000

over the desired goal — in 2020.

To this day, customers still donate on top of what they pay for their meal while dining in or grabbing takeout. These are gestures that Nguyen will never forget and aims to pay back in some way.

“Yeah, they helped me a lot. And right now, my heart, I remember every night, every night,” Nguyen says as she pats her hand to her chest. “Sometimes on holidays, I help people with presents.”

Another fundraiser, organized by Remy Thurston to raise funds for a Lang Van employee who was diagnosed with blood cancer early in 2022, raised more than $30,000 through the sale of T-shirts that sport the exterior of the restaurant in Lang Van’s iconic green. The description for the fundraiser describes the cozy spot to be “part of your extended family here in Charlotte.” All the proceeds went directly to the affected employee.

Nguyen said the employee is still out of work while wrapping up her chemotherapy treatments, but she hopes to be back in the restaurant soon.

Orlean, an employee that’s worked for Dan for eight years, describes Dan as “a beautiful person.”

“She’s like my mother, you know?” Orlean added. “I don’t have a mother here. [I came] here in 2008, so I didn’t have an opportunity, you know, working.”

“I knocked on doors, you know, ‘Hey, I need

work.’ … One day, [Nguyen] called and said, ‘Hey. Do you want a place for working?’” Orlean recalls. She remembers taking three buses to get to Lang Van at the time. Their relationship blossomed from there.

Nguyen, who arrived in America to join her husband in 1999 and struggled to get by, even living out of her car for a short period, does what she can to help others like Orlean who find themselves in a similar situation.

Her strengths are in allowing her emotions to show, remembering many of her customers by name and acting with a selfless demeanor. Nguyen’s pure character is cemented by the testimonies of her from employees.

“A lot of people love my employees. They love me. They love everybody,” Dan gleans, becoming teary-eyed. “And I don’t care for myself. I never think for myself. My babies are happy, my employees are happy, and customers are happy.”

Despite the struggles that the pandemic brought on, the future of Lang Van looks to be stable for now. Nguyen’s unwavering dedication to help and care for others keeps her employees standing right by her side, and customers steadily streaming through Lang Van’s doors.

Pg.

SUDOKU

TRIVIA TEST

CROSSWORD

1. ANIMAL KINGDOM: What is a baby hedgehog called?

2. MOVIES: Which 1960s movie features a character named Holly Golightly?

3. HISTORY: In which country did the Easter Rising of 1916 take place?

4. GEOGRAPHY: Which U.S. state is bordered by the states of Washington, Oregon, Montana, Utah, Wyoming and Nevada?

5. LITERATURE: What do the initials in J.D. Salinger’s name stand for?

6. GEOMETRY: How many sides does a heptagon have?

7. TELEVISION: Richard Dawson was the original host of which TV game show?

8. GENERAL KNOWLEDGE: Which gymnast was the first to score a perfect 10 in Olympic competition?

9. U.S. STATES: Which state’s official animal is a red fox?

PLACE A NUMBER IN THE EMPTY BOXES IN SUCH A WAY THAT EACH ROW ACROSS, EACH COLUMN DOWN AND EACH SMALL 9-BOX SQUARE CONTAINS ALL OF THE NUMBERS ONE TO NINE.

10. MEDICAL: What is the common name of a condition called tussis?

LIFESTYLE

AERIN IT OUT NODA GONNA NODA

A funky, rainy Saturday funday

Normally, a rainy Saturday is my ultimate excuse to put on my biggest sweats, curl up on the couch and binge-rewatch the Harry Potter movies. But one recent such Saturday in early September required me to tuck away the only child in me and prepare for socialization, which landed me in an Uber to JackBeagle’s in NoDa.

For some, NoDa represents the “grungy”/rougharound-the-edges face of Charlotte, for others, it’s a historical home for the struggling artist that will fight tooth and nail to keep NoDa NoDa. Sure, there are new players in the NoDa game since I threw a tantrum when my parents wouldn’t co-sign my move to Highland Mill Lofts (or my hippie phase) seven years ago, but major players like Growlers Pourhouse, Heist, Noda 101, Ever Andalo (yes, I know the name and menu changes are still up for debate), Dog Bar, Blind Pig, Sanctuary, and of course, JackBeagle’s remain the same. And therefore, the

fabric remains largely intact — worn in and comfy.

You know the rides with drunk friends where you are filled simultaneously with instant regret for the driver and endless gratitude that you weren’t the one who requested it?

It was that kind of ride. We pulled up in front of Jackbeagle’s.

I took a sigh of relief knowing that the secondhand embarrassment had come to an end but refuge was still a few rainy steps and four ID checks away — which may as well be two blocks in a downpour for a Black girl with natural hair.

I pulled my leather jacket over my bun and beelined it to the door, my plans quickly thwarted by my girlfriend chatting up a familiar face just outside the door. “Now she knows I ain’t tryin’ to get my hair wet,” I thought as I rolled my eyes and tried to squeeze past them.

Peeking beneath the collar of my jacket, my eyes met with the bouncer whose familiar wide grin seemed to be getting a good laugh at my expense. A pillar of the

community, Sherman has been there perched on a stool just inside or just outside the door of Jackbeagle’s every time I’ve visited, usually donning the same sheepish grin. Something about him reminds me of the sweet version of Gort, the junkman, in Halloweentown II.

“Pray for me,” I said to him, shaking off the rainwater that had accumulated in the crease of my jacket. He giggled, his shoulders vibrating while shaking his head in solidarity, “I will.” I turned to take in the familiar chaos of the interior bar.

Patrons standing over barstools, hoping to sneak in a quick shot and a beer inside where it’s less crowded, the remnants of their cheesesteaks strewn on an unoccupied table, and groups of girls waiting in line for the bathroom leading out to the back patio. I wasn’t greeted by the respite of refreshing AC. Instead, the mugginess of the summer rain mixed with the smell of wet dog, beer, and B.O. hanging in the air. Yummy.

Live music out back meant we’d be outside anyway. About 75% of the patrons were scattered under the awning, waiting to order drinks, or snacking at the hightop tables completely unbothered by the shoulder-toshoulder crowd slowly filling up the space and cutting off any crossbreeze. Not a solitary stool to rest my loins.

I hung back for as long as I could, fearing a claustrophobia-induced panic attack. Beneath one of the occupied tables, a pup, maybe a Maltese, caught my eye as it rolled around in a dirty puddle of rainwater. My brows furrowed at the thought of having to wring out my pet before leaving the bar, but then I saw humans doing virtually the same thing, dancing without a care for the

rain or the rhythm. No judgment, do ya thang dog.

It was only a matter of time before those same rhythms and the sounds of funk and soul pulled our drunken party close to the stage and out from under the comfort of overhead covering. My girlfriend placed a cider in my hand, grabbed my arm, and pulled me through the crowd into the drizzling rain. Protesting would’ve been in vain, but oddly enough, I was actually feeling the Chicago funky jazz band, Sneezy.

The lead singer, a cherub-faced white guy clad in a red tie-dye t-shirt, bolo tie, a bandana-wrapped wide-brim fedora atop what must have been a killer curly fro, and Chacolike sandals sat cross legged on stage belting out adlibs in the form of Bill Withers (“Ain’t No Sunshine”). Bandmates rubbed his exposed belly attempting to stand him up and this comedic assist quickly devolved into a saxophone solo introed by what sounded like Salt-N-Pepa’s “Whatta Man.”

I couldn’t believe my ears as I watched this merry band of misfits with the soul of Black folk perform for, well, not Black folk — and those non-Black folk were eating it up!

“Y’all know y’all Black right?!” I said as the lead singer stepped off stage for a break. He had to do a doubletake curious as to whether or not he heard me correctly and then a grin spread across his face. “That’s the best compliment we’ll get all night,” he said laughing, “All of our musical inspirations are.”

After that, getting a bowl of Thai Mac to go was the icing on the cake. Despite all the change, NoDa is still gonna NoDa and I ain’t mad at it.

INFO@QCNERVE.COM

LIFESTYLE

HOROSCOPE

Sept. 21 - 27 Sept. 28 - OCT. 4

ARIES (March 21 to April 19) This week could offer more opportunities for ambitious Lambs eager to get ahead. But, don’t rush into making decisions until you’ve checked for possible hidden problems.

TAURUS (April 20 to May 20) Some light begins to shine on professional and/or personal situations that have long eluded explanation. Best advice: Don’t rush things. All will be made clear in time.

GEMINI (May 21 to June 20) Although you might want to protest what seems to be an unfair situation, it’s best to keep your tongue and temper in check for now. The full story hasn’t yet come out.

CANCER (June 21 to July 22) Work prospects are back on track. But, watch what you say. A thoughtless comment to the wrong person — even if it’s said in jest — could delay or even derail your progress.

LEO (July 23 to August 22) A colleague might try to goad you into saying or doing the wrong thing. It’s best to ignore the troublemaker, even if they rile your royal self. Your supporters stand with you.

VIRGO (August 23 to September 22) Be careful not to let your on-the-job zealousness create resentment with co-workers, who might feel you shut them out. Prove them wrong by including them in your project.

BORN THIS WEEK: You are a delightful paradox. You like things neat and tidy. But, you’re also a wonderful host who can throw a really great party.

LIBRA (September 23 to October 22) Although it’s not quite what you hoped for, use your good business sense to make the most of what you’re being offered at this time. Things will improve down the line.

SCORPIO (October 23 to November 21) A more positive picture of what lies ahead is beginning to take shape. But there are still too many gaps that need to be filled in before you make definitive plans.

SAGITTARIUS (November 22 to December 21)

Continue to hold onto the reins so that you don’t charge willy-nilly into a situation that might appear attractive on the surface, but that actually lacks substance.

CAPRICORN (December 22 to January 19) The Sea Goat’s merrier side dominates this week, and this means that, despite your usual busy schedule, you’ll be able to squeeze in parties and all sorts of fabulous, fun times.

AQUARIUS (January 20 to February 18) You’ll find that people are happy to help you deal with some difficult situations. And, of course, knowing you, you’ll be happy to return those favors anytime. Won’t you?

PISCES (February 19 to March 20) Give that special someone in your personal life a large, loving dollop of reassurance. That will go a long way toward restoring the well-being of your ailing relationship.

ARIES (March 21 to April 19) change that you’d hoped for is down the line. But, you still need to be patient until more explanations are forthcoming. Continue to keep your enthusiasm in check.

TAURUS (April 20 to May 20) Your social life expands as new friends come into your life. But, while you’re having fun, your practical side can also see some positive business potential within your new circle.

GEMINI (May 21 to June 20) Your workplace situation continues to improve. Look for advantages you might have missed while all the changes were going on around you. A trusted colleague can help.

CANCER (June 21 to July 22) Resist the urge to hunker down in your bunker until things ease up. Instead, get rid of that woe-is-me attitude by getting up and getting out to meet old friends or make new ones.

LEO (July 23 to August 22) Now that you’re back enjoying the spotlight again, you should feel reenergized and ready to take on the challenge of bringing those big, bold plans of yours to completion.

VIRGO (August 23 to September 22) A former friend would like to repair a relationship you two once enjoyed. Your positive response could have an equally positive impact on your life. Think about it.

BORN THIS WEEK: You are a wonderful matchmaker who can bring people together to form long-lasting relationships.

LIBRA (September 23 to October 22) Resist making impulsive decisions. Stay on that steady course, as you continue to work out workplace problems. Be patient. All will soon be back in balance.

SCORPIO (October 23 to November 21) You might feel confident about taking a promising offer, but stay alert for what you’re not being told about it. Don’t fret. Time is on your side.

SAGITTARIUS (November 22 to December 21) People dear to you might be planning a way to show appreciation for all you’ve done for them. Accept the honor graciously. Remember, you deserve it.

CAPRICORN (December 22 to January 19) Congratulations! Your self-confidence is on the rise. This could be a good time to tackle those bothersome situations you’ve avoided both at home and at work.

AQUARIUS (January 20 to February 18) You feel obligated to return a favor. (Of course, you do.) But, heed advice from those close to you and do nothing until you know for sure what’s being asked of you.

PISCES (February 19 to March 20) Your loving reassurance helped revive a once-moribund relationship. But, be wary of someone who might try to do something negative to reverse this positive turn of events.

PUZZLE ANSWERS

SAVAGE LOVE WINDOW SHOPPING

Watch where you’re pointing that thing

At a party recently I was chatting with a parent who mentioned that he lets his (elementary school-age) kids look at porn. He had a laissezfaire attitude about the whole thing, but I found it disturbing. Am I being a judge-y childless witch?

There were no middle schools where I grew up, so an “elementary school age” child could be a 6-year-old first grader or 14-year-old eighth grader. For the record: I obviously don’t think a 6-year-old should view porn, and a responsible parent would not allow a young child to view pornography. I also know it’s almost impossible for a parent to stop a motivated 14-year-old kid from looking at porn. So, if this man’s children are older, perhaps he said, “lets his kids,” when he meant, “can’t stop his kids.” Whatever his kids’ ages, you can’t stop him from not stopping his kid from looking at porn, but you are free to offer him some unsolicited advice. (Is there anything parents enjoy more?) You could also send him the clip of Billie Eilish on Howard Stern talking about how watching porn at a young age really messed with her head.

My husband likes to be naked all the time at home. I think he should cover up when he’s in front of the big window in our front room and can be seen from the street, but he says I am being body shame-y. What do you think?

I dated a guy who thought he should be able to walk around in front of his large picture windows at home, naked and sometimes hard (morning wood-y), and he was adamant about it. And then one day the police came and arrested him for indecent exposure. Anyway, you should put up curtains and/or plant some tall bushes in front of those picture windows.

I’m a 44-year-old who’s on the dating scene for the first time in 11 years. A few months ago, I hit it off with a hot, hot guy. Great! My problem/ question is about distractions during sex, and I need a sanity check. Once during intercourse, Hot Guy called out an answer to an NPR news quiz that was playing in the background. Is this behavior

rude? I’m operating under the assumption that if one’s mind wanders during sex, one should at least pretend to be focused.

“Maybe this letter writer should’ve chosen a more appropriate time for intimate relations — like when This American Life is playing,” said Peter Sagal, the host of Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!, National Public Radio’s long-running news quiz program. “Still, I completely understand why the letter writer would be offended by this man’s behavior. First, by thinking our show would be appropriate as an audio background for lovemaking — although Bill Kurtis is known, for good reason, as the Barry White of anchormen. And second, the fact that he actually answered questions out loud while in flagrante. But the letter writer shouldn’t think he was completely ignoring her to concentrate on us; our questions aren’t that hard.”

Follow Peter Sagal on Twitter @PeterSagal.

Been playing with one of my fellow guys recently — I’m a gay guy — who says he’s into men, but who absolutely refuses to let me (or anyone else) touch his butt. What is this?

The Ass Ceiling. (It’s also a boundary of his, and one you must respect — but you’re free to ask him about it. Conversations, even follow-up conversations, about limits, boundaries, and reasonable expectations are not inherently coercive. Wanting to better understand a “no” doesn’t mean you didn’t hear it and don’t respect it. But at the start of a follow-up conversation like that, you need to emphasize that you did, indeed, hear that “no,” and will, of course, continue to respect it.)

I’m a 40-year-old cis het man. For more than 20 years — most of my life so far — I’ve been obsessed with one woman. We were never a couple, and I haven’t had contact with her since my mid-20s. How to get past this? The easiest way would probably be to start a relationship with another woman. Or I could get therapy — but I don’t know if my insurance would cover it.

Some days my Instagram feed is mostly memes about how straight guys will do literally anything to avoid getting the therapy they clearly need … and your question brought every one of those memes to mind. I mean, you’ve been miserable for almost two decades and you can’t be bothered to check whether your health insurance covers the therapy you so clearly need? Jesus, dude. Make that phone call, get some therapy, don’t date anyone until you’ve been seeing your therapist for at least a year.

My husband and I (bio female, newly transmasc) recently became poly. We have created a “closed kitchen table poly quad” with our two best friends. The breakdown is one older married

couple, one younger engaged couple, and it’s getting serious. We are now talking about moving in together. Any tips on living together for poly newbies? I think we have a chance at making it work long-term, but I don’t want to add pressure.

Here’s a tip for poly newbies: Don’t move in with other singles, couples, triads, battalions, etc., you just started dating. If moving in together is the right thing to do, moving in together will still be the right thing three years from now. If it’s the wrong thing to do, moving in together will be a disaster three months from now. Take it slow.

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