Aug 27 – Sep 2, 2014

Aug 27 - Sep 2, 2014 / Vol. 28 / No. 27

Cover Story

You’re so Charlotte if …

Back in early July, we launched a contest for our readers to help us ponder Charlotte’s identity. Borrowing a 25-year tradition from fellow altweekly Nashville Scene, we asked folks to finish the sentence, “You’re so Charlotte if …” Within a few weeks, an unrelated trend developed on social media, spanning Miami to my hometown of…

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For: Neo-noir nonsense

SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR**DIRECTED BY Robert Rodriguez and Frank MillerSTARS Mickey Rourke, Jessica Alba Co-conspirators Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller serve up a steaming pile of sloppy seconds with Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, the long-delayed sequel to the 2005 hit Sin City. When the original SC hit theaters nine…

Matt Brunson

Life After Beth: Grave situation

LIFE AFTER BETH*1/2DIRECTED BY Jeff BaenaSTARS Aubrey Plaza, Dane DeHaan There’s one clever idea in Life After Beth, and it’s the suggestion that zombies really dig smooth jazz. When it comes to movies taking pot shots at that maligned musical genre, this concept is almost as funny as the moment in Wayne’s World 2 when…

Matt Brunson

Bizarre crimes from Charlotte police files (Aug. 28)

Alive and Well: Threatening phone calls and text messages are sent and made every day, and they aren’t anything to laugh at. Except this one. A man received a phone call in which the caller said, “You are f–king dead.” The victim was, in fact, at Hooters, probably enjoying a beer and some chicken wings.…

Ana McKenzie

Unacceptable Loss

The caller ID reads “Chattanooga Police,” and I think, “I don’t have time for this.” My daughter Ali is on the way over with friends to watch the Vandy basketball game; I need to finish boiling shrimp and spreading out newspaper on the table. “He needs to handle this on his own,” I’m thinking. “He’s…

Tina Guidry Patterson

Weekly horoscope (Aug. 28-Sept. 3)

For All Signs: The planets Venus and Mars were aligned in April of 2013. Venus, the ancient goddess of love, carries broad feminine and romantic symbolism. She resides over relationships. Mars is the warrior god and prevails over masculine territory, setting boundaries where need be. The original alignment suggests the conclusion of one relationship and…

Vivian Carol

The Cutting Edge

In the belly of a custom-outfitted truck near the kitchen door of a local restaurant, Bryan Diliberto, owner of ProChef USA, translates medieval blade mastery into a necessary skill for the 21st-century world of hospitality. “The knife-sharpening industry has come full circle. Forty or 50 years ago, guys used to sharpen knives in an alley…

Tricia Childress

Cooking to calendar

When Leah Wagner of Carlea Farms plans dinner, she doesn’t head to the grocery store for ingredients. Her pantry extends for 10 acres around the family home in Millingport, North Carolina, about an hour’s drive northeast of Charlotte. Like many area farmers, the Wagner family eats primarily what they grow. “If it’s not in season,…

Alison Leininger

CD review: David Childers’ Serpents of Reformation

David Childers is no stranger to the Charlotte music scene, having released a number of albums as a solo artist, with the Modern Don Juans and with Overmountain Men. Serpents of Reformation, released on the Concord-based Ramseur Records (The Avett Brothers, Langhorne Slim, Samantha Crain), brings forth a new sonic side of the stellar songwriter.…

Jeff Hahne

Three questions with Agnes Mbiya, owner of Divine Pies

Perhaps no dessert in the world is as quintessentially American as pie, yet the best pie in Charlotte has roots in the Congo. Though not exactly known as a key producer of bakers, it was the birthplace of Agnes Mbiya, the energetic and infectiously cheerful proprietor of Divine Pies. Step into the bakery, which sells…

Emiene Wright

Bless These Sounds Under the City duo drive each other’s talents forward

Blind dates in the music world, in which musicians try to find each other purely for professional reasons, tend to yield the same low return rates they do in regular dating: Common interests are noted and exchanged, forced conversation and awkward silences follow, clocks get watched, plausible excuses are offered and early bailouts ensue. But…

John Schacht

The November Man: Double-Oh-Never-Mind

THE NOVEMBER MAN**DIRECTED BY Roger DonaldsonSTARS Pierce Brosnan, Luke Bracey It was in 2002 that the spy trade became a young man’s game. While Pierce Brosnan was making his final appearance as James Bond in the roundly, soundly ridiculed Die Another Day, Vin Diesel came roaring to the front with xXx (which even opens with…

Matt Brunson

Charlotte’s culinary landscape is expanding …

The Charlotte restaurant scene is on the move. Beginning in late summer 2013, the culinary scene has exploded like a pubescent boy on Wheaties. This kind of growth has not been seen since the corporate steakhouse invasion of the late 1990s and early 2000s that signaled Charlotte’s debut as a bona fide city. A semi-resurrected…

Keia Mastrianni

Police and racism: The truth is in the numbers

Kimberly Easley’s home sits off a hilly street in a quiet corner of Mooresville. From her back deck she points to a private lake barely discernible through tall trees, admitting it’s easier to spot during the winter, when the leaves are gone. She has no nearby neighbors, which affords her a kind of serenity she…

Ana McKenzie and Erin Tracy-Blackwood

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