See & Do
Thursday, March 09 Tilting at windmills? In the face of certain defeat, Atticus Finch defends an African-American accused of rape in To Kill a Mockingbird. The beloved Harper Lee novel, adapted for the stage by Christopher Sergel, sets a spell with its famed Deep South/Jim Crow ambience at Theatre Charlotte through March 26. Martin Thompson…
Urban Explorer’s Handbook 2006
Backstage at the Visulite Theatre on a recent Saturday night, the venue’s version of rock & roll’s most mythical sanctum sanctorum was revealed as a space in transition. The Visulite’s “band room” is neither the best nor worst this writer has seen. Certainly, despite staffers’ doubts, it’s not a hell-hole on par with NYC’s infamous…
Urban Explorer’s Handbook 2006
Everybody thinks the life of a reporter is one long series of amazing, exciting adventures. If you cover restaurants, you get to dine every night on scrumptious food at glorious places like Upstream or Dolce Ristorante Italiano. If you cover music, you spend your nights hanging out backstage with the likes of Andre 3000, Ryan…
Karma Cleanser
Dear Karma Cleanser: A colleague of mine was in my cubicle bragging about how big his iPod is. This guy is a total show-off anyway, always trying to make the other kids feel inferior. So he hands me his iPod and I’m holding it while he’s showing me some porno video and, well, I don’t…
Urban Explorer’s Handbook 2006
Leaving town on NC-16, you don’t exactly get the feeling you’re entering Silicon Valley. Twisting past the Jet Ski rental lots and the java huts in a town built around a fake lake, a sign welcomes you to Denver, NC, or as the sign says, “The Denver of the East.” From the outside, Charles Hogan’s…
Here’s to Ol’ Blue Eyes and Co.
Tonight it’s on for all you swingin’ cats from way back. We’re revisiting that long lost era of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Joey Bishop and Peter Lawford, who are better known as “The Rat Pack.” So be sure to keep your drinks in the upright position and never fail to add a…
Urban Explorer’s Handbook 2006
John Marlow has witnessed a dead body move. Only once. And it didn’t happen like you see in the movies, where corpses sit up abruptly in their caskets. Still, Marlow admits that seeing a dead elderly man’s finger twitch, even briefly, was “kind of creepy.” “A lot of people will be like, ‘Are you sure…
Letters
Where’s the Edge? As a Charlottean and a longtime reader of Creative Loafing, I am really disappointed at your coverage of the CIAA tournament (“It’s Our Thing Now,” by Branna Calloway, Tara Servatius and Kandia Crazy Horse, March 1.) In particular, the article by Branna Calloway was nothing but empty fluff, with none of the…
Urban Explorer’s Handbook 2006
The inside of an ambulance is one of those exclusive places, like a jail cell, that no one really wants to see. Until a couple of weeks ago, the last time I rode inside a siren-mobile was when I was four years old. (I learned the hard way that I am deathly allergic to seafood,…
Urban Explorer’s Handbook 2006
Anne Springs Close Greenway. It’s technically in Fort Mill, but it’s a great park with 2,300 acres of forests, lakes and pastures that no one seems to know about. The 32 miles of trails are ideal for hiking, cycling or finding spots to picnic and fish (catch of the day available to members only). Located…
Urban Explorer’s Handbook 2006
“X-ray clear to the Panama City airport. Hugo six … maintain three thousand. Expect eight thousand. Within one, zero minutes. Departure control frequency one, two, eight point three, two scroll, three, three, one, two.” That’s what an air traffic controller sounds like. What it means, we’re not sure. None of the controllers at Concord Regional…
Figure it out
It’s best not to trust a man who says he never masturbates. I’m not that big on judgment, now, but as a general rule I’d say when a man claims he never masturbates you immediately have a losing situation, a total conundrum. Because you have to consider, seriously, what’s worse? The fact that he’s lying,…
Urban Explorer’s Handbook 2006
The Charlotte Bobcats Arena opened to great fanfare last fall, with a series of events geared to involve the public with the venue. Generally positive response seems to suggest the strategy has worked, as the Queen City masses steadily throng to partake of the arena’s concerts and games. However, despite pains taken to accommodate fans…
Urban Explorer’s Handbook 2006
Two weeks ago, in my “Table Dancing” column, I asked you to send in your picks for the best $10-and-under eateries in the Q.C. The e-mails didn’t flow quite like I thought they would, so I queried a variety of folks in person and assembled some suggestions from my crack team of experts (i.e., my…
Urban Explorer’s Handbook 2006
On any night in Charlotte, some 5,000 people find themselves homeless. They could be in any number of out-of-sight places: sleeping in a car, tucked beneath a highway underpass, crashing on a friend’s couch. If they’re male and it’s winter, they might find housing at the emergency shelter on Statesville Avenue. At the shelter’s previous…
Heroes and Heroines
I’m in the wrong writing field. Despite my best efforts, I haven’t been able to use the following words in a story: pulsating, throbbing, heaving, thrusting and mammaries. On Saturday, I attended a Carolina Romance Writers’ workshop for a chance to use this formally forbidden diction. (Hmmm … Forbidden Diction — that sounds like the…
Urban Explorer’s Handbook 2006
They’re watching you. On a 48-monitor video wall — a stalker’s dream — the Metrolina Regional Transportation Management Center has the 67-mile belt and most of the Charlotte-area interstates under their surveillance. Two operators man the big board 24 hours a day and can zoom in with any of the 70-plus, 360-degree pan/180-degree tilt cameras.…
Stargazer
Pisces The Fish (Feb. 18 — March 19) Your personal identity is the subject under consideration. Who are you becoming and who do you need to be? How do you wish to define yourself before the world? How can you develop an individual identity that is workable while simultaneously maintaining a personally rewarding relationship? These…
Urban Explorer’s Handbook 2006
From the sidewalk, passersby can watch pies, cakes, breads and pastries being made in Johnson & Wales University’s baking labs facing Trade Street. But the most interesting lab is the one that wraps the corner of Cedar and Trade. This is Sugar Rush Central, also known as the “Chocolate Lab.” The entrance to this classroom…
Urban Explorer’s Handbook 2006
You get a whole new perspective on the craft of theater when you see it from above — way above. We climbed and climbed up flights of stairs at the Children’s Theatre’s new digs at ImaginOn, and wound our way up a steep spiral staircase until we were inside the top of the “toaster.” That’s…
Chappelle Cracks QC Up
Last week, Mr. Postman brought me an official certificate of appreciation from the Red Cross, for my services during the hurricane disaster relief efforts. Thoughtful, very; necessary, not so much. I happily donated more time and money than I could afford to Katrina relief. But my biggest contribution was taking in an old friend, a…
Film Clips
New Releases THE LIBERTINE Bawdy period sex comedies are nothing new — they’ve been around at least since 1963’s Tom Jones hightailed it back to England with the Best Picture Oscar in hand. At first glance, The Libertine appears to be a modern attempt to jump-start the sub-genre, to wrest the costume epic away from…
Urban Explorer’s Handbook 2006
In my third week on the job, I received an e-mail asking if I wanted to attend a boxing match. I didn’t even have to write about it if I didn’t want to. Other than free lunch at staff meetings (which has since been discontinued), this was the first perk of the job. As boys,…
Urban Explorer’s Handbook 2006
Durham is not the fourth largest city in North Carolina, despite what the census people would have you believe. The fourth largest is Lowe’s Motor Speedway. At least it is during the three major race days of each year, when 200,000 fans and staff populate the Speedway’s 1,200 acres. To accommodate the influx of people,…
Red Hot Mama
Are there any active old-school divas that we can still look up to? Cher? Retired. Tina Turner? Retired. Barbara Streisand? Her too. Joni Mitchell? Yep. Linda Ronstadt? Almost M.I.A. Diana Ross? A sad joke by now. Carly Simon or Carole King? Debatable. Well, there is one big exception. Other than mid-80’s and mid-90’s lulls, Bonnie…
View From The Couch
HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE (2005). The fourth installment in the J.K. Rowling screen franchise clearly isn’t afraid of the dark. There’s a reason that this is the first movie in the series to earn a PG-13 rating, as director Mike Newell, the first British director attached to this veddy British series, and…
Urban Explorer’s Handbook 2006
If you breeze through the county prison system on your typical drunk driving charge, odds are you’ll probably never see the inside of a medium-security holding area like this one in the Mecklenburg County jail. It’s for inmates expecting a longer-term stay behind bars. Some can’t make the high bonds, and some were refused release…
Urban Explorer’s Handbook 2006
The view from the 15th floor of the government center is a beautiful thing. It’s one of the few perks that come with the job of mayor. The walls of Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory’s office are lined with windows that allow unspoiled views of the heart of uptown, including the Bank of America and Wachovia…
Cat Power
It’s almost an identical 1,100 miles from the Ardent Studios in Memphis, TN, where Cat Power (a.k.a. Chan Marshall) recorded her latest, The Greatest (Matador), to two cities Marshall now calls home, New York and Miami. It’s a handy bit of symmetry. For until The Greatest, Marshall has always straddled the Mason/Dixon sonic line. Over…
Mos Valuable Player
Night Watch 68Film Clips 69View From The Couch 7068
Urban Explorer’s Handbook 2006
It was a crazy day, but the real kicker about this one was that this day ended up as the red-blooded American male’s ultimate fantasy: Cheerleaders lined up ready to simper, jump and pose on cue for the camera. Creative Loafing was invited to observe the secretive casting world via Paige Johnston, who owns Corrigan…
Urban Explorer’s Handbook 2006
The three bears have nothing on Charlotte’s projection booths. Just as Goldilocks discovered as she checked out bowls of porridge and lumpy beds, size does matter. One projection booth in the area is so small it could be mistaken for a spare bedroom in someone’s home. Another is so large its winding corridors bring to…
CSN
If you’re of a certain age bracket, Crosby Stills & Nash songs trigger sense memories. The tingle you get as those impossibly perfect high harmonies of “Helplessly Hoping” unfurl. That ominous, Nixon-era dread telegraphed by the organ/guitar intro of “Long Time Gone.” The patchouli-scented whiffs of utopianism conjured by “Wooden Ships.” And, above all, the…
Russian Roulette
I’ve never really contemplated the functionality of subtitles in foreign films except as a way of understanding what characters were saying, whether it’s “Vous pouvez vous enculer avec tes frits de liberté” (“You can shove your freedom fries”) or “Anche noi Italiani pensiamo che Roberto Benigni é un’idiota” (“Even we Italians think Roberto Benigni is…
Slumming
You need only turn on E! to see that there is a city of humanity defined not by encircling interstates or a cluster of area codes, but by a shared set of eight-plus-figure values and opulent rites: a tribe of wealthy elites traveling from rave to yacht to penthouse, crossing the international dateline more often…
Urban Explorer’s Handbook 2006
Billy is a lot like his dad. They’re both named Bill. They both became professional race car drivers. And both shattered the C-2 vertebrae in their necks during races. Last year in Daytona, with only a lap and a half to go in the race, Billy was running in sixth place when the third and…
Long Live Rock
First, it was the famous NYC punk club CBGB, imperiled by the rising cost of downtown hip. Now, Charlotte’s own venerable version of same, the Milestone Club, is endangered. The question of whether rock is dead arises again. Not wanting to get embroiled in endless cyclical arguments between rockists and futurists, I won’t opine overmuch.…
WATERED DOWN
For the next four days, I’ll be cruising with some of the finest hard bodies of the Carolinas. AAA and the Carolina Panthers are sponsoring a Panthers Fan Cruise. We’re scheduled to set sail from Tampa, FL, and rock the boat all the way to Mexico. I’m sure I was told the boat would stop…
It’s Make-or-Break Time for Moving Poets
Gcina Mhlophe has won international acclaim for her acting in films, and she’s been a featured actress onstage at Lincoln Center. She has sung with the London Philharmonic and with Ladysmith Black Mambazo. She has authored acclaimed poetry and children’s books while winning the reputation as South Africa’s greatest storyteller. The great griot will play…
Urban Explorer’s Handbook 2006
A 50-year-old man is walking around the campus of Belmont Abbey College in a dress. On closer inspection, he is actually wearing the traditional vestments of a Benedictine monk. The long, black cloth trails softly behind him. He is on his way to the Belmont Abbey Basilica. The tall steeples and original 1876 brick exterior…
A La Carte Cable TV?
Recent news reports could lead you to think “a la carte cable” — in which you pay only for the cable channels you want — is just around the corner. Don’t be so sure. Mainstream media stories about a recent FCC study — which declared that an a la carte system would save consumers money…
No Relation
Don’t look at me to be your mature guide to the Internet. This week, learn how to cook without animal products, laugh at some really gross inventions and read snarky comments about celebrities. Oh, and then there’s Googoosh. Just Say No never looked so good. vegan freak www.veganfreak.com Dr. Stinky www.flat-d.com/products.html Snarkywood www.snarkywood.com Persian pop…
Urban Explorer’s Handbook 2006
In technological time, the antiquated dispatch system at Crown is like the first printing press. The old computer looks like Atari’s PONG. Yet, the 10-year-old system is the only one among cab companies in Charlotte. Numeric zip codes are spaced out on a screen, and the cabs, represented by green rectangles, are listed below the…
Focus on whose family?
Tom Landry already had a YMCA T-shirt in hand and a facility tour to consider, he said, when a Y employee delivered some surprising news: Landry, his partner and their son could not apply for a family membership. “I was shocked,” he said. “It was embarrassing.” The YMCA of Greater Charlotte, unlike many Y’s, is…
Holy Warrior
Fishwrapper
Urban Explorer’s Handbook 2006
It disappears then turns into something else, but it’s not magic, says Scott Brown. He’s Mecklenburg County’s solid waste services manager. “People want to forget about their waste once they put it on the curb,” he says. At the curb, garbage men sift through your junk, separating paper from containers. Then, at the 110,000-square-foot recycling…
It’s the United Way
During corporate charity fund drives, pressure on employees to donate can be intense, especially if their bosses are keen on impressing the higher-ups. As fund drives for Charlotte’s choicest charities rev up and wind down, employees at Charlotte’s big corporations, and many small businesses as well, routinely empty their wallets for the community good with…
Year-round Illegals
Memo to Sue Myrick from Rodolfo de la Garza, professor and immigration expert at Columbia University in New York: “You’re not going to stop immigration because the incentives to come are all here.” Of course, de la Garza, being the expert, gives a solution that is not going to happen. “What you can do is…
Urban Explorer’s Handbook 2006
In 1969 Wayne Jernigan was making decent money as a drummer in Nashville, playing alongside country legends such as Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton. Still, he wasn’t quite making it as a studio musician. Wayne had always been fascinated by “the other side of the glass,” he says. During his playing days, he…
Mile-High Chug
I fly a lot. Not the “buzzed and ready for action” euphemism, but I frequently shove myself into a steel tube and travel at 507 miles-per-hour above the clouds. The seats are so close I can smell the lavender-scented shampoo on the chick a row up. On a recent early morning flight out of Reno,…
Breaking News
IRANIAN-BORN STUDENT PLOWS SUV INTO CHAPEL HILL CROWD A gas-guzzling behemoth as an agent of terrorism? Oh, the irony. NASCAR OFFICIALLY PICKS CHARLOTTE FOR HALL OF FAME CIAA and NASCAR news all in one week?! The Chamber can now tout uptown for its equal-opportunity boozing. PAYDAY LENDERS WILL NO LONGER PREY ON POOR IN NORTH…
Urban Explorer’s Handbook 2006
It’s one of Charlotte’s best kept secrets, a full service film and video rental facility with studios big enough to accommodate everything from commercials to feature films. Among its credits? Shallow Hal, starring Jack Black and Gwyneth Paltrow, and Will Ferrell’s upcoming NASCAR pic. Silver Hammer Studios was started by UNC-Charlotte grad Richard Aldridge, a…
Winelist
Free Wine Tasting Thursdays, 5-7pm. Dolce Vita, 3205 N Davidson St. 704-334-1052. Wine Classes www.CarolinaWineClub.com. March 14, 6:30-8:30pm, Spanish Renaissance. $35. Westye Group Southeast Showroom, 127 West Worthington Ave. # 104. 704-344-8027.
Congressional Porkfest
When no one was looking, the bastards put the bridges back. This summer, the infamous Alaskan bridges to nowhere became national symbols of the largest porkfest in Congressional history. One bridge would link the town of Ketchikan — population 8,000 and declining — to Gravina Island, home to the nearby airport and not much else.…
Urban Explorer’s Handbook 2006
Recently, the esteemed lefties from the local MoveOn chapter tried to visit US Rep. Sue Myrick’s office, hoping to accomplish what had been a fairly easy task at other politicians’ offices: hand a staffer some petitions protesting something-or-other. This time, the petitions were urging Myrick, a Republican, to return money received from indicted US Rep.…
New Guys in Town
OK, there’s Eleanor Rigby and there’s Cathy Rigby, but the town of Rigby had me stumped. The large white board beside the Five Guys Famous Burgers and Fries order stand proclaimed, “Today’s potatoes are from Rigby, Idaho.” Is there potato terroir? Is Rigby the Bordeaux of potatoes? A quick Internet check of the city of…
