The Blotter
Good Times Roll in Gastonia: A man who does not have a driver’s license stole his roommate’s car and drove to Gastonia. Once he reached that hotbed of nightlife, they guy handed over the car to three of his buddies. The troublemaking trio cruised around town in the stolen Chevy for several hours before wrecking…
Music Menu
THURSDAY 6.23 Chatham County Line – CCL singer and guitarist Dave Wilson’s songwriting is laced with a Dylan-like whine and grind. You can hear it on several Wilson originals and the band’s faithful version of “I Shall Be Released.” The group maneuvers the roots highways with rocking numbers and plaintive tearjerkers that incorporate just the…
We Just Wanted To Learn Spanish
“So, do you have a place to hide?,” asked one of my fellow students’ emails a few weeks ago. My wife and I were in Cochabamba, Bolivia, studying Spanish at Escuela Ruwenwasi in Barrio Juan XIII, on the west side of town. We were staying with a local family and kept the TV on almost…
See & Do
June 22 – Wednesday Proving that Oklahoma! isn’t as “fer” as you can go when you seek rusticity in an American musical, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers transports us to the Far West. Out in the terr’tory, Adam Pontipee becomes a dubious role model for his younger brethren when he rustles up a bride on…
Sit & Spin
Miles Davis Round About Midnight Columbia Legacy Edition So, after shelling out a good portion of your annual salary in 2000 for the six-disc box set, Miles Davis & John Coltrane, The Complete Columbia Recordings (1955-61), did you really believe the Miles/Coltrane-era vault was finally bare? Silly jazz fan — so naive. As ‘Round About…
Wheeler Ready to Roll
It’s probably the worst kept political secret in town: Former Charlotte City Council member Lynn Wheeler is laying the groundwork for another at-large run. Wheeler, a staunch supporter of building the new basketball arena downtown, was voted out of office two years ago in the Republican primary. She had hacked off too many conservatives who…
Stargazer
Cancer – The Crab (June 21 – July 21) You are concentrating on completion of important work that will give your life shape and definition for a long time in the future. You are required to be thorough, contemplative, and communicative all at once. It is a tall order but stresses of the last two…
Soundboard
Wednesday, Jun. 22 Breakfast Club Dub Access ReggaeCorkscrew, Huntersville Jared Allan & Co.Double Door Inn Rising Lion ReggaeThe Evening Muse Wrinkle Neck Mules; Lascivious BiddiesExcelsior Club ChandraGarden Cafe Open Mic w/ Ansel CouchThe Gin Mill Wizard’s Road ShowIrish Cue, Cornelius Gabe and Friends Milestone Riddle of Steel w/ Fingers Cut Megamachine & Hansom BanjoPhil &…
No. 1 Nationwide
Creative Loafing – Charlotte won a first-place AltWeekly Award, presented at the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies’ annual convention in San Diego on Friday, June 17. “Flawed Priorities,” a CL cover story by Tara Servatius, originally published April 28, 2004, won the first place prize in the Education category for newspapers with circulation over 50,000. The…
Lurch, Quiver and Fly
Eric Anderson has been around Charlotte since bovine outnumbered bankers. Anderson has been the iron man of visual art in Charlotte, quietly churning out work which any world-class city would be proud to call its own. He’s been well received and well collected, with little fanfare since his arrival at UNC-Charlotte in 1967. Notice of…
A Sight For Soaring Eyes
Few filmmakers today bother to push the envelope. Even fewer attempt to shred it altogether. Hayao Miyazaki is one rare maverick. A venerated figure in the field of animation, Miyazaki makes movies the way other people hallucinate during fever dreams. No sight is too outlandish, no concept too radical, no idea too extreme. In the…
Rainmaker to the Powerful
For a while, it seemed as if Michael Marsicano had fallen off the face of the earth. In 1999, the nationally celebrated arts fundraising dynamo took a final bow at the Arts & Science Council to thunderous applause from the city’s beautiful people. Marsicano then packed up his things and moved to the top desk…
Disneyworld At Dana
Round One of the Tom-Tom shootout has been decided – and it’s a clear victory for Vance. Last December, after 34 years of sterling service to Central Piedmont Community Theatre and the cause of Charlotte musical theater, venerable Tom Vance was told to clean out his office. In the process, the reins of CP Summer…
Film Clips
New Releases THE PERFECT MAN With the lovely Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants still in theaters, only the most ardent Lizzie McGuire fanatic would conceivably make this imperfect movie her top choice for a night out with the girls. Hilary Duff, a personable but one-note actress who seems to be playing Lizzie even when her…
The South Park Symphonettes
Chairperson Bitsy Harrison: This meeting of the South Park Symphonettes will come to order, y’all. OK, let’s start up, people. . .OK, thank you. Y’all know why we’re here. The paper might’ve run a story and some letters about us ´n’ everybody saving our spots at the Symphony Pops concerts and how awful we are…
Florida As Second Chance
The Orange Blossom Special by Betsy Carter (Algonquin Books, 298 pages, $23.95) Florida has always beckoned to schemers, dreamers, lovers and losers. There’s something about the Spanish moss and swampy terrain that attracted people looking for a new start – or a way out. Some arrived on the famed Orange Blossom Special, the first train…
View From The Couch
THE BROWNING VERSION (1951). Viewers should prepare to have their hearts, if not exactly broken, at least heavily pummeled by this exquisite adaptation of Terence Rattigan’s play. Rattigan himself wrote the script, with director Anthony Asquith effectively orchestrating the proceedings so that, in spite of its limited setting, this never feels like simply a claustrophobic…
The Elephant & The Porn Star
QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “No matter what they do, the money is going to help elect Republicans to the House.” – Carl Forti, communications director of the National Republican Congressional Campaign. TUESDAY, JUNE 14 Moral relativism, as per the quote above, was embraced by Republicans in Washington, a break from their recent role as the…
CL Recommends
In The Company of Soldiers by Rick Atkinson (Owl Books). Pulitzer-winning historian Atkinson (An Army At Dawn) accompanied the 101st Airborne Division from Fort Campbell, KY, to Baghdad. His account is far from the whitewash produced by many embedded correspondents, but is no less laudatory of the soldiers he got to know. Atkinson’s recurring themes…
Hail to the Chefs
Seven chefs. Five restaurants. Five states. A heap of driving. And one speeding ticket (curse those Savannah traffic cops). I’ve spent my recent weekends trekking to the restaurants of some of the Southeast’s finest practitioners of its native regional cuisines. Of course, that could include barbecue pit masters who cook out of remote rural shacks,…
News of the Weird
LEAD STORY: Yamaha Corp. recently introduced the MyRoom, a customizable, soundproof, shedlike structure with 27 square feet of floor space, for installation inside notoriously crowded Japanese homes, so that a resident can get privacy (or be exiled if he or she gets annoying). The company expects a sales surge in 2006, when Japan’s first wave…
Arts Agenda
Classical Music Charlotte Symphony Performs Pink Floyd Guitarist/Vocalist Randy Jackson joins the symphony along with a full band to perform Pink Floyd classics. Fri., June 24, 8 p.m. $22-$44. Ovens Auditorium, 2700 E. Independence Blvd. 704-522-6500. Summer Pops at Symphony Park The annual series presented by the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra. On the Lawn. www.charlottesymphony.org. June…
John Currence
John Currence looks like a man preparing for battle. He greets us in City Grocery’s upstairs bar with a pink bandana wrapped around his head and a burning cigarette inhaled down to its nub in his left hand. His smile comes easily and he laughs with a muscular chuckle, but frenetic machinery is obviously working…
Letters
Not True Christians Karen Shugart’s article on gays and the church (June 15) was interesting in many ways, but in the end didn’t add up to a real understanding of the complex issue of gays and the church. The first misunderstanding was in the very title of the article: “They’re Christian. They’re Gay. Get Used…
Great Scott
I met Scott Peacock, executive chef of Watershed in Decatur, GA, and co-author with Edna Lewis of The Gift of Southern Cooking, around 1991, just after he was laid off from his job as chef at the Georgia governor’s mansion. We were both at turning points in our lives, considerably depressed and idle enough to…
Frank Stitt
The first bite delivers a gentle surge of corn, familiar yet ardent. I can pick up the barely perceptible trace of nutty parmesan in the second mouthful. The texture is stout but also silkier than expected. It tastes nothing like the instant goop I vigorously sidestepped as a kid. The richness of the dish seems…
Come Fry With Me
As a kid from up North, I have long held a romantic notion that if you grew up in the South, you spent your summers sitting under a willowy tree with a glass of lemonade in one hand and a piece of fried chicken in the other. I was fascinated by fried chicken, which I…
Ben and Karen Barker
Magnolia Grill does not look the way I imagined it would. For a nationally recognized bastion of New Southern cuisine, the restaurant seems positively… spare. In fact, it more closely resembles an immaculate meat-n-three joint. (It was a health food store before Magnolia Grill opened in 1986.) Not that it doesn’t radiate welcome. Art depicting…
Female Aficionados
As a woman, I get especially proud when I meet a dynamic, talented female winemaker. You know… a chick with balls. She’s not afraid of the good ol’ boy wine industry, and arrives on the scene full of enthusiasm. Women have made considerable advancement in the wine ranks, thanks to the commitment of many stalwart…
Michael and Laurence Gottlieb
Michael and Laurence Gottlieb both knew they wanted to be chefs when they grew up. After all, food has been the family business since 1884. Their great-grandfather, Isadore, founded Gottlieb’s Bakery, a Savannah institution for more than a hundred years. Gottlieb’s earned a place in the city’s collective memory for its chocolate chewies, an addictive…
Wine List
Wine Classes The interactive classes will explore the essentials of wine and food pairing, tasting techniques and trends in winemaking. Wed., 7pm. $25. Maggiano’s Little Italy, 4400 Sharon Rd. 704-916-2300. Wine Classes for Women A series of classes with three classes per series. Mon & Tues evenings. Salute Wine & Provisions, 2912 Selwyn Ave. 704-343-9095.…
Louis Osteen
Louis Osteen relaxes on the deck of his Fish Camp bar, his shaggy head bopping to the fiery blues playing overhead. He casually flips the pages of the New York Times spread out in front of him. I suspect this is a Sunday morning ritual for Osteen, before the blitz of lunch orders sends him…
Good Eats
All Around Town Anntony’s Caribbean, 6434-F West Sugarcreek Rd., 704-598-6863; 2001 E. 7th St., 704-342-0749. A hint of the tropics; rotisserie chicken with Jamaican jerk sauce, ribs, Paradise Island fish special, curries, and Caribbean styled greens. $$ Azteca, 116 Woodlawn Rd., 704-525-5110; 9709 Independence Blvd., 704-814-9877; 1863 W. Franklin Blvd. (Gastonia), 704-866-7574. A favorite of…
Top Toques
Today’s star chefs are part of American celebrity. Most of these chefs have a cadre of publicists, press agents and marketing directors. Names like Wolfgang Puck, Todd English, Toms Colicchio and Keller, and Charlies Trotter and Palmer are household names. Star chef products show up on our grocery stores’ shelves while glossy photos of these…
Raw Power, Baby, Can’t Be Beat
And on the fifth day, God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures…” And the next day, after God slapped together Adam and Eve, He said unto them, “Now go forth and eat sushi.” Standing naked before the Almighty in the Garden of Eden, Eve turned to Adam and said, “Eat raw fish? Is…
Sunday Music for a Saturday Night
From reality television to “keeping it real,” popular culture in the 2000s claims to give folks an authentic slice of the world. So why does John Lennon’s plea, “Just gimme some truth,” seem more appropriate now than ever? The pervasive feeling that everyone is on the make or on the take nourishes a craving for…
The Next Generation
After graduating from culinary school, the most promising chefs spend several years gaining hands-on experience from the already established top chefs. Some Charlotteans were under the mistaken impression that the opening of Johnson & Wales University’s culinary college in 2004 would instantly produce a plethora of “star” chefs here. But think about it. Could a…
Breaking News
ARTS FUNDING SURVIVES BY SKIN OF ITS TEETH McCrory lands role in new film Revenge of the Philistines. CHARLOTTE AIR TRAVELERS TO SOON START GOING THROUGH “PUFFER” MACHINES Are you thinking of Marilyn Monroe in Seven Year Itch too? AREA OUTBACK STEAKHOUSE WAITERS CHARGED WITH “SKIMMING” CREDIT CARDS The charges for Australian porn and 100…
Rock & Roll Books
So You Wanna Be A Rock & Roll Star: How I Machine-Gunned a Roomful of Record Executives and Other True Tales from a Drummer’s Life by Jacob Slichter (Broadway, 304 pages, $21.95) Passion Is a Fashion: The Real Story of the Clash by Pat Gilbert (DaCapo Press, 404 pages, $18.95) Jacob Slichter’s entertaining memoir recounting…
Declaration of Independence (Boulevard)
This much is certain: There’s a lot of great food to be found outside of the so-called Charlotte Center City. And while there are lots of intriguing, under-the-radar establishments all across our ever-expanding “New South” burg – Dilworth, Elizabeth, NoDa and Plaza-Midwood come to mind – there’s also an underappreciated culinary hotbed right underneath our…
Seeing Stars
I’ve been told I’m psychic — make that extremely psychic. “You’re extremely psychic,” a palm reader told me five years ago. “Really?” I squealed. “Me? Extremely psychic?” “Yes. Look here,” she said, pointing to a pale cluster of wrinkles next to my (too short-looking) lifeline, “you have a perfect five-point star in the palm of…
Follow No More
What do you do when the music you play doesn’t fit into any of the genres so carefully (and successfully) targeted by major labels? If you’re white, like Dave Matthews or John Mayer, you are considered “eclectic.” You tour and build a word-of-mouth fan base with tape trading and an internet presence. When your all-important…
McCrory Wields Art Axe
Last fall, indignant arts leaders said Mayor Pat McCrory wasn’t qualified to critique the public art they picked for the light rail line. It now appears it was arts leaders who weren’t qualified to play politics at McCrory’s level. Until recently, it seemed the art community had won its battle with the mayor over whether…
