by Tracy Jones | Oct 31, 2018 | Do, November 2018
What would a city look like if it was built through an open-source process? That’s exactly what Raleigh’s Visual Art Exchange wants to find out with a new exhibit called IMBY, or In My Backyard.
Inspired by local and national debates between the YIMBY (yes in my backyard) and NIMBY (not in my backyard) camps, VAE staff realized that, often, the only voices heard about city development are those of the people who feel the strongest. The impact of that development, however, affects many, many more.
“We wanted to experiment with how creativity could further engage people in the process of planning a community, and how reaching a wider audience could create more equity in the process,” says Kyle Hazard, VAE’s exhibitions director. “The goal is to expose attendees to the challenges that surface when density, community, accessibility and growth all collide, and possibly find new, crowdsourced and more equitable ways to look at solutions to those challenges.”
The month-long, collaborative, experimental exhibit will be built completely by the public. Attendees will have the opportunity to build the community in which they would like to live, from scratch. Almost like a real-life SIM City, but with more creativity and flair, the gallery will start out with empty pedestals and a whole lot of cardboard. The city will grow from there.
“If, to build that community, they decide it is necessary to topple a building, move a community center or even move an entire neighborhood out of a particular area, [visitors] will have to physically pick up and move those resources, creating a more personal connection to development,” says Hazard of the public’s participation. Guests will be given prompts for things to include, such as roads, power and accessibility, and will occasionally be asked to draw disaster cards that introduce natural, medical, social or structural challenges to resolve.
According to Wake County government statistics, a total of 164 new residents move to Raleigh per week. With the inevitable growth, it’s becoming increasingly clear that residents will have to come together in real life and agree, or compromise, on how that will work for everyone.
“As a staff, we’re interested in seeing what the answer to our original question was—what does a publicly built, open-source community look like?,” Hazard says. “Then, we hope to engage people from the NIMBY and YIMBY camps to see how those attitudes affect how a city is developed.”
While VAE has invited the public into the gallery for collaborative projects before—to write concerns on toilet paper flushed away for the new year in January of 2017, for example, or a month-long, publicly built, giant collage project four years ago—this will be the first community city built in the gallery. Part interactive art installation, part game, and part community conversation VAE encourages people of all ages and backgrounds to come out and participate.
To get in on the action, visit the Visual Art Exchange between November 2 and 24 at 309 West Martin Street.
by Tracy Jones | Oct 15, 2018 | Do, October 2018
“The Rocky Horror Picture Show” is honoring its onstage roots in a live production at Cary’s Koka Booth Amphitheatre. Outside, under the stars and just before Halloween, audiences can expect to be chilled, thrilled and fulfilled with this rock musical-slash-science-fiction horror comedy.
Frank, Brad, Janet, Magenta and Riff-Raff, played by YouTube sensation Penn Holderness, will take the stage for two nights only, along with the rest of a very talented cast.
“Seriously, the cast is amazing!” says producing artistic director and Broadway veteran Lauren Kennedy Brady. “We have some of the funniest actors around and killer singers. Plus, we have Abbey O’Brien directing the production.”
O’Brien is fresh off of working on “Jagged Little Pill,” the Broadway-bound musical based on Alanis Morissette’s music. She worked on “Waitress” on Broadway recently, as well.
After last year’s successful production of “Rock of Ages” at Koka Booth, Theatre Raleigh was eager to team up with the venue for another production this year.
“‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ struck us like a lightning bolt, right when we are about to give up on ideas,” Brady says. “To me, when you’re picking a show to do in a venue like the Booth, it has to feel right. It has to be the right experience. And I think ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ is perfect.”
Fans of “Rocky Horror” know that the experience goes beyond quietly watching a show from their seats. Dressing up, shouting at the screen and throwing objects are all part of the fun. To encourage these traditions, the theater will be selling “Fun Packs” for an additional $5; they’ll contain everything you’ll need to participate, from toast to water guns to rubber gloves.
For those unfamiliar with all that “Rocky Horror” entails, have no fear. “Virgins,” or first-time Rocky Horror participants, aren’t expected to know anything.
“No one will razz you or belittle you,” says Brady. “As a matter of fact, we’ll have experienced diehards scattered about to help those who feel in the dark. And we are hoping to have the callback lines up on a big screen.” Callback lines are the phrases audience members shout back at the screen or stage during specifically scripted moments.
Koka Booth isn’t merely playing the movie on a big screen with a shadow cast in front of it. Instead, the production will feature an elaborate set, a live, six-piece band and 15 actors singing and dancing their hearts out.
“We’re going to create an experience that the Triangle area will not soon forget!” Brady says.
To purchase tickets, visit boothamphitheatre.com. Reserved seats are $35 and lawn seats are $22.50.
by Tracy Jones | Sep 30, 2018 | Eat, October 2018
It’s a tough world for lots of small businesses these days, and especially for those that are family owned.
Only around one in five businesses in the U.S. still survive after 60 years in the same family, so it’s something of an anomaly to find a family business in its third generation, or later, still going. Conflicts develop, inheritors lose interest or companies simply find they can no longer keep up with the times; whatever the struggle, keeping a business in the family is more likely than not to pose a significant challenge.
Raleigh has a deep history with family businesses, dating back to 1865 when Thomas H. Briggs opened his hardware store on Fayetteville Street. Although the store closed in July of 2015, due to debt from an economic downturn, Evelyn Murray, Briggs’ sixth generation descendant, reopened the store a month later, on East Hargett Street.
“To pay off our debt to our vendors, we had to sell everything,” Murray says. “I bought the name for $1, took my own money and reopened the store. I love being back downtown. The only thing that’s missing is being back on Fayetteville Street, where it all began.”
Briggs Hardware is proof that, while challenging, businesses can succeed (or bounce back) with enough heart and hard work.
Shirtsleeves to Shirtsleeves
Businesses aren’t easy to start. John L. Ward, one of the world’s leading authorities on family business governance, uses the phrase “shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations” to describe the evolution of family businesses. As his thinking goes, the first generation of family members create a thriving enterprise, starting out with nothing but their shirtsleeves. The second generation lives off of what the first generation created, leaving the third generation with nothing but the shirtsleeves to show for the business, and having to start all over again.
But maintaining strong family bonds and a business that’s financially healthy can help buck the trend, keeping a family business thriving as it’s passed down.
“At the end of the day, my mother always said, ‘When you walk out the door and lock it to go home, you go out as siblings,’” says Boo Jefferson, who now runs Kannon’s, her grandfather’s men’s and women’s clothing stores, with siblings Joe Ann, George and Mary Kathryn. “The most important thing is the love you have for each other. This business is our heart and soul, but we love each other more.”
Business Evolution
Another factor Ward counts for family business failure over time is a business’s inability to adapt to the changing times. The product becomes obsolete or the family simply refuses to change its ways.
“Family business is susceptible to that, because they might have a tendency to stay with the product they know and therefore, don’t adapt,” says Dr. Stephen P. Miller, a family business expert and co-founder of the Family Enterprise Center at UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School. “On the other hand, they are able to make decisions faster, have rapid speed to market, and can provide a unique product or service for a specific niche market.”
Kannon’s has faced the challenges of a changing marketplace. Most clothing is now available at the click of a mouse (or tap of a smartphone) and the concept of destination shopping—something that Kannon’s Women’s Store was originally famous for—doesn’t really appeal to many younger people. In its previous location, nearly 98 percent of Kannon’s Women’s business came from out of town or out of state. After nearly 100 years in Wendell, the Women’s Store relocated to a space near the Men’s Store in Cameron Village. Jefferson hopes the new space will be more competitive and potentially prepare the company for ownership and management by a fourth generation.
“You have to always recreate yourself and stay on top of things,” Jefferson says. “It’s harder running a business today. My mother always told us that when you think you know everything about a business, you need to lock the doors.”
Community Involvement
It’s often not enough for a small business to simply hang an ‘open’ sign on the door and wait for the customers to come. The community needs to know a business is there.
“You have to make money to be in business,” says UNC’s Miller. “We find a lot of family business owners are trying to pursue a product important to their community or society. Sometimes they just love a particular product or service. There is a higher purpose in mind. It can be a wonderful vehicle for a family to express their values through their business. Raleigh is a dot on the map for Walmart, but if it’s a Raleigh-based family business, it’s their whole world, and there’s more of an inclination to be tied into the community.”
A great example of a Raleigh family business supporting its community is Ruggero Piano, established in 1958 by trained violinist and Italian immigrant Robert Ruggero. The winner of the 2014 Raleigh Arts Commission’s Medal of Arts Award for lifetime support of the arts in the Raleigh community, Ruggero Piano has allowed local musicians of all ages and abilities to gather to share their gifts with an appreciative audience.
“Community involvement and support has always been one of our top priorities,” says Chris Ruggero, the general manager and third generation descendent involved with running Ruggero Piano. “Our passion for pianos, music, and the arts has allowed us to take an active role in the community in many different ways. We’ve offered free concerts, fundraisers, educational seminars, and other types of events at our Bosendorfer Hall since 2002.”
Love of the Business (And Each Other)
While most businesses are simply passed down through the generations, Bailey’s Fine Jewelry falls into a unique family business category. According to the Wall Street Journal, nearly a third of family businesses are operated by husband-and-wife teams. Bailey’s opened in 1948, with both Clyde Bailey Sr. and “Mama” Ann Bailey running the business in Rocky Mount. Clyde Bailey Jr. then helped grow the business, opening a location in Cameron Village, with his high school sweetheart, Jane. And now, grandson Trey Bailey has taken over third-generation ownership with his wife, Marci, and brother-in-law, Doug Morgan.
“Our business is not just generational,” says Trey Bailey. “It has always been husbands and wives working in the business.”
Working together in the store and at home, Bailey says, it is his family’s love for one another coupled with its love of the business that has made the store successful. While Bailey’s has had its challenges over the years, the Baileys’ passion has always brought them through.
“Family business has pros and cons,” says Bailey. “It’s not always easy. It can be great in many ways, and there’s a lot of good to that. You can get too close for comfort and too many cooks in the kitchen sometimes, but we all have different strengths and weaknesses. We all seem to have a strength where the other has a weakness, and vice versa. We’ve grown so much. We now have more family members pulling the rope in the same direction, more people on the team who really care.”
Another reason Ward cites for the failure of family businesses is when the founder’s successors are unmotivated, or less interested in the business, and therefore, less hungry to work to keep it going. It can be difficult to keep love for a business alive through generations, or at least to keep that love as strong as it was when the business started. It’s up to each emerging generation to re-ignite the flame, so to speak.
“I was really interested in the jewelry industry,” Bailey says. “My grandfather and dad were jewelers and watchmakers, and I am neither. I am not a born jeweler, but I love people, I love customer service, and I love the jewelry industry. It piqued my interest to give the family business a try, and I’m glad I did. It’s a love-filled, joy-filled business.”
Succession
While poor succession planning is another reason family businesses fail, not all family businesses were set up for succession in the first place.
“Many start family businesses with no intent of going from one generation to the next,” Miller says. “It doesn’t have to go from one generation to the next to be successful. Some are just serial entrepreneurs.”
In the case of Raleigh’s Flythe Cyclery on Peace Street, succession began when Wade C. Lewis gave his son the business after he returned to Raleigh from serving in World War II. Lewis’s grandson, Edwin “Skip” Flythe Jr. had intended to pass the business on to his son for fourth generation ownership, but his son’s early death in 2013 changed everything. Flythe Jr. lost interest and closed the bike shop in 2016, nearly 70 years after it originally opened.
But the story does not end there.
“Skip was getting into his 70s, and he was ready to be done,” says Derek Frank, co-owner of Trails End Bikes. “He took us under his wing and helped us get started. We took the remaining inventory and took his advice and we created our own thing out of it.” Frank and his business partner, Tim Karcher, both worked at Flythe Cyclery and decided to carry on the bike shop in their own style, opening in Raleigh’s Oak Park Shopping Center in December of 2016.
“As a third generation business at Flythe, we got to carry a lot of pervious clientele who were loyal to the shop,” Frank says. “But we have also brought on new clients as well. We’re open to everybody and anybody.”
What’s Next?
According to Miller, next generation development begins around the age of 10. Children often learn a lot of things just by being around the family business and absorbing the environment.
“We view succession not as an event that occurs when the owner becomes 65 or 70 years old, or is ready to let go of the business,” Miller says. “It can take decades. The children may not be old enough to understand strategy, but they’re watching every day.”
Most family businesses owners agree that they don’t want to push the third, fourth or fifth generations into the business if they lack the desire to be involved, for fear that the business will then fail. Many also require that any children who want to come into the family business work somewhere else first, to gain discipline, responsibility, and perspective in their field.
“My mother never asked us to come into this business, but we all had to get business degrees,” says Jefferson of the Kannon’s clothing stores. “Each one of us came back. We want to see the legacy continue.
by Tracy Jones | Sep 18, 2018 | Buzz, September 2018
One part neighborhood bar, one part Southern kitchen and a dash of wood smoke greeted Michael Thor upon his permanent return to Raleigh last month. After spending nearly three years in Atlanta recovering from a paralyzing motorcycle accident, the Whiskey Kitchen co-owner is back in the world he helped create.
“So far, so good,” says Thor, who returned to Raleigh August 3. “It’s tiring. Friday and Saturday are both 10 hours here. I have to figure out what my body can handle and what it can’t. I hit the ground running at the beginning of the week and crash by the end.”
Thor suffered a C2 spinal cord injury from the accident in November of 2015 and relies on a wheelchair to get around. He currently lives “wheeling” distance from his restaurant on West Martin Street, allowing him to get to work on his own.
With a weak voice due to a compromised diaphragm, Thor admits that working in the restaurant takes more energy than it used to.
“I feel like being here is really going to help me,” Thor says. “You have to take deep breaths to be real loud, especially in this restaurant.”
Although Thor had been living in Atlanta, he co-led the birth of Whiskey Kitchen. He received constant updates, and gifts, including a full ticket stabber from a bell dinger from a busy Friday night. Seeing the restaurant for the first time last March during a fundraiser in his honor, Thor knew everything had come together.
“I came in and everything looked exactly as it was pictured in my head, but it wasn’t emotional because it was how I’d seen it all along,” Thor says. “I could not be more proud of the people who came together and made it a reality in my absence.”
Now that Thor is back in Raleigh, he’s re-experiencing a profession that never sleeps while also adjusting to working in a different way. From knowing the details of the bar and the kitchen to the front of the house, the list is endless.
“I know the restaurant industry inside and out, but how Whiskey Kitchen runs is a new experience for me,” says Thor. “I feel as the owner of the business, I should know how to do all of the things a business does.”
Thor says some days he feels really strong, while others he can hardly move. His recovery has been unique because, typically once a person gets movement back, they don’t lose it again. This hasn’t been the case for Thor, whose recovery has ebbed and flowed, but for the most part has maintained a positive trajectory.
“The move back to North Carolina was incredibly scary, not knowing how to transfer from this safe little pocket,” he says. “Somehow, it was scarier than the realization that I was paralyzed at all. I had always assumed that one day I would walk back through the doors of the restaurant. It was right around the 18-month mark that I realized it was not going to be a quick fix.”
Whiskey Kitchen is a large restaurant space, allowing ample room for Thor to get around, but its offices are located upstairs, presenting a new challenge. A new downstairs office space is in the works.
Inspiration to his Community
Thor, along with his wife, Sarah, and his mother, Karen, hope their experiences will help promote adaptive environments in restaurants. A few people from Thor’s rehab at Atlanta’s Shepherd Center were also involved in the culinary industry and understand the struggles of working in that industry while disabled. Peer support has been vital throughout Thor’s recovery, and he recently created the new Instagram handle of @crippledcook, which racked up more than 1,000 followers in less than 5 months.
“It gives disabled people hope to see someone continue and be successful in life and being happy and not trapped and confined,” Thor says. “It gives them a positive thing to grasp onto.”
We Are a Team
Thor hasn’t undergone his recovery alone. Sarah has served as full-time caregiver, learning quickly about health, wellness, nursing, wound care and much more.
“We work together really well and this experience has changed us both,” Sarah says.
“For the better,” says Thor, finishing his wife’s sentence for her. “Physically, not so much. I wasn’t an advocate for anything prior to the accident. This thrust us into a new world. It didn’t just happen to me. It happened to the entire family. It happened to the restaurant. A lot of people were affected when I went down.”
As a couple, they have become more patient and communicate better. They talk about what’s on their minds and how it pivots in their new lifestyle.
“It’s one of the hardest things anyone would have to do,” Sarah says.
“And if our roles were reversed, we’d have a very different story,” adds Thor.
Next Steps
Inspired by Thor’s injury, Karen, his mother, is opening NextStep Raleigh, a paralysis recovery center at 6601 Hillsborough Street. The 3,200 square-foot, accessible, community-based rehabilitation gym will house specialized paralysis recovery equipment, including functional electrical stimulation and neuromuscular electrical stimulation equipment.
NextStep Raleigh will serve people in the Triangle living with paralysis. There are approximately 125,000 local people suffering from some sort of paralysis due to stroke, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injury, amputation, cerebral palsy and traumatic brain injury, and recovery centers are few and far between.
“We’re hoping at the beginning to get around 30 patients that work out 3-4 hours per week, hoping it will grow from there,” Karen says.
Patients will come in for an assessment, then set up an exercise program with guided exercise. It costs $100 per hour and insurance doesn’t cover exercise physiologists. The team plans on raising funds for scholarships.
“A spinal cord injury is the definition of adding insult to injury,” Karen says. “Messages can’t get from the brain to the body, causing nerves to fire all over the place. It’s a complete miscommunication of the body.”
The center has hired full-time employees aligned with the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, ensuring that all will be neuro-recovery network (NRN) certified. UNC has committed to sending interns to the center, and Karen hopes other local universities will participate as well.
Karen admits there is a lot of room for growth as the non-profit matures, as it was expensive to open in the first place. She also hopes for corporate sponsorships and charitable donations to purchase more equipment and expand offerings to include caregiver support and alternative therapy.
“We have to get our feet under us first,” Karen says, adding that she hopes the center will help support neurological research. “Every spinal injury is completely unique. I don’t think there’s ever been as much activity around figuring out how to heal spinal cord injuries as there is right now.”
NextStep Raleigh’s grand opening takes place September 20.
by Tracy Jones | Jul 9, 2018 | July 2018 / August 2018, Polish, Stuff
Growing up in Walla Walla, Washington, cicadas and other critters weren’t part of the landscape for Allison Camp, but they are now. An NC State graduate student studying environmental toxicology, Camp is drawn to protecting the environment and looking out for the little guy, by trade and by passion.
That little guy is now prominently displayed throughout Camp’s jewelry line, Ocelli Creations. Named after “eye spots” found on many insects (ocelli, or ocellus in singular form), Camp encapsulates everything from baby’s-breath flowers to moth wings in resin, to create pendant necklaces and earrings.
Butterfly Wing Earrings
“I was inspired by the diversity of all of the little animals around me and I was trying to think of some way I could preserve them, turn them into art,” says Camp. “Beyond that I thought they looked cool, I had the ultimate goal of helping other people notice all of those little critters and animals that are interesting and have so many beautiful details about them. That was the dual inspiration.”
Camp, along with her friends Nicole Allard and Lexie Just, started with the cicada wings that are abundant, locally, in the summer. They experimented with different wings from various insects and parts of flowers, and the jewelry line grew from there.
“I was fascinated with the idea of capturing cicada wings in resin,” says Camp. “I was interested with playing around with how I could preserve them in some way, and that’s how I began.”
Resin casting is not an easy process, and preserving cicada wings, honeybees and shed snakeskin requires delicacy, to say the least. The resin takes time to prepare and multiple layers need to be applied. If Camp were to apply a layer each night, a typical piece could still take a week or more to preserve. And sometimes air bubbles get in the way.
Wing Necklace
“A lot of the resining is done freehand, so if you miscalculate the viscosity of the resin, it can spill over the edges,” Camp says. “That contributes to a large amount of our challenges. We can try to recoup some of these, but sometimes it’s just not possible and they end up in our own closets. And some pieces just get totally ruined in the process.”
So far, cicada wings and honeybees have been the most popular on Ocelli’s Etsy site and at local shows, but with Camp using only what she finds already deceased, her inventory can be limited. Because she refuses to order wings from butterfly farms, Camp can’t exactly make jewelry to order; she once found a lime green butterfly, for instance, and was able to make four pieces out of it, one from each wing.
But she doesn’t know when she may find something like that again, or even if she ever will.
“There’s just some aspect of being foraged and found that we subscribe to that keeps it in its most natural, most low-impact form,” says Camp. “Everything is very local. These are actually animals that you would find in the state, or in the Southeast. That’s fun, creatively too, to be like, ‘hey, we don’t know what we’re going to have.’ It makes everything a little bit more unique and special.”
Bee Necklace
With the goal of expanding upon her metalsmithing skills—Camp considers herself a newbie—and starting a blog focused on art, behind-the-scenes work, and promoting a lifestyle that encourages people to be a little gentler to the environment, Camp is optimistic about the future of Ocelli Creations. etsy.com/shop/OcelliCreations
