Cover Story
True Confessions from the Millennial Dating World
[Image-3] Let’s be honest, the dating scene and the meaning of love is different since our parents and grandparents were young whippersnappers. Facebook and dating apps weren’t around, computers may not have even existed (certainly not cellphones), marrying young and having children was normal, sex before marriage may have been taboo (depending on whether or…
Live photos: Lara Americo and Radio Lola Light Up the Evening Muse (2/15/2017)
Radio Lola opens for Lara Americo’s emotionally charged performance.
Fifty Shades Darker: Grey Lady Down
FIFTY SHADES DARKER * (out of four) DIRECTED BY James Foley STARS Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan There are at least 50 reasons why Fifty Shades Darker is almost every bit as awful as Fifty Shades of Grey, the 2015 box office smash that centered on the relationship between BDSM-lovin’ billionaire Christian Gray and mousy college…
John Wick: Chapter Two too much
JOHN WICK: CHAPTER TWO ** (out of four) DIRECTED BY Chad Stahelski STARS Keanu Reeves, Ian McShane In today’s seen-it-all world, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find action films that actually deliver on the action. Most of it is so stylized, so choreographed, so CGIed, that the chances of audience adrenaline being satisfactorily pumped has…
Cameraperson, Wait Until Dark, What a Way to Go! among new home entertainment titles
(View From The Couch is a weekly column that reviews what’s new on Blu-ray, DVD and Streaming. Ratings are on a four-star scale.) CAMERAPERSON (2016). Kirsten Johnson is a world-class documentary cinematographer whose credits include the Oscar-nominated The Invisible War, the Oscar-winning Citizenfour, and Michael Moore’s doc-blockbuster Fahrenheit 9/11. As she explains in a note…
U.S. Reset Brings New Relevance to E.L. Doctorow’s ‘Ragtime’
Things were so different in 1906, the year E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime begins. Theodore Roosevelt, a conservationist Republican, was in his second term at the White House. The wave of immigrant Jewish refugees, fleeing pogroms in Russia, was at its peak. American women would have to wait three more presidential elections before they could vote, but…
Meghan Coomes Makes Jewelry Out of Love Letters
Before Thomas and Agnes Coomes were ever married, they were separated by World War II. From the day he was deployed 1942, until he returned home safely in 1945, Thomas and Agnes wrote to each other every day. The Coomes are the grandparents of artist Meghan Coomes, and their relationship taught her the value of…
Ahmir the King Debut Looks to Lead Group of Hungry, Young CLT Rappers
Isaiah Ahmir Ford has just two classes to finish before he can graduate high school. The 18-year-old Rocky River High School student is still unclear on whether he will attend college once he’s done, but it looks like that all depends on how things go for his alter ego, Ahmir the King, who just dropped…
The Tampones To Deliver Big, Freaky Valentine at Petra’s
“I don’t know how far I should go into Alphonse’s background,” Ashby Blakely says. “Like our show, some of his story might be inappropriate.” Blakely is attempting to give a clean origin story for the World Famous Tampones, a cabaret duo he formed with Charlotte actress and PaperHouse Theater’s Artistic Director Nicia Carla. Let’s just…
Sherrell Dorsey Gets Proactive In Making CLT’s Tech Industry More Inclusive
In 2016, when Sherrell Dorsey launched The Plug, a Charlotte-based site that focused on aggregating news about people of color in the tech industry around the country, she didn’t know it would grow in popularity as quickly as it did. It blew up fast, however, and Dorsey spent much of the year traveling internationally, coming…
Everybody Needs Somebody, Even the Nacho Slobs
I was sitting inside a tacos and tapas place on East Boulevard recently with my best friend and Pretend Husband Fitz Bailey and his boyfriend Jesse Hamilton. My girlfriend, Lara Americo, was supposed to be there with us. We had planned this Saturday double date a week ago. Between downing pomegranate mimosas and the gnashing…
The Blotter: Unruly Students
Irony A 41-year-old woman called police to her home in east Charlotte last week after it seemed like a ghost had been through her home. She told officers that some unknown suspect had apparently broken into her home, because the entire place was ransacked. The only item listed on the report as stolen, however, was…
Put Valentine’s Day Out of Our Misery
Isn’t it about time we kill off this Valentine’s Day charade? Seriously. Aside from Christmas – the other holiday that’s ostensibly about one thing (the birth of Baby Jesus), but really about another (gigantic corporations selling us stuff we don’t need) – Valentine’s is the most manipulative holiday in the U.S., currently practiced every friggin’…
Bean Vegan Cuisine is Neither a Bird Nor a Plane — It’s a Meatless Restaurant With a Southern Twist
[Image-1] Charlie Foesch always knew he was a good cook. He’d prepare vegan meals for himself, his partner Roy Parkhurst and small gatherings of their friends, who would shower Foesch with praise for his culinary skills. But he never gave much thought to cooking for hundreds of people a day. “It’s such a cliché, but…
Bean Vegan’s Charlie Foesch Talks About His Other Passion: Comic Books
Charlie Foesch laughs maniacally when I ask about the superhero theme at Bean Vegan. “Now, this is very subversive,” he says in a near whisper, then grins like the Cheshire Cat. He points to the huge Captain America cutout that greets patrons when they enter Bean Vegan Cuisine, then motions to the back, behind the…
