Jul 3-9, 2013

Jul 3-9, 2013 / Vol. 27 / No. 19

Cover Story

50 years of progress down the toilet

In 1961, Democratic Governor Terry Sanford sought to repair North Carolina’s educational system, which at the time ranked in the bottom five in reading, math and science among all states. He proposed nearly doubling spending on early education and consolidating various universities into an organized UNC system. To do that, he asked the General Assembly…

John Grooms

Nom Nom brings Asian fusion to burgers

When Ronnie Yee’s Chinese ex-pat parents opened the Imperial Garden Chinese Restaurant on Independence Boulevard — before Nixon’s groundbreaking trip to China in 1972 — Chinese food was so mysterious, so exotic that Yee reports “only Charlotte women ordered the Chinese dishes. The men wanted steak.” To be successful, the Yee family did what many…

Tricia Childress

3 questions with Zachery Avant, co-owner of Good Runnings

Mountain biking may not be the first activity that comes to mind when you hear the term “gateway drug,” but it’s what fueled Zachery Avant’s appetite for all things bike-related. The 27-year-old Charlotte native is one of the founders of Good Runnings, the city’s first food-and-goods-exclusive bicycle delivery service. “Charlotte’s pretty interesting right now in…

Laura Camilo

Bizarre crimes from Charlotte police files (July 4)

Assault with a strange weapon: A 57-year-old man filed a police report after his wife allegedly picked up a piece of an old vacuum cleaner and hit him with it. In unrelated cases, a man was arguing with a friend in his driveway when, according to the report, the so-called friend picked up an old…

Ryan Pitkin

Letter to the Editor (July 4 edition)

A Call For Hosts How can a person make a difference in the world nowadays? The answers may be more up to you than you think. For the 2013-2014 school year, Education, Travel & Culture (ETC), a highly regarded nonprofit high school exchange student organization, will welcome many high school-age teenagers to the U.S. Its…

Weekly horoscope (July 4-11)

Cancer The Crab (June 20-July 21): Monitor your inner critic this week. It may be serving up a plate of neurotic guilt to interfere with your attitude. A better use of this energy calls for rising above the yada, yada of the droning ego voice. Set it aside and realize it is just the shadow…

Vivian Carol

CL roundtable discussion: Paula Deen

Editor’s note: Much has been said about celebrity chef Paula Deen and her brother Earl “Bubba” Hiers. Both are embroiled in a lawsuit, brought forth by a former employee of the restaurant Deen and Heirs co-own, that claims Deen used racist and derogatory language — even supporting the idea of a plantation-themed wedding — and…

Headlines that make us go, “WTF?”

You can’t trust headlines on social media. My boyfriend recently came across one on his Facebook newsfeed that he read aloud to me as we drove back to Charlotte after a weekend trip: “Texas Board of Education Revises Textbooks: Slaves were ‘Unpaid Interns.'” My hands gripped the steering wheel harder; I nearly ran us off…

Kimberly Lawson

Find Your Muse enters its eighth year

On a warm June night, during the eighth song about heartache and heartbreak, I found myself wanting to tell the singer-songwriters to hug it out. “I think listening to all of this on a weekly basis is going to make me better at relationships,” Pat Maholland jokes. Maholland works the Evening Muse soundboard, as he…

Jeff Hahne

The Wrong Stuff: Sondheim’s Gallery of American Antiheroes

You won’t find any heroes to root for in Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins — unless you harbor a perverse wish that Samuel Byck had succeeded in crashing a commercial DC-9 into the White House and killing President Richard M. Nixon. Nor are there any surprising plot twists as nine successful and would-be assassins of American heads…

Perry Tannenbaum

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